JOY Full Horses: Pt. 1 Ch. 6: Being PLAY Full

Play Full
The dictionary would tell me that I should write this as playful.  But just as Panksepp wants to emphasize that when he writes PLAY in capitals he is speaking of one of the seven fundamental affective systems, I want to remind you that playful means we are full of play.

The six properties of PLAY which I wrote about in the previous section remind us why being PLAY FULL with our horses is important.  Being full of play helps us find creative solutions to training problems.  It keeps us in a relaxed mental state that makes it easy to reach for the positive solutions instead fear-based corrections.  Play creates a safety net for our horses.  Especially when you are working with difficult or potentially dangerous situations, being in a play state helps you find horse-friendly solutions.

Playing with Horses
But how do you play with a horse?  After all safety always comes first. I can’t play with the Icelandics in the same way that they play with one another.

sindri Fengur rough play

Horses at play

At a recent clinic I was sitting in the host’s living room. Her three dogs were having a rough and tumble play session.  It looked for all the world like a miniature version of the Iceys.  There were the same mock bites, the same leaps up into the air.

My host walked boldly through this maelstrom bringing me a cup of tea!  If they had miscalculated and bumped her leg, the worst that would have happened was the tea would have been spilled on her carpet.

Cindy with her dogs

Dogs at play

If the Iceys miscalculate, I could end up in a full-body cast. So what is the answer? How can I safely play with my horses?

Playing with Behavior
Without a great deal of skill and experience, I may not be able to engage with my horses via their natural play behaviors, but I can play via the behaviors that I teach them.  That’s the beauty of clicker training.  If I am in a state of play as I teach new behaviors to my horses, they will turn those behaviors around and use them as a way to play with me.

Even seemingly hard behaviors can function in this way.  Playing a Beethoven concerto can seem like either an onerous task imposed by your teachers or the greatest joy in your life.

How a behavior is perceived is more important than what it is. Our senior horse Magnat loved to piaffe.  Give him the least hint that piaffe might be on the table, and he would be offering it with gusto.  He also loved to retrieve.  At the start of a training session in the arena, he would insist on being turned loose so he could retrieve any dropped objects that might have been left in the arena by others.

Magnat belonged to Ann Edie.  Ann is blind.  Many know her through her other horse, Panda, the mini she uses as her guide.

Panda great walk

It may look like a casual walk, but Panda is guiding her blind handler.

For years Ann and I boarded our horse together in a large lesson barn.  The Iceys and Magnat belong to her.

Playing with Play
Because Ann is blind, it was very useful to her to let Magnat clean up the arena at the start of every session.  She was handed gloves, riding crops, Kleenex, cones.  If there was nothing else to retrieve, he even brought her larger than normal pieces of the shavings that made up the arena footing.

Piaffe and retrieving are two very different kinds of behaviors.  Retrieving was taught in an afternoon.  Piaffe took many months of structured work, but for Magnat they were clearly both regarded as play.  They were taught with laughter and they brought laughter.

CTFYH cover with caption1

Coming next: Part 1: Chapter 7: Training Playfully Mixed with a Little Science

I hope you will want to share these articles by sending links to this blog to your friends.  But please remember this is copyrighted material.  All rights are reserved. Please do not copy any of the “Joyful Horses” articles without first getting written permission from Alexandra  Kurland, via theclickercenter.com

Also note: these articles are not intended as an instruction guide for introducing your horse to clicker training.  If you are new to clicker training and you are looking for how-to instructions, you will find what you need at my web sites:

theclickercenter.com                    theclickercentercourse.com

JOY Full Horses: Part 1 Ch. 4: Inside The Trainer’s Brain

Recognizing Play

sindri fengur playing 3 photos

When they’re turned out together, our two Icelandics engage in mock battles. How do I know they are playing and not fighting for real?  Their drama is intense.  Both rear up and crash into one another.  One will come down over the neck of the other seemingly trying to bite the other horse through his thick mane.   They’ll spin apart and kick out, then race off at a gallop shouldering one another for an advantage in the turn.

To a causal observer it looks both very dramatic and very real, but these Iceys are good actors.  Their battles are all make believe.  They leave the “battle field” without a mark on them.  The kicks are all pulled punches and the bites nothing but pretend.  One moment they are body slamming into one another, the next they are standing side by side in their other favorite activity – social grooming.

After a good play session they come into the barn relaxed, refreshed, and always ready for more.  At twenty they play with the same vigor and intensity that they did when they were four.

When you watch your dogs or your cats wrestling together, you have no trouble recognizing this behavior as play.  You see the bites that aren’t bites, and the claws that don’t draw blood.  You see them taking turns.  First, one is on top pinning the other down, and then they’ll flip roles.  The stronger animal has learned that if he dominates the play, the other animal will quit.  I don’t know which of the Icelandics is the faster horse.  They always run together.  If Fengur has his nose out in front, it is only because Sindri, our stallion has let him, not because Sindri has fallen behind.

When Peregrine, my senior horse, was a two year old, he was chased by another horse through a fence.  I’ve seen what it looks like when these clashes are not play. It is terrifying to watch.  There is no mistaking the real thing for play.  When I see my cats confronting the neighborhood stray, it does not look in any way like the play they engage in together.  But that play between friends has prepared them well for the negotiations they are about to have.  All of us – cats, horses, people – know when the play has stopped, and we are now engaged in the real thing – a struggle for survival.

Part 1: Chapter 5: What is Play?

Defining Play
So we can recognize play.  But what is it?  Stuart Brown wrestled with this question in his book. He opened by saying he resisted giving play a definition for a number of reasons.  Play is so varied.  As he points out, an activity such as writing this chapter might seem like play to me, but it might be work to somebody else.  So we cannot define play simply through the activities we engage in.

For Brown play may be hard to pin down with a rigid definition, but at least in people, it does have very recognizable properties.  He would say:

* Play is done for it’s own sake.  Play has no direct survival value.
* It is voluntary.  You don’t “have to” play.
* Play is inherently reinforcing.  Play is fun so you want to play more.
* Play provides freedom from time.

This is the characteristic that most resonates with me.  I am constantly losing track of time.  I’ll be working with the horses, or working on this book, and suddenly realize that several hours have passed and I’m about to be late for an appointment.  I have been so absorbed in what I was doing, so in “the zone” in a PLAY state, that I have completely lost track of time.

At clinics I am constantly surprised that the hands on my watch have moved forward by several hours. “How can it be four o’clock?”, I’ll exclaim.  “It was just 12:30 the last time I looked.”  It is as though I’m surprised by the notion that time passes.  I know the hands on my watch will be progressing around the clock face, but in my PLAY state it truly does seem as though no time has passed.

* Play produces a diminished consciousness of self.

pool noodle GermanyWe stop worrying so much about how we look to others.  In imaginative play we may even become a different “self”.  When you’re trying to learn to ride and you have an instructor barking commands at you treating your lesson more like military boot camp than something you’ve chosen to do for fun, you’ll be a long way from a PLAY state.  Barked commands create FEAR and make the learner more self-conscious – not less.  To promote the best mental state for learning and retaining information, we want to be PLAY full.

When people are first learning clicker-compatible rope handling skills, I start them out without their horses.  At first, people may be thinking how silly they look practicing their technique with a rope tied to a door handle.  They’ll be terribly self-conscious.  Once I get them in a PLAY state, this kind of thinking disappears. They forget what it might look like to an outsider as they become fully engaged in the process.

* Play has improvisational potential.

When you play, you aren’t locked into a set way of doing things.  You can experiment and invent.  Many of the details that we now know make a huge difference to the horses were discovered during play sessions without any horses being involved.

People took turns being the handler and the “human horse”. They stepped outside of themselves and left behind their usual, I’m-an-adult-and-I don’t-play-silly-make-believe-games.  They let go of their self-conscious rigidity and let the act of playing take over.  The result was they saw things in a different way and with fresh insights.

Canine clicker trainer, Kay Laurence, often refers to a quote from Proust:

A journey of discovery comes not from a voyage into new landscapes but seeing familiar landscapes with fresh eyes.

Over and over again, our animals show us the truth of this expression.  As each new layer of training is explored, we see our animals and all their brilliance with fresh eyes.

* Play provides a continuation desire.  You want to keep doing it.  Once the play stops, you want to do it again.  As Brown puts it: “Play is its own reward, its own reason for being.”++

++ The Properties of Play are from: “Play: How it Sharpens the Brain, Opens the Imagination, and Invigorates the Soul”    Stuart Brown M.D. and Christopher Vaughan, The Penguin Group, NY New York 2009.

Coming next: Part 1: Chapter 6:  Being PLAY FULL

I hope you will want to share these articles by sending links to this blog to your friends.  But please remember this is copyrighted material.  All rights are reserved. Please do not copy any of the “Joyful Horses” articles without first getting written permission from Alexandra  Kurland, via theclickercenter.com

Also note: these articles are not intended as an instruction guide for introducing your horse to clicker training.  If you are new to clicker training and you are looking for how-to instructions, you will find what you need at my web sites:

theclickercenter.com                    theclickercentercourse.com

JOY Full Horses: Part 1 Chapter 3: What Neuroscience Teaches Us About Play

aa Panda scrabble

The Archeological Dig Through The Brain
So far I’ve discussed:

SEEKING.  This is the “granddaddy” of all the systems. You have to find the resources needed for survival. This is why so many people love to shop.  The SEEKER circuit is being activated even if you are just window shopping. This system is also activated in conjunction with the other emotional systems so it is too simplistic to say the SEEKER circuit alone was activated.

RAGE: Someone wants to take your resources so you have RAGE.

FEAR: Other organisms want to eat you, so there’s FEAR.

LUST: You need to reproduce.  This leads to the evolution of the next system: CARE.

CARE: You need to care for offspring.

PANIC: The loss of your caregiver and protector triggers this system.

This leaves just one more system to talk about and that’s PLAY.  After I first heard Panksepp speak, I was trying to remember the seven systems so I could share his work with others.  I got six of them without any trouble.  What was the seventh?  I had a hard time remembering PLAY.  Somehow PLAY just seemed too frivolous and inconsequential to belong on this list, but then I started learning more about play and the key role it “plays” in brain development.

So here is the last of the seven systems:

PLAY: Animals need social engagement which is manifested in play. PLAY is the last system Panksepp lists, and he gives it special significance. It is through play that the neocortex becomes integrated.

Clicker Training and the Seven Affective Systems
For a clicker trainer, this list of the seven Affective Systems is of particular interest.  Consider what it means to use a marker signal and to pair it with things an animal wants.  The click becomes my “yes answer” signal.  For the horse it’s a predictor of good things.  My horse wants to get me to click so he can engage in activities he enjoys.  That means he’s going to be more likely to perform whatever behavior was occurring just as I clicked.  It’s a wonderfully reinforcing loop.  We’re both happy.  I’m getting more of the behavior I like, and my horse thinks he’s got me all figured out!  He knows how to make that magic click happen.

Clicker training is a fun, effective, horse-friendly way to train.  When I look at Panksepp’s list, I understand even more clearly why my horses and I enjoy it so very much.  Clicker training activates both the SEEKER and the PLAY systems.  I’m not relying on FEAR to move a horse out of my space.  In fact I actively work to avoid triggering FEAR, RAGE, or PANIC.

As a clicker trainer, I’ve learned how to trigger the SEEKER circuit and to turn training into play for both myself and my horses.  At any point where the training begins to feel like a chore, it’s time to rethink what I’m doing.  I want to come up with training solutions that don’t just manage my horse’s fear and anxiety.  I want to turn the trailer, the farrier, the scary end of the arena into a source of play and social engagement for my horse.  I want him actively seeking out opportunities to engage with me and the environment.

Part 1: Chapter 4:  Inside the Trainer’s Brain

The Neuroscience of Training
When I think about Panksepp’s list, I wonder what happens in the brain when different training methods are used. Two trainers could be working towards the same end goal behavior. On the outside you’d see the behavior emerging. But inside the brain – what is happening?

Clicker trainers talk about their horses being different. Panksepp’s work seems to support this. When we use clicker training, we’re very much activating the SEEKER circuit. We’re engaging our animals in PLAY, and we’re avoiding FEAR and PANIC.

You can train a horse with a whip and spurs followed by a pet on the neck.  Alternatively, you can take the threat away and train with a clicker and treats.  Panksepp’s work would suggest that very different systems are activated within the brain. And so, yes, when we say our clicker-trained horses are different – at the basic level of brain mechanisms, it turns out that they truly are.  So, if play is critical for integrating the neocortex, what is this saying about our animals? And what is the effect on us as we participate in the process? Anyone who clicker trains can easily answer that last question.

Coming next: Part 1: Chapter 4:  Recognizing PLAY

I hope you will want to share these articles by sending links to this blog to your friends.  But please remember this is copyrighted material.  All rights are reserved. Please do not copy any of the “Joyful Horses” articles without first getting written permission from Alexandra  Kurland, via theclickercenter.com

Also note: these articles are not intended as an instruction guide for introducing your horse to clicker training.  If you are new to clicker training and you are looking for how-to instructions, you will find what you need at my web sites:

theclickercenter.com                    theclickercentercourse.com

JOY Full Horses: Part 1: Ch. 2 Animal Emotions con’t

Joy Full Horses title page coverIf you are new to this series, this article is part of a book which I am publishing here on this site.  I suggest you begin with the first article published on January 2, 2016 https://theclickercenterblog.com/2016/01/02/

Part 1: Chapter 2: Animal Emotions continued

In the previous section I introduced you to the work of the neuroscientist, Jaak Panksepp.  Panksepp has identified seven affective emotional systems which are common to all mammals.  The first of these is the SEEKER System which I came to understand better through the actions of a courageous mouse.  In today’s article, we’ll look at five more of these systems, beginning with RAGE.

aa mouse walking

RAGE
Once a mouse finds the resources it needs, it must then protect them.  So another primary system is RAGE.  With our wonderful modern technology we can hide remote cameras in all sorts of unlikely places, including hollowed out tree stumps in which a scientist has cached nuts and grains.  If you want drama, just wait until a shrew, a mouse, and a vole happen upon the stash at the same time.  Prize fighters in a boxing ring would be hard pressed to put on such a show!

For a ring-side view of this epic drama, use your SEEKER system to hunt up on some past episodes of the BBC’s “Spring Watch” series. You’ll find them on youtube.  The “boxing match” was high drama for a series that takes you into the English countryside to watch over bird nests and spring lambing.

FEAR

aa mouse

Mice SEEK, but there are others who are SEEKING them. So one of the other deep archaeological layers of the mind reveals the FEAR system. Those of us who work with horses know this one well.  Sit on a horse who hears an unfamiliar sound, and you will feel his heart pound in a sudden adrenaline rush of FEAR.

LUST, CARE, and PANIC
Or if you are on a stallion, perhaps it is another system that distant sound has just activated: LUST.

LUST leads to reproduction which leads in mammals to the CARE system.  This is obviously especially strong in females.  I wonder if this explains in part why so many more women than men are drawn in these modern times to horses.  Horses certainly require a great deal of care and nurturing.

Mammalian babies are dependent upon their mothers for survival so the sixth ancient system is PANIC.  The loss of your caregiver triggers this system.

aa zebra nursing

When I first heard Panksepp give a basic lecture on the seven systems, he made an interesting observation.  When a young animal is afraid, it is silent.  When it is separated from it’s caregiver, it cries out.  FEAR and PANIC are different systems.

Here’s another interesting observation from Panksepp: in the brain the areas that are activated when an individual is physically hurt and when they are separated from their social group are very close together.  This may be why we experience separation as “painful”.

How does this relate to horse training?  We often refer to a horse being in a panic.  If we are following Panksepp’s terminology, what we may really mean is he’s afraid.  When our horse sees a herd of cows and bolts out from under us, how do we describe the event to our friends?  As we relate the tale later (hopefully not from a hospital bed.), we may say he panicked   The question is: was that really PANIC or was it FEAR?   We may think they look the same, but the underlying emotional systems are very different.

aa trailer loading Robin.pngHere’s another example: Your horse doesn’t want anything to do with the shiny new trailer you’ve just bought for him.  You picked it out especially with his comfort in mind. It’s an inviting space with lots of windows, and a bright interior. He’s always been good going up over platforms and onto the wooden bridges you’ve built for him.  But now he’s got his feet planted at the foot of the trailer ramp, and he’s refusing to go another inch forward.  Anytime you’ve gotten him to move, it’s been over the top of you trying to get back to his pasture mates.

So here’s the question: Is your horse afraid or is he in a panic? The answer matters because it will help determine the most effective course of action you can take to get him to walk willingly and easily onto the trailer.

So what is the difference?  We often use the words interchangeably. You’ve gone to a friend’s barn for a weekend trail ride, and your horse all but runs over the top of you trying to get away from the llama he’s seeing for the first time.  Later when you’re telling the story, you say he was in a panic.  But again, if we think about Panksepp’s discriminations, is that a correct use of the term?

If you know which emotional system is being triggered, you can come up with a more effective training solution. If you think just about the difference between FEAR and PANIC, you may find that it very much effects the training choices you make.  Consider the horse who doesn’t want to go on your new trailer. Is he fretting because he’s being separated from his pasture mates?  Or is he uncertain about the strange smell of the new rubber mats on the trailer floor?  Can you see that these call for different training solutions?

If you think the issue is fear of the trailer when really you’re dealing with separation anxiety, you could be spending a lot of time getting your horse used to walking through narrow chutes, and stepping up onto ramps, and you’d still have issues getting him on a trailer.  If he’s worried about his friends on the other side of the fence, making him go onto a trailer could end up “electrifying” it in his mind – making it a much more terrifying place than it ever would have been if his friends had been with him when he first went on it.  You may have begun with only PANIC, but now you’ve got FEAR layered on top, making the whole training situation that much more difficult.

Before you begin any training plan, it’s worth considering what the underlying emotions are that you’re dealing with.  Does your horse fret over having his feet worked on by the farrier because he’s in the barn by himself and he wants to get back to his herd?  Or is he afraid of the farrier because he’s not very well balanced and the farrier has hit him – hard – when he’s shifted around? For your training to be most effective and efficient you want to choose a training solution that fits the emotional system that is being triggered.

To be continued . . .

Next up: Part 1 Chapter  3: What Neuroscience Teaches Us About Play

I hope you will want to share these articles by sending links to this blog to your friends.  But please remember this is copyrighted material.  All rights are reserved. Please do not copy any of the “Joyful Horses” articles without first getting written permission from Alexandra  Kurland, via theclickercenter.com

Also note: these articles are not intended as an instruction guide for introducing your horse to clicker training.  If you are new to clicker training and you are looking for how-to instructions, you will find what you need at my web sites:

theclickercenter.com                    theclickercentercourse.com

 

JOY Full Horses: Pt. 1: Ch 2 Animal Emotions – Affective Neuroscience

Joy Full Horses title page cover

If you are new to this series, this article is part of a book which I am publishing here on this site.  I suggest you begin with the first article published on January 2, 2016 https://theclickercenterblog.com/2016/01/02/

 

Part 1: Chapter 2: Animal Emotions continued

In the previous section I introduced you to Virginia Morrel’s book “Animal Wise”.  In her book Morrell shares the work of scientists from all over the world who are doing pioneering work in the field of animal cognition.  That includes the neuroscientist Jaak Panksepp.

ratAffective Neuroscience
Virginia Morrell gives a wonderful summary of Panksepp’s work in a chapter entitled “The Laughter of Rats”.  It’s a great primer to prepare you for Panksepp’s own books on Affective Neuroscience.  For those of you for whom this is a new term, Morrell supplies us with a simple definition: that’s the zone where neurons, emotions and cognition meet.  The question here is how does the brain generate emotional feelings and what impact (affect) do these feelings have on behavior?

Panksepp sees emotions as evolutionary skills that help animals survive and reproduce.  Evolution is a conservative process meaning structures tend to be preserved and reused rather than discarded.  We can use mice and rats in medical studies because their biochemistry is so similar to our own.  So why should we think the nervous system is any different when it comes to recycling existing structures?

Panksepp titled his second book “The Archaeology of the Mind”.  It’s a great title.  Just as an archaeologist can study past cultures by digging down through layers of sediment, the neuroscientist can study the evolution of cognition by going down through the layers of the brain.  We share the same ancient structures with all other species of mammals.  We are not separate from other animals.  We share a common heritage, and Panksepp now has evidence to support the idea that that means we also share common emotional experiences.

By electrically stimulating the brains of rats and guinea pigs Panksepp has identified seven emotional systems found in the mammalian subcortex.  These seven systems serve similar functions in the animals he has studied.  When he talks about these systems he writes them in capital letters to differentiate them from our vernacular use of these terms.  I will follow this practice here.

The Seven Affective Emotional Systems
The SEEKER System is the most primitive and extensive of the seven systems. The SEEKER circuit is activated when a healthy animal explores it’s environment.  It needs to know where it’s resources are, where to look for food and water, shelter and mates.  When people talk about the SEEKER circuit, they often use someone’s love of shopping as a modern example of this system in action.

Karen Pryor has speculated that the SEEKER system is activated by clicker training.  That’s why we see such enthusiasm and eagerness to engage in the training.  It isn’t so much about the food that comes after the click, as it is the hunt for the right solution.

It’s easy to see how the SEEKER system applies to dogs and other predators.  They have to hunt for their prey, so it’s no wonder dogs love clicker training.  But horses?  They live on a carpet of grass.  How does this relate to them?

Even horses need a strong SEEKER System.  They may live on a carpet of grass, but they still need to find the bits that haven’t been recently grazed.  They need to know where the water holes are, especially in a dry climate.  They need to know where to find shelter in a storm, and what the best routes are out of a canyon should they be chased by predators.

I came to appreciate the SEEKER system in a rather odd way.  I don’t know about you, but I am a mouse rescuer.  When one of my cats comes parading past me with a mouse or baby rabbit dangling out of her mouth, another of Panksepp’s primary systems sends me into action.  The nurturing CARE system makes it impossible for me to see an animal in distress without wanting to do something about it.  Yes, I know mice are considered pests and all that, but mice also have emotional lives.  They are amazing creatures.

A Courageous Mouse

aa composter

I’m going to digress for a moment.  At the new barn we use an O2 composting system for the manure.  Instead of creating a  large manure pile somewhere – hopefully out of sight – and leaving it over a period of a year or more to rot down, manure goes into a cement bay.  When the bay is filled, a pump forces air through the pile.   You can see how this is done by looking at the photo.  The empty bay in the middle shows two rows of wooden slats. These cover a trough in the floor.  Air is pumped into this trough and up into the pile through holes drilled in the slats.   This not only speeds up the composting process, the intense heat from the rotting manure kills weed seeds, insects and parasites.  In three months it can produce a high quality compost that can go directly back onto the fields as fertilizer or into the garden.  And because the manure is contained throughout the process in the cement bays, there’s no unsightly muck heap in the barn yard.

aa flowers and composter.png

Some of the flowers produced by the compost

We don’t have a tractor so when a bay is ready to be emptied, I do that by hand – wheel barrow by wheel barrow.  It’s a time consuming process but well worth the effort.  As I shovel in yet another wheel barrow full of compost, I think of the flowers that will be growing out of it later.

One cool fall day I was emptying the composter, digging in with my pitch fork when I disturbed a mother mouse and her nest filled with babies.  She scurried out from under my pitch fork with seven almost-grown babies clinging to her belly.   She ran up what was for her a mountain of manure to the top of the composter.

There she was confronted with a sheer cliff many times higher aa composter pilethan herself.  One of her babies had lost it’s grip.  She paused just long enough to give it time to reattach itself to her belly, and then she scaled the cement wall, ran across the wooden planks of the walkway at the back of the composter, and disappeared into the safety of the mouse tunnels she must have known she would find on the other side.

I was in awe.  What courage. Am I projecting human emotions onto a mouse?  Maybe. But I will still call it heroic what she did, especially pausing long enough to carry all of her babies to safety.  She could so easily have left that one behind to save the others.  She could have kept herself safe and simply abandoned them all.  We have much to learn from the dedication of that little mouse to all of her offspring.

The Cat Dilemma
So when one of my cats come meowing proudly through the house showing off some little mouse that she has brought back for me, I turn into a rescuer. But I am always in a quandary.  I hate the way a cat will play with a mouse before she kills it.  I want to rescue the mouse and set it free.  But am I really doing it a favor?  Who knows how far the cat has come.  When I release the mouse, will it be able to find it’s way back to the safety of its nest, or am I condemning it to a slow death by starvation?

I always do rescue the mouse, but for years I worried if this was really the best thing to do.  And then at one of my clinics I got the answer.  During our Friday evening introductions, one of the participants said he was a field biologist.  He looked the part.  I could easily see him tromping through the woods of northern Minnesota, radio tracking equipment on his back, following a pack of wolves.  I’m sure you can conjure up your own picture based on all the nature programs you’ve watched on TV.  I asked him what species he studied.  His answer: mice.

“Oh,” piped up another attendee, “Are you an exterminator?”

Hardly.  It turns out he loves mice.  He was studying an endangered species that lives in the coastal sand dunes of North Carolina.  Here was the perfect person to ask about my dilemma.  Was I doing the mice I rescued any favor.  I was very much delighted to hear that, yes absolutely, the mice would know how to orient back to their nests and stored food supplies.

It turns out mice can travel huge distances over the course of a single night.  They are updating the map of their territories.  They need to know where their resources are.  Where is the grass that is about to seed, the berries that are about to ripen?  Hearing this gave me a much deeper understanding of the SEEKER system and the primary role it plays in an animal’s life.

To be continued . . .

In the next installment I’ll continue to explore the Seven Affective Emotional Systems identified by Jaak Panksepp.  Next up is RAGE.

JOY Full Horses: Part 1: Why Play?

Joy Full Horses title page coverI’ve teased you with an introduction to this book, and with the Table of Contents.  Now finally here is Part 1: Why Play!

This is a short section – just to get your feet wet.  Enjoy!

 

 

blue bar

Part One: Why Play?

Panda scrabble - leaning against me

When science and art come together,
they become indistinguishable from play.

blue bar

Chapter 1: Mammals Play

Fengur Sindri rearing 5:19:13

 

Airplane Reading
When you travel by plane as often as I do, you begin to know all the major airports in the country.  I can tell you which ones have free internet access and electrical outlets at your seat, and which ones force you to sit on the floor to recharge your computer.  I can tell you which airports have decent food and which ones assume that the entire traveling public wants to eat junk food.  I can also tell you where all the good bookstores are.  I enjoy browsing through airport bookstores.  Instead of feeling overwhelmed by an overabundance of choice in the mega bookstores, the airport bookstores are confined to cubbyhole spaces.  They give you just a small sampling of what is current and popular.

What I want for traveling is what I call airplane reading – nothing too heavy.  I mean that both physically – I may have a long walk between gates and my backpack is already weighed down with my computer and camera equipment.  And I also want something that’s light enough reading to let me dip in and out as I nap on the plane.

I often check out the business and science sections where I’ll find titles that might not otherwise have crossed my radar.  That’s how I spotted a book on play, called appropriately enough “Play”.  For a long time, whenever I referred to this book, I could never remember the author’s name.  I finally tracked down my copy for the express purpose of being able to reference the author in a talk I was preparing.  It was written by Stuart Brown.

Stuart Brown. How was I going to remember that?

Stuart is easy.  Stuart is Stuart Little from E.B. White’s charming children’s book.  And if we are thinking about children’s books, then, of course, we have Paddington Bear, and that gives you the author’s name. Not sure of the connection?  Paddington Bear lived with the Browns.  Hence Stuart Brown.

That’s a playful way to remember the author of a book on Play.

Stuart Brown book covers

Why Do Animals Play?
Stuart Brown is an M.D. who has studied play.  In his book he posed an interesting question.  Play carries with it enormous metabolic costs and genetic risks.  Two horses playing mock stallion battles are not only expending a great deal of energy, they are exposing themselves to possible injury.  In the wild if they miscalculate and one of them is injured, that horse could very quickly be out of the gene pool.  So given this, why is play so prevalent?  It’s not just people and puppies who play.  You’ll find play behavior across all species of mammals.

aa Iceys play in snow 3 pictures caption

It’s not my intention here to give a detailed review of Brown’s book.  The main point he was making is that regardless of the evolutionary forces that led to the prevalence of play, what we are left with is this conclusion: play is important for the development of healthy brains.

When you compare brain scans of individuals who have been play deprived with those who are living in enriched environments with many opportunities for play, you see a marked difference.  Should you wish to, I’ll leave it to you to explore this in more detail.  You can begin with the lighter read of Brown’s book and then move on to the work of neuroscientist and play specialist, Jaak Panksepp.  And if you want even more, their books will give you plenty of additional references to explore.

The launching point for what I’ll be covering is this basic premise: play is important for healthy brains.  That means it is important for our horses, and, equally, it is important for us.  As I explore what play means in the context of training, I will be focusing my attention on both ends of the lead rope. I’ll be looking at what it means for both the horse and the handler to be engaging in play.

aa crackers basketball

blue bar

Part 1: Chapter 2:  Animal Emotions

aa crackers hit ball

Bob Viviano and Crackers – Great partners who knew how to play and to share their connection with others.

Is Your Training Fun?
When we think about clicker training, we often think about play.  After all, we’re often using clicker training to teach some very playful behaviors.  But just because you are having your horse kick a beach ball, doesn’t necessarily mean either one of you is having fun.  If you’re so caught up in the science behind the training, if you’re thinking about what the discriminative stimulus is for kicking the ball and whether you should be using a least reinforcing stimulus after that last miss, your brain may be processing the interaction in a way that’s a long way away from play.

If you’re concentrating on your handling skills, if you’re thinking about the timing of your click, and whether your hand is staying out of the treat pouch between clicks, again you may be a long way away from play.  It’s easy to get so caught up in “getting things right” that play drops out of the equation.  The function of these articles is to remind you that we need to keep bringing play back to the forefront of our training.

I mentioned Jaak Panksepp earlier.  His work is getting a great deal of attention at the moment within the clicker community.  Karen Pryor gets the credit for this.  Karen Pryor is one of the very early pioneers in clicker training.  Her book, “Don’t Shoot the Dog” has introduced thousands of people to this modern form of animal training.  Karen wanted to know what the neuroscientists could tell us about how the click is processed in the brain. In her book, “Reaching the Animal Mind” she talked about the SEEKER system, one of the seven primary emotional states Panksepp has identified.  It is the SEEKER system that Pryor attributes to the enthusiasm and – dare I say it – joy we see in our clicker-trained animals.

Animal Wise
Panksepp has been studying what was once a forbidden area in science – emotions in animals.  Here’s another “airplane” book I’ll recommend, Animal Wise by Virginia Morell.  Morrell begins her book with the following:

“Animals have minds.  They have brains, and use them, as we do: for experiencing the world, for thinking and feeling, and for solving the problems of life every creature faces.  Like us, they have personalities, moods, and emotions; they laugh and they play.  Some show grief and empathy and are self-aware and very likely conscious of their actions and intents.

Not so long ago, I would have hedged these statement, because the prevailing notion held that animals are more like robotic machines, capable of responding with only simple, reflexive behaviors.  And indeed there are still researchers who insist that animals are moving through life like the half dead, but those researchers are so 1950s. They’ve been left behind as a flood of new research from biologists, animal behaviorists, evolutionary and ecological biologists, comparative psychologists, cognitive ethologists, and neuroscientists sweeps away old ideas that block the exploration of animal minds.  The question is now not “Do animals think?”  It’s “How and what do they think?”

Hurray!  Finally people are coming around to my view of animals as intelligent, very aware beings with rich emotional lives.  I know this goes against strong cultural biases.  But where did this notion that animals do not think come from?  Why do scientists have such a horror of being accused of being anthropomorphic (attributing human mental abilities to an animal)? How can we deny the evidence we see in every interaction we have with our horses, with our cats and dogs?

Outdated Belief Systems
Morrell points out in her introduction that this idea that animals do not think or have emotions as we know them is an old one. Aristotle did not believe that animals could think rationally, but he did at least grant that they experienced physical sensations such as hunger and pain, and they could be angry.

It turns out that Aristotle represented an “enlightened” view of animals – even with all of it’s limitations.   Later philosophers denied that “animals had any thoughts, emotions, or sensations and therefore we did not need to extend any moral consideration to them.” (Morrell)

Belief systems are a curious thing.  There’s that wonderful line that crops up during political discussions: you wouldn’t want a little thing like facts to get in the way of a good argument.  It applies here, as well. Belief systems become self supporting.  We tend to attract experiences that support our belief systems.  I find it beyond comprehension that anyone could deny the emotionally rich life that animals have.  You have only to sit on a panicked horse who has been separated from his herd to know very directly the emotions he’s feeling!

But I suppose there will be those who would say I’m just delusional.  I’m the one attracting evidence to support a faulty belief system.  Perhaps.  But I am no longer alone.  If you want a good read, add Animal Wise to your list.  Morrell has been visiting with scientists from all over the world who are doing pioneering work in the field of animal cognition.  That includes the neuroscientist Jaak Panksepp.

Coming next: Part 1: Chapter 2: Animal Emotions: Affective Neuroscience

I hope you will want to share these articles by sending links to this blog to your friends.  But please remember this is copyrighted material.  All rights are reserved. Please do not copy any of the “Joyful Horses” articles without first getting written permission from Alexandra  Kurland, via theclickercenter.com

Also note: these articles are not intended as an instruction guide for introducing your horse to clicker training.  If you are new to clicker training and you are looking for how-to instructions, you will find what you need at my web sites:

theclickercenter.com                    theclickercentercourse.com

 

 

Joyful Horses: Table of Contents

In my previous post I explained how my book, JOY Full Horses, came to be written.  Then I left you hanging while I went off for a week to a conference.  So here, finally, is the first installment of the book.  I’m beginning, as books do, with the Table of Contents.

As you scroll down through the Table of Contents, I hope the chapter titles excite your interest.  I don’t want you to feel overwhelmed by a sudden flood of articles into this blog, so my plan is to publish a block of material once or twice a week.

Before I begin, let me share with you what this book overall is about, and what it is not.  In clicker training we learn not to focus on the unwanted behavior.  We want to focus on what we want the learner TO DO.  So it seems odd to be saying what this book is not.  It is not a “how-to” guide to clicker training.  I’ve written those books, produced those DVDs, written that on-line course.  If you are new to clicker training and need the nuts and bolts of how to get started, I will direct you to those resources.  You can find them all via my web site: theclickercenter.com.

So what is this book?  And who is it for?  The second question is easy to answer.  It is for you – especially if you have animals in your life, and you’re interested in training.  Over the past twenty plus years I’ve been pushing the boundaries of what can be done with clicker training.  How do we use it?  How do we think about it?  What is our current understanding of cues, chains, reinforcement schedules, etc., and how has that changed over the years? In these articles we’ll be going well beyond the basics of clicker training.  I want to share with you the differences that make a difference – that transform you from a follower of recipes into a creative, inventive trainer.  Play is the transformer.  In the articles that I have collected together to form this book, you’ll discover what I mean by that.

Alexandra Kurland   January 12, 2016

Joy Full Horses title page cover

Here’s a look at what’s coming:

Contents:

PART ONE: WHY PLAY?

Chapter 1: Mammals Play
Airplane Reading
Why Do Animals Play?

Chapter 2  Animal Emotions
Is Your Training Fun?
Animal Wise
Outdated Belief Systems
Affective Neuroscience
The Seven Affective Emotional Systems
The SEEKER System
A Courageous Mouse
The Cat Dilemma
RAGE
FEAR
LUST, CARE, and PANIC

Chapter 3: What Neuroscience Teaches Us About Play
The Archeological Dig Through The Brain
Clicker Training and the Seven Affective Systems

Chapter 4:  Inside the Trainer’s Brain
The Neuroscience of Training
Recognizing Play?

Chapter 5: What is Play?
Defining Play

Chapter 6: Being PLAY FULL
Play Full
Playing with Horses
Playing with Behavior
Playing with Play

Chapter 7:  Training Playfully Mixed with a Little Science
The ABC’s of Training
Reinforcement Variety
Antecedents

Chapter 8: Cues and Their Connection to Play
What are Cues?
Explaining Cues to a Beginner – Your List
Explaining Cues to a Beginner – My List

PART 2: PLAYING WITH CUES:
Ten Things You Should Know About Cues

Number 1: Cues are not Commands
Chapter 1: Asking Versus Telling
Commands
Cues
Paradigm Shifts
Playing with Cues

Number 2: Non Verbal Cues
Chapter 1:  Shh. Don’t Talk.  I’m Listening To Your Body
Clever Hans
Unintended Cues

Chapter 2: Turning being PLAY FULL into a Habit
The Power of Habits
The Effect of Cues
Unexpected Habits
Emotional Habits
Traveling Outside Your Habits
Microhabits
The Structure of Habits
Changing Habits
Bad Habits
Forming Habits – Good or Bad
Focus
Cravings
Changing Your Habits
Do You Believe?
The Power of Community
Keystone Habits
Small Wins or Big Fights – You Choose
Brick Walls
Dismantling The Brick Walls
Patience and Persistence
“They Don’t Feel Pain the Way We Do”
The Evolution of Belief
Balance – The Core of Everything
My “Salt Box”
Learned Helplessness
Standing Up For Our Horses
Force-Based Training
What Good Trainers Have In Common
Speaking Out For Our Horses

Chapter 3: TagTeaching – You Can’t Train My Child Like a Dog!
TagTeaching
Tag Points
WOOF Criteria
The Focus Funnel
The Focus Funnel Applied to Horse Training
Constructive Feedback
Tag Teaching and Keystone Habits
Journals
Forming The Record Keeping Habit
Forming a Journaling Community
KeyStone Habits for Life

Number 3: The Environment is a Cue

Chapter 1:  Emotions and Environmental Triggers
Environmental Cues
Guide Horses
Goose Neck Trailers
A Trainer’s Play Ground
The Herd Horse Advantage
My Cue Trumps Your Cue
Intelligent Disobedience
Horses as Guides
Evidence in Support of Intelligent Disobedience
Trusting Intelligent Disobedience
Teaching Traffic Checks
Testing the Training – How Strong are your Habits?
Guide Work: Yes She Can!
But, But, You MUST Need to Correct Her

Chapter 2: Using Environmental Cues
Every Day Environmental Cues

Chapter 3: The Time Has Come the Walrus Said to Talk of Many Things: Premack, Asking Questions, Mats, Airplane Runways and Creativity
The Time Has Come
Behaviors as Reinforcers
Turning Mats Into Tractor Beams
Feldenkrais Work
Asking Questions
The Translation to Horses
The Lead Tells A Story
The Runway
Give Them What They Want
Stopping on Mats
Constructional Training
Mat Manners
101 Things
The Opposite of Flooding
Playing with Language
Transforming Horse Training Into Play
Using Props
Playing with Images
Creativity

Number 4: Cue Communication

Chapter 1: Dr. DooLittle Knew How To Listen
Everything You Need to Know About Cues
Cue Communication
Everyday Conversations
Animal Trainers – The Ones to Really Learn From!
A Well-Trained Human
Behaviors Become Cues
Mounting Blocks as Cue Communication
Trust Your Horse, Trust the Process
Capture the Saddle
The Why Would You Leave Me? Game
Expectations
Walking Off Casually and the Why Would You Leave Me? Game
Capture the Saddle – A Target Game
Pre-Ride Safety Check List
“Grand Prix” Mounting Block Behavior
Listen To Your Horse
Detective Work
“Just Tell Me How You Feel”

Chapter 2: Finding “Yes”
Saying “No”
The Horse As Teacher
The Conversation
Fixing the “Fixers”

Number 5: Cues Evolve

Chapter 1: Cues Evolve Out Of The Shaping Process
Review
Head Lowering
Keeping Things in Balance
There’s Always More Than One Way To Teach A Behavior
Not A Forward-Moving Exercise
Moving the Hips
Backing in a Square
“Walking and Chewing Gum”
Dynamic Food Delivery
Mapping Out The Dance
Reading Your Dance Partner
Cues Evolve – Adding the Lead
Cues Evolve: How Light Can Light Be?
Who’s Not Showing Respect?
Starter Button and Constant On Cues
The Horse’s Perspective
Soap Box Time
Backing with Starter Button Cues
A Change in the Game
More “Being the Horse”
Heating Up a Behavior
Priming The Head Lowering Pump
Head Lowering from Backing in a Square
Calm Down NOW!
Heading Toward Lighter Than Light Cues
Playing with Cues
“How’d you do that?”

Number 6: Getting What You Want When You Want It: Stimulus Control

Chapter 1: Getting What You Want
More About Cues
Cues and Our Eager Clicker Horses
Stimulus Control Version 1.0
The Four Criteria of Stimulus Control
Speed Bump: Teaching with Extinction
Through “the Wardrobe”

Number 7: Stimulus Control and Play

Chapter 1: Even Play Has Rules
Reminders
Balancing Cues
Building a Repertoire of Behaviors
Base Behaviors
An Equine Ostrich
Clicker “Drill Sergeants”
Laughing with our Horses
Playing Safe
Remember To Laugh

Number 8: Cues Can Change and Be Changed

Chapter 1: Cues Evolve
Change Happens
What Comes Before What Comes Before
How Light is Too Light?
Wait

Chapter 2: The Cue Transfer Process
Changing Cues
Basic Manners
Tap Root Behaviors
Saying Please and Thank You
Good Manners are a Good Habit
The Grown-ups Really Are Talking
Great Service
Consistency
Over-eager Students

Chapter 3: New Cue – Old Cue
Creating New Cues
Sleight of Hand Magic Tricks
Understanding Pressure
Play and the Transferred Cue
The Transfer Continues
Sleight of Hand Magic – The Trick Revealed

Number 9: You Can’t Not Cue

Chapter 1: Using The Cues Your Horse Discovers
Collecting Gems
Clever Hans
Working WITH Your Own Clever Hans
Canine Teachers
Selecting from the Menu
Use Your Cues
An Accident Waiting To Happen
All Work and No Play . . .

Chapter 2: What is Clicker Training?
Labels
What Clicker Training Means To Me
Defining Clicker Training
Creating Stepping Stones

Chapter 3: Are You A Clicker Trainer or a User of Clicker Training?
Are You a Clicker Trainer?
Why Clicker Train? The Science Foundation
Three Blind Men and the Elephant
Modern Animal Training
Relationship
Using Clicker Training
The Clicker Super Glue
Science
Relationship
Repertoire
Persistence
Using Clicker Training
The Clicker Umbrella
Just Because You Can . . .
More Questions
Levels of Analysis
Adding a Question Mark – Feldenkrais Work
Asking Not Telling
The Questions

Chapter 4: What is the lesson? – Playing with Cues
The Teachers We Get Are The Teachers We Need
Stories
One Day At A Time
TTEAM
Innovations Come From the Outside In
Following Antennae
The Joy of Discovery
Ready To Teach
Change Makers
Change Our Beliefs, Change the World
Detective Work

Chapter 5: Stepping Stones
More To Learn
Remembering Play
Getting “Yes” Answers
Training Choices
Building Clean Loops
Scritching
Sequence Matters
You Never Know What You’ve Taught.  You Only Know What You’ve Presented
Using Your Head
Breath
Celebration!
Moving On
What Could You Find? What Could You Release?
Posing the Questions
Adding the Click
Tactile Communication
Cues Evolve
Cue Communication
Adding in Lateral Flexions
Do Not Enter Signs
Microrhythms

Number 10: Playing with Chains

Chapter 1: Cues Evolve into Chains
The List of Ten
Creating Change Through Chains
The Story for Poco
Poco’s Learning Loop
What We Say
The Meaning of Words
Negative Reinforcement
Procedure versus The Emotional Effect
History Matters
The Emotional Spectrum
It’s Not Your Fault
Changing Expectations
Hidden Motivators
What Triggers Change?
The Fluid Nature of Language
How Words Are Used
The Power of Play

PART 3: GOING MICRO

Chapter 1: The Many Forms of Micro
Why Micro
MicroShaping
Outcome Versus Reaction Pattern
Base Behaviors
Tossing Treats
Precision
Dynamic Food Delivery
Precision and Play Go Together
Patterns
What Does the Click Do

Chapter 2: How Clicker Trainers Play
Five Go To Sea
“Riding” the Ocean
The Conference
Reaction Patterns
Extinction

Chapter 2: Regression
Reverting to Past Behaviors
Extinction Reveals Your Horse’s Past
Well Behaved or Shut Down?
Leaving History Behind
Data Collecting
Tuning Up the Handler’s Skills
Building Your Repertoire
The Animal Emotions
The Emotions of Extinction
Extinctions Emotional Pattern
Grief

Chapter 3: To Love a Horse
Extinction and Shaping
Regression and Resurgence
Extinction History
The Catalyst, Not the Cause
Extinction Reveals the Past
The Equine Version
Accidental Extinction
Mini versus Maxi Extinctions
Training Game Mishaps
Micro Extinctions
The Measure of Success
Using “Hot” Behaviors
Click For What You Already Have
Cues and Extinction
Teaching “Chill”
The Training Game
Genabacab
PORTL
PORTL Games
Mastering Extinction
Experiment One: Resurgence
Experiment Two: Regression
Mind Games
Using resurgence – Insight
What is Creativity?
Persistence
Degrees of Freedom
Expanding Repertoires
Being Emotional Is Being Alive
Building Unlikely Behaviors with Resurgence
Resurgence and Dog “Yoga”
Generalization and Creativity
The “Pose”
Seeing Familiar Landscapes with Fresh Eyes
The Creative Process
Mastering Micro
Micro Masters

AFTERWORD
I Can’t Do What You Want
Finding Joy

JOY Full Horses

IMG_0218 Fengur snow great

In 2014 I surprised myself by writing a book.  This is by no means the first book I have written, so perhaps some of you will be surprised that I was surprised, but I had just finished the monster-sized project of writing and launching my new on-line course.  I wasn’t expecting to take on another big project quite so soon on the heels of that endeavor.

But books are funny things.  You don’t so much write them as they write themselves. When a book wants to pop out, if I am anywhere near a computer or a pad of paper with a pen in my hand, that’s what is going to happen.

Once the book was written, there remained the question of what to do with it. The normal answer is you publish it as a hold-in-your-hand actual book, but somehow that didn’t seem the right answer for this particular project. I sat with it for a year while I considered what I wanted to do.  In the end I have decided that what I wanted was to share it here.

I’m going to publish my book in this blog, section by section.  I hope you enjoy it.  It was written first and foremost for my horses, perhaps you could even say by my horses.  It is a gift from them to you.

Happy New Year 2016

Alexandra Kurland

Robin in box purple JOY FULL

 

Before I begin the book, let me share with you why it was written.

2014 was a dreadful year for me.  It’s astounding how fast your world can be turned upside down and inside out.  I arrived at the barn on Feb 10, 2014, as usual.  Robin and Peregrine greeted me at the paddock gate, as usual.  Robin bowed, stretching both front feet out in front of him and crossing one leg over the other – again as usual.

robin stretch bow copy

The bow is part of a favorite morning game. It’s his cue to me to open my car door.  I always feel like a jack-in-the-box popping out of my car on his signal.   I opened my car door, as usual, and gave both Peregrine and Robin good-morning-greeting treats from my pocket.

I got my backpack out of the car and headed up to the barn. Fengur and Sindri, our two Icelandics, were there to greet me as I reached their section of the barnyard.  Robin and Peregrine were already inside the barn, waiting for me in the aisle.

I went through my morning routine.  I fixed Peregrine’s mash, passed out hay for everyone, put Robin into his stall, closed the back gate to his “sun room” so he couldn’t help himself to Peregrine’s breakfast, gave Peregrine his mash and had just started on Sindri’s stall when I heard Robin banging against his stall wall.  I love the open design of the stalls in the new barn.  I could look down the line of stalls and see all the horses.  Robin looked as though he was trying to stretch out in a bow but there wasn’t quite enough room.

Robin in stall long view

“That’s interesting,” I thought.  “He’s transferring the bow up to the barn.”  I wanted to capture the moment, but I was too far away.  I continued on with Sindri’s stall, but I was listening now, on the alert for a repeat performance.  Sure enough Robin bowed again.  This time I was prepared.  I rushed over, but not in time to capture the bow.  Robin had gone outside into the small run directly outside his stall.  A quick glance told me something was wrong.

It took no more than an instant to switch from the playfulness of clicker training to the dread of a colic alert.  This wasn’t his normal bow inviting me to come play.  The stretch that I was seeing was something entirely different.  In the space of no time at all Robin’s gut had seized up into full colic pain.

Thank goodness for cell phones.  I never thought I would hear myself say that, but it meant I didn’t have to leave Robin to call the vet.  I got him out of the stall and into the arena.  Less than an hour later the vet was there, not my usual vet, but one of the younger members of the practice.

Robin blew through all the pain meds she gave him.  Suddenly we were talking about surgery.  “If you think it’s an option, you should ship him now.”

I couldn’t believe I was hearing those words, not for Robin.  He was my healthy horse.  He was never sick.  He’d never even had a lameness exam.  He’d certainly never coliced, and he had none of the common risk factors for colic.  He wasn’t confined to a stall.  Yes, the pastures were closed for the winter, but he and Peregrine had free run through the barn, the indoor arena, and their outside paddock area.  He drank a lot.  His weight was good.  He had none of the signs of metabolic disease that has become so common in older horses.  Given all the horses I know, Robin would be the last one I would expect to colic – and yet here we were talking about surgery.

I knew from clients who had gone through this experience that colic surgery was survivable, but you needed to ship early.  The longer you waited, the lower the chances were for a good outcome.

But surgery.  For Robin.

He was my healthy horse.  I didn’t want him to become an invalid.  That wasn’t the kind of life he would enjoy.

And then there was his shadow, Peregrine.  Peregrine is my elderly thoroughbred.  In the last couple of years he had become completely dependent upon Robin for security.  I’m not sure Robin appreciated having a constant shadow, but Peregrine didn’t really give him any choice.  In 2011 when I moved the horses to their new home, Peregrine coped with the change by attaching himself completely to Robin.  Fierce Robin, who had never really buddied up with anyone,  slowly discovered that he liked having someone to hang out with and take naps with.  They had become a pair, sharing everything including training time with me.

But now Robin was in the arena, filled with drugs that didn’t even dull his distress.  Peregrine was hovering nearby.  He clearly knew something was terribly wrong.    What was I to do?  If I kept Robin here, I was going to lose him.  And then what would Peregrine do?  The unthinkable was happening.  It was never supposed to be this way.  Robin was so much younger than Peregrine and he had ALWAYS been so healthy.  How could he be colicing?

If you’re going to ship them, ship them sooner rather than later.

I knew this truth.  I knew I had to make a decision, but how was I going to trailer Robin anywhere?  This was February.  The only available trailer on the property was snowed in.  And how could I leave Peregrine?  I wouldn’t be able to go with Robin.

I started making phone calls.  It took another hour to get everything organized, to get a driver for the trailer, to get the trailer dug out, the truck hitched up.

If you’re going to ship them, ship them sooner rather than later.  The day had begun so normally.  And now just a few hours later, I was leading Robin out to the trailer and shipping him off without me.

Bob Viviano, one of my long term clients and good friends, drove Robin for me.  We are lucky in this area to have an excellent hospital within an hour’s drive.  We gave Peregrine a sedative which bought me the time I needed to get Robin on the trailer.  He loaded without hesitation and I sent Bob off.  It was then a little after noon.

Half way to the hospital the snow started. Bob drove through white out conditions from a storm that was moving in from the coast.  If I had known there was snow to our south, I would never have risked his safety to drive Robin. Instead of an hour’s drive, it took him closer to two to reach the hospital.

I was waiting in the barn for news. At two thirty I heard that Robin had arrived safely and was being examined by the vets. Bob was heading back.

Peregrine had woken up by this time and had begun to pace.  I closed the outer stall doors to try to keep things a little warmer for him.  There was nothing I could do to ease his distress except to give him back Robin.  I had to hope that was going to be possible.

The news from the clinic didn’t sound good.  They were recommending surgery.  Was that an option?

I talked to the surgeon about what I wanted for Robin.  If it meant he would be left in chronic pain with a disabled life, then no, I didn’t want to operate.

She thought there was still a good chance for him.  How can you say no?  I said yes to the surgery.

I waited.  The hours passed.  There was another horse in surgery ahead of Robin. As soon as that horse was in recovery, Robin’s operation would begin.

At six I got another call.  Robin was being prepped for surgery.

Peregrine continued to pace.  He walked through the night, unable to settle.  I stayed with him, but it was Robin he needed.

At midnight I got the call, the call we all dread.  I had another decision to make.  They had found a twist. A full twist with dead small intestine.

I had learned from my clients that if you are going to ship them, ship them sooner rather than later.  I had also learned that cutting out intestine was the deal breaker.  That’s where you stopped.

So he’s a dead horse.  That’s what I thought as I heard the news.

But the surgeon thought there was still a chance.  The twist put him into the category of worst case scenario, but given that, he was in better shape than many horses who had twists.  He still had a good chance.  My world had flipped and flipped again.  What was she saying?  What decision should I make?  How could I say no? How could I stop now?

I told her again what I wanted for Robin.  I wanted him to live, but not if it meant he would be left in a state of chronic pain.  I told her it was okay to continue, and it was also okay to stop.

I wish I could have been there.  I don’t know what decision I would have made if I had seen the pain Robin was in.  But in the barn with Peregrine continuing to pace, I gave permission to continue.

At 2:30 in the morning the call came.  Robin was in recovery.

Peregrine continued to pace.  At dawn I opened up the outside stall door and let him out into the barnyard.  Peregrine liked to sunbath.  I hoped the warmth from the early morning sun would help him to settle.  He went out into the snow and rolled.  All very normal, and then he got cast.

I never knew it was possible for a horse to get cast in snow, but the conditions were just right for this calamity.  The weight of his body packed the snow into ice.  It formed a perfect cast along his backside.  The ridge line of ice kept him from rolling back onto his side.  He was trapped on his back, his feet waving helplessly in the air.  After a night of constant walking, he didn’t have the strength left to get up.  I could see in his eyes that he was giving up.

I couldn’t get him up by myself.  I made frantic phone calls.  I put in a call to the vets.  They were only ten minutes away.  Someone would be there at this hour who could get here fast.

While I waited, I dug away at the frozen snow.  I cleared enough to tip Peregrine more onto his side.  He struggled, found a bit of purchase, and was on his feet just as the vet arrived.

Disaster averted, but I couldn’t help but think how close I had come to losing both my horses in the space of twenty-four hours.

I stayed with Peregrine throughout the day.  I wanted to see Robin, but I knew he was getting the full care he needed.  Peregrine needed me more.

By evening he was settled enough that I could leave him in the care of others.   I drove down to see Robin.

Robin greeted me with a nicker.  I don’t know what I had expected, but not this.  He looked so healthy, so very bright.  He posed for me.  “Oh don’t do that, Robin, you’ll hurt your stitches.”

The surgeon and intern stopped by and stayed for a long time answering questions and just visiting.

I stayed with Robin.  His surgery was rapidly emptying my bank balance and putting me deep in debt, but that evening, when he rested his head against me, I knew I had made the right decisions.

I finally had to leave.  I slipped out of his stall, but before I could leave, Robin posed – his sure cue to me for attention.  The pose was a behavior he had learned when he was two. It had been the cornerstone of his training – helping him to develop the most glorious gaits and also giving him a sure-fire way of engaging me in clicker games.

So soon after surgery he wasn’t allowed anything to eat.  I couldn’t give him any treats, but that’s not what he wanted.  He wanted me to stay with him.  I opened his stall door and went back inside to hug his face – another favorite behavior.

I tried to leave again, again he posed.  I laughed.  He was turning my leaving into a game.  I went in and out a few more times for him, and then I slipped away.

The following afternoon I went down again.  The brightness was gone.  Robin was crashing.  He was in terrible pain.  The vets did an ultrasound looking for gut motility, looking for signs of more damage, or worse, more dead intestine or another twist.  What they could see encouraged them.  There were no obvious signs of further damage.

Robin in hospital

Over the next couple of days Robin’s temperature shot up.  What little manure he passed came out as liquid diarrhea.  He was put into an isolation stall.  When I visited him, I had to don protective gear – gown, gloves and boots before going into his stall.

My days took on a pattern.  I slept at the barn, so I could keep an eye on Peregrine.  I made a bed for myself in the tack room by stacking bags of shavings together.  In the morning I would wake up early and do the morning chores.  Then I would wait for the call that would tell me if Robin had made it through the night.

While I waited, I wrote.  I worked on a book.  It was originally supposed to be a series of articles for my on-line course, but day by day as I waited for news of Robin, it grew into a book.

Robin continued to fail.  To protect his feet from laminitis they kept him wrapped up round the clock in ice boots. He hated the boots.  He was in constant colic pain in spite of the pain killers he was on.  Every afternoon, all afternoon I stayed with him in his stall.  Some days all I could do was lean against the wall and watch as his muscles quivered in spasms with the pain and the fever. Other days he would lie down and sleep with his head resting in my lap.  I sat in the deep shavings and kept a vigil, monitoring every little change.

Robin 2 sleeping in hospital

The days passed.  The money poured out.  While I worried how I was going to afford all of this, I wrote a book about Play.  Odd how things evolve.

I knew always Robin might not come home.  He was so very sick.  The vets suggested that we give him platelets, but they wanted to check with me first.  The platelets were $500 a bag.  Ah well, I thought, so much for getting the new computer I so very much needed.

A week went by, then another.  I watched some horses go home.  Others came in, most for colic surgery, most were thoroughbred mares with newborn foals at their side.

I watched the staff give all the horses superb care.  Never was there any concern about leaving Robin with them.  There was no rough handling, no yelling, no treating any of the horses like livestock.  It was careful, caring, gentle handling.

During the second week Robin began to show more interest in eating.  At first, he was offered only small handfuls of hay several hours apart.  Then he was given a bowl of hay and finally a hay net.  At first all this did was make the diarrhea and the pain worse, but then on his second Saturday in hospital he started to look brighter.  His temperature finally dropped, and he began to eat more normally.  When I arrived in the afternoon, I was greeted by the welcome sight of a full hay net hanging in his stall.  The following day he continued to do well, so on the Monday, two weeks to the day of his arrival, he was cleared to go home.

I continued to live in the barn through the winter, huddled near a space heater in the tack room so I could keep an eye on Robin.  He was confined to his stall for a couple of weeks, then he was allowed out into his small outside run.

Peregrine helped me watch over him at night.  I always knew when Robin was lying down.  Peregrine would begin to pace.  The tack room is directly opposite Robin’s stall so Peregrine’s pacing would wake me in the middle of the night.  I’d slip out to check on Robin.  Always he looked comfortable, just resting, but I often had to get him up or Peregrine would continue to fret.  After about two weeks, Peregrine relaxed and let Robin – and me – sleep as needed.

Two months on from the surgery, Robin was allowed the freedom of the barn plus the arena, and then another month on from that he was allowed normal turnout.

As he got better, my writing time disappeared, and the book project went on hold.  Now that spring was here, there were more pressing outside jobs to do, plus my travel schedule was back in full swing.

In June the nightmare repeated itself – this time with Sindri, Ann Edie’s Icelandic stallion. He went off his feed, and he had a low grade temperature.  We had the vet out right away.  The diagnosis – anaplasmosis, one of the tick-borne fevers.  Apparently, this was hitting our area hard this year, and they were being run ragged getting to all the horses who were showing similar symptoms.

Sindri had had Potomac Horse fever eight years previously.  He’d had a bad reaction to the tetracycline, the antibiotic that is used to treat it.  His kidneys shut down, and we came very close to losing him.  Tetracycline is the drug of choice for anaplasmosis, but given his previous reaction, the vet chose an antibiotic from a different family of drugs.

This was on Saturday.  Sindri’s temperature dropped back to normal, and by Sunday he was back to eating and drinking normally.

Monday morning as I was turning him out, I saw a slight misstep as he came out of his stall.  Alarm bells started ringing.  The vet was out doing a recheck on Robin.

As we were finishing up with Robin, I mentioned that Sindri hadn’t looked right that morning.  He’d been a little off, and I was worried about laminitis.  We walked out to look at him.  Sindri walked up to us.  He looked fine.  There was no obvious lameness, no heat or pulses in his feet.

The vet left.  I busied myself about the barn where I could keep an eye on the horses.  When I checked Sindri again a short time later, he could no longer walk. The tinge that I had seen had grown into full blown laminitis.

I called the vet out again.  This time there was no mistaking what was happening.  The anaplasmosis had tipped him into laminitis.  My vet wanted us to keep his feet wrapped in ice boots and to stand him on sand to try to support his feet.  There was no way could get a load of sand delivered on such short notice, so Ann’s husband went off instead to Lowes to bring back bags of builders sand.

He brought us bags of ice and fifteen bags of sand.  That didn’t even begin to give us the coverage we needed.  Three trips later we had enough sand to get Sindri through the night.

The following day, Sindri looked so much better.  I thought with relief that we had dodged that bullet.  He was going to be all right. But the following day he crashed again.  Laminitis is like that.  You think you’re making head way, and then cruelly it flares up again with crippling pain.  The only good news was the x-rays showed no rotation of the coffin bone.

Sindri was on painkillers and other medications to try to control the inflammation.  He seemed to stabilize, but he was still sore.  And we had to keep his feet in ice boots round the clock.  Every two hours I repacked his boots with ice.  I could feel my brain turning to mush as the sleep deprivation set in.

Sindri seemed to stabilize.  He was allowed five minutes in the arena.  Turning he was very sore, but on a straight away he walked out in big reaching strides.  I turned him loose in the arena so he could choose what he wanted to do.  What he wanted was to trot up to me as I cleaned manure piles out of the arena.  That was an encouraging sign.  We were still hopeful he might recover with only minimal long-term damage to his feet.

Two weeks in we stopped icing his feet.  Hurray!  I still had to get up a couple of times during the night to give him his next round of meds, but at least I didn’t have to wrestle with the repacking of the ice boots.  We tried to reduce the level of painkillers.  The result: he could barely walk.  We changed meds and got him stabilized back to where he had been, but he continued to be a mystery.  The x-rays simply weren’t that bad.  Why was he continuing to show this degree of pain?

After two months he was no better, but he was also no worse.  I was scheduled to be out of the country for a week. I left on a Wednesday.  Friday I got an email from Ann.  She had tried to reach me by phone, but the contact number wasn’t working.  Sindri was colicing.

More nightmare.

I borrowed a cell phone and made the overseas call.  It was the middle of the night for Ann, but I knew she would be up.  She told me they weren’t sure what was going on, and she didn’t know what to do.

I heard myself saying if you think surgery is an option, ship him sooner rather than later.  Already, by waiting it might be too late.

I also heard myself telling her in more detail about Robin, about the cost of the surgery and the aftercare, about the risk to the feet in any horse, and the increased risk in a horse who already had laminitis.

I heard myself saying she should call Bob and get the trailer hooked up.  I knew it was the middle of the night, but he wouldn’t mind.  If she thought she wanted to go forward with treatment, the sooner they got to a hospital the better.  She should ship him while he was still able to go.

We talked for a few more minutes.  We both wanted the same thing for Sindri.  We wanted to give him a chance, but not if it meant condemning him to a lifetime of chronic pain.

I hung up, and pretended that everything was normal while I taught the morning sessions.  When it was eight o’clock back home, I called again.  The vets had recommended that Ann send him to our local clinic.  It looked as though the colic would resolve medically, but they wanted to be able to support him with fluids and monitor him more closely.  They had trailered Sindri over mid-morning to the clinic.  I kept checking my emails waiting for word of what was going on.

Sometime overnight things changed dramatically.  He began to reflux, a sign that there was a blockage somewhere.  Then the reflux slowed, but he became very painful, bucking and spinning in his stall.

His condition had shifted from a medical colic to an emergency surgery, but he was still an hour from the hospital.  Ann and I talked on the phone.  We both decided to send him for surgery.  It was so hard being so far away.  I knew the risks far better than Ann.  I had seen foundered horses.  What were we doing?  But we had to give him a chance.

Sindri made it to the hospital, but like Robin, he had to wait for another horse to come out of surgery.  He seemed to stabilize, and it was looking as though he might resolve medically, but then the reflux started again, and the decision had to be made.  Ann got the call and gave her permission to go ahead.

On the other side of the ocean I waited for news.

Sindri’s surgery was shorter than Robin’s and had a better outcome.  His intestine was inflamed.  They found signs of what might have been constrictions, but if there had been a blockage, it had resolved.

I flew home on Monday.  I was anxious to get in and get down to see Sindri.  I was hoping he would still be alive, that I wasn’t flying home to a dead horse.  United Airlines let me down.  The last leg of my trip was cancelled, and I had to spend the night in Newark.  I didn’t get home until mid-day on Tuesday.

Sindri waited for me.

He was in the same stall that Robin had started out in.  I almost didn’t recognize him as I walked up to his stall.  Unlike Robin, he looked like the very sick horse that he was.  His thick mane and forelock were braided to keep them out of the way of the catheter and fluid lines.  It was like looking at someone who you’ve only known with a beard.  Oh, that’s what you look like!

Sindri head shot in hospital

All four feet were in ice boots.  He was clearly in a lot of pain, both from the surgery and his feet.  The surgeon stopped by to update me on what they had found.  He sounded hopeful that Sindri would recover well from the surgery.  I looked at the way he was standing and wondered.

Over the next few days Sindri took us on a downward spiral.  He wasn’t eating.  Fresh x-rays showed us that we were now dealing with a rotation of his coffin bone, and his blood work was pointing us in the direction of liver damage.

Sindri lying down in hospital

I had stopped working on my book when Robin had gotten better.  Now I brought it out again.  Every morning I worked on it, and every afternoon Ann and I drove down to visit with Sindri.  The vets started him on IV nutrition to try to reverse the liver damage.  Slowly he began to eat a little on his own.  Now instead of rejecting the handfuls of hay that he was offered, he was asking for more.

Mid-week a mini donkey moved in to the stall directly across from Sindri.  While Sindri’s condition slowly improved, the donkey’s declined.  He was clearly much loved.  His family came often to see him.  His liver was failing, but he wasn’t as lucky as Sindri.  The vets weren’t able to stop the progression of his disease.  I heard the vets discussing  the possibilities with his owners.  Epm had been ruled out, along with West Nile.  They weren’t sure what they were dealing with, or what more they could do.

It was hard to celebrate Sindri’s growing appetite knowing that across the hall there were only tears.

The vets began to talk about Sindri going home.  If he meets this milestone, maybe by Wednesday.  Then it was Thursday, then Friday.  Finally the call came early Saturday morning.  Sindri had been cleared, we could take him home.

When we arrived the mini donkey was on his side resting on a thick mat.  He was having a seizure.

Across the hall Sindri was looking bright and very much ready to go home.  We were using a borrowed stock trailer that didn’t have a ramp.  I was concerned that Sindri might be reluctant to step up into the trailer.  I needn’t have worried.  Sindri was ready to go home.  One of the interns took him out before I realized he was even out of his stall.  He was already on the trailer by the time I got outside.  Good Sindri!

He got off just as easily and walked surprisingly well up to the barn.  But over the next couple of days that changed.  Walking was reduced to a slow hobble.

I’ve been trimming my horses feet for the last couple of years.  That means when something like this happens, you don’t have a farrier available to help you.  My vet called in a favor and arranged for one of the best farriers in the area to come help us.  Together they decided that the best option for Sindri were wooden clogs.  The clogs are built up of layers of wood laminated together.  They let the horse’s foot roll over in any direction that is comfortable, and apparently they can provide almost instant relief to some laminitic horses.

The farrier and my vet came out together to put the clogs on. They took x-rays first.  The x-rays showed clearly why Sindri’s feet had become so much more painful.  The last set of x-rays taken at the hospital had indicated that he still had good depth of sole.  On the new x-rays the coffin bone on both front feet had rotated even more and was now pressing down on the sole.  We had run out of foot.

I’m glad it was an experienced farrier who trimmed Sindri’s  foot that day and not me.  The sole was separating at the toe leaving a long line of exposed soft tissue.  There was no possibility of putting the clogs on.  The farrier made some temporary pads to protect his feet.  Sindri was so good to stand for the trimming and for all the fussing with his feet.

We had been keeping him on a sand stall, but with his feet so open, the sand had to go.  We put Sindri temporarily in one of the other stalls, while I dug out load after load of sand.  Sand is amazing how it gets into all the cracks and crevasses and refuses to come out.  I swept until sweeping was doing no good.  Then I got out my vacuum – yes the barn has a vacuum.  I bought it originally for my house, but somehow it ended up at the barn instead.  When the vacuum wasn’t getting anything more, I washed the mats.  I had just spent two weeks in a vet hospital.  They had set the bar high for cleaning a stall!

Finally it was ready for shavings – four bags to create a wonderfully deep, soft bed.  Sindri was going into a luxury apartment!  Once he had hobbled from Fengur’s stall to his own, he lay flat out on this new thick mattress and fell into an exhausted sleep.

We ordered boots for Sindri.  They came by overnight express the following day, and we transferred him from the styrofoam pads he had been in to the protective and much more supportive boot.  Every day Ann helped me change his wraps and reapply a sugar and betadine mix to the soles of his feet.

A week later Sindri’s feet were less painful.  The soles were beginning to grow in and cover up the exposed soft tissue, but I knew we still had a long road ahead of us.  The goal was to make him comfortable.  He was still bright eyed, and engaged with us.  He was telling us it was okay to keep going.  As long as his eyes were bright, we would keep going on.  Ann couldn’t say no to the surgery, anymore than I could say no to Robin’s.  So here we were in a place we never wanted to be with any of our beloved horses.

I always wanted to live in a barn with my horses.  I never expected I would be doing so under such circumstances.  Once again, I turned the tack room into my full time office and living quarters.  While I worked on the computer, I could keep an eye on Sindri.  Each afternoon Peregrine and Robin would have a nap standing side by side in the aisle next to Sindri’s stall.  Fengur, our other Icelandic, was generally outside having a sunbath in the barn yard.  And I was in my “stall”, keeping watch.

Sindri’s coffin bones stabilized.  With good care, a good farrier, and a lot of luck, his feet began to heal.  I kept writing throughout all of this.

Some people take up drinking when times are rough.  Other people go shopping or remodel their homes.  I, apparently, write books.  The first draft of the book was begun during Robin’s stay in hospital.  And it was finished during Sindri’s.

The book has been finished for a long time, but I have been undecided what I want to do with it.  Robin is still doing well, but we lost Sindri the day after Christmas 2014.  He coliced again, and this time it was clear it was the end.  When I led him for the last time out of the barn, he walked sound.  We had beaten the founder, but we couldn’t beat the colics. Perhaps six months of pain killers and other medications had just been too much for him.

I set the book aside. It’s been sitting in my computer, waiting.  I wasn’t sure for what.  I really haven’t wanted to publish it as a book, but if not that, what?  The book I have written was given to me by my horses.  It has grown out of lessons Peregrine and the others have been teaching me.   I wanted to share it, but I wasn’t sure how.

My decision has been to do something very old fashioned with it, but with a modern twist.  I’m borrowing an idea from the nineteenth century.  Charles Dickens published his books in serial form. Before they were turned into books that could be read cover to cover, they came out in weekly installments in inexpensive periodicals.  That meant his stories could be more widely read, but imagine having to wait a whole week to find out what twist the next chapter would bring.

I’m going to do something similar, but instead of using a printed magazine, I’m going to publish my book here on this blog, section by section.  I know we all live busy lives so I’ll space the publishing of these articles out so they don’t become overwhelming.

So what is this book about?  The simplest answer is play.

I have always played with training.  I have always told people to go “play” with an exercise.  I send them home to “play with ideas”, not to “work on a lesson.”  Play has been central to my life, but work can overcome that.  It has taken a lot of work to bring clicker training into the horse community.  My horses were always there reminding me that play is more powerful.

So it was right that a book about play would emerge at a time when I was most focused on my horses. It was written first and foremost for my horses, perhaps you could even say by my horses.  It is a gift from them to you.  I hope you enjoy it.

Alexandra Kurland
January 2 2016

Before I begin, I want to extend my great thanks to Dr. Naile and all the vets and staff at Oakencroft Veterinary clinic, and to the surgeons and staff at Rhinebeck Equine Hospital for the good care they gave to Robin and Sindri.

Also, a very great thanks to Mary Arena, who helped us enormously in caring for the horses, especially when I was away.  I would not have been able to travel if Mary had not been willing to step in and help.  Her contribution has always been greatly appreciated and always will be.  You never say thank you enough to people, but, Mary, I get to say thank you here.

Note:  What this book is, and what it is not.  In clicker training we learn to shift our focus from the unwanted behavior.  We want to focus on what we want the learner TO DO.  So it seems odd to be saying what this book is not.  It is not a “how-to” guide to clicker training.  I’ve written those books, produced those DVDS, written that on-line course.  If you are new to clicker training and need the nuts and bolts of how to get started, I will direct you to those resources.  You can find them all via my web site: theclickercenter.com.

So what is this book?  And who is it for?  The second question is easy to answer.  It’s for you – especially if you have animals in your life, and you’re interested in training.

Over the past twenty plus years I’ve been pushing the boundaries of what can be done with clicker training.  How do we use it?  How do we think about it?  What is our current understanding of cues, chains, reinforcement schedules, etc., and how has that changed over the years?

This book explores some of the areas that exploration has taken me.  We’ll be going well beyond the basics of clicker training.  I want to share with you the differences that make a difference – that transform you from a follower of recipes into a creative, inventive trainer.  Play is the transformer.  In the articles that follow you’ll discover what I mean by that.

I won’t be posting every day.  That would be overwhelming to you and to me.  Tomorrow is a travel day, so I’m not sure when I’ll be posting the next blog.  It will depend in part upon my internet access.  I will be putting you instead on an intermittent reinforcement schedule.  If you want to be notified when new posts are published, please sign up to follow this blog.

Coming soon: Part 1: Why Play?

Copyright  2016 All Rights Reserved.  I know on the internet how easy it is to pass posts around.  I certainly wrote this to share, and I hope you will share the link to these posts with others, but please respect the copyright restrictions on these articles.  If you wish to reprint them, please contact me for permission. (kurlanda@crisny.org)

 

Happy New Year!

No one wants to read a long post on New Year’s Day.  Instead I’ll just share three quick things.  The first is to let you know that tomorrow I will be posting the first in a very long series of articles.  I am looking forward to sharing them with you, so save a bit of time tomorrow to join me for a cup of tea and the first of the articles.

The second is share this New Year’s Greeting from Panda and all of us at The Clicker Center.

And the third is to wish you a very Happy New Year!

Alexandra Kurland  January 1, 2016