A "Trademark" magic trick to make food appear

[TBlitz]

For the past couple weeks, my brilliant two year old (Flagmount's Trademark) has created his own 'magic' trick to get his food. Whenever a human walks over to give him his meal, he spins around like a reiner and then dives into his food bucket. In curiousity, I delayed giving him the food while he was spinning and he paused before going into another spin. I did give him his food after that because I didn't want him to spin around all night. Today another experiment was to take his food bucket away while eating. He paused, looked at me confused, then spun around. I waited until he had paused for a little bit and was ready to spin again before I gave him the food.

I am baffled by this youngster and I'm not sure what exactly to do. I guess one day he was turning around and found his bucket had appeared when he faced the human again :confused: and it built from there. I don't want to punish him, but neither do I want to reward this behavior since it's out of the norm. It's obviously not the end of the world, but I'm not sure how to discourage it without confusing him further... or starving him.

Do I need to take a video? :lol:

[stoicfish]

Please!

[goodpony]

yes, definitely...:)

[Sithly]

I bet you could solve this problem easily with some form of clicker training.

There is a free tutorial here: http://theclickercenter.com/ It's under "Step-by-step training guide."

[WombatCA]

I actually have my degree in Applied Behavior Analysis (well, it'll be official in December). This is what is called a superstitious behavior. The animal believes that spinning is what causes his food to appear.

To get rid of the behavior you have two choices (well, technically you have more than two choices, but these are what I'd start with):
1. Do what you mentioned and ignore the behavior. This would be extinction. However, you are correct that he will engage in the behavior more vigorously before he gives it up (an extinction burst).
2. If you don't want him spinning like a top for a few days, try to deliver the food before he can spin. Either take him out of the stall, put the food in, and then put him back in the stall, or do something else to prevent the spinning behavior from occurring. This will essentially break the superstition about spinning causing food to appear.

If you need more detail, feel free to let me know!

p.s. This probably indicates that this horse is going to be really easy to train with positive reinforcement. I'd keep that in mind as you continue to work with him!

[SilverSpringFarm]

What if you put multiple feed buckets in his stall and filled a different one each night? Maybe he would learn that he has to watch you in order to see which bucket gets filled.

[stoicfish]

I would still like to see the video but my 2 cents is put a halter on him, hold him while the food is put in his bucket so he can see the food and realize (since he can't spin) that spinning has nothing to do with it.

[paintjumper]

in the area of the feed bucket BEFORE you feed so he has to patiently stand there and WAIT for his feed. He will eventually hurt himself, I would stop it now. I used to have a young stallion that would rear until his feed got to him. I ignored it at first, then I tried making him wait till last to feed him, but it only got worse..........until I began tying him in the corner of his stall in front of the bucket and feeding him then. It worked, I did that for quite a while before I even tried it without him being tied so he would "forget" rearing. I also tied him at various times during the day, say to groom him or pick his feet or whatever, so that he did not begin to associate the tying with feeding EVERY time.

[TBlitz]

Thanks for the input. I've been super busy and haven't been able to get back on until today (and no video either). Mark is very smart and will do pretty much anything for food, so I'm thinking this problem stemmed from that. I've been haltering him and holding him facing the food, so hopefully this will work it's way out.