Part 4 - How Your Horse Learns: Why it goes bad before it gets good again

Kiwi is a 19 year old rescued Arab mare who came to us untouchable. Watch as Kali explains to students why Kiwi is so hard to halter and how to work with her, showing respect for her past experiences, but helping her to reach new heights.

Kali discusses Kiwi's body language and how to read her horsenality. Kiwi is an emotional extrovert by nature, making her a horse that seeks safety, consistency, and leadership. Kali works with her using techniques affective with her horsenality - such as clicking with rhythm, moving quickly but steadily, giving Kiwi some responsibility for offering behaviors but offering more leadership when Kiwi emotionally checks out. Kali also talks about how putting a hand on the horse can "ground" you, making your energy seem less assaulting to the horse. Kali also teaches students to be aware of what part of their bodies the horse is most afraid of (in many cases, actually your feet!) and how addressing those specific fears head on in your haltering process can really speed things along.

Kiwi displays phenomenal, text book extinction burst just before letting Kali halter her. This is a great opportunity to see how, as John Lyons says, it gets bad and then better, and then worse, before it gets good. Kali states that standard extinction burst is about 1/4-1/3 the total length of time it will take to teach the behavior. In this case, haltering takes 45 minutes and Kiwi's extinction burst is close to 12 minutes. The more profound a belief you're challenging, the longer the subject's extinction burst will be, as extinction burst represents the difficulty the animal is having in wrapping her head around a new reality. Instead of getting mad at the animal during this burst, we must stay with them and reward them for trying so hard to overcome mental road blocks.

This is a great video to witness the learning cycle of a horse because, though the video is only 45 minutes long, it shows the full learning cycle that can be expected teaching almost any behavior over any period of time.

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[txinjun]

The girl,is awesome! I rescued 3 horses approx 3 yrs ago, not knowing a thing about them except that they ate grass, I stumbled across these vids and have fallen in love with Kali's attitude, energy and love for what she does, THANK YOU KALI for teaching me how to read and understand my horses!!! YOU ARE AWESOME!!

[lisaandtheword]

Awesome explanations, I'm learning alot. I have the extinction burst happen as a groomer alot- especially when I teach dogs that nail trimming isn't gonna hurt them..