poisoned cues

[SueWhitmore]

But you are familiar with Allen Pogues training techniques aren't you Sue? Didn't you used to  go on his imagineahorse forum sometimes? He is fairly anti CT, but his methods are actually very similar to CT - but without using a clicker 

Yes a lot, right up until I had the heart attack, and then I stopped. I got masses of good advice from there. When I went back, people weren't posting as much. I think what I needed was a "paint by numbers" boost to get me started. I also like the idea of free shaping. I think it just my perception really - I always felt with trick training I needed a sand arena or at the very least a safe, level area, and at the time I had none. Now I have got the base of an arena, but not the sand, and a few safe level areas. But with clicker, you can just do it anywhere (or so it seems to me), you see instant results (rewarding for me) and it works with multiple horses at the same time, which is always my problem for doing a few minutes work - the time overhead of extracting one out of the group and putting it somewhere. Anyway, it is really nice to look forward to a summer of different thing to do and some foalies!  My horses are always up for any entertainment, so it is quite a blast!

[shoveltrash]

Posted on your blog,Trish,but Ive read and would reccomend two of Bens books;
"The art and science of clicker training for horses" is a great instructional one and " The horseman within" is great too.

got it, thank you so much!  and i've ordered that first book

i'm still WAY behind on reading the 6+ pages here
but i wanted to post what i consider a very good definition of the title of this thread:

A poisoned cue is one that sometimes has a negative consequence instead of a positive one.  A cue becomes poisoned when you cue a behaviour and use a correction such as negative reinforcement or punishment for the incorrect behaviour and positive reinforcement for the correct behaviour.

For a behaviour trained entirely with positive reinforcement, if one now clicks for correct behaviour following a discriminator ( a cue, command, or signal) but also gives an aversive correction (negative reinforcement, punishment) for incorrect behaviour following that same stimulus, the stimulus immediately loses its value as a positive reinforcer. It is, at best, ambiguous in terms of reinforcement. It is not a click. It no longer automatically triggers the positive emotions associated with conditioned positive reinforcers. It can no longer be predictably used inside a chain to reinforce previous behaviour.

which i found in the 'CT terminology' section here - really clarified things for me.  AND made me realize that i have indeed done some 'poisoned cues' inadvertantly. 

Ben Hart makes a thought provoking comment in one of his books about that which is to ask yourself whether you/your horse have ANY unresolved issues.

my initial reaction to this was "me? no!"  but days of horsey inactivity (due to horrid weather and long work hours) have caused me to spend lots of time reflecting on this.......and i realize that i really cannot say "no" 100% .  not really anything *major* imho, but it's there nonetheless.  so i'm diving in, trying some true/pure CT .  not sure where i go from just target training?  am going to post my own thread addressing this, along with a few other question so don't bother answering me here .