Teaching Savannah via clicker training how to do the Intrinzen crunch:
https://www.youtube.com/edit?video_id=pnIvH5ERbwc
So this video accidentally turned out more interesting than intended… It shows both how fast learner my horse is (this progress is after literally one 10 minute session yesterday, and then I did three sample tries before I turned on the camera to display her progress today) and what a sassy baby she is (and how I handle that).
I’ll probably get some criticism for how I handled her rearing and lunging a little at me… My approach has always just been to act super unimpressed. She doesn’t get anything out of me, not a big reaction, not a punishment, certainly not what she was after. I just move her out of my space and keep asking for what I was asking for, and when she does the behavior I was asking for she gets the treat. These explosive episodes have become increasingly fewer. I find if anyone tries to correct her for doing things like rearing, nipping, threatening to kick… it escalates. She likes to fight back against pressure, so I just don’t give her anything to fight against. I take the wind out of her sails, as it were.
I have a super-long post on my blog about why I handle her outbursts the way I do. To summarize though, she is just testing/displaying the way she would with another horse, asking “Are you really in charge here? Or can I just make you step away from that food I want if I show off a little instead of waiting for a command and obeying it?” All I need to do is not back down, and continue to calmly assert myself to maintain control and respect; I don’t need to lash out at her for this (unless she is truly aggressive).
I could actually tell I was hitting her limit - you can hear me saying “just one more time, or you’ll get spoiled rotten” or something to that affect. Which was my cutesy way of saying “I see by your body language you are frustrated and about to get pushy, so I’m gonna wrap this up.” Sure enough, she got pushy right as I finished my sentence. So I regained control, made her do the behavior once more, and then released pressure by ending the exercise. Had I run out of the stall when she reared, she would have learned rearing gets her out of having to work. Instead, she learned rearing gets her nothing and nowhere, but performing the requested behavior gets her a reward and release from any further work - double reward! Next time maybe she’ll save her energy and skip the rearing =P Easy treats!
