May 11, 2017 by theclickercenter

What Did You Mean – Not What Did You Say?

Be The Teacher Your Learner Needs 2 THM.png The Kentucky Derby was run this past Saturday. Years and years ago I used to pay attention to the Triple Crown races. How could anyone who loves horses not be captivated by Secretariat? But the glamour wore off as I came to know many ex-race horses, including some of Secretariat’s offspring. Now, if it didn’t pop up on the national news coverage, I could easily forget that the first Saturday in May is Derby Day. What brought it to mind today is a photo I use in my conference presentations. I was skimming through the talks I gave this past winter. That’s when I spotted the photo. It was in a talk connecting George Lakoff’s work with horse training.

American pharoah lip chain It’s a photo that appeared in my local newspaper, as well as on the internet. It shows our most recent Triple Crown winner, American Pharaoh, being cooled down after a workout. It could have been a photo of any race horse, or really of any hard-working performance horse. There was nothing particularly distinctive about this picture. You can see the sweat and the steam rising off his coat. And you also see the chain that runs through the halter ring and into his mouth. You can’t really tell from the picture, but the chain is probably over his top gums, an area that is even more sensitive to pain than his tongue. That’s how young, very fit thoroughbreds are controlled on the track.

Why was this photo of a thoroughbred race horse in a talk about George Lakoff’s work? What’s the connection? Lakoff is a cognitive linguist who has studied the power of metaphors in shaping how we think. He is particularly interested these days in American politics. One of his central ideas is that the current divide in our politics can best be viewed through the metaphor of family. Long before any of us were aware of national governments or political parties, we were aware of the authority of our parents. They set the rules and modeled the behavior that became the template for how each of us thinks society as a whole should be structured.

Lakoff has proposed that there are two primary family models: the strict father family and the nurturant parent family.

In the strict father model, the father is the head of the family. As the moral authority of the family, it is the father’s job to teach his children right from wrong. He communicates this to the children in a hierarchical way.

Lakoff’s description of a Strict Father patriarch sounds eerily like force-based training. You have only to substitute a few words – trainer for father, horse for child – and you have this:

“The trainer is the legitimate authority, and his authority is not to be challenged. . . Obedience to the trainer is required. It is upheld through punishment. Bad behavior from the horse is always punished.

The trainer teaches the horse right from wrong, and he communicates this to the horse in a hierarchical way.

Punishment is seen as absolutely crucial. It is the trainer’s moral duty to punish bad behavior in the horse.”

The nurturant parent model provides the contrast. In this family structure it is moral to show empathy, to nurture, and to take on individual as well as social responsibility. Cooperation with others is seen as more important than competition.

Instead of hierarchical communication, the Nurturant Parent model focuses on open communication. There is mutual respect between children and parents. This is different from other parenting models where children are expected to show respect for their parents, but not vice versa.

People often say words matter, but words are defined by our core values.

The chain in American Pharaoh’s mouth becomes a symbol of command-based training. In this very conventional view of training, horses are considered to be stupid animals. If we look at that through the lens of Lakoff’s metaphors, we see more clearly what these words mean. It implies a hierarchy – people above horses. It means people can do whatever they want with horses.

Here’s the rest. Because horses are stupid animals, you have to use force to control them. You have to show them “who’s boss”. Here’s the corollary to that: “But don’t worry. They don’t feel pain the way we do.” The frame these metaphors create very much influences what we are able to see.

In this view of the world, when a horse shows resistance, he’s being disobedient. He’s challenging the trainer’s authority and must be punished. This training frame makes it hard to see other reasons a horse might fail to obey. Only secondarily will the trainer break the lesson down into smaller steps, or look for physical causes.

Here’s the contrast:

Robin hug

This photo represents my core belief system. It says something very different. It is much more in line with Lakoff’s description of the nurturing parent model. I believe that horses are intelligent animals, and that they should be treated with great kindness and fairness. There is no hierarchy. There is no separation between their needs and mine. We are partners together.

What matters more than the words we use are the core values we hold. Words only have the meaning that those values give them. Respect is a perfect example.

Suppose you are new to the horse world. You’re looking around for an instructor who can help you train your first horse. You’ve been told that you should go watch a few lessons before taking your horse to anyone, so that’s what you’ve done. You’re watching this trainer interact with his horses. They are behaving exactly how you would like your youngster to be. They move out of his space – no questions asked. They stand politely to be groomed and saddled. They seem safe to ride. You like how he talks about his horses. He talks about partnership. He says it’s important that your horse respects you.

Respect is an important word for you, as well. You like what this trainer is saying. You like how calm and safe his horses are. You leave feeling very confident that you have found what you’re looking for.

But have you? What kind of respect do each of you mean? In the strict father model respect is maintained through the use of punishment. So, yes, horses can appear to be very respectful, meaning they are afraid of the trainer. They have learned what to do to escape punishment.

In the “nurturing parent model” respect means something very different. It is something that is earned. It is not something that is demanded.

Both parenting models can produce horses that show what you would call polite, safe manners, but the teaching process the horses experienced will have been very different. If you send your horse to this trainer, you may find it’s a perfect match. You were both talking about the same kind of respect. Or you could find yourself second guessing your decision. You like him. You can see that he’s skilled. He certainly gets results, but the lessons make you squirm.

When you find that for you there’s a disconnect between someone’s words and their actions, it’s time to look at core values.

What do the words really mean? When we train thoughtfully, we learn to look beyond the outer shell of the familiar words we use. Are we letting someone else’s meaning take over? Do our words reflect the kind of relationship we want to have? Do the training methods match our core values?

Do you want an example? Kay Laurence has just produced a promo video for our October Training Thoughtfully conference. It’s a beautiful video. Words and images are aligned. They tell you so much. When I watch this video, I know it was produced by someone whose core values match my own. If they match yours, as well, I hope you’ll join us for some Thoughtful Training this October.

Training Thoughtfully Milwaukee, Oct 20-22, 2017: Visit: https://www.trainingthoughtfullymilwaukee.com/

Watch the video: https://vimeo.com/216184198

If you want to learn more about George Lakoff’s work, read my January 8, 2017 post. (https://theclickercenterblog.com/2017/01/08/)

Enjoy!

April 21, 2015 by theclickercenter

Today’s Peregrine Story: #10 Standing Up For Our Horses

I was at a horse expo watching a trainer crack a bull whip over a horse’s head. She first warned the audience to cover their ears because the crack was going to be loud. The horse couldn’t cover his ears, and he couldn’t get away. Over and over again she cracked the whip around his body. Each time you could see his belly tighten. You know the expression tied up in knots. That’s how this horse was clearly feeling.

This isn’t training. This is learned helplessness.

We know about learned helplessness from some terrible laboratory experiments that were done with dogs. The dogs were restrained in harnesses and given electric shocks through electrodes attached to their foot pads. For the experiment two dogs were yoked together. The first dog could stop the shocks by pressing a lever which also stopped the shocks the second dog was receiving. The second dog could not stop the shocks through it’s own actions.

In the second half of the experiment the dogs were placed in a room with a barrier down the center. The floor they were on had electric wires running through it. Again the dogs were shocked. The dogs that had learned that they could control the shocks jumped over the divider and escaped. The dogs that had not been able to control the shocks made no attempt to jump out.

Nothing was restraining them. They could have jumped across the partition to the safety of the other side, but instead they just curled up in a ball and took the shocks. Learned helplessness. They didn’t believe any more that they could escape.

Is this what we want for our horses? The trainer with the bull whip had a benign intent. This horse was pushy and tended to spook. The trainer wanted to be sure the horse was safe for the owner to be around.

Safety does always come first – but that has to mean for BOTH the horse and the handler. The trainer continued to crack the bull whip around this horse. I don’t know how long it continued. I left to find the show management to get it stopped and to issue a complaint.

I know if I push against you, you will push back against me. And I know that we will not all make the same training choices. There are many in the clicker training community who want to avoid the use of leads and any use of pressure. But pressure and release of pressure is our riding language so I’ve made it part of clicker training. I want the horses to learn how to use the information that pressure provides in a constructive way. I want it to mean not do it or else, but follow the hints the pressure is offering and you’ll get to your reinforcer faster. How we teach changes how it is perceived.

We all make different choices. We all draw our lines at different points. People who are exploring coercive, force-based training methods want good things for their horses. They see that the end results can look very light. They see that horses can be responsive. They are afraid of the dangerous behaviors they are dealing with, and they are looking for solutions that work.
I don’t want to push against these good intentions, or the exploration that each of us goes through as we sort out how we want to train. But at some point we all need to remember that it is more than okay, it is our responsibility to stand up for our horses. We are their voice. When we see methods that cross the lines of safe training, we need to be able to move past the words the trainers are using to describe what they are doing and see what is really going on.

Peregrine is a crossover horse. That means he didn’t start out with clicker training. We began with the training methods that were being taught within the general horse community. I learned how to say “now here this! This is what you are to do.” And he learned to say “No, I can’t! I won’t” Instead of getting tougher, I learned to be smarter. Together we found a way to say “Let’s do this together.”

Happy 30th Birthday Peregrine. Thank you for the gift of true partnership you have given me.

April 20, 2015 by theclickercenter

Today’s Peregrine Story: #9 My Soap Box

I wrote yesterday about Peregrine’s mother. Some wonderful things have grown out of that terrible training accident, but I am never very far removed from the consequences. It reached past her life and changed Peregrine’s. I’ve also written about his foaling, how she got down against a stall wall and couldn’t get up. He was boxed in by the corner of the stall, trapped in her pelvis. If I had not been camped out beside her stall, ready to help, I would have lost them both. Peregrine’s spine was damaged by the foaling. That in turn led to his locking stifles which led to a challenging first few years of training which led through a series of twists and turns to clicker training. So again good things came out of a hard beginning.

It has also given me the right to stand on the soap box that actively promotes positive training methods. When I first started introducing clicker training to the horse world, I was very careful what I said about other training methods. Clicker training was the new kid on the block. If I came in like gang busters denouncing what everyone else was doing and saying “my way is the best”, I’d have been pounced on and crushed – and rightly so. If you push against someone, of course, they are going to push back.

So I chose not to comment on what was occurring in the rest of the equine training community. At times this was incredibly difficult. There have been so many emerging trends over the last thirty years. Many, very horse-friendly advances have been made. Acupuncture, chiropractic work, physical therapies of many varieties are now common. But why do we need so many interventions? In many cases it is because we also have so many “methods” that are so very hard on horses. Strip away the rhetoric, and you will see revealed some horrific things being done in the name of training.

The words often sound great. Everyone talks about partnership, harmony, etc.. But when you turn the sound down on the videos and watch what is actually being done to horses, it is at times nothing more than abuse.

I remember watching one video where the trainer’s solution to a needle shy horse was to run him to exhaustion in a round pen. The horse was wearing a rope halter to which was attached a long lead. He was trapped between the lead controlling his head and a rope lassoed around his hind leg. A strong twenty-something handler had a hold of the lead. The trainer was riding a stocky quarter horse, controlling from the saddle the rope around the horse’s hind leg.

Every few minutes the trainer would tighten the rope, and the horse would go bucking and pitching around the pen. Then they would back off and give the horse a short break. The horse’s sides were heaving from fear and exertion. The trainer, meanwhile, was telling stories about how much he was helping this horse to get along with people. He was like a skilled magician distracting an audience away from the things he didn’t want them to see.

After about forty minutes of this, his assistant did indeed manage to wrestle this horse into a head lock and give him a pretend shot. As his owner walked him out of the round pen, the trainer told her the horse might be a bit stiff for a few days, and he’d need some ointment for the rope burns on his hock.

I was horrified. Whatever happened to safety always comes first!? Whatever happened to common sense and humane handling!?

The trainer never asked for a physical history on this horse. Did he have any hock or hind end issues that might be made worse by this kind of handling? Suspending a horse as they did between the two ropes could easily have resulted in an injury to his pelvis, his spine, his hind legs. He could have ended up with the same kind of neurological damage that had so crippled Peregrine’s mother. Was it worth it? All this just to give a shot! When you see the videos from the zoos and aquariums showing wild animals – whales, dolphins, cheetahs, giraffes, rhinos, baboons etc. – voluntarily presenting themselves for shots and blood draws, you have to question these methods.

This is a soap box I have earned the right to stand on because for over thirty years I have lived with the consequences of this sort of “get it done at any cost” training approach. We do get to stand up for our horses and say find a different way, find a better way. Find a humane way.

And always, always – safety does come first.

Happy 30th Birthday Peregrine. We have learned some hard lessons together, but we have come safely through to this.

April 19, 2015 by theclickercenter

Today’s Peregrine Story: #8 They Don’t Feel Pain The Way We Do

Shortly before she became mine, Peregrine’s mother was injured in a handling incident. One of the teenagers at the barn had been given the assignment of pulling her mane. In case you aren’t familiar with this technique, it is literally what the name implies. The mane is shortened and tidied up by pulling out the longer strands.

The horses I grew up with never had their manes pulled. The first time I watched this being done it was to a young racehorse, a two year old who was literally climbing the walls trying to get away. The trainer stood outside the stall door watching as a young handler struggled to get the job done.

I couldn’t help asking what they were doing. It looked to me like some horrific form of torture. The trainer dismissed my concerns. “They don’t feel pain the way we do,” he said. In his view, the mare was climbing the walls not because of pain, but because she was being disobedient. That’s a great example of the stories we tell ourselves – and come to believe – to make things okay.

Peregrine’s mother wasn’t in a stall the first time someone tried to pull her mane. Shortly before she officially became my horse, it was decided she should have her mane tidied up. For her introduction to this procedure she was tied tight to a post supporting a four foot high fence. To get away from the pain she presumably didn’t feel, she jumped the fence. You could say it showed how athletic she was that she was able to jump the fence with her head snubbed up tight to the post. Really, it just says how desperately she needed to get away.

I only learned about it because I saw scrapes on her legs and asked about them. It wasn’t until much later that I discovered the full scope of the injuries she sustained. Her spine was damaged in what was a very avoidable accident. My beautiful, athletic, perfect horse became a wobbler. That is exactly what the name suggests. She sustained neurological damage as a result of that incident. She couldn’t tell where her hind legs were so she wobbled about trying to stay on her feet.

I learned over time just how profoundly compromised she was. Eventually it became hard for her even to walk without falling. All the dreams I had had for her as a riding horse were set aside as I tried to help her learn the most basic of motor skills. It was my early training experiences with her that taught me about small steps, and about finding ways around the many “brick walls” that were thrown up in her path. Long before I ever heard about clickers and positive reinforcement, she taught me how to break things down into the smallest of small steps. The power of those lessons formed the core of what clicker training means to me.

She taught me to believe in the power of change. You cannot NOT change. How’s that for a sentence! But it’s true. We are constantly changing. The question is: are you changing towards something or are you simply always reverting back to familiar patterns?

If you don’t believe that change is possible, you will always be reverting back to the same reality that you currently find yourself mired down in. I didn’t know what change, if any, was possible for her. The vets at the time painted a very bleak future for us. I just knew that I had to deal with the challenges each day presented.

Stepping over the sill of her stall door was hard for her. But it was something she needed to be able to do, so we worked on stepping over ground poles. Those were terrifying for her, so I put a rope on the ground instead. Even that was too hard, so I drew a line in the dirt. That she could manage so that’s where we began.

She was showing me that no matter how small a step may seem, there is always, ALWAYS a smaller step you can find.

That is truly at the heart of all good training. It is certainly at the heart of how I think about clicker training.

Eventually she was able to walk over those ground poles, and the sill of her stall was no longer a problem. She could even manage a small cross rail. We didn’t know what was possible. We just kept working on the little things that challenged her. Eventually the little things grew into wonderful things. She became my riding partner and introduced me to the world of classical dressage.

She is why at the core of everything I teach there is balance. For me balance is everything. It gave her life. When some people talk about dressage, they see competition rings and rosettes. I see balance. That’s what dressage means to me. The end result may indeed take you to the show ring, but first it takes you to a feel that is heaven itself. Balance is everything. It is life-giving, life sustaining. It is beauty, grace, power. It is love.

Peregrine continues to teach me those lessons his mother began.
Happy 30th Birthday Peregrine

March 1, 2015 by theclickercenter

Words Matter

What Are You Really Saying?
We’ve been having an interesting discussion in my on-line course about the labels people use to describe their horses.

Words are so interesting. Recently I flew on a Delta airlines plane. Most of the airlines have rows at the front of the economy section that give you a couple more inches of leg room. United calls this section economy plus. Delta calls it comfort seating.

Oh dear.

As I walked past the last row of this section to my seat in the middle of the plane, I couldn’t help thinking: “abandon hope all ye who enter here.” If I have just passed the comfort seating zone, what was left – the comfortless seating rows. Exactly right!

Words Matter
Words matter. Labels matter. We use language so we are constantly creating labels and attaching them to everything. We name our family members, our friends, our pets, the objects around us, the thoughts and emotions we’re feeling.

When we talk about our horses, we often find ourselves saying they are dominant, stubborn, aggressive, playful, friendly, submissive. We stick these labels on the animal, and they become self-fulfilling prophecies. The power of expectations is huge. Dr. Robert Rosenthal demonstrated this in a clever study done with rats. Twelve lab techs were each given five rats. Their job was to train their rats to run through a maze. Six of the lab techs were told their rats came from a strain that was bred for good performance. The other six lab techs were told their rats came from a strain that had been bred for poor performance.

They were given five days to work with their rats, and from day one on there was a significant difference in how the rats performed. The “smart” rats learned the maze much faster. Of course, you’ve already guessed the set up. The rats were all from the same strain. There should have been no significant difference in performance, but the expectation of the handlers impacted how they handled the rats. The “smart” rats were handled more gently which resulted in them performing almost twice as well as the “stupid” rats. The expectations of the experimenters had created a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Rosenthal went on to conduct similar tests of expectations in schools. In one study all the students in a class were given an IQ test at the beginning of the school year. The teachers were then told that five of the students had scored exceptionally well on the test and could be expected to excel throughout the year. At the end of the year, these five students had indeed surpassed all the other students in the class. And again, you’ve probably guessed the set up of the experiment. The five children were picked at random. Their scores were no higher than the rest of their classmates at the start of the school year, but the extra attention the teachers gave them again created a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Rosenthal dubbed the influence that expectation can have on results as the “Pygmalion Effect”. His work clearly shows us that labels and the expectations they create do indeed matter.

What Are You Attaching The Label To?
Dr. Susan Friedman and other behaviorists remind us that the emotionally charged labels we use don’t describe the whole animal, they describe the behavior we’re seeing. That shift in focus is important. If I think of a horse as aggressive, we can both become trapped in this label just as surely as a fly is trapped in amber.

Labels can become dead ends. An aggressive horse becomes just that. Even if I modify his behavior, that label remains attached like a permanent brand tattooed around his neck. He might not be showing aggression now, but watch out, that label warns. This is an aggressive horse.

When you unlock the horse from these labels and describe instead the behavior you are observing along with its antecedents and its reinforcers, you also unlock training solutions that create the potential for lasting change.

Labels
Labels can certainly be a convenient short hand. We all use them, but we need to be mindful when we do of the effect that these labels have on the ways in which we interact with our horses and the training choices that we make. We need to keep in mind the Pygmalion effect, but that doesn’t mean we mustn’t use labels. After all, labels – meaning nouns and the adjectives that modify them – are what give meaning and richness to our language. Without them we would be creating a very drab world indeed. (Note all the labels that were used just in the last two sentences. They help give colour to the world we live in.)

So instead of stripping our language down to the bare bones because we are afraid to use any descriptive labels at all, let’s learn instead how to put the Pygmalion effect to work for us. If our expectations contribute to the outcome we get, then let’s use labels that take us in the direction we want to go.

When you attach labels, think about what you want to modify. Are you describing the whole horse or just the behavior you are seeing in this moment? If you do label the horse, select ones that take you to the horse you want to have. I believe that horses are intelligent animals, and I love being around smart horses. The labels that I attach to the horses I’m with reflect this belief system and direction I want to be heading with them. Listen to the labels that people use to describe their horses. They will reveal their underlying belief systems.

Self-Fulfilling Prophecies
We attract evidence to support our belief systems. If I believe that horses are intelligent animals, I will be most aware of experiences that support that view. Someone else might think of horses as stupid animals. Guess what they will notice?

We can see the same behavior, and our underlying belief system will cause us to see it in completely different ways. We’ll each end up attaching labels that support our belief system. So when you use someone else’s labels, you want to consider their underlying belief system. Is it a match with where you want to be heading with your horse?

If you try on someone else’s label, examine carefully what expectations that creates for you. When I say my horse is “smart”, there’s delight and admiration attached to that label. You might use that label and find that it creates problems. What happens if your “smart” horse doesn’t understand a lesson? Do you get frustrated with him because he’s not trying hard enough? He should be able to get this. If a label leads you down a relationship path that creates disappointment or conflict, don’t use that label.

Labels are often based on an incomplete analysis of the behavior we’re seeing. We hear so often horses are prey animals, and they are flight reaction animals. Lets take those descriptions a step further than these statements usually carry us. Horses are herd animals. They form social groups to provide safety from predators. When a predator attacks what do horses do? Run, of course. But not apart. They don’t scatter in all directions. They bunch together. Why? Because that tighter bunch makes it harder for a predator to get in close to take one of them down.

So when a horse is startled and crowds in on top of you, is he being pushy, or is he trying to keep you both safe? When you drive him out of your space because you’ve been taught that this behavior is a sign of disrespect, what must he be thinking? That you’re literally throwing him to the lions.

For obvious reasons we can’t have our horses jumping on top of us, but if I see this reaction as a desire for safety, I’ll find training solutions that support this need. Our underlying belief systems and our understanding of horses will very much influence how we see this event. It will impact what labels we attach to the horse and what training solutions we choose.

Through clicker training we are learning to look beyond the easy out of incomplete or outdated labels to the behavior we are seeing. Horses do indeed have very definite personalities. One of the great pleasures of clicker training is the horse’s personality can be expressed and remain intact. That makes it very much a study of one – your horse with his unique personality and life history. When you describe him, use words that lead you to towards the kind of relationship you want to have.

I believe horses are intelligent and my expectations create that reality in my horses.

Alexandra Kurland

Please note: 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

P.S. If you want to learn more about expectations, listen to the January 22, 2015 podcast of NPR’s Invisibilia: How to Become Batman. You’ll hear Robert Rosenthal describe the study he did with the rats, and you’ll also hear from Stanford psychologist, Carol Dweck. I’ve referenced her work in previous articles.

http://www.npr.org/podcasts/510307/invisibilia