STM - 1.4 the 5 R's

I had originally put a bit about reward in the previous blog post, but then realised that the 5 Rs should really stay together. The 5 R's are

1. reward
2. release
3. redirect
4. relax
5. repeat

Reward
Reward is a form of positive reinforcement, and can either be vocal, a pat or a treat and a combination of both is recommended. Reward is a tricky one for me. I am fairly comfortable with using my voice and pats, though when I came across voice rewards in earlier modules I realised I have only ever used one voice reward and never thought to change this for each horse. I have now also been trying to use treats but tonto just gets way to excited, and is rarely in a calm mental state to reward.



Basic rules of rewarding:

• Treat only offered for desired behaviour
• Treat only offered when horse is in a positive mindset (no ears back)
• Treat must be seen as a gift, and grabbing then take treat away
• Do not over reward, should not be obsessive. 

Treats just might not work with t, but might be a useful tool for sof providing she doesn't get too pushy.


Release
Release is a form of negative reinforcement. The idea is to remove pressure as soon as the horse moves in a direction you want. So opening the hand when the horse lowers the head in forward down for example. The logic is very natural to me, it is how I have always been told to train horses, however I lack finesse and am often to slow to release, resulting in nagging from me and a confused horse. I need to initially expect less and release faster.


Redirect
Redirect is to move away from undesired behaviour. Here I am a bit confused how this is done in practice. My only experience is with child-minding, where the child is upset that it hasn't got the toy it wanted, instead of giving the child the toy (because it was its siblings) or shouting at the child because it is too young to really understand you distract it by finding another toy and making it interesting. This avoids reinforcing the bad behaviour and prevents things from escalating. I totally get it with kids... but I get a bit more confused with horses. If the horse is not doing the thing you are trying it to do should I try something else? Would this not just confuse the horse? Is this not a form of release? I think I need to see this done in practice before I really get it.


Relax
Horses do not learn from doing the exercise, they learn from reflecting upon it, therefore you need to give them time to stop, think and learn. Plenty of breaks is advised. This is something I am very guilty of not doing, I have a tendency to rush from one thing to the next, and if it is going well I always have the temptation to push through for more. I really need to force myself to stop on the high and just let the ponies chill. The good thing about training two simultaneously is that I can give them breaks by swapping between horses. The signs that a horse is learning include:

• Lowering the head

• Blinking the eyes

• Shaking the head

• Yawning

• Licking

• Chewing

Sofie is a big yawner and blinker, Tonto is more of a lick and chew horse. I need to watch for this signals and only start the next exercise when the horse is ready and starts looking to me.


Repeat
Apparently it takes doing something 3 times for the horse to learn a habit. Therefore to really master something you need to keep repeating it, and you need to make sure you don't repeat bad behaviour - hence where the redirection comes in handy.




Today I did a bit of forward down with T and Sof to try and put some of this into action. At first both were begging for treats but they eventually gave up when they realised they didn't get the reward for begging. For the first time I managed to get Tonto to lower his head in a relaxed way! admittedly it was not on the floor but this was real progress. I have to stay very quiet with Tonto as he is too excitable. I could then very quietly give him a treat. He hates pressure so tiny vibrations and very fast releasing is necessary - in fact he rather I guide him with my voice than use any pressure. He might me more of a liberty kind of guy.


Sofie is a bit ahead of the game as I have worked with her before on this. She did a bit of blocking but vibrating the reign seemed to work alongside a quick release. Vocal feedback seems to really help her. She was doing so well that we tried a bit of LFS on a circle. It looked good to me, but I am still not very confident I am doing it right. I'm off to a clinic tomorrow so that should help :)