My two year old gelding has learned, too well, he gets a treat for certain behaviours.
Now he is offering those behaviours.
I don’t want to discourage him but he needs to know training is over.
Over the years I have done a certain amount of clicker style training and have used rewards successfully to retrain problem areas.
I have never had one who is so food motivated and it seems actually tries to offer new things, he will anticipate hips over/lifting his foot/or moving into me (think mounting block).
thanks
Could you add a wait command with a verbal cue that you reward? Once he’s where he’s supposed to be he gets a wait command and is rewarded for the effort of not moving.
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I see what you are saying, I think he knows that lesson, lol when I took the halter off I pushed him away, which has been my ‘off’ switch with other horses, he just stood and waited and waited.
He may need to be disappointed once or twice until he figures out school is over?
If I don’t immediately hand over the carrot bites or cookies when I first see my gelding, he gradually starts offering the side stretches, the between the leg stretches, and a few other strategic moves … all the things I’ve taught him to do, for treats.
Horse thinks I’m a vending machine. Pull the right lever and the treats will appear.
I turn him around to face the big open pasture and push on his butt and say “go on!” He’s never gotten a treat after that. So he marches off huffily, not looking back.
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Try to have a clear training is starting / training is stopping signal or routine.
So for me treat bag on is starting, and when I give a jackpot then it’s off we’re done.
Clean, clear and consistent are your golden rules for reward based training to save frustration over food. So try to work cleanly in that food reward only ever follows a marker signal that it was the right answer (or a try towards the right answer) your horse will learn that no marker, no food pretty quickly.
It’s lovely when they offer stuff and I will give scritches and tell them they are clever, but a behaviour without a cue isn’t what I asked for or am working towards, so it isn’t rewarded in the marker, bridge, food reinforcer chain sense.
I taught my first crossover horse to jambette (wave a leg) and, because I was so thrilled this shut down abused horse was offering to engage, I used to reward him every time he did it, irrespective of being asked for or not….well we had years of that leg coming out aaaaaaaallllllll the time for anything and great frustration if food didnt appear. Not great fun for him, me or anyone in the way.
Lesson learnt!
Both my two year olds are in the exploration phase like yours @colorfan and we’re working our way back out of the I swing my bum your way because I’m learning to step towards a target….no target, not asked, no thank you!
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They’re too smart sometimes!
My Assistant is the mini, who I’ve allowed to enter the barn with me, through the service (human) door. A privilege not extended to horse or pony.
While I prep grain, he inspects & pillages stacked hay, then tries to open the bin holding his TC Sr. If I tell him “go to your house” - his stall - he goes, but those little ears are pinned. If he had a middle finger… 
OP, already good advice here.
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We call training with operant conditioning letting the genie out of the bottle.
Now you have a well engaged student and it will made more demands of you than one merely following directions.
That is why we also train initially the wait command, or the student tends to anticipate by offering behaviors.
Some times is what you want and work with those, others you need to dismiss without discouraging the offering itself.
Each student is different, each situation can be also, find what works.
We used to train there are rewards for behaviors, then teach also for just standing there waiting.
One example, treat for coming to you in the pasture, then teach when coming to stand there with heads averted and waiting for an invitation to take the thread.
That avoids noses anxiously and at times rudely bumping for treats.
Once we had five geldings in one pasture, a friend came by, we went to look at the horses, they came over and politely stood there with sideways heads.
Horses can see us fine with one eye, don’t need to have both on us.
Friend thought that was hilarious and talked about that for long time.
Seems that her horses are the mob kind, are all over her and she said she was going to train them better now.
If you have been missing that step in training, now is a good time to start teaching both, active and passive behaviors.
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I just disengage with the horse, walking away if he’s being pushy, OR, just standing there and ignoring him, as long as he’s not physically engaging with me, like nudging. If he stands there and gives up, no matter how interested he is in me, I give one more treat, “good boy” and walk away, end of session. It’s like Bluey said - it’s training a desired behavior, which is to leave you alone LOL
Be sure you’re not inadvertently rewarding a behavior you like but didn’t ask for. There’s a difference between doing something to discourage a wanted (but not asked for) behavior, and not rewarding an offered one. If you’re not asking for anything, ignore him until he stops and tries to figure out what’s happening, then you can reward and give your “wait” or “hold up” cue, whatever you choose. Then ask for something.
I had one I taught to do a down dog for the purpose of stretching. I had a very specific cue on his leg, not to be confused with anything I’d do to ask him to lift his leg. Sometimes he’d decide the leg lift cue was a DD cue, and I had to ignore his lovely DD and expectant look. Then I’d actually ASK for the DD, reward him, then ask for leg lift and reward that.
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The main thing IME is whatever behavior you want, cue it the same way every single time. Cueing ‘quit that’ behavior is the same as ‘do this’ behavior.
The human has to be in training mode the entire time they are with the animals. But humans in general are averse to this mindset.
The humans in my universe don’t do consistency well. They have a narrative in their own heads that sometimes we are ‘on’ and in performance-treat mode, and sometimes we are ‘off’ and not doing that. On their own whim, based on distractions and/or lack of commitment to the program.
You can explain on vs off to human family members, friends, co-workers, etc. Sometimes we are playing the game, sometimes not. Rationalize it, let them know what to expect. They even pick it up on their own. But that’s not an option for the animals, who live in a linear survival-oriented brainscape.
Animals don’t have an ‘off’ of their own, they cue on the human behavior. If the human behavior isn’t 100% the same, then the message absorbed by animals is ‘keep trying’. ‘Be persistent until they give what you want because eventually they will’.
If humans want to have on/off modes, they have to incorporate ‘off’ in their signals, and be consistent about how they use it.
Humans create nuisance behavior in animals through inconsistency and lack of constant awareness. This is fairly well studied by animal behaviorists. When rewards are sometimes there and sometimes not, animals keep trying until the payoff comes.
This has been a big issue in communities that are trying to adapt human behavior so as not to continuously attract wildlife seeking trash, treats, food generally – such as bears and pet-killing predators raiding trash, or deer wandering through town and across roads seeking food left by picnickers. Potentially dangerous / destructive wild animals. Not attracting them means that all of the humans have to handle and respect the process in the same way – but human communities tend to do this poorly.
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Clear and consistent, bag on-bag off, no more cookies in my pocket.
[quote=“OverandOnward, post:4, topic:806580”]
So he marches off huffily, not looking back. haha
[quote=“Bluey, post:7, topic:806580”]
then teach when coming to stand there with heads averted and waiting for an invitation to take the thread.
[/quote] Yes, I think I need to look into this. To teach ‘wait’ do you use a target? (board on the ground)
[quote=“JB, post:8, topic:806580”]
Be sure you’re not inadvertently rewarding a behavior you like but didn’t ask for.
[/quote] Yeah, wanting to find the balance, we are very early on in this training so I don’t want to discourage him, maybe redirection is the thing, and or giving the wait command.
Ultimately he will have to learn no cue no treat.
[quote=“OverandOnward, post:9, topic:806580”]
The human has to be in training mode the entire time they are with the animals
[/quote] Yes! I am very aware of this, from the moment they are aware I am coming to them I am in training mode.
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This happens with my dog. (I know… not a horse, but still mooching for treats). I do a visual cue to show that I have no more treats and the session is done as well by saying “all gone”.
My visual aid is me holding my hands up in front of me, fingers pointed up, and flipping back and forth from the front and back showing the dog I have nothing up my sleeve like a magician 
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I switched to primarily lower value treats with the occasional high value treat. It’s made a big difference.
Alfalfa cubes vs carrots.
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Every horse is different. My mare wasn’t to much of a mooch but started a bit when she was younger so I stopped giving treats for a few days, then started again. She is rather spoiled now, but she’s also 14 and has proven her worth. The four year old gelding I ride gets the same treatment as my mare used to - one treat after riding, one treat after tack off (there used to be a treat for being caught but I ride after they either eat breakfast or dinner these days so they are in already).
I am for the most part very specific about treats and trust me, cute muzzles gently looking for food are VERY tempting! I remind the muzzles they have to work for the treats and constantly ask those muzzles, “but what WORK did you do?”
I did ride a horse that was an adorable little gelding off the track, great kids horse potential so I thought to train some tricks. Took one attempt for him to learn “bow” command meant put head between legs and get treat and proceeded to beg for the next 10 minutes! I never did it with him again. Some horses are just VERY food motivated and you have to be more careful with them.
One of the keys is only treat when command and proper behavior happens. If behavior happens without command, no treat. This is SO much more important with highly food motivated horses. Also, with operant conditioning, you do want to move to intermittent reward so you will want to go from treat all the time, to half the time to random - random treat is the best way to get the behavior to stick.
As other have said, having a clear start and end is great also - I would go out into the field to get horses, a different one from the herd each time. Only the horse with the halter on (they didn’t generally keep halters on in the field) got treats. It taught (for the most part) the other horses that mugging me for food wasn’t going to go anywhere. Last treat given immediately after halter off (this was to keep their attention on me so they wouldn’t turn/run/buck/accidentally hit me when turned back out).
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