Finding What They're Meant to Do II

    I was hit with a new level of understanding about Brockle and his bolt.

   When he charges, barks and jumps at a dog, he is doing naturally what is expected of him in Schutzhund competition, except it's not happening at my command and it's not appropriately directed.

When a setter gets out the gate and takes off through the neighborhood for a jaunt, his head is down and he quarters each lawn,  actively hunting for fun like he would in the field for his owner. The zig-zag is bred into him, along with the desire to find it and point at it.

A cow horse turned out in a pasture with cattle will work them freely. The stop and turn is bred into him and the desire to boss those cows around is his idea of fun.

Brockle, mixed up mutt though he may be, drives across the fields at those dogs with all of the eagerness, speed and straightness of the competition dogs.

Now I know why HMT wanted me to hold off on the shock collar. If I use a shock collar to stop his drive it will create a hesitation in him. Part of him will be wondering, "When am I going to get zapped?" as he flies along.

What I need to do is shape his direction and control when he gets to satisfy this natural desire. If he's directed correctly (which is where I need help from HMT), I'm guessing Brockle will also understand there's a proper time and place for his lunge and run and wait for me to tell him when to use it.

This will give me the means to redirect him.

I got pretty excited and let this line of thinking roll around for awhile. It's not like shaping an animal's behavior to suit my needs is a new concept. I was thinking about shaping behaviors vs. creating behaviors and when we make roadblocks for ourselves and our animals by not understanding exactly the consequence of our actions.

Then I jumped to breed influence. Shaping behaviors that come from a dog/horse/pig/chicken breed vs. creating behaviors to divert the nature of the animal.

Let's take the instinctive flight/fight response horses come with. They all have it. How we shape it determines the horse we end up with.

Ideally, we want to train our horses to carry us along, go where we point them, stop when we say stop and not kick, smash, buck, bite, throw us into trees, in other words, let us live.

By it's nature a horse will run first, fight second when it feels threatened.

Fight comes first when flight won't fix it. Defending young, territory, mares etc.

My personal thoughts while training a horse are that a flight response doesn't hurt me or the horse, but a fight sure can. So I'd rather not fight.

This is why I always offer an escape to a horse. Even one that's securely tied to an iron rail with a rope halter has the option to move it's hip away from me and get a release of pressure.

Having an escape available for a horse is so automatic for me I don't have to think about it anymore, but it took a lot of years. I rarely get in fights with my horses.

All horses have a flight or fight response and I have chosen my path to begin all horses by shaping the flight response to my needs.

Now we can get into the automatic responses created by breed influence.

My first successful reined cowhorse was Sonita,  a handful of a mare that taught me more than I can say. She was so geared to work she would cut anything. Llamas, kids, kids on bikes, flags, balloons, blowing plastic bags, dust devils, absolutely any object waving in the breeze that stood out from it's environment was something she would work. This was with me or without me BTW. If she couldn't control it's movement she would lose interest, but it was very clear she had been bred to work cattle.

On the flip side, that same hyper awareness made her afraid of tractors, indoor arenas, anything happening over her head, white spots on walls, odd patches of snow, I could go on for hours. Her breeding had done that too.

Shaping man-made behaviors is both easier and harder than shaping the ones that nature gives all horses. I think it's because we're not as good at it as Nature is. People breed to enhance performance for themselves rather than survival for the horse. We forget that for every spectacular new response we breed into an animal we are going to get a balancing response along with it, which will be equally unspectacular.

It was easy to get Sonita on a cow, it was a near death experience to get her past a tractor.

Man-made behaviors don't always make sense to the horse either, we tend to breed things into them they don't understand. I'm willing to wager Sonita's compulsion to cut a plastic bag stuck on a bush didn't make sense to her. It probably contributed to her craziness though.

Then comes the third response we put into our animals. This is the one that I really started thinking about while working Brockle. This response is all about us, it's the response we want from our animal that has nothing to do with their natural or man-made self. Dog Dancing comes to mind. Now there's a competition made entirely for our amusement. I'm not saying the dogs don't love it, they seem to think it's as funny as we do, but it's based on nothing but our will.

This is one of the coolest training knots I've ever come up with. I'm thinking the clearest, cleanest communication between me and whatever animal I'm training will come from beginning to shape the instinctive behaviors that come with the animal first.

If I can channel an instinctive response to work in my favor it will lay the groundwork for the next step, shaping the man-made bred in responses. The animal will be open to my training in this murkier area because of the clear relationship we've already established. If I'm on the look-out for the balancing behaviors that come during this phase, and don't look at it as a negative, but just another, expected response to shape, will I get a better animal? I don't know yet, but it makes sense.

If I've been successful in all of this shaping and modifying, the third phase should be cake. We should have our minds tuned in enough for my trainee to accept my request whether it makes sense or not, if for no other reason then the trust and understanding built by that point.

I understand horses better than dogs, so my example is equine.

1. Start a colt with the standard round pen type thinking (even though your pen can be any shape or size). Restraint is voluntary, flight is always possible.
As the colt's training progresses, the flight response is honed until a foot step away is as much a release as blowing away from a flag was at the beginning.
2. Bring in the bred in behaviors. Begin to shape the speed, cowiness, elasticity, whatever your breed offers.
3. Now it's time for double bridles, spade bits, jumps that are higher than the horses head, dancing, talking to Wilbur, whatever.

It's going to be interesting sorting this out with dogs...