Clicker Training And Spanish Walk

[CLT]

Having seen Becky expertly and enthusiastically teaching and riding Heather's Fanta in spanish walk and after speaking to Omar about his many successes with Ketchup, I was wholly inspired to give it another go with my horse.

I'd done some clicker work with Dougal a while back but had stopped as he became rather interested in eating me

N E way, for the last couple of days I've been having a go at teaching him Spanish Walk using the clicker and he has taken to it like a duck to water.  He spent a little while coming to understand that throwing his leg out and stamping repeatedly wasn't what I was after but today, to my utter amazement, he did both legs in succession for the first time.  This was dead handy as since I didn't have anyone to help me with him I'd wondered how the heck I was going to get him to understand that he needed to move both the legs successively. Not bad at all given that we've only really done about 45mins of it over two days.  So onwards and upwards and many thanks to Becky from whom I've nicked the very useful voice command 'spanish'!!

If anyone else has used clicker training to teach a horse spanish walk, piaffe or passage I'd really like to know how you did it, and whether you were able to do it alone or if there came a time when you needed someone else to help either ridden or both of you on the ground.

CLT

[Camacoona]

Well done to Dougal!! :lol:  and of course to you too!! :P

let me know how you get on,

Omar

[CLT]

Will do Omar, and maybe when you get some time you'd let me know how you managed to clicker train the luvly ketchup to piaffe.

BTW thoroughly agree that a cavasson is easier to use than a bridle I nearly lost a leg yesterday trying to keep hold of the reins and get Dougal lifting his shoulder/leg spanish stylie......talk about over enthusiastic

CLT

[Vrijheidsdressuur]

Working alone with the clicker (and the horse of course ! ) is over here never a problem. I've taught the pony's everything on my own, including the Spanish walk and at the moment we're starting the Spanish trot. I think the Spanish walk is one of the easier tricks to teach a horse, as no physical training is needed for the horse to  be able to complete the movement. Of course the leg-lifting will go smoother and higher when a horse is more agile and muscular, but every horse can lift a hoof.

There are quite a few methods to teach the horse the Spanish walk. The one you're using is one of the most common ways to tackle it: first teach your horse to pick up his hooves normally when you touch them with a whip, and ct when he does. Then you're going to ask for a more pronounced frontleg-lift before you click, by repeating the whip-cue when the leg is lifted normally, supporting him with an uplifting voice cue and click the moment the leg is lifted higher/longer/furter forward. If your horse streches his legs in front of his body whenever you cue him to do so, with your whip or voice, you can add this movement to the walk. To do this, you first need to learn your horse to start walking when you give the cue, and stop again when you say so, when working from the ground. When that's no longer a problem, you have the advantage that you don't need a whipo-cue on his rear to make him move, so you have that magic stick free to use at the front.  I usually start to combine the two movements by asking the horse to walk, then after a few paces ask him to stop and while he is stopping, asking him with the whip and voice to lift and stretch the frontleg that would have been the one to step forward if you hadn't stopped him. If you repeat that, your horse learns to find the balance required to lift a front leg when slowing down from walk to stand. If that works on both sides (nothing wrong with first working on the one side, then on the other!), you're going to add the final phase of adding the leg-lift to the walk: you're going to ask your horse to slow down, lift the leg as you have asked before - and then immediately ask him to start walking again when he stretches his leg. This way he learns that the stretched leg should land in the next step of the walk, not just next to the other front leg. If that goes well, you can ask these leg-lifts during the walk on both sides, and then combine them in the polka, in which you first ask the right leg, then make two steps in walk and then ask the left leg in a lift, then two steps, then right etc.. At that point of the training you don't have to switch sides anymore to 'ask the other leg' for a lift, as your horse recognizes the voice/whip cue as a cue to lift that frontleg that was going to be lifted in the walk anyway. So both for the left and right leg the cue can be a tap on the breast.

With the clicker though you can also freeshap the Spanish walk entirely from the regular walk, by 'just' clicking at the highest movement of the frontleg during walk. When you mark this point a couple of times with the clicker, your horse will start to emphasize this part of his step - by lifting his leg higher/longer in the air. Then it's just a matter of shaping to reach Spanish steps during the walk, and then you can put them on cue and string them together to a polka or true Spanish walk.

Good luck!

Miriam

[CLT]

Hi Miriam

Thanks very very much for that detailed reply.  It is really useful to get a clear idea of how others are teaching this and your method sounds straight forward.  ATM I am not using a whip to tap the leg to ask the horse to raise it but have been merely touching immediately behind the leg, just in front of the girth, with a finger.  Having done that a few times and used the word 'spanish' he has come to now understand that if I say Spanish and point my finger he will left the leg up and forward.

It's really handy to have a commentary from someone who has also taught this alone - not that I am really alone of course as I've drawn the attention of many on-lookers who obviously think I am barking mad

Thanks agian

CLT

[Vrijheidsdressuur]

Yup, I know what you mean, over here people thought I was slightly insane too when I started rewarding the pony's with food when they had done something right. A pony should listen to you anyway, so why on earth pay him to do so?   But nowadays they seem to think that evidently it led to some nice results, as I never get negative remarks on clickertraining anymore.

The whip-cue is for me only the first stage of training, after that I add many more cues on which the pony's are to start the Spanish walk, as I'm not always near their chest to give that aid. Sjors for example I've taught to start the Spanish walk when I walk behind him, tap him with the whip on his rear and say 'paso' (Spanish for walk ). That's a great way for activating the hindquarters during the Spanish walk, and to ask this movement when walking behind him during long reining. And when lungeing, the only cues I give Sjors are a whip pointing to his shoulder and the word 'paso!' and the brain starts working.

Why I still always start using the whip, is because it's a safety measure: the beginner horse will  associate lifting and stretching the leg with a whip-cue. And therefore won't do it that easily when there's no whip in sight. That's a great advantage for less experienced trainers, as this way you yourself will maintain a bigger distance to the horse (good news for your kneecaps ) and just as important, you will prevent that your horse kicks out when you merely lift a finger to greet a neighbour, or bend over to pick up a brush. I've come across a lot of horses, and one of the main problems I encountered during my lessons was that people started tricks before really completing the basic ingredients for tricktraining, such as backing up. That excercize is essential when learning the Spanish walk, and one of the most difficult cases I've come across was a girl who taught her horse the Spanish walk by tapping his chest and legs with her hand, before she had taught him to back up. The result was that the horse lashed out as soon as someone standing in front of him lifted a hand or finger or touched his chest-area to get him to back up. We solved the problem that same lesson, but is was essentially a very dangerous situation, as a lot of people handled the horse during the day and would unconsciously give him the aid for lashing out when picking up brushes, pushing him away, opening gates etcetera.

When you stand next to his shoulder and tap the hindpart of his leg as you do, this of course isn't such a big problem, but I always advice trainers to use whips during courses, just to be on the safe side. What are the next tricks you're going to tackle?

Greetings,
Miriam  

[CLT]

Miriam

Hmmm very interesting.  I think that my horse has moved on from recognitiion that I want him to lift the leg because I have touched or pointed at him and he is more attuned to the voice command "spanish".  I kinda thought that this would work better, particularly once I'm on board, and also because it's unlikely that anyone else would use that word around him

I do like your idea of long reining and teaching it, as you say it makes sense because it moves them forwards and they use the hind legs.

I'd really like to teach him piaffe as I'd like him to engage his hind more but I'd better not try to run before we've learned to (spanish) walk! so that'll have to wait a bit.

Will keep you posted.

Caron


 

[Vrijheidsdressuur]

Hi Caron,

I think it's very good of you to focus on the voice cue for the Spanish walk. Nowadays I also give Sjors sometimes the command for the Spanish walk with just my hand, so without whip, but always in combination with 'paso!'. Just to be on the safe side I've actually taught Sjors not to react to the handsignal alone, nor to the voicecue alone, by praising him when he let his hoof on the ground whenever I gave one of the two signals instead of both of them. That made him realise that only this specific combination of voice+hand, or voice+whip meant Spanish walk. Again for extra safety as I'm not the only one working with the pony's, and I don't want others to get kicked in the knees because they accidentally give the handcommando, nor do I want people to be able to ask for the tricks without my knowledge, as a few treats at the  wrong moment can easily ruin a smooth Spanish walk.

The latter is by the way the same reason to why I have taught Blacky and Sjors not to go faster when I click my tongue (not the tongueclick, but the 'clackl' ). There's always a couple of funny people along the road when I drive them in a team who go clacking to make the ponies go faster, so instead of going for the obvious tongueclack, I decided to use the word 'hup!' as 'go faster' signal.

Working with different cues for tricks can even be further specialised, as over here not just I, but Lydia also trains Blacky tricks with the clicker as I've taught her. Of course Lydia always uses slightly different commands than I do, not only because she's a different person but also because she mostly trains unsupervised as I know that she knows how to work with the ponies. The funny thing is that Lydia and I both ask Blacky to bow on a regular basis, and a couple of weeks when I saw her training him, I suddenly realised that this wasn't at all how Blacky bowed with me! With Lydia he stopped halfway the bowing and only stood like that for a couple of seconds, while I had taught him months ago to bow as deep as he can and hold that pose for 10 seconds. Because Lydia thought the bow she got was quite good already, Blacky had developed two bows, the Miriam-bow which is deep, long and therefore very annoying , and the Lydia-bow which is halfway down, short and therefore much more fun. Only when I told Lydia to stand a little different, hold the whip in a different way and pronounce the voice cue slightly different, Blacky bowed as I like to see it. I can tell you that he didn't really like his fraud being discovered...