Donkey Welfare Symposium Notes - Part 2

Here's a continuation of my training notes from the Donkey Welfare Symposium at UC Davis.

Day two:  After a morning of fantastic lectures (I'll write about those is Part 3) we arrive at the donkey training area with our shaping plans in hand.  Ben looked at them and made suggestions about how to break down the training steps even further and add more detail.

I was glad that I had taken the course in Operant Conditioning Behaviour Analysis through Dalhousie University - we had to write shaping plans so they are not new to me!

My goal was: stand on left side of my donkey and lay my hand on the donkey's shoulder while he is standing still- simple as that!

I also wrote that the donkey's attitude should be calm and attentive.  A note about this:  training for a calm, relaxed attitude (as well as for the behaviour you are looking for) was a BIG "aha!" for me last year.

This sounds so obvious to me now, but I didn't always link behaviour and attitude - I was simply happy to get the behaviour.  This is not good training IMO.  But I think I should write another post about this and ... I will!

Back to UC Davis:  my shaping plan also included an evaluation of where we had left off the day before which was: couldn't touch "Louie" but he stopped moving away from me at more frequent intervals.

Then I wrote out my steps towards my goal: 

Step 1:  approach and stop 10 feet away

Step 2:  back off and repeat

Step 3:  approach and stop 9 feet away

Step 4:  back off and repeat

and so on ... working in baby steps at the donkey's pace until I am able to stand beside him.  I won't touch him yet.  I am watching him to see how relaxed or nervous he is and I can back off and repeat steps, closing the gap in smaller increments as he needs me to.

This is about the donkey and not about me or about reaching my goal quickly.  Depending on the animal and his history, it might take days ... or longer!  

However .... voila!  Here's me and Louie a short time after we started working!  I have a halter slung over my shoulder - it's just there, not intended to be used yet. 

The big brown jenny came over to see what we were doing!  She offered a lot of comfort, and support to the gelding - it was quite amazing to witness.  Very fuzzy picture!

Day 3 and I have a halter on Louie.  He's anxious again and doesn't know where I might be taking him. Past experience would factor into this big time. 

Shaping Plan for Day 3 -

Evaluation of Day 2:  was able to touch Louie and put on a halter while he was standing quietly.  He relaxed during the scratching reinforcement and allowed me to run my hand down his front legs.
Seem to be gaining his trust.

Goal:  ask for a weight shift forward or hopefully 1 step with halter on

Step 1:  Repeat approach, scratch on withers and back off and few times.  If donkey is calm and standing still, move on to ...
Step 3 :  Halter on, reinforce for standing quietly with scratching and praise
Step 4:  Use firm, gentle pressure on lead rope, stand next to donkey's shoulder.  Release pressure immediately following weight shift or step forward - reinforce!

I was successful in leading Louie to the front off the small enclosure.  I let him walk back on his own.
Ben talked again about the importance of shaping plans, saying that it gives a clear place to stop for the day (or session) that without a plan, we will be tempted to push on .... ask for more and he feels this is a mistake. 

Have a written plan and stick to it. Small steps forward and you will stretch the donkey's comfort zone slowly and methodically without pushing him to a place beyond his threshold.  You want to end every session on a good, positive note.

Here's Ben working with Abner, the very anxious mule:

Ben also talked about the need to become a "behaviour detective," always watching the animal's response and body language. Also important to perfect one's own timing.  The release of pressure must be immediately following compliance from the animal (my words)  as this is the reinforcement (-R) removing the pressure.

I really enjoyed learning about this process without using food.  Although clicker training is my method of choice, I do think there are occasions when other options  might be useful.

Ben did a demonstration with Abner using food however.  He feels wearing a treat bag is very useful in cueing the animal that "yes, now there are food reinforcements available."  This is different from some other approaches ... I've heard excellent trainers say that they always have treats in their pockets so that they can reinforcement anything they like, even though not in a formal training session.

I have noticed though with my own four donkeys, that they certainly recognize the treat bag as an invitation to work.  Although we are always "training" when with our animals (important to remember!) we are also giving them cues all the time too, through body language, words, gestures and tools/ training aids.

more coming in Part 3 ...

Notes from the Donkey Welfare Symposium - Setting the scene + training, Part 1

I'm back from California and the symposium was quite an experience!  I'm going to try to post my notes in several parts:  training and welfare (meaning everything else I learned!)

This post will be Part 1 about the training sessions I attended with Ben Hart from the UK http://www.thedonkeysanctuary.org.uk/blogs/ben-hart . Ben works for the UK Donkey Sanctuary and was part of the team that presented at the symposium.  Actually the UK Sanctuary was one of the main sponsors of the 3-day event.

Shortly before leaving home, I found out that I was lucky enough to claim one of the 20 spots in the training clinic (3 afternoons) due to a cancellation. Since working with donkeys is my passion (along with making art) I jumped at the chance! I wasn't at all sure what to expect and I couldn't have anticipated what awaited me at the UC Davis campus.

Setting the scene:  About 30+ donkeys and one mule had arrived at the campus (they have a large veterinary school and teaching hospital) just a few hours before we did.  They had traveled 28 hours from Texas in a stock trailer and were clearly exhausted.  These donkeys were in the care of the Peaceful Valley Donkey Rescue (PVDR) - the largest donkey rescue in the US, now caring for 3,000 donkeys!  Yes, you read correctly, I didn't add a zero!

The enormity of the problem of unwanted, abandoned and neglected donkeys in the US is simply staggering.  Some of the contributing factors that contribute to the problem are climate change/ drought, continued breeding programs, economic hardship and the lowly status of donkeys in general.

Peaceful Valley Donkey Rescue http://www.donkeyrescue.org/ is committed to taking in and re-homing any donkey that needs help - they focus on adoption so they can make room for more.  An adopted donkey always belongs to them, so if the new owners' life changes, the donkeys go back to PVDR .

So, on the first afternoon of the training sessions, we were asked to choose a donkey to work with. I didn't
have any preferences, so ended up with a young gelding (he's the roan in the picture above) who had been picked up as a stray in Louisiana 6 years ago and has been at the rescue ever since. He was exceptionally wary and I couldn't get near him.

Ben had us working with positive reinforcement using scratches on the withers as the reinforcement (+R) and backing away as the negative reinforcement (-R) i.e. removing the thing that the donkey wanted to avoid ... ME!  Of course each donkey was different and Ben talked about understanding and investigating species behaviour, breed behaviour and finally individual behaviour.

He asked us to become "donkey detectives," saying that donkeys are small communicators due to their stoic nature and that we need to scale down our body language.  He said that trainers need 10 solutions for 1 problem - I really liked that!

So how to work with a donkey I couldn't get near?  In a different setting, I would have begun with a long target stick and some treats, probably putting them in a feed dish after the donkey had touched the target.  Using food in this context would have been a bad choice in my opinion!  It would have been impossible to set the environment for success.

There were 20 students and a bunch of observers - introducing these donkeys to clickers and polite manners around food would have been a mistake, especially since the donkeys were moving on to other situations and the students were (mostly) novices at clicker training. 

Instead we practiced our timing using our body language.  In the small penned area I was working in, I followed my donkey at a distance that he felt was acceptable, trying to walk alongside of him if possible.  He kept retreating into the sheltered area. At first I didn't press him - I didn't want to corner him or make him feel trapped, so I moved slowly.  Eventually I stood in the doorway, giving him room to leave if he chose and that's exactly what he did.  I could see his eyes look fearful as he politely took a wide path around me to go back outside. But soon, I did step in with him and if he stood still, I left.

Here's the key point:  When he moved, I moved with him, when he stopped moving, I backed off.
That's how Day 1 ended.  I got to move closer to him, but not touch him, he began to understand the game and stopped moving more frequently.

Ben talked about working in baby steps towards a goal - successive approximation.  Our homework was to write a shaping plan for the next day.  He explained his strong conviction that we need to write down our goals and our baby steps towards them, that we should NOT keep everything in our heads and then "wing it" when we are with our animals as this will lead to moving too quickly and forgetting where we got to in our last session.

to be continued in the next post ...