Clicker training is the term used to describe working with animals using positive reinforcement. The basic idea is that you mark the behavior that you want (often with a noise maker called a

, hence the terminology) and then you immediately reward. The animal learns to work for desired consequences (as opposed to punishment-based training in which the animal tries to avoid aversives.) That reward is often, although not always, food. Clicker training has transformed how dogs are trained. Those border collies speeding around agility courses? Clicker trained. It’s transformed how animals are cared for in zoos. An elephant needs a pedicure? Instead of using punishing restraints, use clicker training and she’ll offer her foot. However, it’s been slow to come to the horse world, where whips, spurs, chasing, kicking, yelling and severe tack remain the norm.

People who go into clicker training with their horses do so because they want a kinder, gentler way. They don’t want to use force, they want the behavior to be mutually rewarding for both horse and owner. What could be better than teaching with cookies? But, it’s not as simple as it seems. Horses don’t respond to food rewards the way that we think they should. Just because we’re feeding carrots to our horse instead of hitting him doesn’t mean that the animal is happy.

Horses, left on their own in wide open spaces, live in established groups, mostly comprised of family members. They’re peaceable societies with little hierarchy. A nature documentary of a grazing herd would be boring indeed. But, watch over time and observe closely and you’ll discern complex interactions using the most subtle of body language. If a mamma wants a mare to stay away from her foal, she quietly walks between them, and indicates displeasure with her ears pinned back. One horse eases away from the other. Conflict resolved.

Horses in stabled situations often exhibit much more dramatic behavior. Instead of eating continually, grazing over hundreds of acres, food is dispensed a few times a day in a stationary spot and is quickly eaten up. Horses are stuck in close confines with horses they don’t know well or don’t like (in a natural situation, a horse chooses her own friends, and she’s picky.) Resources of both space and food are limited. Horses, who don’t naturally have hierarchies in a herd, resource guard their food and space, which humans interpret as dominance and aggression. That’s what it looks like, but such behavior arises from stress and is caused by management, not innate personality issues.

We humans are voice-oriented. Sometimes we don’t notice the tension in our horses until we hear squeals, boards being kicked, or see bite marks. We should pay attention to the ears. Horses pin their ears before they escalate their body language to something more dramatic, like striking out with a front hoof or swinging around and kicking. In group pastures, most of the tension revolves around food. Horses pin ears to tell others to move away from their pile of hay. I’ve even seen horses resource guard a water bucket (whereas in a more natural environment, drinking together is a pleasurable social activity.) Pinned ears are often seen when food is expected, for example at feeding time a horse (even when isolated in a stall out of sight of the other horses) will lay his ears back in a clearly threatening posture. The pinned ears will be focused on the person who is bringing the grain. (This can be upsetting to the caregiver who thinks the horse should be happy to see her.) This tells me that in the artificial environment of the stable, that although the food is greatly desired, it is also a source of anxiety.

Pinned ears can also be associated with pain and lameness. Horses with ulcers pin their ears from discomfort. You should always pay attention to pinned ears.

So, the horse is already needy and anxious about food, and the owner arrives, with a bag filled with treats, assuming that this will make the horse an enthusiastic learner. Sometimes it goes according to plan. But, I’ve observed horse clicker training sessions in person, done them myself, and viewed many videos, and more often than not, the horses are doing the behaviors asked of them, but they’re going about it with ears pinned tightly back. Other body language that speaks of frustration is also seen – tight, swishing tails, wrinkled noses, and tense brows.

Many people excuse away pinned ears with “my horse is concentrating on the work.” It’s true that sometimes horses will point their ears backwards when listening to the rider – but in that case it’s more flicking than both being held tightly back, and the pinning doesn’t last long. That body language would be understandable when asking a horse to do something physically demanding with aids that pressure and cause pain (often seen in traditional dressage schooling sessions) but when using a clicker? When the horse, supposedly, can opt out? When there’s no overt punishment?

I’ve heard clicker trainers brush off concerns about this with “I’ve got the behavior (perhaps going to a target mat) and now I’m working on happy face,” as if the “happy face” is something to be trained and not expressive of what the horse is feeling at that moment. (I’m not putting up video links to examples because these are well-meaning people and I don’t want them attacked or singled out.)

My view is that pinned back ears are never a positive sign, and should not be ignored. There is always some discomfort, anxiety, or anger (and threat) associated with this body language. My horse, Tonka, pins his ears before bucking. (Why he wants to buck is always linked to frustration, and is always my fault!)

I’ve no doubt that some of the pinned ears that I’ve seen in clicker training sessions are due to subpar technique. With some species, it doesn’t matter what my training skills are. My goats always look delighted to be in a clicker session, even when my timing is off and I’m asking them to do something that they don’t like, like hold up their hooves for trimming. With horses, though, poor technique isn’t just a matter of being a less than effective trainer, those pinned ears are telling us something important – that what we’re doing needs to change. Increasing the rate of reinforcement, reducing repetition, clearly increasing criteria, and putting behaviors on stimulus control, could all help turn this around. (If you don’t know what I just wrote, don’t worry – they’re all terms within the trainer’s lexicon.) Sometimes, those pinned ears have been inadvertently trained by a few mistimed clicks. If so, backtrack and fix it. But, I don’t think that what our horses are telling us is purely about technique. That there are other things at play here to complicate the training.

Horses are the ultimate cross-over animal (a term applied to animals that were started with punitive training methods and have been switched to all positive.) Even if the owner does clicker training, the rest of the horse’s world goes by different rules. Twenty-two or so hours out of his day the horse has little influence on what goes on around him. Often the horse is in a restricted environment, and everyone else who cares for him relies on pressure, restraint, etc. during their interactions. Many horses are rightly not trusting or are shut down. Positive reinforcement requires that the animal actively engage in the training by offering behaviors. A horse used to being punished for a hoof out of place is not able to do that. The horse that does understand that the rules have changed might not like those rules – he’s had no control over when and how much food he gets all day long, and now we’re telling him that if he does something, that he gets access to it. We humans like to think, “here’s a fun game for you to get your treat.” Perhaps the horse doesn’t see it that way.

Left to their druthers, horses would be actively foraging and investigating their environment 18 hours a day – instead, a horse in a typical stable situation is bored and hungry. (A sufficient quantity of food that is fed at limited times isn’t as satisfying to a horse as having forage always available.) That pent-up need to eat becomes focused on the trainer. The horse knows that the person has food, but it’s not being handed over. The horse pins his ears, clearly signaling to give it RIGHT NOW. If this was one horse to another, this body language would be paid attention to. One horse would acquiesce, leaving the other to the food. How frustrating it must be to the horse that his person ignores what he is saying! The horse has the choice of escalating the dialog, of shutting down, or of doing what is asked of him, but doing so with a curled lip and pinned ears – quite clearly indicating that this game isn’t any fun at all.

Added to this is that during training a session, treats can’t be tossed (as we do in dog training) and so the horse has to come back to the owner for the reward. The handler becomes a food dispenser, which can easily devolve into pushy and dangerous behavior from the horse. Note that there are training techniques to minimize this, but if the horse isn’t mugging you and his ears are still pinned, then listen to his ears and believe what he’s telling you. He’s not happy.

The trainer sees this sullen behavior and wants to change the tone. Because horses don’t usually respond to treats like happy, tail wagging dogs, the tendency is to click and treat basic behavior over and over. The ears do prick up during that moment of eating! But rather than generating enthusiasm, I think that his compounds the pinned ear problem. It becomes a behavior chain: pin ears → get food → pin ears → get food. I’ve had many conversations with Karen Pryor about this basic mistake that so many trainers make (I’ve done it myself) – rather than raising criteria, we stay at a plateau. Once a behavior is trained, it no longer needs frequent rewards. Leave it and move on to something else. Don’t keep doing the same exercise over and over!

Horses are not an easy species to train. My goats got the clicker game immediately, and with great good cheer. Chickens do anything for a speck of corn. Training a fish was even easier! Working with horses is made even more challenging because so much of it is done from their backs. Some of what I see – the ear pinning, the let-down (that’s another discussion!) and the slow rate of progress that most horse clicker trainers get – is attributable to poor training skills (and a concurrent lack of understanding of the science behind the techniques,) But I also think that we trainers are missing something and that understanding horse ethology is a key. Horses are food motivated, but also food anxious.

I’m a firm believer in positive reinforcement training and in the precision and clarity that using a clicker brings to the work. However, I also pay attention to what my animals tell me. I see a lot of horses telling their owners that they’re not happy. We shouldn’t ignore it. We should figure out why. When I got Tonka, I assumed that I could simply apply what I’d done with my other species of animals to whatever I wanted to teach my horse. My sweet gelding quite clearly pinned his ears back and told me that hearing that clicker made him angry. I made many adjustments to my training methods. I worked hard at improving my training technique, and yet he still pinned his ears. I paid attention to what he was telling me. I’m a positive reinforcement trainer. It’s a perspective, and the clicker is just one tool. I set it aside for awhile. Instead, I gave Tonka treats when he was calm and relaxed. When he stood square and quietly in cross ties he got a pat and a carrot coin. When he stood immobile after I mounted, he got a good boy and a cookie. When I was grazing him and asked him for a “head up” he got an apple slice. I continued to offer food rewards in very relaxed training scenarios until the anxiety surrounding the food disappeared and only the enthusiasm remained. I’ve now reintroduced the clicker into some training sessions. I use if for specific, clearly defined goals. I’m able to use the clicker, without ear pinning, in my dressage lessons. It’s been worth it. I’m now getting the same sort of energy and enthusiasm from Tonka that I get when I clicker train my dogs.

This is all a work in progress. My training and riding skills need improvement (this is on-going and never-ending), and I continue to learn about the science that determines behavior. I’m following research done in feral horse herds to better understand the needs of my stabled horse. There is, though, one thing that underpins all of this – I trust my horse to tell me when I’ve gotten it right. That conversation starts with his ears. Just a flick.

A Gallery Of Horse Ears:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A big thank-you to Dr. Susan Friedman, who’s email conversation with me on this topic helped me to clarify what I’ve been thinking about for a long time; her prodding got me to put it into this blog. If you’ve been pondering similar training questions, I want to hear from you. Leave a comment or email me.

Just when you think that a hen can’t look any worse from the molt, she does.

Oh, Jasper!

 

Not much better from this angle…

 

Jasper is eating and drinking fine, but I know that she’s feeling out of sorts because she’s been sleeping in a nesting box at night.

This is a typical molt – for her. Do you think she’ll grow any tail feathers back in? Each year she has fewer and fewer.

It looks awful, but molting is a normal – and necessary – process. Your hens will get through it just fine. Don’t overdo the protein treats in worry over them. A little extra, and I mean a little, like a teaspoon, of extra protein in the form of meal worms or cat kibble per hen, is fine. Don’t go overboard or you’ll risk kidney disease. In the morning, just so that I feel like I’m doing something helpful, I toss a handful of

 to the girls.

I’m raking up feathers, but no white ones. I’m still waiting for Twiggy to molt! Beatrix is also still laying, as is Beulah. At this rate, I’ll be cleaning up feathers into November.

Horses sleep lying down. Tonk’s stall is clean when he goes in at night, but, horses poop, and Tonka always seems to find a pile of manure for a pillow for his (white!) quarters. During the day, he has a favorite sandy spot in the paddock to roll in.

 

Some horses are one-side rollers, but Tonka rolls on both.

 

Like all of us, horses have dead skin and dandruff, and being fur-bearing animals, they shed. These are all reasons enough to give your horse a grooming everyday. But, getting your horse clean is not the most important reason to get out the brushes. I spend hours a week grooming my horse because this is a way to bond with him.

Horses are herd animals, who (when managed properly with space, resources, forage, etc.) get along in a companionable manner, mostly walking around and eating, and at times dozing in the sun. Within that group there are tight friendships – usually bonded pairs. Those horses stand tail to head, swishing flies for each other; sometimes they scratch each other’s withers with their teeth. Touch and mutual grooming are essential to horse friendship.

In a boarding situation, you try to put friends together, but it’s not always possible. Tonka spends the day in a paddock with Maggie. They get along okay – there’s no drama, but they’re not best friends. You can’t force friendship. My horse doesn’t have another horse to scratch his withers, but he has me. Lucky for him, I love grooming. I learned my technique at a riding school in England, where there were daily inspections. No teatime if there was a rough spot on your horse! A thorough grooming takes time – which I think is a wonderful excuse to get in tune with a horse.

Most grooming sessions start with a

. This one is flexible rubber.

 

When I first got Tonka, he pinned his ears and fidgeted when I groomed him. As always, my mantra is to pay attention. The horse will tell you what he likes and what he doesn’t. Your horse will know if you are listening to him. Horses communicate to each other with superbly subtle body language – a flick of an ear, a shift of weight – all has meaning. How frustrating it must be to horses to have to interact with us dull humans who don’t listen! Responding to your horse’s body language while grooming him is the first and most basic step to gaining trust and it will carry over to when you are on his back. Something as simple as changing how you brush him because of what he tells you reaps rewards far beyond having a horse politely stand still. So, I respected what Tonka had to say and I put away the curry. Instead I got a

. (The one I have is an inexpensive model, but you could splurge and get .)

As you can see, it does a great job of loosening dirt and hair.

 

Tonka particularly likes having me use it on the insides of his legs where he can’t reach. How do I know? He politely shifts his bum and leans in.

 

Here is Tonka, tipping his head so that I can scritch his ears and poll with the mitt.

 

This is a happy horse.

 

Next, I use a

 to flick the loosened hair and dirt off of him.

 

As I groom, my free hand is as important as the one holding the brush. It feels for rough spots, lumps and anything else that I might not see.

 

The

 comes next. This gets the fine dirt off, and brings up oils and creates shine. I love seeing a gleaming coat.

 

I do have a use for that curry – I use it to keep the brushes clean.

 

At this point, some people stop brushing. I don’t. I pull out a finish brush. When I first got Tonka, before I even touched a brush to his face, he let me know that he didn’t like it. He’d swing his head away from me when I held a brush at the height of his head. So, I got a smaller, super-soft

. I used clicker training to teach him to touch his head to the brush (I didn’t reach to him, he came to me.) When I finally brushed his face I could see him realize, this feels GOOD. Now I use this brush on his entire body. (I don’t use the clicker for grooming anymore – it was for that specific situation that needed to be changed. I like grooming to be peaceful and undemanding. Tonka can relax and not worry about doing a behavior for a reward.)

 

If I have the time, I go over him with a sheepskin

. That gets the last bit of dust and dander off, and he likes it. (By the way, I’m not holding him down by the halter, I’m moving it out of the way to get his whole face.)

 

We’re still not done. There are shavings in his tail to comb out and knots to untangle. I start from the bottom and use a

 so as to pull out as few hairs as possible.

 

Then, I pick out his hooves.

 

Lastly, I sweep up.

 

All of that work is worth it.

 

And it makes us both happy.

I teach others how to groom their horses so that it is a mutually beneficial time for both horse and rider. Here’s a quote from one of my clients:

Ever since I switched to your style of grooming Salti has stopped stepping away. In fact he leans into the cactus cloth on his neck.

Salti was a horse that I had dubbed “Mr. Grumpypants” because of his ear pinning and general annoyed expression. It turns out that Salti is a both a sensitive soul and a horse with very sensitive skin. With a few adjustments in care, he’s become affectionate and more outgoing.

I’m willing to travel. If you want to learn how to have a dialog with your horse while grooming, email me. I’ll listen to both of you.

Supermarket eggs come from hens that are the same age (young!) and the same breed. Still, there are variations, but you never see them because they’re sorted out before packaging. Any egg with spots, inside or out, are diverted to processed products. Because of this, consumers believe that eggs must be uniform, or they’re not good.

Those of use with backyard hens know that eggshells can have bumps and odd colors, and that eggs can be strange shapes, elongated or pointed, and still be healthy to eat and delicious. However, it is true that the older the hen, the poorer the quality of the egg. I’ve found that eggs from hens older than three years of age tend to have a grainy texture and that the whites are thinner. They’re fine for use in baked goods, but they’re not good hard-cooked or poached.

Twiggy’s eggs are another story. She’s three years old. The other hens that age lay beautiful eggs – upright yolks, sturdy whites and thick-enough shells. But, for more than two years, Twiggy hasn’t had a break in her overly-ambitious laying schedule. Her egg shells are dull, not glossy, and they’re thin, too. Inside, I’m seeing some odd things.

 

A fresh egg should have a stringy white bit called the chalazae. This is what centers the yolk in place. (As an egg ages, it disintegrates which is why you seldom see the chalazae in older eggs from the supermarket.) But this? This chalazae is all wrong. It’s a mass.

Cracked into the pan, you can clearly see the difference between Twiggy’s egg and that from Beatrix, who is exactly her age.

 

They have access to the same food, and yet Beatrix’s yolk is a deeper orange. Look at how thin and clear Twiggy’s white is. You usually see that in an egg that has been stored for weeks, not in an egg laid the day before.

Are these eggs edible? Yes. But I feed them to the dogs.

I don’t know how long Twiggy can keep this up. I found one long white feather in the run. A sign that Twiggy is going into the molt and will be taking a break? I hope so!

It’s fall and so the hours of daylight lessen, the leaves and the feathers fall, and the hens stop laying.

All but Twiggy.

 

Yesterday I collected only one egg from the Big Barn – Twiggy’s. She produces a very large white egg, distinct from what the other hens make, and so I am sure that it is hers. But even if I didn’t recognize the egg, I’d know that it was from this White Leghorn. Why? Because she’s the ravenous hen, and in my experience it’s the hungry hen that is the best layer. All healthy chickens should be active foragers and eager eaters, but Twiggy takes that to the extreme. She needs to consume more food than the others in order to lay more eggs than the other girls – a 2 1/2 ounce egg, six days a week.

A hen like that needs a lot of fuel to have the energy and raw materials to make those eggs. Unlike the other hens, she takes advantage of every moment of daylight. She’s the first to the feeder in the morning. It’s a good thing that the coop has big windows and the sun comes in as soon as it’s up. If she were in a darker coop, and slept later, I doubt that Twiggy would be able to eat enough. She’s also the last to grab a few more bites before hopping up on the roost. If I go into the barn at night and turn on the light, while the other hens murmur and blink and hide their heads under the feathers, she jumps down, hurries to the feeder and starts eating. This is a problem for me, because if I turn the light out, she’s stuck there on the floor, unable to see her way to the roost. So I’ll turn off the inside light and leave on the exterior, and wait until she can find her way back to bed.

I don’t know how long she can keep this up. I’ve yet to find white feathers on the ground from the molt. If she doesn’t molt, she won’t get needed rest. She barely took a break last year – just a slight slowing of production and then two weeks off. Her eggs are showing signs of weakness (more on that in another post.)

Has anyone had White Leghorns that went through normal, full molts? Took breaks from laying? This is my first large leghorn. My bantam leghorns (Snowball and her cousins) weren’t great layers, and they all molted. Let me know your White Leghorn experiences in the comments!