His behaviours were great, but as soon as he heard the click, he was like a piranha looking for the treat.  Aim.....well, there was none, he just rooted with his mouth open until he found the treats.  He came at my hand with his mouth gaping and at high speed which resulted in half the nuts ending up on the ground.  I know he is not going to bite me, but that would be unnerving for most folks. 

 

And to top it all off, it was freezing cold (below zero) and due to his lack of aim and grabbing, I had slobber all over the cuff of my jacket (he drips saliva from his mouth when we train).  It was too cold to take my jacket off and so I had to live with this cold wet rag on my wrist until I had finished all my chores.  
 

I stood back and thought, 'when did you get so rude ?', then I quickly checked myself and started to more appropriately ask, 'when did I let this get so out of hand?'. 

 

So we had a lesson in treat manners.  And boy-oh-boy, it was a tough one.  he got it, but very quickly and easily forgot himself and got grabby.  His rate of reinforcement was so low that it really worried me about what I was actually teaching him.  I could see he was frustrated, but I couldn't use targeting to get the rate up as he gets grabby with the target as well, so I would be reinforcing the mouthiness.

 

I resigned myself to the fact that we would have to visit this painful lesson every day until I had it back to a level where he was less agitated about getting treats....and I was DRY !

 

Today, I brought him out and did he ever show me what homework he had done over night.  I was bowled over !!  He was soft and gentle with taking the treats, and I could really see him consciously being SO careful.  Only on a few occasions did he forget himself.  I had a dry cuff today and, even better, his rate of reinforcement was really high :-)""

 This sounds quite like one of the ponies that was at the Magic Centre -he tended to use his teeth to get the treats !!!. there were 2 elements that we worked on. Firstly, holding the side of his headcollar, as you were treating. What you weren't doing, was holding his head still whilst you were treaing, more your hand held in a tai chis style (no force!)  an allowed the hed to move ( poss redirecting energy if it came towards you). The hand with the treat at this stage was bent up in a fist towards ones own body, and then the treat was presented when there was a moment of relaxation on the head carriage (if you began to present the treat and his head got "busy" again, you folded your arm up to your body and waited again for that moment of relaxation.

The other part of the equation was presenting the treat from above, literally sliding down his nose to present the treat which prevented him grabbing down to get it. This worked really well, and Alex also had various people treat him  - though we were all doing the same thing, we were ll doing it very differently (!) which was also a good learning curve for the pony.

Cheers Hilary