Consistent Inconsistency

I've been working on a stay and come with Star. The stay is something I've struggled with a bit before, the come has developed naturally from me calling her in the field. I've been shaping the stay by first going one step away from her, then two etc and she's pretty good 80% of the time. What I'm trying to do is keep my posture neutral when I ask her to stay, when I ask her to come I open out my arms and she targets my right hand. However she does sometimes anticipate my asking her to come, yes Star can read my thoughts too! Only kidding, I think it's far more likely she's reading signals I'm giving out that I'm totally unaware of.

I think it must be incredibly frustrating for horses the fact that we are so inconsistent a lot of times. As humans we have one word that has seven different meanings depending on how it's said, conversely we also have seven different words that can have one meaning too. We also give out a veritable hotchpotch of body language that animals have to try and decipher. Never forget a horses first language is body language not verbal. I think Star often finds visual cues more easy than verbal ones.

Our senses are not the same as horses. I think at one time we probably had more acute senses, survival after all depended on it. Now due to our lifestyles these are grossly under utilised. I think we expose ourselves to too much what I call "background noise"; television, internet, mobiles, busy stores and so on. Modern society is like a constant information overload if you're not careful. This chatter fills our minds, has to be assimilated and dealt with, numbing us to a lot of other things we should be more aware of. How often do you start training and some stupid random thought like a shopping list pops into your mind? I envy horses for their ability to be totally in the moment.

Of course our horses are then reading us, trying to make sense of what we're doing and act on the information they're gathering. I'm sure this is what's happening a lot of the time Star anticipates me, I'm doing *something* I'm unaware of when I'm thinking of asking her to come. Or more likely several different somethings all of which Star associates with potentially being cued!  I have to say it's darn hard to make sure you're keeping body language and cues consistent in every single session. We ask the horse to be acutely aware of what their body is doing, space etc. but we don't ask the same of ourselves.

You know the other post where I was talking about some clicker trainers being a bit negative with people. Well I do understand this because lets face it we're pretty inconsistent with each other most of the time too. I have far more patience with teaching an animal than I do with a person that's for sure! Honestly you tell a person something and then they go and do something totally different, you find yourself thinking for goodness sake can you not just follow instructions!! We're also pretty good at telling other people what not to do rather than guiding and rewarding what we do want. When was the last time anyone told you you did a good job? As a society we don't understand how to use positive reinforcement with each other, maybe it's time to try and make some changes with ourselves too.