As I was saying in a previous post, I started working on clicker training with Reily. He actually seems to be really enjoying it. It stimulates his little neurons and it gives him plenty of extra attention each day. For the first week we worked twice each day on the most basic principle: "Stand patiently in your own space and though shalt receive a click and a handful of food as a reward". Now that he's got this basic step down packed we've moved on to working with the "target". Well I'm slowly but surely deciding that Shawna Karrash is a genius, because this is such a brilliant idea, but as a sane human being I cannot bring myself to pay her company $35, $45, or even $50+ for the necessary "supplies" to move on to this next step. I mean come on, their targets are just pieces of oblong, plain, white plastic. So being the cheap resourceful horse owner that I am, I devised a plan... raid the Dollar Tree of makeshift items! When I shared said plan with my boyfriend he suggested that I try to find a mock-up of Jeff Dunham's character, Jose the Jalapeno, since, after all, he is just a vegetable... "on a schtick". I laughed but he had a good point, I really just needed something of my own, "on a schtick". That's really all the official targets on the website are anyways. So off I went to the Dollar Tree, and after about 35 minutes of cruising every aisle I was happily standing at the register with four foam footballs (one for the hand held target, one for a stationary target in their stall and one for each side of the trailer eventually) and a piece of bamboo for the "stick". I was so excited when I got home to show my boyfriend how trifty and imaginative I'd been! The only thing I was missing at this point was the "side bucket" which you strap on like a fanny pack and it holds the food you use to reinforce them while their learning each new task. As I lamented over not finding anything to jerry-rig for this, my aggravatingly smart boyfriend casually states, "well why don't you just use one of those extra lunch boxes?"... well why do you have to be so ingenius?! Of course, this turned out to be the perfect solution because the strap on the bag is just large enough to slip over my head and arms and hang around my waist.
So, now we were fully prepared to move on to principle number two: "Bump thy nose against foam football on a schtick and thou shalt receive a click, a handful of food and the verbal cue of 'target' as a reward". The first time I brought it out Reily was curious but slightly baffled by it. He was perplexed at first and I'm sure he was thinking, "this was NOT what we have been practicing all last week and what in the heck does she want me to do with this mulit colored squishy thing?!". But he picked up on it in no time and now I swear to you, he's so attached to that football that I have to throw it over the electric fence to get him to leave it alone! Even after I do that he'll stand there and stare it down like, "bring that thing back here, I'll put my nose on it as many times as you want, it makes food magically appear!!"
Since this is new to us both I figured I'd try it first with Reily and see how it went before starting with the other horses. But this morning I was using his breakfast to work with him and we were out in the field with all the other boys. Well Boo finished his breakfast before I was done playing with Reily and he was adorably interested in what it was we were doing. But Reily, of course, was NOT happy to share the food or the attention. So poor Boo just stood there and stared at me like, "No fair Mom, why's he always getting all the attention!" I guess I'll have to start working on it with Boo earlier than I was expecting!
