Archive for April, 2010

What do you do with your horse?

Written by Hiddenhorse on 25/04/2010 – 12:47 pm -

This is inevitably the first question that I always get asked by people when they discover that I own horses. Actually I dread it, not because I don’t ‘do’ stuff with my horses, like riding them (this is what they really mean), – I do, but to be honest, riding them is perhaps the least important aspect of what I do with horses and when someone wants to know the answer to that question I always know I am dealing with a ‘mentality’, and it is usually going to be hard work! Read more »

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Posted in Biography, Miscellaneous Stuff, Utility | No Comments »

It’s not about training, – it’s about trust

Written by Hiddenhorse on 05/04/2010 – 3:07 pm -

It’s not about training, it’s about trust….

In the last post ‘The politics of join-up’, I looked at the join-up process primarily as an behavior based on negative reinforcement, I also looked at how join-up was a ritual that is part of the repertoire of ‘political’ behaviors which allow a horse to join a new herd or group. What I didn’t ask was why would a horse want to do this? Read more »

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Posted in Clicker Training, Training, join up | 1 Comment »

The Politics of Join-up

Written by Hiddenhorse on 05/04/2010 – 12:52 pm -

The Politics of Join-Up

For many people the first time they became aware of any kind of alternative methods of dealing with horses, it was when they first saw Monty Roberts demonstrating ‘join up’ ® . Until that time horse training methods had all been based on traditional knowledge, which usually meant doing what everybody else did, – because everybody else was doing it. As you will now know, this is what I call ‘utility model thinking’, based on the idea of the horse being defined by it’s function or utility. See other posts for more details on the utility model. Read more »

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Posted in Clicker Training, Training, join up | No Comments »