Basics of Reinforcement
I ran out and did my training between downpours yesterday. It's a muddy mucky mess out there! I was still able to spend a few minutes of quality time with each of the 17 horses I worked with. With most of the horses, I spent the time doing count-down petting because I am conditioning petting to be a secondary reinforcer. With Rusty's group, I am conditioning a hand reaching toward them to be perceived as a good thing. The hay was not big fluffy chunks like it was on the first day, but, rather, mouthfuls. I tried to keep the mouthfuls being delivered rapidly. A horse doesn't just take a bite, chew it up, and then swallow it; instead, it has a processing line where it is chewed to finer degrees as it goes toward the throat. The chewed hay can be swallowed while the front of the mouth is still full. If there is no hay sticking out the side of the horses mouth, there is room for more and they like the whole food processing area to be fully utilized. I try to keep hay sticking out the sides.
My intake pens are arranged around an octagon where I can stand and feed, we call it the gazebo. I can provide food service to a lot of horses with this set up. Right now the three mares are in one pen, the foal and it's mother are in the next pen, then comes Rusty and his penmate, then Big Red, and finally Terragon and Ol' Joe. The last three are already gentle so they only get marginal food service. They have however, learned to nicker to me, asking for morsels. The other thing that is instinctive is pawing to get food. Horses have to paw to survive the winter snows out in nature. They are going to do it, but you really don't want to feed them and reinforce it or it will get worse. Big Red threatens Rusty through the panels if I am feeding Rusty and ignoring Big Red. Food service has to adjust to meet the consumer demand.
The mustangs like timothy grass hay. They take it with no problems as long as it isn't full of mold or distasteful weeds. The USFS isn't careful about the hay it buys, so the contractor likes to deliver damp hay, maximizing the weight for which he is paid. The hay looks good for the first few days and then starts to mold from the inside out. If it was a rancher paying his own bills, there would be a standard maximum moisture content set in the contract and the tool to measure it, but the attitide seems to be "it's just for a bunch of mustangs" [a.k.a. range-vermin] so molding hay is tolerated. We sort out the mold as best as we can, but when you are feeding them by hand, you really need to inspect each morsel. If what you are handing out is perceived as icky, you have a problem.
At first, mustangs don't think alfalfa is edible, but I introduce it by tucking a bit inside the grass morsels. It doesn't take long for the rich buttery flavor of alfalfa to become preferred. Rusty has already had a few bites. I am really fanatical about getting pure alfalfa for the mustangs. The things that ruin it for training are knapweed, bindweed, chicory, sunflowers, etc. Basically anything but green grass or alfalfa. If the alfalfa was baled too dry, the leave shatter off the stem and you have stems and green dust. It can be used, but you will curse it eventually.
Less than 5% of the mustangs will eat grain, treats, apples, corn, etc. It doesn't hurt to offer it without any pressure, but you should understand that it is more likely to be seen as aversive than not. You might actually be able to train a mustang to not snatch food by using grain as a punishment, but I haven't tried that.
I've been writing about primary unconditioned reinforcers, things mustangs just naturally like. Now lets talk about what to condition as a reinforcer and how to do it. Perceptions are automatic responses and as such are conditioned by Respondent Conditioning (a.k.a. Pavlovian conditioning). You simply pair the thing you wish to become reinforcing with something that already is reinforcing. I want my presence, my voice, my hands to all evoke a positive emotional response. I sing to the new mustangs.
Sleep mustang, sleep.
Dream of canyons so deep.
All the winter, you'll eat good hay,
Come next summer, we'll ride and play,
Sleep mustang, sleep.
A lullaby as a conditioned reinforcer for a mustang? Why not! Remember the post about chewing rhythm yesterday? You can easily sing "Row, Row, Row your boat" to that beat. That beat might be an unconditioned reinforcer, I don't know yet, but it is worth trying.
As we go along, a good trainer wants to add more and more reinforcers to the list for each animal. Does the animal prefer you in one part of his pen? Use it. Does the animal like to be scratched on the withers, the belly, or under the tail? Every horse seems to have a magical scratching spot where he can't help but twitch his lips and stick his neck out. Your job is to know where that place is. Does the animal have a favorite training activity? Can you reward for leading well by taking them to somewhere they want to go? Can you make the halter and lead rope into conditioned reinforcers? Heck, yes! The Premack Principle says that you can even use well known behaviors to reinforce new behaviors. I use nose targeting to relax the animal and reward it for effort when it is learning something hard.
If you train well, you yourself become highly reinforcing. If you train well, your animal is going to want to be with you. Open the gate and let the animal tell you if you have positive valence. If it runs away, you might want to think about what you are doing. I had an assistant for a few days who kept getting his feelings hurt because the animals didn't like him. Hmmm... I didn't like him either. That's why he only lasted a few days. But, the point is that it's not the animals fault if they don't like you. Try making yourself likeable and quit blaming the animal.
There is something that people expect horses to like that they actually hate. Patting the mustang, or any horse, for that manner is not a naturally pleasant experience for them. It's actually quite aversive for most of them. Teresa is an adopter that stayed here 2 months learning how to train mustangs and training her own horse Kalispell. She made patting a conditioned reinforcer by pairing patting with food over and over. He is the only animal on the property that will tolerate it. It completely destroys a person's horse-experience credibility with me if they try to pat a horse they don't know.
Finally here are some very wise words from Lara Jacobs, who trains parrots. This statement is worth a lot of thinking time:
My intake pens are arranged around an octagon where I can stand and feed, we call it the gazebo. I can provide food service to a lot of horses with this set up. Right now the three mares are in one pen, the foal and it's mother are in the next pen, then comes Rusty and his penmate, then Big Red, and finally Terragon and Ol' Joe. The last three are already gentle so they only get marginal food service. They have however, learned to nicker to me, asking for morsels. The other thing that is instinctive is pawing to get food. Horses have to paw to survive the winter snows out in nature. They are going to do it, but you really don't want to feed them and reinforce it or it will get worse. Big Red threatens Rusty through the panels if I am feeding Rusty and ignoring Big Red. Food service has to adjust to meet the consumer demand.
The mustangs like timothy grass hay. They take it with no problems as long as it isn't full of mold or distasteful weeds. The USFS isn't careful about the hay it buys, so the contractor likes to deliver damp hay, maximizing the weight for which he is paid. The hay looks good for the first few days and then starts to mold from the inside out. If it was a rancher paying his own bills, there would be a standard maximum moisture content set in the contract and the tool to measure it, but the attitide seems to be "it's just for a bunch of mustangs" [a.k.a. range-vermin] so molding hay is tolerated. We sort out the mold as best as we can, but when you are feeding them by hand, you really need to inspect each morsel. If what you are handing out is perceived as icky, you have a problem.
At first, mustangs don't think alfalfa is edible, but I introduce it by tucking a bit inside the grass morsels. It doesn't take long for the rich buttery flavor of alfalfa to become preferred. Rusty has already had a few bites. I am really fanatical about getting pure alfalfa for the mustangs. The things that ruin it for training are knapweed, bindweed, chicory, sunflowers, etc. Basically anything but green grass or alfalfa. If the alfalfa was baled too dry, the leave shatter off the stem and you have stems and green dust. It can be used, but you will curse it eventually.
Less than 5% of the mustangs will eat grain, treats, apples, corn, etc. It doesn't hurt to offer it without any pressure, but you should understand that it is more likely to be seen as aversive than not. You might actually be able to train a mustang to not snatch food by using grain as a punishment, but I haven't tried that.
I've been writing about primary unconditioned reinforcers, things mustangs just naturally like. Now lets talk about what to condition as a reinforcer and how to do it. Perceptions are automatic responses and as such are conditioned by Respondent Conditioning (a.k.a. Pavlovian conditioning). You simply pair the thing you wish to become reinforcing with something that already is reinforcing. I want my presence, my voice, my hands to all evoke a positive emotional response. I sing to the new mustangs.
Sleep mustang, sleep.
Dream of canyons so deep.
All the winter, you'll eat good hay,
Come next summer, we'll ride and play,
Sleep mustang, sleep.
A lullaby as a conditioned reinforcer for a mustang? Why not! Remember the post about chewing rhythm yesterday? You can easily sing "Row, Row, Row your boat" to that beat. That beat might be an unconditioned reinforcer, I don't know yet, but it is worth trying.
As we go along, a good trainer wants to add more and more reinforcers to the list for each animal. Does the animal prefer you in one part of his pen? Use it. Does the animal like to be scratched on the withers, the belly, or under the tail? Every horse seems to have a magical scratching spot where he can't help but twitch his lips and stick his neck out. Your job is to know where that place is. Does the animal have a favorite training activity? Can you reward for leading well by taking them to somewhere they want to go? Can you make the halter and lead rope into conditioned reinforcers? Heck, yes! The Premack Principle says that you can even use well known behaviors to reinforce new behaviors. I use nose targeting to relax the animal and reward it for effort when it is learning something hard.
If you train well, you yourself become highly reinforcing. If you train well, your animal is going to want to be with you. Open the gate and let the animal tell you if you have positive valence. If it runs away, you might want to think about what you are doing. I had an assistant for a few days who kept getting his feelings hurt because the animals didn't like him. Hmmm... I didn't like him either. That's why he only lasted a few days. But, the point is that it's not the animals fault if they don't like you. Try making yourself likeable and quit blaming the animal.
There is something that people expect horses to like that they actually hate. Patting the mustang, or any horse, for that manner is not a naturally pleasant experience for them. It's actually quite aversive for most of them. Teresa is an adopter that stayed here 2 months learning how to train mustangs and training her own horse Kalispell. She made patting a conditioned reinforcer by pairing patting with food over and over. He is the only animal on the property that will tolerate it. It completely destroys a person's horse-experience credibility with me if they try to pat a horse they don't know.
Finally here are some very wise words from Lara Jacobs, who trains parrots. This statement is worth a lot of thinking time:
When I'm training an animal I have no history with, I have to lean heavy on the food reinforcers. This animal has no clue who I am or my intentions at first. As I continually pair myself with the animal's food reinforcers, that line of trust begins to build and not only am I learning the animal's body language but this animal is learning to read mine. A very strong form of communication I want to build. With consistently pairing myself with not only the food rewards, I'm pairing myself with understanding the animal's body language. Soon the reinforcers will change or expand and pretty soon the reinforcer becomes the interaction with me. Just another reinforcer I can add to my list of growing reinforcers. I need that list to grow because the reinforcers change as the environment changes. If I'm training an animal in an environment it has never been in before and something in that environment spooks the animal, I need to cue that animal back to me immediately or bridge it for going where I need it to go or stay until the environment is safe again for everyone in it. Often times when the animal hears me bridge and I bridge with the word 'good', that in itself is often a large enough reinforcer for the animal to stay put or return immediately. A food reinforcer often looses all appeal. The secondary reinforcer, my voice bridging the behavior of staying put is of high value because it has been consistently paired with positive outcomes.
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