calmness training

Steigerwald.T New Year’s Eve Challenge: Impulses and their control

Thursday October 20th, 2022 Training the animal friendly waySteigerwald-T.deLeave a comment

Does your pet also suffer on New Year’s Eve? Do the unfortunate noise, the light stimuli and the stench trigger strong fear reactions in him? I have repeatedly read on Facebook about fatal colic or injuries at the turn of the year.

The good news is that this does not have to happen! You have a good deal of control over preparing your beloved four-legged friend for this event with its terrifying effects. Back in 2019, I launched the New Year’s Eve Challenge. Through the training of at least thirty different acoustic, visual and also olfactory stimuli, our animals learn that it is not so bad after all. On the contrary, through so-called operant conditioning, your pet may even have pleasant feelings when it hisses and bangs. This is because, unlike methods such as “pooping out”, the reactions of the animals are taken into account.

New Year's Eve Challenge - relaxed into the new year
New Year's Eve Challenge - relaxed into the new year

The procedure is as simple as it is captivating: You wave a balloon, for example. When your dog, horse or cat stays relaxed on the spot or lies down, you click and give him a little bit of food. Through the number of repetitions, the idea of “Wow, that’s worth it!” builds up in the brain. The perceived stimulus becomes an announcer of something good.

Now, of course, your pet may immediately flee at the sight of a wildly wiggling balloon and you may not even get around to rewarding holding still. Then the key is to reduce the stimulus. You can do this by putting more distance between you and him or, in this example, simply holding the balloon up. Believe me, there is always a distance at which your animal can control its impulse to move away from the stimulus. You can find out exactly how to do this in the Challenge webinar.

You don’t have to set off fireworks to train fireworks either. The Challenge process leads to generalisation. With sufficient variability and quantity of stimuli, your animal will put the firecracker in a drawer with everything that you have linked as pleasant in the weeks leading up to New Year’s Eve through targeted training.

New Year's Eve Challenge with dogs- relaxed into the new year
New Year's Eve Challenge with dogs- relaxed into the new year

It is said that behaviour is driven by its consequences. In the wild, our animals would move as far away as possible from fireworks because the consequence of flight is relief. And it is more than understandable that they want that relief so badly. As a self-confessed country bumpkin, I can only confirm this. But what if the relief cannot come because a fence or the walls of the home prevent escape? Faintness and fear are the result, the impulse to flee looks for another way, the animal is helplessly at the mercy of its fear and does not know what to do with itself.
Through intensive training, you offer alternatives to escape and help your animal to see the “civilised” world differently. Create pleasant consequences for relaxed reactions to a variety of stimuli. Always increase them so that your animal can still say “yes!” and accompany it on the path to self-efficacy.

Register here for the Steigerwald.T New Year’s Eve Challenge and receive valuable tips for your training and the support you need to give your pet a relaxed start to the new year.

New Year's Eve Challenge with horses- relaxed into the new year
New Year's Eve Challenge with horses- relaxed into the new year

And while we’re on the subject of giving gifts: I really care about the well-being of all animals, so of course I will reward your efforts for your darling! See “Special Callenge Bonus”.

Steigerwald.T New Year’s Eve Challenge

Thursday December 12th, 2019 Training the animal friendly waySteigerwald-T.deLeave a comment

The Steigerwald.T New Year’s Eve Challenge
For almost four weeks now, people have been making funny, strange and creepy noises in the presence of their horses. They often attract incredulous shaking of the head or even criticism. I would like to explain once again what this challenge is all about.
In learning theory, the phenomenon of generalization is described by the fact that conditional reflexes and behavior arise not only from the original stimulus that triggers the reaction, but also from triggers that are similar to it. The Pavlovian dog, for example, also begins to salivate when the tone of the bell has a different frequency range.
In order to prepare our animals for New Year’s Eve, we can work with various noises, smells and visual stimuli so that they remain more relaxed during the fireworks on the critical evening – in some areas days before. When horses have stress, when there is a fireball and we don’t want to ignite rockets for training purposes, generalization helps us and them to cope with this task.
Cow bells, dog barking, tools of all kinds (hairdryer, cordless screwdriver, welding machine, compressor, circular saw, jigsaw, mixer, blender, drill hammer, etc.), engine noises (car, tractor, wheel loader, Bobcat, yard loader, moped, motorcycle, harvesting vehicles), the human voice or musical instruments are possible acoustic stimuli that we can use in training.
Optical stimuli have a stronger effect on flight animals in the dark than in the light and the factor smell/smoke is also an element that we can approach step by step during training.

Applied practically, it can look like this: “Behavior is driven by its consequences”. If my animal behaves calmly during the presentation of the corresponding stimulus, the consequence of this behavior is something pleasant. Stimulus – stop – Click+Feed. Thus it combines the actually aversive stimulus with a tasty affair. But how do we get there that this stimulus is answered by standing still? By getting closer and closer from a feel-good distance. A squeaky balloon right next to the horses ears often put them on the run. A distance of five metres, may be good to endure. Squeak-stop-click-feed-one step closer- squeak-stop-click-feed-one step closer- squeak-stop-click-feed-one step closer- etc. At some point there comes the point where my horse raises his head strongly, widens his eyes very much or snorts. At this position I repeat the stimulus until my horse can show a calm behaviour again. In the ideal case it starts to grumble when perceiving the sound and tells us that the stimulus is so positively connected that it triggers joyful expectation.
Distance, stimulus intensity, direction and predictability are the keys with which we gain access to the horse and pick it up where it can still be quite relaxed. This is important because it is the only way to strengthen the calm that we ultimately need on New Year’s Eve. So find the right stimulus to pick up your horse and amplify any desired response to noise, flutter or glow.
It is not for nothing that behavioural therapy is a popular and frequently used tool in psychotherapy to treat phobias. Some horses may not have a “real” phobia, but I see it as my task to give even those candidates who “only” walk around with their eyes open and don’t dare to touch their hay a more relaxed turn of the year.
In our Facebook group “Horse-Agility and Clickertraining” you will find many creative examples of the Challenge participants. Of course I’m also there with Wolfgang, who is much more relaxed now.
On Tuesday, December 17, at 7 p.m. you will get a free webinar with a detailed overview of the training methods and special features. The link to the webinar will be added here on Monday.

Marengo’s Training Camp – Homeward bound

Tuesday September 18th, 2018 Training the animal friendly waySteigerwald-T.deLeave a comment
going for a walk

The highlight of Marengo’s seven weeks at Hof Steigerwald was to be a hike home. Sounded like a good plan, but if both participating humans are blessed with a heavy workload, it was also very ambitious. Marengo’s owner Nadine and I had 4 days available for the trip. According to the omniscient modern technology it would amount to a 106 km tour. Because our horses would be travelling with us on the trail with an average 10 km per day over gravel, pebbles, concrete, and sand, we were curious how far we would actually get. For my Shetty Wolfgang it was the first hiking tour with an overnight stay, for Marengo it was the second.

It was a hot summer’s day, during the midday heat not a bit of shade for quite a long time. What a blessing to finally enter a forest! But there the next challenge awaited us: Gravel! In order to cross streams, we were forced to stick to the main traffic routes and squeeze along the narrow sloping curbs, sometimes half a meter below street level. However, Jupiter’s paws testified to the current state of those streams. Poor boy. We picked apples, pears and plums from trees along the roads. Oh, how I like the feeling of being so well cared for! Although a little early for the season, we were treated to spontaneous nerve training sessions by passing corn choppers and agricultural machinery. Ralf and Monika Meyer from the Coldewey 2 farm near Sulingen gave us a warm welcome as they had already done when we stayed with them eight weeks earlier.

The next morning, the ponies stood on Ralf’s home-made horse scale. Wolfgang still should lose another 20 to 30 kg. Marengo had lost about 80 kg during his stay at Hof Steigerwald! Afterwards, we continued through moor gravel. And it is hot, mercilessly hot. We pass through a beautiful landscape, find blackberries, and a truly wonderful place for our midday rest. Side roads are blocked with traffic because the federal highway is closed. Finally, we feel grass under our hooves again ?. During a break we decided to cut the day’s hike and go only a little further. Another corn chopper comes along to test our nerves, after which we are rewarded with a breathtaking view over North German heathland. Then Marcel brings our equipment for an outdoor night camp. I can only encourage everyone to indulge in the experience of a night under the stars with the background noise of chewing horses and circling crickets. This falls definitely into the category “Chicken soup for the soul.”

After the luxury of a fresh cup of coffee we continue our way. Newly purchased map shows a way that does not exist, alternative path found, gravel again, a beautiful landscape, and – you guess – some more gravel. Finally another copse, an ancient path, enchanting atmosphere, green and silent. We pass some farm houses and consider to ask for a night camp – if it was not broad daylight. On the edge of the moore our last order for a shadowy spot: Lunch break. While we keep looking at the caterpillar excavator a 500m away and pondering how quickly we would be able lead the ponies out of the way into side path, we were hit by a challenge a different sort: a bunch of peat-cars rattling by, all the while we fed our ponies non-stop to glue them to the spot.

After that adventure came the most beautiful part of the hike. Pure nature, sandy soil under your feet and hooves…pure bliss. When we got back to civilization it actually started to rain. After another short break we needed to go only a little bit further, where our wonderful husbands picked us up with the teams and brought us home. I’m soooo glad we set out! The beauty of this story is: If Marengo did not have trouble loading in the first place, I would never have come up with the idea of taking a few days off, virtually right after my Open House day and directly before next week’s seminar with Bob Bailey.

Wolfgang and Jupiter have grown even closer to my heart in these three days. There is never that much intensity in the relationship with an animal during everyday life. So, let us always look at the good things to come!