Starry's New Trick

Starry's New Trick

Ranger's stall is right next to Starry's, and there are bars between them.  Last spring, when Ranger was shedding, Ellen spent a lot of time in Ranger's stall; grooming him.  Starry wanted attention--whether he wanted attention from Ellen or Ranger, we can't say.  Sometimes he can be a rather annoying horse.

He has a Jolly Ball in his stall.  (You know, those balls that people get horses that they usually never play with.)  One day, he picked up the ball when he was standing by Ellen.  She clicked and treated him.  Of course, to get the treat, he had to drop the ball.  Then, he picked the ball back up.  Ellen clicked him, again, and a game was born.  He kept picking the ball up, over and over again.  If he wasn't annoying enough, before, he was now!

After a while, Ellen wanted him to do more, so she ignored him when he picked it up.  He wanted to get his treat, so he put the ball into his feed dish.  He struggled with this for only a short time before he figured it out.  He would put the ball in his dish, Ellen clicked and treated him and threw the ball back on the floor.  Starry then had to go find the ball and bring it back.  When Ellen was bored with the game, she would throw it to the far end of his stall.  He hasn't figured that out, yet.

Sometimes he would do it for me, too.  Over all these months, we would tell Kevin about Starry putting his ball in his dish, but Kevin never saw it.  Finally, it happened.  Starry did it when Kevin was there.  He put the ball in the dish seven times in a row.  Kevin was elated!

This is a perfect example of how we can train horses with clicker training.  In this case, Starry came up with the behavior and Ellen "captured" it by clicking and treating him.  Once he got good at it, she then stopped clicking him for the initial behavior, and then Starry experimented to see what would get him that click.  Then, by throwing the ball further away from him, the trick got harder for him.  We fear that he will eventually figure out getting the ball when it is on the far end of the stall, too.  Then we will be in trouble!