One of this month's obstacles that is new to me and Fat Pony is the "Leg Lift".  At Starter Level, the obstacle reads "The horse must place one front foot up onto a solid block (any height) he must not step up just rest the foot on the block for a count of three. You may lift the foot on or he may do so himself."

At Advanced Level, the obstacle reads " The horse must place one front foot up onto a solid block (any height) without the handler lifting the foot. He must not step up just rest the foot on the block for a count of five."

Well, of course, I didn't read the Starter Level course (getting lax!) and so it didn't occur to me to teach this obstacle to Fat Pony by lifting his leg onto the object and then rewarding him!  In fact, that would be a very good way forward and a very good analogy would be to think of the farrier's stand.  Or, in my farrier's case, the farrier's knee!  Thinking of the farrier's stand then also gives you a purpose for the leg lift obstacle.  In the case of the farrier's knee, I'm sure he's doubly grateful for a horse that lifts its front leg politely, places it gently where asked and then holds it still until released!.....

But, no, this didn't occur to me to start off with and I went gung ho for teaching by modelling.  Meaning that I perform the action, wait for the horse to copy me and then reward.  Now, there's nothing wrong with teaching by modelling either.  Once your horse is quite tuned in to you s/he will naturally start to mirror you and then teaching in this way is great fun and quite cool :-)  With Fat Pony it would have worked very well, except for the other mistake that I made, using a log that would roll!  The log just happened to be what was lying around and it was a reasonable size, but also quite round.  Fat Pony got the leg lift pretty much straight away, but then the log rolled, my timing was off with the reward, Fat Pony thought the task was to roll the log and, hey presto, I've taught him to paw the log :-o  Taught very effectively too, I might add!

Back to the drawing board....

The non-horsey OH likes to play with the ponies, sometimes, especially Fat Pony, as he's so playful and likes to engage (FP, not OH ;-)   So, as we need to work on the Hula Hoop for this month's horse agility, I asked the OH to please practice the hoop if he plays with FP.

Clearly something got lost in translation somewhere, as OH came to me and said, "FP's doing really well at the hoop, he puts his foot in at least half the time without touching the hoop.  But I think I've taught him the hokey cokey"......  Fat Pony's "putting his foot in, but he won't wait, he puts it in and then takes it out, puts it in and takes it out"........ LMAO!

It didn't take long to work out what happened.  In all training, timing is critical.  In order for learning to take place, there needs to be a release or a reward (we work on reward) and if the timing is wrong there's a good chance you not only don't teach the desired action but you may inadvertently teach an undesired action!  

Whilst the OH has grasped some of the principles of breaking a movement down in order to teach it, he doesn't always see all of the components.  In this instance, the 3 components are 1. step cleanly into the hoop (when asked); 2. wait until further instruction; 3. step cleanly out of the hoop (when asked).  In the teaching phase, all 3 of those components get rewarded.  Once firmly established, you can then move on to combine all 3 elements into one movement, without having to reward each one (increasing reward intervals).  The OH had realised only 2 of the 3 components, namely 1. step cleanly into the hoop and be rewarded; then OH was asking Fat Pony to step out of the hoop and be rewarded.  It didn't take many goes before Fat Pony had "learned" that you step in the hoop, get a reward and then step out of the hoop and get a reward.  In Fat Pony's mind there was no "wait" element.  In Fat Pony's mind, you put your foot in, you put your foot out, you put your foot in, you put your foot out.....

And that..... is how you teach your pony the hokey cokey :-D

Bah, humbug!  Well, I suppose that after such a superbly dry and mild September, the rain had to play catch up at sometime.  Fat Pony's diet pen is suddenly awash with mud, although, thanks to a quantity of rubber stable matting, it now has a reasonably sized dry oasis in the middle which is keeping it usable to still restrict him part time.  And gives us a nice spot to play "step into the hula hoop" which is an obstacle we need to improve for this month's course and breaks up Fat Pony's boredom.

Meanwhile, the deluge outside has prompted me to book an Indoor arena for an Intro to Horse Agility clinic at the end of November.  So, no matter what the wind and rain might throw at us, we should be able to have some fun :-)

I was quite surprised to discover that for a non emergency I had to wait a week to see the vet!  Patience #1.  Just as I thought that all was looking well with Fat Pony, he developed a skin condition :-(  Not knowing what it was, I felt it best to keep him isolated until the vet could take a look.  Good for his ongoing diet.  Bad for Horse Agility!  Patience #2.  To keep Bored Fat Pony amused, I had a think about what I could still practice with him, in the confines of his fairly small diet pen.

Three of this month's Horse Agility obstacles involve variations on "stand and wait" and as Playful Fat Pony's brain goes at a million miles an hour, he's not very good at patience, standing still, waiting, doing nothing.....  And as practicing Stand and Wait doesn't need much space, it seemed like an ideal opportunity to get some serious practice in.  Patience #3 :-D

I find that "positive re-enforcement" training (such as clicker training or treat training) works really well with something like the stand and wait.  With Fat Pony I use treats (sugar free polos!).  I appreciate that there are arguments against feeding from the hand, but that would be a separate subject all by itself.  There are other ways to reward the desired behaviour, I just choose what works for me.

To make it more interesting, we are practicing a number of variations on the theme:  how far away I can go; how long he will wait for; waiting without recall (I return to pony); waiting with recall (he comes to me on cue after the wait); and him standing still while I walk all the way around him (not as easy as you might think, try it!).  The most difficult one to work on has been me walking away from him with my back turned.  The reason for that is that we had previously been doing some Parelli and I had taught him to stand and wait with me facing him square on, with the signal for him to come to me and/ or to follow me being to drop my shoulder (passive body language) and turn and walk away.  Most of the time, there is quite good alignment between the body language of "Natural Horsemanship" and directing the pony around a Horse Agility course, but occasionally it doesn't quite work out.  Another topic in its own right!