Hest

16/04/2023

27/11/2022

Okay, det var egentlig ikke planen, at jeg ville lukke flere ind på kurset nu, men så var der en, der fandt et gammelt link og meldte sig til og så tænkte jeg: "ja, hvorfor ikke". Så jeg lukker lidt flere ind, hvis der er interesse.

Jeg kan se i mit system, at der er flere, der meldte sig til sidst, som ikke åbnede bekræftelsesmailen lige efter de havde meldt sig til og klikkede på knappen. Så husk at finde bekræftelsesmailen (evt. i spam) og bekræft - ellers må jeg ikke sende mails til dig og så kan jeg jo ikke sende dig et link til kurset.

Begynderkursus i klikkertræning af heste.

26/08/2022

En gratis masterclass fra den fænomenale Karolina Westlund Friman i forbindelse med at hun snart kommer med sit nye store kursus om problemadfærd. Jeg har været med som pilottester på det store kursus og tygger mig stadig igennem de store mængder information og viden hun byder på. Men altså her en lille gratis forsmag 😊

https://fb.watch/f8efsztHzV/

31/07/2022

Siden maj har jeg afprøvet mit online "Kom godt i gang med klikkertræning"-kursus med et par modige kursister. Det har været total optur for mig og for mine kursister. Derfor vil jeg gerne invitere flere med som testere.

Læs mere og skriv dig op via linket, hvis du vil lære at klikkertræne din hest. Måske har du ikke prøvet det før og vil gerne lære det ordentligt fra starten eller også har du prøvet det før, uden at det rigtig er blevet godt?

Jeg tør næsten garantere, at du får mere end du forventer. Du får det til introduktionspris.

Begynderkursus i klikkertræning af heste.

25/05/2022

Karen Pryor.

Jeg tror ikke, at der findes nogen anden person på jorden, der har haft større betydning for at rykke træningen af dyr i en mere human retning, end hun har.

Der findes ikke en person, der har haft større betydning for spredningen af positiv forstærkning og klikkertræning og som konsekvens deraf øget velfærden for mange forskellige racer verden over.

Her er lidt om, hvad hun laver nu :-).

WHERE IS KAREN PRYOR AND WHAT IS SHE STILL TEACHING US?

A most sincere Happy Birthday to Karen Pryor, whose remarkable reach has improved the quality of life for all species of learners, and their trainers and teachers. Read more here: https://www.clickertraining.com/where-is-karen-pryor

06/05/2022

Skal det være denne sommer, du endelig får lært at klikkertræne din hest?

Eller måske har du prøvet det før og det skal være denne sommer, hvor du lykkes med det?

Hop med på mit "kom godt i gang med klikkertræning af din hest" forløb.

Det er nyt online kursus, som du får mulighed for at være med på til en særlig introduktionspris. Til gengæld håber jeg, at du vil give mig dine kommentarer og tanker undervejs om, hvad du synes om kurset, så jeg kan forbedre det.

Kurset er online, så du behøver ikke at læsse hesten og køre nogen steder hen. Jeg kan sagtens hjælpe dig og din hest ved, at du sender mig videoer af de øvelser, jeg giver dig og jeg giver feedback på videoerne. Det er en utrolig effektiv måde at lære på - særligt med dyr, som vi ikke altid kan slæbe med rundt til diverse clinics. Du og din hest kan træne trygt hjemme hos jer selv og samtidig få personlig coaching. Det giver også muligheden for, at du kan lære af de spørgsmål og videoer, som de andre studerende sender ind og som jeg giver feedback på.

Jeg har lavet et ambitiøst begynderkursus. Det er altså ikke et kursus, der kun skraber overfladen og som du er færdig med på en uge. Vi går i dybden og starter med at lægge et solidt fundament for dit fremtidige samarbejde med din hest. Og vi undgår nogle af de største faldgrupper undervejs. Vi sætter dig og din hest op til succes med klikkertræning, så I får den bedste start.

Kurset koster 240 kr. Det er mindre end en beskæring eller et (brugt?) underlag. Personligt synes jeg, at det er et lille beløb for at komme godt i gang med en indlæringsform som potentielt kan berige både dit og helt sikkert din hests liv og gøre jeres venskab endnu stærkere.

Jeg lukker ikke så mange ind i første omgang - tænker højest 6 personer. De første 5 personer, der skriver sig op via linket nedenfor, vil blive tilbudt en plads (der er allerede en, der er i gang med kurset). Resten vil få besked, når jeg åbner for anden version af kurset.

Læs mere her og skriv dig op her:
https://www.subscribepage.com/begynd_klik_maj_22

16/02/2022

Giver god mening, synes jeg.. 😊

AV tjek lige at dine spænder der på trensen, ikke sidder lige på kæbeleddet.

Det er smertefuldt for hesten, og påvirker hele dens krop…

Det er bare en af de vigtige punkter på trensen jeg altid tjekker, når jeg laver bid og trensetilpasning i forbindelse med mundhuleundersøgelser..

Biddets pasform er vigtig, men det hjælper ikke hesten, at ha et perfekt bid, hvis trensen ikke passer eller hvis hesten har ondt i en eller flere tænder..

Hos mig er bid og trensetilpasning inkluderet i prisen for en Mundhuleundersøgelse- fordi det er så vigtigt for din hests velvære..

http://www.xn--dyrlge-heidinielsen-oxb.dk/

15/02/2022

Endnu et eksempel på virkelig lækker træning. Her fra en af Monty Gwynnes studerende. Equispeak by Monty Gwynne

https://youtu.be/FbtiWBjLlQM

this is a young horse who has been trained only with R+ demonstrating his coming to the mounting block, a permission cue for mounting and then a request to e...

14/02/2022

What behaviours are you accidentially reinforced while working on something else?

Example: Zaphir steps on to the mat. I love it and instantly give him a click and a treat. Such a good boy, right :-)!
He shuffles his feet a little, then steps off the mat and back on it again. I click and treat.

What did I just do? I reinforced both the stepping on the mat but also likely the shuffling of feet and stepping off the mat! If I keep doing that, I might end up with a chain of behaviors consisting of two unwanted behaviors (stepping off and shuffling) that I have effectively but inadvertently reinforced while working on the desired third behavior of the chain: step on the mat.

I might also have created a superstitious behavior, so now Zaphir is convinced that the correct behaviors are stepping on to the mat AND stepping off AND shuffling his feet. He is now completely sure that those three things are what he is supposed to do. And the more he gets to practice them the stronger all of the behaviors become and the harder to get rid of.

But I did click the right behavior, and I did have good timing and I did deliver the treat timely and without fumbling. I did good and still I got into trouble!?

Because of classical conditioning the events get stringed together and all of them are reinforced to some degree. And this is how sometimes we get into trouble even when we have good timing and other good trainer skills.

The events happening closer in time to the click becomes more reinforced than the events further away (in time) from the click. So the clicked on behavior is reinforced stronger than the preceeding behaviors. So you have to be careful about what happens before the reinforcement.

What undesired behaviors did you inadvertently reinforce?

26/01/2022

One day.

19/01/2022

You know whats annoying?

When you train a dog to touch your hand and hold the nose on the hand, but the dog licks you hand in stead! And that licking behavior is unwanted and SO difficult to get rid of. Yes, I am speaking from experience.

Or you have tried to train a horse to go through a doorway that she for some reason didnt like and now she will move a couple of steps forward, one backwards, stop, two steps forward, one backwards, stop ... and so forth. And you seem to not be able to get her to just go forwards!

Or you taught your mini to touch a target and now he bites it.. so you got more than you bargained for!

The thing is, when you click and treat for a specific response, the behaviors your horse did right before that response will also be reinforced. Maybe his ears were pinned? Maybe he shuffled his feet?, maybe he leaned backwards? Those behaviors will be reinforced along with the desired behavior. The behaviors closest to the one you clicked for will be more reinforced than the ones further away in time. But they will all be more likely after the reinforcement.

Its not my fault! You can blame Pavlov and his "learning by association".

I used to be a master of unwanted chains of behavior. And I might also have created a couple of superstitious behaviors too - without wanting it.

I know know that Induction and Indirect reinforcement was to blame. Knowing about it makes it easier to avoid. And there is a couple of techniques to use. I will talk about them in upcoming posts

Have you tried it? what unwated behaviors have you accidentially trained when you were working on something else?

07/01/2022

👏👏♥️♥️👏👏♥️♥️👏👏♥️♥️

02/01/2022

Godt nytår!

Jeg har lavet et "Kom godt i gang med at klikkertræne din hest" online kursus og der er plads til et par stykker mere, derfor har jeg besluttet at holde åbent for tilmelding en uges tid mere.

Det koster 240 kr i introduktionspris. Det er ikke meget at give for en indføring i klikkertræning med øvelser, som du kan få feedback på og hjælp og vejledning undervejs. Du har endda adgang til materialet et helt år og mulighed for hjælp fra mig de første 3 måneder.

Læs mere og skriv dig op til kurset eller til mit nyhedsbrev her:
https://www.subscribepage.com/begynder-klikker-kursus

Håber vi ses.

Mange hilsner

Kristin Due Holmegaard

Begynderkursus i klikkertræning af heste.

26/11/2021

Take the treat gently, please!

It probably goes without saying that if you want to use food in your training, you need your horse to be gentle or it might become a painful experience to be an R+ trainer.

My horses mostly take their food gently. I taught them to. One of them didnt seem to have to learn, she just takes the treats gently..

But another one had a hard time when I introduced food in training. He would move towards my hand with an open mouth and teeth first 😱. Fortunately there are some hand feeding techniques that reduce a horse’s tendency to grab for the treat. However, the way you deliver a treat might reduce grabbynes but it might not solve the problem entirely, because the problem sometimes goes a bit deeper. And if you really want you horse to be relaxed around treats or food in general you have to do more than learn fancy hand movements.

For me it was a long process that, apart from the actual delivery techniques, also involved teaching him that food could arrive from other places than my hand - like in a bucket or on the ground. That treats would ALWAYS arrive when I was around (he would never miss out), that he would have something to chew on constantly and food would always be available. That he would always get his face stuffed when other horses were around.

I would rather give one treat too many than one too few. And in training I would make sure that he was constantly chewing.

It was a question of me being consistent, predictable and trustworthy.

It was also a question of using the right treats. I had to experiment with that. Monty Gwynne and Peggy Hogan taught me about chew times. I tried many different types of treats and they were all judged on the basis of chewtime (how long does it take to chew), combined sugar and starch (preferably below 10% combined), no melasses and value (not too high and not too low).

I recently learned new feeding techniques from . It got me thinking even more about the topic.

I would really want to talk about food in training and all of the issues related to that - good and bad.

Did/so you have any issues with using food with you horse? How did/do you deal with it?

09/11/2021

05/11/2021

I wholeheartedly believe that you can train anything with a clicker and a bunch of treats. Heck, you can get a long way with a number of well-timed treats and no clicker!
…
I aspire to get as close to pressure-free in my training as I possible can. Or phrased differently: I apply positive reinforcement and avoid negative reinforcement. I don’t mix if I can avoid it. In a training session I am very close to being pressure-free or pure R+/positive reinforcement or whatever you might call it. Which means that I train everything with a secondary and a primary reinforcer (mostly a click sound and some food).
…
Out side of a training session I might apply some pressure. For instance I might pull on the rope a little when I am in a hurry and the horse doesn’t move or when the vet is here and we need to get something done. In an ideal world I would have prepared for these situations so that I didn’t have to use pressure, in the real world I haven’t trained for everything - yet 😬.
…
Needless to say I use A LOT of food in and out side of training (one might say thah everything you do with your animal is training or learning). Because, lets face it, food is a powerful primary reinforcer with horses. And no wonder: Horses spend most of their lives searching for food and eating. Play, scratches, praise etc is a bit more difficult to apply in horse training than food, in my experience..
…
Where are you on the scale:
“no food” “a lot of food” in training?
…
And where would you like to be?

03/11/2021

I almost have 300 followers now which is great ♥️😊👏. Thank you for following. I know that a lot of you are training horses and/or other animals with positive reinforcement. Maybe some of you have been “pressure free” for years and others may just be starting out, finding your own way on this track.

You are probably on the positive reinforcement path for a reason. Would you share why positive reinforcement is important to you? Would you tell me in the comments?

I am here in the deep end of positive reinforcement training because of frustrated horses and my desire to un-frustrate them and hopefully make them happier. I will put a longer explanation in the comments 😊

02/11/2021

First impressions count

They really do. Especially when it comes to the potential for a new experience to cause fear.

Why is this? Well the first time we experience something, our brains are busy noticing every detail and paying close attention to the experience. If something happens that really frightens us, the situation and the fear can become inextricably linked. There is no prior experience telling us that the situation is usually safe, so our brain learns that that particular environment is scary and something we should try and avoid. So for a horse that had a painful procedure the first time they met a veterinarian and has associated veterinarians with fear (of pain), will experience that fear every time they see or smell the vet.

Last week I took my baby for his first swimming lesson. I was excited, anticipating a fun session for him, splashing around getting used to the water, in the company of other babies. We certainly started out that way, but then the instructor asked us to sit them on the edge of the (chest deep on me) pool
‘Just line them up’ she said, ‘and I will come along and push them in’.
Errr, say what now? There was no way I was going to let her push my baby into the water! That would be so frightening for him and so likely to create a fear of water - the exact opposite of my goal for bringing him to the class in the first place!
My heart started beating faster, I hadn’t prepared for this, I didn’t have an articulate argument ready, I came here to have a lovely time, not a confrontation. As I took my baby out into the pool well away from the edge, I watched her push the other little babies into the water. My heart broke to see the big round eyes of a little girl as she clung to her mother, wet hair plastered down. Another little one swallowed water and had to be taken out as he started vomiting. His mother left without looking back. I recall how quiet it was after all the dunking. Where before there had been splashing and delighted shrieks, now the babies clung to their mothers, silent and watchful.
‘Yeah’, I said to the instructor when she motioned for us to participate, ‘we’re not doing that’.

We didn’t participate and we won’t be going back, but the experience has left me pondering 2 things:

1. We need to remember that feelings attach themselves to situations and experiences, especially first experiences. And if those feelings are particularly strong (like a really scary experience or traumatic event), they can persist. This is one of the ways a fear of water, or horse floats, or needles can get established. The horse who ends up in a traffic accident the very first time they travel in a horse float is likely to be far more frightened of the horse float and problematic to load next time, than one who has the same traffic accident after floating calmly and uneventfully many times. This is why it is soooo important that we try and manage all our horses ‘first’ experiences as much as possible to make them as likely as possible to go well.

2. We are our horses’ only advocate. Sometimes we will find ourselves in positions we didn’t expect and, like me with my baby in his swimming class, we need to speak up to protect them from what could be a traumatic or frightening experience that could create a negative association. This can be sooo difficult because we are taught from a young age not to question professionals and socially, there is a lot of pressure to comply with requests and do what everyone else is doing. It is difficult, but vital that we are prepared to advocate for our horses and keep the ‘thank you, but no’ and the ‘I’m not comfortable with that, do we have another option’, cards in our back pocket for those times when an instructor wants to teach our horse a lesson we are not comfortable with, or we are asked to do something at a clinic, or by a farrier, vet or other equine professional that doesn’t fit with our ethics.

Fear is not a fun emotion to experience. Whether it’s fear from a trauma or scary event in the moment, or being triggered long afterwards because the feeling of fear has become associated with something in the original environment. Fear associations can be difficult and time consuming to change. It’s our job as horse guardians to do everything in our power to prevent them from being made in the first place.

27/10/2021

My new logo is ready and I am in love with it 🥰😍

I am going to enjoy putting it into the online courses I am planning.. and my new newsletter.. haven’t decided if I am going to do it all in both Danish and English or just one of the languages to begin with.. but no matter what my choice is going to be its going to have a beautiful logo 😊♥️

22/10/2021

Felix and I waiting to do some live training on this evening’s webinar on duration with Jan Østergaard and Ryan Cartlidge .

The concept was that Felix and I should do some nose targeting on the basis of instructions from Jan and ideas from the audience.. it was fun but we are pretty tired now 😄.

Felix did good. Love him to the Moon and back ♥️♥️♥️

12/09/2021

Sometimes its all about the dog. It makes me happy when he is happy…

that goes for my husband too btw😆. I love these walks with only him, me and Felix.

And this view makes the mind and soul relax. Everything falls into place just for a while. Perfect for conversation and to just move and breathe.

Inhale. exhale. be.

11/09/2021

Say cheese… no really, I want some of that cheese, hand it over, please 😬.

04/09/2021

When the neighbour got a new horse 😊

03/09/2021

Zaphir is rocking this! Nice leg work if I may say so 😊👏👍💪

Front end movement in progress.

Getting more steps while trying to keep a good and sound movement, which means:

- hind legs should move as little as possible
- body weight on the back legs to ease up movement in the front
- outer front leg steps to the side and a little back
- Inner front leg crosses over in front of the other leg

As I said, its work in progress but I am happy with this approximation 😊

01/09/2021

Look who’s back ♥️❤️🧡💛💚💙💜

He has not been feeling well for a looong time and I have been frustrated and sad and helpless. I have done everything in my power and still he has been in much pain and painkillers didnt work.

But now he seems a lot better. We can even go for walks. I have never been happier about him doing stuff I would rather he didnt - like drag me or run away from me when I want to take him away from grass and all the annoying little things he was unable to do for too long. The first time he tried to get away from me I cried from happiness..

I love you my little Sovs ♥️♥️♥️

♥️horses

17/07/2021

Ja, det er præcis hvad jeg oplever med alle dyrerne 👍.

Dyr der trænes primært med positiv forstærkning vil være ivrige efter at gøre mere! Hvis du forventer 3 skridt tilbage får du 6, hvis du beder om hurtigere skridt får du trav og for det meste behøver du ikke bede om det overhovedet! Hesten vil tilbyde det helt af sig selv - fordi den synes at det er for fedt at gøre det..

Det er bla. derfor at jeg elsker at træne sammen med dyrerne på denne måde..

Have you heard of Discretionary Effort?

"Discretionary effort is the level of effort people could give if they wanted to, but above and beyond the minimum required." —Aubrey C. Daniels, Ph.D.

It's one of the amazingly positive "fall outs" from Positive Reinforcement.

When we gain something we like for our behaviour, we feel good! It also makes us feel good about lots of things connected to the behaviour we were positively reinforced for. In a work situation, this could mean feeling good about our job, our co-workers, our workplace and even our boss!

The same goes for horse training. When we train our horses with Positive Reinforcement, they feel good about everything connected to the training. They like us, the training environment, the gear and what they are doing. We get this wonderful merging of extrinsic motivation with intrinsic motivation to do things and do even more things - because the horse enjoys it.

This can be the horse making that extra unexpected effort. My horse Mercedes will offer a trot when I'm shaping a faster walk, or will continue to do laps of the obstacle course when she's supposed to be having a break, or my donkey Seymour will push his face quite hard into my hand when I'm shaping (gentle) face targets.

It's a pretty wonderful thing when you start to notice it.

It's not something that you'll ever get from using Negative Reinforcement, which is where the animal will only do the bare minimum required.

How great is Positive Reinforcement! You can read more about Discretionary Effort in this link, where the corporate world is getting on the feel good band wagon, in order to not only motivate, but keep staff happy :-

https://www.smore.com/rzygf-discretionary-effort-through-r

(Photo Credit: Aubrey Daniels International, Inc.)

14/07/2021

What are you guys doing?

I am working on having Zaphir make a bit of room to Clearmont by the gate when I let her in. Some time in the future It would be nice if he would just take a couple of steps back when I arrive with another horse.

I am not being super formal-training-session about it. We are working on back up more formally and then whenever I pass the gate and he is there I hold my arm out so that he steps back to get the treat. He is beginning to step back more when I come with Clearmont. Its actually a big deal with him. He used to be very irritable whenever food was around and he world lash out at the other horses. So I am proud of him.

Would love to hear what other people are working with.