Equiosity

Episode 124: Mary Hunter Pt 1: Growing Cilantro - Yes It Is About Training!

This week begins a series with Mary Hunter. Mary is a horse owner, a training coach for both horses and dogs, and an applied behavior analyst. She has a great blog: StaleCheerios.com. She organizes the annual Art and Science of Animal Training conference, and she together with Dr. Jesús Rosales Ruiz, she has written the PORTL Manual. She was also our guide for the Listen and Learn Audio course on Applied Behavior Analysis.

Just before Thanksgiving we spent a delightful afternoon catching up with Mary. We started out talking about gardening and the growing of cilantro. That led us to extinction and then to shaping and finding approximations that create early success.

A windy day was the spark behind a conversation about managing horses when their energy is up. That led in turn to stimulus control and remembering how powerful small changes in the environment can be. And that led us to a favorite subject - using the training to ask questions so our horses have a real say in what we do together. What we are really talking about is listening well.

This week Dominique launched us into an interesting conversation about reinforcers. If you don’t want to use food, or you want to use food creatively, what are some of your options with horses.

With dogs there can be so many fun ways to reinforce behavior besides using a food reward. You can toss a ball, play tug, give a belly scratch. With horses because feeding treats is such an easy reinforcer to use, we seem to get into more of a rut in our thinking. So this week we explore different options.

We begin by talking about how grazing can be used as a reinforcer. It’s still using food, but often people fight against grass instead of using it. Just like any treat delivery process, if you want to use the opportunity to graze, you have to go through a teaching process with your horse.

Many people close their pastures at this time of the year to keep their horses from churning them into mud. Especially if you board your horse, you may be doing a lot of hand grazing. That means his is a great time of the year to work on this lesson. You’ll be turning grass into a powerful reinforcer you can use in your training. And your horse will be learning a lot about polite manners and emotional control.

We talk about non-food reinforcers, as well. It all helps to make the training more interesting for your horse.

The rest of this sentence is find a look that pleases your eye. When you look at a horse what do you like? If you’re looking at ten pictures of your beloved horse, what characteristics make you choose this photo over that one? This is the question we explore in this week’s podcast. What pleases your eye, and why is this important to think about when you train, and especially when you feed your horse?

This week’s episode explores the stimulus control quadrants developed by Dr. Jesús Rosales Ruiz. When I say stimulus control many of you are probably thinking about the four criteria that are used to judge if a cue is under full stimulus control. This is not what Jesús is talking about.

He’s looking instead at the conditions under which learning occurs. It’s a fascinating discussion. Don’t fight extinction is an important part of the stimulus control quadrants. You can find out what this means in this week’s episode.

This week's podcast was prompted by a question a listener sent in. She had a terrifying escape with her two horses from one of the California fires. Her experience prompted a question about choice. Her question led us to a discussion of the work of Dr. Jesús Rosales Ruiz on stimulus control. This is a short episode. We decided to introduce the topic this week and then to dive in more deeply in our next podcast.

You’ve been reinforcing your horse for the good behavior you want, and now suddenly that process stops. You’ve just thrown your horse into an extinction process. You’re about to experience the emotional fallout that creates.

Stopping positive reinforcement is how we normally describe the extinction process, but what happens when someone stops punishing a behavior? This is another way in which a horse can experience extinction. What does this process create? And does this help us to understand some of the extreme behavior horses sometimes show early on in their introduction to clicker training? That’s the twist on extinction that this podcast explores.

A wrap up of the recent Science Camp sparked a lively conversation centered around choice. We end the podcast with a story that illustrates what choice looks like. We get there by talking about zoo programs, trailering, keystone behaviors, and errorless learning.

Dominique loves to learn. She is forever finding interesting articles and scientific studies for us to discuss. This week we consider one that looks at machine learning and the 85% rule. This doesn’t sound as though it could possibly be related to equine hugs, but it is.

You can learn anything from the internet. Google any subject and you will get a long list of links. But having access doesn’t always help you to know where to start or how to proceed. In this week’s podcast Dr. Susan Friedman lays out a road map to help you in your exploration of any question you want to explore in depth.