S4 E7: Cooperative Care with Peggy Hogan

In this episode of our Special Edition Season of An Equine Conversation, focusing on ‘What Else Is There?’ besides riding, we welcome the incredibly experienced & knowledgeable, Peggy Hogan to chat with us on the topic of Cooperative Care.Cooperative Care may be a new term for some of you. It’s something that is used or can, or we could perhaps say should be used widely in the animal world, including with our equines. But I’ll let Peggy tell you more on this shortly.Some people may think of Cooperative care as boring, but I think it is anything but & find it amazing & totally fascinating. I know Peggy shares my feelings and has done a heap of learning about & exploring cooperative care with the equines in her world.Cooperative care is something we could and really should all be training with our horses, to make daily care activities a breeze & emergency care activities less stressful. It also has the most wonderful flow-on effects to all our training and the relationship we have with our equines, so it is well worth investing our time into. A few notes on this episode for you…It was very remiss of me, in this conversation, not to invite Peggy to introduce herself more fully to you. I’ve no doubt many of you will already be familiar with Peggy’s work, but not everyone will. I can tell you that Peggy & I have already spoken about another podcast episode conversation we’d like to record and so I’ll make sure we capture Peggy’s story then.Just a couple of things or people Peggy mentions this episode that it’s just worth defining for you:Dr Susan Friedman has a business called Behavior Works, the US spelling of Behavior, and runs courses through that platform for those of us in the animal training sphere. I’ve participated twice in the Living and Learning with Animals course – which I know Peggy has attended many, many times.Clicker Expo – this is an annual, now twice annual conference event run by Karen Pryor Academy based in the US. In late January, early February-ish is a virtual expo, which means those of us living far away can attend live & watch back recordings. There’s also an in-person Expo that happens too. I’ve attended the virtual Clicker Expo a couple of times now and can say it is full of so much inspiring, educational information and practical things to play with, with our animal friends.There are more people mentioned and terms used like in every episode, that I missed catching & defining for you, but hopefully you get the gist enough and can start looking things up that peak you’re interest… and also, we have more to discuss in future episodes.Join Peggy and I now, as we delve into the world of Cooperative Care… with us attempting great restraint on not getting too far into the training weeds … and they were some tempting weeds I tell you but we managed to mostly stay on track. Peggy Hogan:Through her business, The Best Whisper is a Click, Peggy Hogan has traveled internationally providing clicker training clinics, and more recently, online coaching and courses generously sharing knowledge of Clicker Training horses. She has been a speaker at Clicker Expo since 2013.  Her background in training includes Natural Horsemanship and an in-depth study of the teachings of Peggy Cummings, founder of Connected Riding. In the late 90's there was little information on using positive reinforcement with horses, so after an introduction from Alexandra Kurland, Peggy learned from professional clicker trainers of many other species, world renowned trainers like Ken Ramirez, as well as diving into the science behind the training with Dr. Susan Friedman. Peggy has investigated ways to add more shaping, capturing, luring, and targeting to her clicker training for horses program. Horses offer complex behaviors freely if given the choice, behaviors that range from agility to freestyle to husbandry to medical procedures. Peggy is currently teaming up with Monty Gwynne from Equispeak to reach the online community for teaching this amazing technology. In this episode we discuss:1:24 - episode introduction & notes5:39 - introducing & welcoming Peggy Hogan8:50 - what is ‘cooperative care’?12:32 - in what context is it used - what does it look like / what is it used for?19:07 - how much easier so many activities become with cooperation24:21 - cooperative care in Zoo’s versus in the equine world & the need to know how to train that’s built into ownership27:27 - with most horse owners being female, needing to empower & take care of ourselves without the fight28:32 - misused of the word ‘liberty’ and defining what that means in Peggy’s world30:41 - how did Peggy get interested in cooperative care32.43 - exploring what could develop when the animal had more control & being inspired by a YouTube video33.57 - collaborating with Eva Bertilsson & Emelie Johnson Vegh & presenting at Clicker Expo on ‘Animals in Control’ & the beginning of the ‘start buttons’ label35.16 - is cooperative care for all equines? & the difference between emergencies & our ‘bread & butter’ training39:24 - a little training can go a long way41:06 - where to begin45:07 - moving from ‘start buttons’ to ‘continue buttons’, having a ‘stop button’ & taking a ‘no’ as data, not personally51:35 - cognitive dissonance trips us all up in our journey’s sometimes: more about the concept of & label that is ‘respect’55:08 - cooperative care is a label too - what does it really mean55:52 - painting a picture for you1:00:55 - when learning for cooperative care, it extends to everything - it’s a gold mine1:06:03 - ‘discretionary effort’ & it can be scary initially, when an animal offers1:08:15 - where to find out more1:10:55 - recapping & the power of filming & reviewing your training1:15:13 - learning it right the first time is way easier than having to fix problems created when learning with poor information - learn from experienced coaches/instructors/trainers1:18:16 - episode wrap-up & what’s coming up at Abbey’s Run & next week Links from Peggy:Home: www.thebestwhisperisaclick.comCourses: www.clickertraininghorses.com/storeFB: https://www.facebook.com/peggyhogan1?mibextid=ZbWKwLFB business page: https://www.facebook.com/ClickerTrainingHorses?mibextid=ZbWKwLInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/clickertraininghorses?igsh=OGQ5ZDc2ODk2ZA==YouTube: https://youtube.com/@PeggyHogan?feature=shared Our links mentioned this episode:  Sign-up to our email listAbbey's Run Equestrian websiteAbbey's Run Equestrian on Facebook Thank you to Matthew Bliss for podcast production & consultation. If you'd like him to help with your podcast, get in touch by email at [email protected]