@Abbie.S I think the Australian Harness Racing has banned the use of whips in racing back in 2017. So not sure that a whip is “needed” it is just what we are used to.
So I’m genuinely curious as to what you’ve accomplished with R plus alone on your horses? I found that using treats under saddle made my mare stoppy in an unbalanced fashion and made it impossible to keep moving at faster gaits.
As for myself: I’ve trained my mare clicker tricks to a good level, I’m able to maintain and improve trailer loading through a mix of R plus and R minus, I’ve schooled my mare a bunch of dressage components but right now mainly want her as a really solid back country trail horse, I can school up to about 4th level on a my coach’s schoolmaster and have ridden a competent first level test. And I’m pretty competent with a range of ground work techniques including lateral work in hand, obstacles, longing, etc. I can be useful with my coach’s green horses.
I couldn’t do most of thus only R plus.
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At the moment I’ve started working with a green former brood mare who is wonderfully comfortable in her own skin but pushy and nippy for treats. Absolutely we need a strong repertoire of R minus for me to be effective on the ground with her. There’s not a chance I’d get anywhere with her just on R plus at this point. Ive actually introduced it primarily to get her to stop mugging for treats and stand back and wait. And yes there’s a bit of positive punishment when her teeth make contact with my jacket.
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i do love me a big beefy boss mare 
but you have to stand up to them.
Anyhow if you’ve managed to do substantially more than me on just R plus I’d be genuinely interested to know how you did that. Particularly riding fairly advanced moves. What cue would you end up using for say a trot half pass or a canter pirouette that
”‹”‹”‹”‹ wasn’t about weight and pressure? Or do you train the pressure cues with R plus? If you want say transitions within gait without haltung how do you cue and reward say collected to medium or extended trots up and down, or collected canter to hand gallop and back? I myself cannot imagine riding them without weight and pressure cues. Obviously these get more subtle as training progressed but I have never been able to figure out how to reward say a transition to extended trot with a click and treat. Especially once the horse is revved up and enjoying flying.
I’ve messed around with a lot of stuff to sort out my own pissy mare and took R plus as far as .it would go, IMHO.
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I got that at first too, and for quite a long time, which was fine because my horse was young and I wasn’t in any hurry to start working him. And I like to experiment so I did lots of experiments, many of which I had to fix later. But as I got more cues associated with behaviors he eventually become much slower to throw out the anchor and much better at longer durations.
The fact that I got him as a baby and started clicker training him at 4 months probably helped.
I also would have had to teach him a lot more -R behaviors, and restricted a lot of my experiments, if anyone else had been handling him.
I couldn’t do most of thus only R plus.
I think I could probably ride a decent first level test now using primarily +R trained cues, but I don’t really know that, and am not likely to find out unless my granddaughter decides she wants to start going to shows. That, and once I started using pressure instead of voice cues I can no longer be sure that there isn’t some -R involved.
And that brings us back to trying to evaluate how much of the training is +R and how much -R. When I was doing mostly liberty work I was more confident that most of what I was getting was from +R, but once I started riding it took a lot more effort to avoid getting right back into -R. And as you know, pressure and release with a click and treat tacked on isn’t necessarily +R.
And then there’s the added problem of the balance before movement progression vs the balance from movement progression, in that if one tries to evaluate one method by the other’s standards it’s not going to be a very accurate evaluation.
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Anyhow if you’ve managed to do substantially more than me on just R plus I’d be genuinely interested to know how you did that. Particularly riding fairly advanced moves. What cue would you end up using for say a trot half pass or a canter pirouette that
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It seems to be basically the same as -R, in that we train the response to the pressure cues and then use them to get different behaviors. Or maybe what’s really happening is that we’ve gradually switched to -R with clicks tacked on and think we’re still training with +R? I really don’t know, but what I do know is that this is fun and traditional dressage wasn’t.
Or do you train the pressure cues with R plus? If you want say transitions within gait without haltung how do you cue and reward say collected to medium or extended trots up and down, or collected canter to hand gallop and back?
Behavior chains and variable rates of R.
I’ve messed around with a lot of stuff to sort out my own pissy mare and took R plus as far as .it would go, IMHO.
I’ve had moments of doubt too, and decided to go back to -R because it’s so much faster, but soon realized that it isn’t actually faster because the work I was getting with it before sucked.
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lol! yes that’s exactly it :lol::lol::lol:
I’m not sure how training to pressure cues counts as R plus. I think it’s closer to training R minus and then adding a reward.
All my major trick training with my mare was pure R plus. She offered a behaviour and I shaped it with clicker treats. It took us about a year of casual work to go from ripping towels off the door when she wanted dinner (offered behaviour) to playing fetch with my gloves. It was all R plus building on offered behaviour. I don’t know any other way to teach fetch!
But today I was working with green exbrood mare who has forgotten how to stand to have her feet handled. I was hauling on her foot, holding it a moment, putting it down and giving her a treat.
That’s not pure R plus. That’s just R minus (haul on her foot until she raises it) with a treat if she doesn’t fly backwards. This was effective. She got better about her feet over the course of the session. But it’s not pure R plus because I have no way of eliciting the behaviour and rewarding it without first using pressure to get the behaviour. I am using R minus, that is appropriate pressure to get her to lift and hold her foot, and I am releasing as soon as she’s done it in good faith. Slowly we will work towards holding longer and longer.
I am clearly not using positive punishment. That would be getting after her when she skitters backward and drops her front foot. That would be counter productive because it would be adding to whatever anxiety she has about lifting her feet.
I am using negative reinforcement in that I haul on her foot until she raises it, then hold it lightly a few seconds, then set it down (release of pressure). Then I give her a treat. But that doesn’t make the exercise R plus fundamentally.
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Cues are separate from the shaping part, and are added later, which is how we know that they’re cues and not aversives. So if I use +R to shape my horse to step forward and then add a leg cue, I know that I didn’t use pressure to train it. That, and the cues I add to a -R behavior are too light to be aversive. If I increase a +R pressure cue (more leg, for example) I’ll get nothing more than the behavior that’s associated with the lighter pressure, whereas if I up the intensity of -R trained leg pressure I’ll get more of whatever behavior that aversive is associated with (quicker response, more energy).
However, for those of us who learned to ride using -R, I do suspect that we may sometimes further develop the +R pressure cues into -R cues, because the pressure and release muscle memory is so ingrained. Which is why most of us who have gone on to ride using primarily +R aren’t entirely sure how much of what we’re taught our horses under saddle is from +R or -R.
I’m pretty sure that my bit cues are -R, because the aversiveness of the bit pressure so easily overshadows the +R training. IOW, if my horse spooks and I grab him in the mouth, the aversiveness of that experience is likely much greater than all the rewards before and after.
All my major trick training with my mare was pure R plus. She offered a behaviour and I shaped it with clicker treats. It took us about a year of casual work to go from ripping towels off the door when she wanted dinner (offered behaviour) to playing fetch with my gloves. It was all R plus building on offered behaviour. I don’t know any other way to teach fetch!
Same here. I wanted to learn how to shape and I didn’t want to mess my horses up by teaching them practical things that I might have to untrain later, so I taught them stupid pet tricks. Only trouble was that in the process I got so interested in CT that I couldn’t stop.
But today I was working with green exbrood mare who has forgotten how to stand to have her feet handled. I was hauling on her foot, holding it a moment, putting it down and giving her a treat.
Something that may or may not help is to give her the treat while her hoof is still up, and then, when she gets that, teach her to keep her hoof on the stand. I’ve found that if I don’t train both I create a horse who won’t keep his hoof on the stand because he’s so enthusiastic about picking it up.
One of my clicker training friends clicks her horses for relaxing the leg and allowing her to handle the hoof rather than for any specific part of hoof handling, and that works well, too.
That’s not pure R plus. That’s just R minus (haul on her foot until she raises it) with a treat if she doesn’t fly backwards. This was effective. She got better about her feet over the course of the session. But it’s not pure R plus because I have no way of eliciting the behaviour and rewarding it without first using pressure to get the behaviour. I am using R minus, that is appropriate pressure to get her to lift and hold her foot, and I am releasing as soon as she’s done it in good faith. Slowly we will work towards holding longer and longer.
Agree that sometimes it’s much more practical to use pressure to get the behavior. But there’s also microshaping, which can be fun. You just stand there and wait for the horse to flex the muscles that could lead to shifting the weight, and click that until you can capture unweighting the hoof. I like to do a lot of microshaping with scared or shut down horses who need lots of treats before they can start to feel safe.
I am clearly not using positive punishment. That would be getting after her when she skitters backward and drops her front foot. That would be counter productive because it would be adding to whatever anxiety she has about lifting her feet.
I almost never use positive punishment, except when I strike out without thinking because old habits die hard. It’s just not necessary, and has side effects that I’d just as soon avoid.
I am using negative reinforcement in that I haul on her foot until she raises it, then hold it lightly a few seconds, then set it down (release of pressure). Then I give her a treat. But that doesn’t make the exercise R plus fundamentally.
Sometimes I think I’m using -R, but the aversive gets “charmed” by the treats because they over ride the aversive. I charmed the whip with one of my horses (before I knew anything about charmed aversives), which caused all kinds of confusion. And then someone clued me in to the concept of charmed aversives and it all become much clearer.
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Interesting. I looked up why, it appears to be in response to “animal welfare concerns”, i.e. the use of the whip to repeatedly strike a tired horse in the attempt to get it to perform better. In that case, the whip is being used inappropriately and abusively anyway. As with so many things in the equine world, the tool is rarely the problem, it’s how it’s used.
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The unfortunate thing about whip use is how its use is implemented. A whip as opposed to a crop is a wrist only movement. It does not involve the use of the whole arm. It is not a cudgel, It is meant to give a tap. That is why so many of us prioritize a very flexible (expensive) whip. Done properly there is no change in contact and minimal momentary shift in hand angle.
Occasional use of the whip in training on a shoulder, should only involve case where the horse insists on falling on the shoulder. Otherwise, the whip should tap behind the leg.
As for spurs, they should be used only by those who have complete individual leg control. They are fine aids, not cleats.
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Am I the only one that thinks +R just sounds like a pain in the butt to try to use for literally everything? I like it for tricks and helping work through certain things, but ugh for practical things it doesn’t sound fun to me.
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Sorry just saw this now! Here is the blog: [h=1]Using a whip is not horse abuse, it’s communication[/h]
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Years ago my coach advised me to get spurs and when I was reluctant she had me start the ride with spurs and then take them off part way through. As my horse grew more responsive and I got stronger I was able to leave the spurs on for the whole ride.
I’ve ridden a few horses who. went best if I found an excuse to poke them with my spurs or tap them with the whip in the first five minutes. Just to let them know that I mean business and have the tools to back it up. After that they worked with almost no spur or whip.
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For a laugh, a racehorse talking about whips (NSFW -some swearing). https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ky4VyPyEMgE&feature=youtu.be
Oldish thread here but…Harness Racing is done in, basically, a fenced chute and only turns left. Regular Driving is outside a confined area and the whip is a valuable aid. If they were scared of being beaten, they’d be upset and lose focus on the task at hand.
In regular Racing, basically, jockeys have no legs steering by pulling on the reins, maybe a bit of weight shifting… Many use a whip as a replacement for leg aids and just fan it alongside to move the horse away from it. Not because they are scared of it either. It tells them where to move to. If they were scared of it, they’d fall off stride and lose focus. Defeating the whole purpose of entering them in the race.
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