Equiosity

Last week we celebrated the life of Karen Pryor. My horses have lived a much better life because of Karen's work. That includes my young horse, Robin. I suppose I should stop referring to him as my young horse because this year he has reached an important milestone. Robin is thirty years old. That's like a person reaching their 90th birthday. It’s an achievement that needs to be celebrated which is what I am doing in this episode.

I don’t know Robin’s actual birthday so I will be celebrating his 30th Birthday all year long. Robin has had an enormous impact on equine clicker training. He showed us what is possible. So in this episode I am going to share Robin stories. We’ll be talking about trick training, the “pose”, default behaviors and of course, balance, balance and more balance.

Episode 312 Remembering Karen Pryor

At the end of January 2025 Dominique and I got together for an afternoon's conversation. This is part 1 of that conversation.

I primarily wanted to talk about Karen Pryor. Karen died on January 5 2025. This episode celebrates her life.

This is Part 3 of our conversation with Lucy Butler. With her fiancee Lucy founded the River Haven Sanctuary in Rhode Island. The sanctuary is home to about fifty animals - pigs, geese, ducks, chickens, goats, donkeys, and three horses. The Sanctuary gives forever homes to animals that were in crisis. Lucy and her fiancee Jeff have plans for developing the sanctuary into an educational center,.

In Part 1 Lucy introduced us to the sanctuaries three horses, Pearl, River, and Nieve. Initially, clicker training was used to help the horses settle and to fill in the huge gaps in their basic education. It’s been a healing process for them physically as well as emotionally.

In Part 2 we talked about the effect that lateral work is having on the horses. We began with Nieve and the remarkable changes lateral work is making in her emotional stability. Nieve is confirming that in horses physical balance is very much related to emotional well-being.

In Part 3 we continue on with the changes that Lucy is seeing in River, a standardbred who was raced for five years and was then a harness horse for the Amish, and in Pearl, a mini who came to River Haven Sanctuary via another horse rescue.

These “throw-away” horses show us how important training is to their overall well-being. Lucy is learning how to weave strong safety nets under her three very different horses.

This is Part 2 of our conversation with Lucy Butler. With her fiancé Lucy founded the River Haven Sanctuary in Rhode Island. The sanctuary is home to about fifty animals, pigs, geese, ducks, chickens, goats, donkeys, and three horses. The Sanctuary gives forever homes to animals that were in crisis. Lucy and her fiancé Jeff have plans for developing the sanctuary into an educational center,.

In Part 1 Lucy introduced us to the sanctuaries three horses, Pearl, River, and Nieve. Initially, clicker training was used to help the horses settle and to fill in the huge gaps in their basic education. It’s been a healing process for them physically as well as emotionally.

In Part 2 we talk about the effect that lateral work is having on the horses. We begin with Nieve and the remarkable effect that teaching her lateral work is having for her emotionally. Nieve is confirming that in horses physical balance is very much related to emotional well-being. We talk about constructional design and what shaping on a point of contact means for the horses.

This is Part 1 of our conversation with Lucy Butler. With her fiancé Lucy founded the River Haven Sanctuary in Rhode Island. The sanctuary is home to about fifty animals, pigs, geese, ducks, chickens, goats, donkeys, and three horses. The Sanctuary gives forever homes to animals that were in crisis. Lucy and her fiancé Jeff have plans for developing the sanctuary into an educational center.

In Part 1 Lucy introduces us to the Sanctuary’s three horses, Pearl, River, and Nieve. Initially, clicker training was used to help the horses settle and to fill in the huge gaps in their basic education. It’s been a healing process for them physically as well as emotionally. This sets the stage for the main purpose of our conversation - which is to talk about lateral work. Lucy is in the early stages of introducing her horses to lateral work. The discoveries she’s making and the changes she’s seeing in her horses are well worth sharing.

For me central to all performance work is the horse’s balance. The training helps the horse find his optimal balance and use of his body. Whatever your performance goals are for your horse, a central, fundamental focus on balance will help you get there. And it will get you there without compromising your horse. Balance matters for the lifetime of your horse.

Lucy has been an active participant in my on-line clinics so I’ve been watching her horses’ training develop over time. All three have reached the point where lateral work is beginning to pop out. In the last coaching session Lucy talked about the exciting changes she’s seeing in her horses.

The changes in all three horses have been so remarkable, we had to share. Normally when someone is invited to talk about lateral work, it is because they are an expert in this type of training. In Lucy’s case it is because this work is so new to her that I wanted her to join us. The changes she’s seeing in her horses are very much worth sharing.

I always add something at the end of each episode. This week I have included a tribute to Karen Pryor who died on January 4, 2025 at the age of 92. Do please join me in honoring her work.

This is Part 4 of a 4 part conversation. In November Dominique and I spent a delightful afternoon going through a list of topics Dominique has been accumulating. We talked the afternoon away, so I’ve split our conversation into four episodes.

In Part 1 we talked about trailer loading, the microshaping strategy and what criteria we use to decide when to end a training session.

In part 2 I described a procedure for teaching a horse to lift his feet that uses body part targeting. This lesson helps develop skills in the handler that are needed for teaching lateral work.

I also described a fun lesson where instead of round penning horses, we round pen people. The lesson teaches handlers the choreography of ground work.

In part 3 we consider another critical handler skill and that’s fast decision making. Often we look at training progressions with the focus on what the horse is learning. Of course the question that interests people is: What am I going to be teaching my horse?

In order to teach well, there are skills the handler needs to learn. Many of these are obvious physical skills such as learning good rope handling techniques. What is less obvious are some of the “invisible” skills such as fast decision making. These invisible skills are the “grease” that makes all the physical skills work smoothly.

So in this episode we focused on flexible thinking and fast decision making. We review the progression of lessons that develops this skill for the handler and we consider why this is such an important skill.

We also look at shaping on either side of the click and more details about teaching foot care, especially related to handling the hind feet of potential kickers.

In Part 4 we continue this discussion of teaching horses good foot care manners. We share some farrier stories and then consider if, when, and how to fade the click and treat out of the foot care process.

Our discussion takes us to listening to horses and how that phrase is interpreted by different trainers. What gets normalized in our training expectations? When trainers talk about relaxed horses, what does that mean? We make a distinction between relaxation and learned helplessness. Do we recognize the difference? This brings us back to the earlier conversation about round pens where the end result in many styles of round pen training is learned helplessness. We want to keep the sparkle in the eye and that’s what we see with clicker training.

This is Part 3 of a 4 part conversation. In November Dominique and I spent a delightful afternoon going through a list of topics Dominique had been accumulating. We talked the afternoon away, so I’ve split our conversation into four episodes.

In Part 1 we talked about trailer loading, the Microshaping Strategy, and what criteria we use to decide when to end a training session.

In part 2 I described a procedure for teaching a horse to lift his feet that uses body part targeting. This lesson helps develop skills in the handler that are needed for teaching lateral work.

I also described a fun lesson where instead of round penning horses, we round pen people. The lesson teaches handlers the choreography of ground work.

Now in part 3 we consider another critical handler skill and that’s fast decision making. Often we look at training progressions with the focus on what the horse is learning. Of course, the question that interests people is: What am I going to be teaching my horse?

In order to teach well, there are skills the handler needs to learn. Many of these are obvious physical skills such as learning good rope handling techniques. What is less obvious are some of the “invisible” skills such as fast decision making. These invisible skills are the “grease” that makes all the physical skills work smoothly.

So in this episode we focus on flexible thinking and fast decision making. We review the progression of lessons that develops this skill for the handler and we consider why this is such an important skill.

We also look at shaping on either side of the click and more details about teaching foot care, especially related to handling the hind feet of potential kickers.

This is a fun episode. We begin with foot care and the connection to lateral work. The lesson I describe is especially useful if you have a horse who struggles to pick up his feet for you. Instead of trying to fix a broken behavior, I share with you a different way of teaching your horse to pick up his feet, one that uses body part targeting.

I’ll let you listen to the episode to find out what the connection to teaching lateral work is.

The discussion of lateral work connects us to something I don’t think we’ve talked about before in this podcast and that’s round penning people. Again, I’ll send you to this week’s episode to find out what that’s about.

In November Dominique and I spent an afternoon catching up and talking about a wide range of topics. We talked together for over four hours so obviously that conversation is going to be divided up over several episodes.

In Part 1 Dominique gets us started with a question about breaks. We talk about trailer loading, familiarizing horses to new environments, the Microshaping strategy and the criteria we us for knowing when to end a training session.

This is Part 3 of a three part conversation with Michaela Hempen and Carmen Heritier. In the spring of 2024 Carmen sent her three year old quarter horse mare, Malu, to Michaela for three months of training.

Malu was like a sponge. She soaked up all the lessons. In this episode we contrast what it was like to work with a well prepared young horse who likes people with that of restarting Michaela’s mare Blondie. In Parts 1 and 2 we reviewed Blondie’s training background. In this episode Michaela shares more of the details of her training. She describes the long-term impact of the physical and emotional compression that Blondie endured in her early training before coming to Michaela. Blondie’s training background is a common one. The contrast between the two horses highlights what a gift it is to give a horse a good start to their training.