Tantrums over standing still... clicker training?

RachelFerd

RachelFerd

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Has anyone used clicker training to teach their competition horse to stand still?

My mare is going through a phase of having complete ridiculous over-the-top tantrums over being made to stand still, or having to hack out behind a fieldmate rather than in front. She is perfectly happy to stand still under saddle when *she* wants to, just not when I want/need her to, therefore I really don't think it is a physical problem.

The tantrums are quite severe, 100mph running backwards, rearing, whipping round, stag leaping into trees/fences/other horses/cars... then attempting to pi** off at full pelt. Basically completely unacceptable behaviour over a very simple request.

She is an extremely dominant mare, and rules the roost over any horse she has ever been turned out with. Since an out of the blue incident when she kicked me 6 weeks ago she has been particularly difficult, as if she now believes she is the boss of me too.

Her behaviour has earnt her some serious tellings off, and I am quite handy with a whip, but reprimands from us seem to only spark her into reacting more violently. Hence why I am interested in taking the 'nicey nice' approach and clicker training her to stand. She is quite food orientated, so thought it may work.

Any thoughts or ideas would be great. Am not liking being a mare owner right now!
 
i hate to state the obvious, but i would be trying a totally different saddle on her before doing anything else. being unhappy to stand still indicates saddle pain to me. (comfortable in motion but not when standing.)
oh, and i'd knock all her additional feed on the head (hay only, balancer if you must), as much turnout as possible, and lunge her first.
i'd have someone on the floor to feed her handfulls of grass as a distraction...
clicker training from the saddle is something i found really tricky, i needed another pair of hands basically!
 
Oh dear, sounds like you have your hands full!

I've never taught a horse to stand with clicker, but have done it with dogs, so why not give it a try? Have you tried clicker before? It's a good idea to start with a 'leave it' exercise to teach the animal not to go for the food until you give it. Targeting is also helpful with animals which get excited as it re-focuses them on a learnt activity. I would play around with these two before doing the standing still, as standing still can be quite demanding. When you do get round to it, start with a much easier demand, e.g. all four feet on the ground for one second and build up, but always return to easier tasks, don't make it progressively more difficult all the time.

Clicker from the saddle is very difficult so I am not sure it will help that much with teaching her stay behind another horse.

Having said all that, could there be a physical cause for this behaviour? It sounds quite extreme and if it's all new perhaps she is in pain?
 
hi Kerilli, cheers for the reply.

I have 3 different saddles that all fit her well enough as far as I am aware (2 old jump saddles, and a prestige dressage saddle) and I get the same reaction in all of them. She is happy to stand still peacefully under saddle if she wants to. Eg today she happily stood in the arena while I was teaching OH, but wouldn't stand when he was opening the gate when we were about to leave and hack home and chucked a huge tantrum.

She is turned out 24/7 and only gets a couple of handfulls of Ride&Relax - only given as something to disguise her calmer herbs with. Not that they seem to do anything!
 
pleased i have a gelding now ,iv'e never used clicker training but this might give you some ideas

this might not be much help but maybe worth a try

i used to do loading problems and was called out to deal with a warmblood chestnut mare ,the problems started just trying to put brushing boots on to protect her legs ,she was an complete t**t to deal with ,kicking ,biting etc just putting boots on.

so i used a controler halter on her ,the same one as richard maxwell uses (not monty roberts dually) and proceeded to re halter break her (she was about 12 yr old) and gain some respect from her ,argued for well over an hour about the trailer including running round the side ,rearing and trying to stove the roof of the trailer in with her front feet

eventually she gave in ,then i found out that she was on loan and this was the 7th place she'd been to because of her behavior ,won't hack out ,won't stand still , won't load , won't tie up etc etc

anyway after working with her a few days and teaching the owner what i was doing ,she is now a completely different horse ,a pleasure to deal with most of the time ,she still has her and that was 6yrs ago

i'd like to think i solved all the behaviour problems but it was a pure side effect of winning an argument with the trailer ,there for gaining her respect

there was a richard maxwell book out a few years ago that would explain how to use the halter in a way to cause join up etc and gain more respect from her
i think it was called something like release your horses potential in 2 mins a day or something like that ,good luck
 
My Mare was just like that when I got her ! NOT saying we've sold the issue as she will stand now just digs holes now ......

The thing that worked for me and still does and sounds like your mare is similar is If i stand to talk she'll stand for hours !!! I had someone on the floor and rode to them halted next to them. if she stood still she got a polo .... if she didn't troted another lap or two then tried again ... Now she'll stand like an angel if I'm talking to someone and will generaly stand too but like I said on the occassion will dig a hole to just tell me she's bored !!! lol But like the other lady mentioned it's a 2 pair of hands job , however you look at it .
 
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My horse is being like this at the moment - only when it all gets exciting tho. After a bit of stubbling - turns itself inside out. Waiting to jump her round - backwards or sideways - until we go in then she is fine. Found it is just better to keep her walking and "get on with the job" . Only started this recently since its dropped a bit cooler. Fine other wise at home, schooling etc. She is a "hot" type though
 
I love the clicker for lots of things but again I've never got the hang of using it in the saddle. I do have a book that suggests taping a clicker to the end of your whip to make it all a bit easier. If they are established on the clicker then you don't need to rush too much to reward. In the book they were using it to shape a good flying change and half pass and all sorts but I fear this is not really for me!

So, I certainly think it would work brilliantly if you went about it the right way (small steps as Booboos said) and could get the hang of using the clicker in the saddle. I don't think there is any behaviour that can't be trained with the clicker if you know what you're doing.

Good luck :)
 
I've looked at clicker training a bit but to be honest to my mind it gets in the way of things a lot of the time as you're forever having to break the flow of what you're doing and "click and treat" (I know theoretically you can phase out the treat but I've not seen many people do that succesfully). So, personally, I'm not a fan of clicker, but hey, horses for courses and all that.

One thing I would say, though, is that if you go down the clicker path, don't just click and treat for your horse standing still..... otherwise, well, you'll get what you ask for! - your horse will get very good at standing still. However, your horse is then likely to continue to keep offering to stand still in the hope of a click & treat. So, while standing still may not then be your problem, moving forwards is likely to be! The whole clicker ethos with horses is actually quite involved so you might end up wishing you hadn't gone there if you just do it and scratch the surface of it - so if you're going to do it, I would recommend reading up on it a lot and seeing some of it in action.

If you did want to do some clicker stuff, you could look up someone called Becky Holden (google her, she's a dressage type that does clinics up and down the country).
 
Kelpie said:
One thing I would say, though, is that if you go down the clicker path, don't just click and treat for your horse standing still..... otherwise, well, you'll get what you ask for! - your horse will get very good at standing still. However, your horse is then likely to continue to keep offering to stand still in the hope of a click & treat. So, while standing still may not then be your problem, moving forwards is likely to be! The whole clicker ethos with horses is actually quite involved so you might end up wishing you hadn't gone there if you just do it and scratch the surface of it - so if you're going to do it, I would recommend reading up on it a lot and seeing some of it in action.
Click to expand...

Ideally, you'd eventually tie the requested behaviour to an aid (perhaps something like scratching the withers if not a voice aid) so wouldn't have that problem. But I agree, in the early stages at least, you're going to get a lot of different responses!

Someone I know who teaches it says it's much easier to teach the process to people with no previous training experience or already established system. It makes sense, as when I experimented with it, I found it very hard not to do what I'd always done, which interfered with my ability to respond consistently and immediately. Too much thinking! :D

That said, if you watch successful trainers, many (most?) actually have some sort of (unconscious) word/noise/gesture that effectively means "Yes! You've got it!" to the horse. The only problem is, at least when people are starting, they tend to reward with the cessation of asking, so the horses quickly learn that "good boy" really means "stop whatever you're doing and have a break". :)

Standing still is a really tricky one. I did know a relatively inexperienced person who taught her horse to "stand" with clicker training and the horse also stood well under saddle, but then so do lots of other horses so it's impossible to tell whether or not the horse's fidgetiness was just regular "baby" stuff that would have come out in time, or was a behaviour that would have continued into her training if it hadn't been addressed as it was.
 
It might be worth getting her back checked (if you haven't really recently) just in case she's uncomfy in some way (a bad back could translate accross saddles if its just sore all the time) then you can totally disregard that line of questioning if the back person comes up with nothing. My horse did this when I first got him, it was intermittent some days he just about would stand still but mostly he wouldn't. A change of saddle and back treatment sorted it out. Does she walk off when you try to mount too??
 
Just out of interest, it's quite easy to phase out the click and the treat for conditioned behaviour, and if you need/want keep a "you're on the right track, keep going signal" in there. When Betty used to do obedience I taught her the sit/down stay with the clicker but also added a body cue during the behaviour which meant "keep going", gradually I reduced the body cue from a full on nod of the head and verbal praise to a blink of the eyes. When she was in the sit/down stay, all I had to do was blink at her and that worked as a re-inforcer!
 
Thanks for the responses everyone. I think there is probably some mileage in me doing this, as 3 years of conventional training has got me nowhere on this one! Just feels ridiculous to have a horse that will do a nice flying change on the aids, but can't stand still on request. Unfortunately we have reached a real sticking point here, as although I can diffuse the situation if I have space, when it comes to things like crossing roads, I no long really want to be kamikaze thrown into traffic because the mare won't follow the green cross code.

There is no flinching or reaction in her back on palpitation, although she hasn't had the sports massage lady up in quite a while - will probably have her seen just to be sure, but there is no obvious under saddle pain.

She has always walked off when mounting too - but she is an ex racehorse and has always been legged up in motion. She will stand to be mounted properly when she is feeling chilled, but the more you 'make' her stand, again the less she does stand.

May try a different tactic over the weekend and give her a series of (VERY!) long hacks to see if I just need to get her back down and her mind off of the sugary grass spurt...
 
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