Reward Your Horse Training

27/07/2024

Here’s my take on the Charlotte Dujardin news. I can’t say I’m shocked, but I can say that I’ve been thinking about tbe ethicality of using animals for competition. What are your thoughts?

04/10/2023

Acclimating a horse to a new location can take time. My horse moved to a new barn in April, and took a long time to habituate to the sight and sounds of cars, motorcycles, and other vehicles near the arena. When I took her into the arena or barn early on, she would go over threshold and start pacing the fence line in panic. So we didn’t do that for a while. I worked on behaviors in her paddock or the round pen and took her for walks and grazes near the road. We just tried the arena again yesterday- and I made sure to set her up with productive things to do. She had several feeding stations and a well familiar exercise involving cones, which served as a visual reminder of what we were doing. Guin had a few moments of worry but didn’t lose her mind and remained calm the entire time. Small steps for the win!

02/11/2022

New student Teaspoon

24/09/2022

The power of environmental cues, a story.
When I was putting my horse Guinevere away after work, she decided that rather than hanging with the other horses in the paddock, she wanted to go back and play some more. Silly me hadn’t locked the gate, so out she went, without a halter.
Catching her isn’t a problem, but I hate being the no fun party p**per.
But what actually transpired was this:
Guin left the paddock and stopped on the mat where we always stop for me to close the door and for her to be reinforced. This was our routine, and she very much stuck to it even without being attached to me. I clicked and treated. Then I asked her to put her nose in the halter, which she did easily. I clicked and treated. I told her she was a very good girl (click/treat). And then we went back into the paddock. It was a good moment.

04/07/2022

A Facebook friend shared videos of some prep with her horses for fireworks. In the video, a group of horses was standing in a paddock and then what sounded like firework noises were played over speakers. The horses all spooked and ran.

I really appreciate this person's effort to prepare her horses for tonight, but it really got me thinking of how this process could be improved to make it less stressful for the horses and actually be effective at decreasing the horse's response to that stimulus.

What people don't understand is that exposure alone does not decrease reactions to scary stimuli and can actually have the opposite effect causing sensitisation. So, going out to your horses' pasture and playing loud firework sounds at random can actually cause their reactions to that stimulus to increase - that's sensitization. This is why our horses don't get better after experiencing a few 4th of July nights in America!

In systematic desensitization we slowly introduce the scary stimulus in small increments that the horse can handle. Every horse in the video reacted with flight, so this process was not systematic desensitization. It was not flooding either because the horses were able to escape- they ran and the noise stopped. This is why their process falls under sensitization.

It could work through habituation, but only if the stimulus occurred in regular intervals. Habituation happens when a scary stimulus is a part of the animal's habitat. For example, my horses were kept in a pasture that's fence line ran parallel with the train tracks. The tracks were probably twenty feet from the fence. When the first train came by, it terrified my horses, but after living in that pasture for a week, they didn't even bother to lift their heads from grazing when they heard the train. This is habituation. Horses learn to disregard stimuli that is unimportant in order to focus on other stimuli that is. This happens when the horse is regularly exposed to the stimulus and over time they learn that it does not harm them and they can safely ignore it. The key word here is regularly. The stimulus must occur often enough for the horse to become habituated.

Doing a few random sessions of playing firework sounds at full blast will just terrorize and sensitize horses to that stimulus. The intentions are good, but ineffective at best, and damaging at worst.

How can we modify this approach to make it less stressful and actually effective?

First, start by introducing the soundtrack at a lower volume. If the horses notice it, turn it down a bit and start there.

Second, play the soundtrack on repeat or at regular intervals in the days leading up to the 4th of July.

Third, gradually increase the volume to full intensity.

In this approach you are keeping the horse below threshold by systematically introducing the stimulus at a level the horses can handle and using the frequency of the stimulus to habituate the horse. It becomes a part of their environment and they know it won't hurt them and is not important. This approach could work without being too stressful or traumatizing.

Randomly inducing fear makes horses more fearful. That's sensitization. Counter conditioning is a great way to help your horse accept loud noises, but if you have a barn full of horses to prepare, a combination of systematic desensitization and habituation could help make nights like tonight a little easier on everyone.

Stay safe tonight.

29/06/2022

Horse owners are all too aware of how a physical injury can temporarily sideline - or even permanently cripple - their horse. This knowledge leads most owners to do their best to minimize physical injury: raising foals with maximum turnout opportunities properly conditioning their horse for the dema...

03/06/2022

Shaping a retrieve has not been easy for Guin and I. I thought it would take a couple of weeks. This is where we are after a year- our first actual steps of retrieve.
Here are a few variables I played with:
- finding an object Guin wanted to bite
- building a bite
- lifting her head with the object from a chair
- lifting the object from the floor
- building duration on holding the object
- moving with the object
- moving towards my hand
- a slight tug as the release cue
We took weeks off. We had very very short sessions maybe once a week. We always went back to places we could be successful. We made no progress for months. But we gained confidence. And now look at us.
Today, Guin whinnied when she brought the ball to me for the first time. I like to think it is because things finally made sense to her. “Oh, this is what you wanted? I can do that, mom.”

30/05/2022

27/05/2022

Will you look at this lovely balance? It is brought to you by dressage done with clicker training, most recently inspired by Monty Gwynn, the Balance Through Movement method done with clicker training, careful hand feeding techniques, and of course bodywork by
Proof that you don’t *need* pressure to develop that thoracic sling.

22/05/2022

Guin has a storied history of VERY BAD THINGS HAPPENING when saddle pads are involved. She’s keeping both ears on the pad but still giving me the go ahead (head lowering). We are now learning that pad on = VERY FUN THINGS HAPPENING in the form of beloved cues (head lower and smile). It takes the time it takes.

21/05/2022

Preparing for “air bubble pets” with the start button. does a lovely job getting Agnes more comfortable with petting movements!

15/05/2022

and I spent a fun day at the Fort Dalles Horse Affair, showcasing R+ training and promoting a rewards-based training approach!

05/05/2022

This is totally normal, right?
Overkill by Man At Work as enrichment for my horse during breakfast in duet with Rowdy Roddy Rooster

28/04/2022

My little overachiever is lifting her leg much higher than needed for our school halt prep work, but considering that she couldn’t lift it on that side at all 3 weeks ago… calling it a win!

24/04/2022

Cues are funny things. Frequently we think one aspect of our training is the cue, for example the thing we say or the gesture we perform, but who is to say what our horse thinks the cue is? It could also be our body position or something in the environment.
Before I give the hind end movement a verbal cue, I want to make sure that the behavior is at least independent of where my body is located. For this reason, I put myself into a variety of positions and see how Guin does. Safe to say she aced the quiz!

16/04/2022

What to do when things aren’t going the way you want to as a trainer?

Guin and I had gotten a few steps of shoulder in here and there, so I thought we could just take the training wheels off and move on. Turns out… that wasn’t really the case. The behavior broke down. So I just kept trying. And it didn’t work. (Of course.)

I could have given up, but I didn’t.

Instead, I ended up going back to basics, retraining each cue and reviewing the basic exercises that moved us closer to the shoulder in goal.

I immediately felt happier and more motivated around this, and so did Guin. She had become quite frustrated around this training before.

Go back to where you are comfortable. Do something that works and then build from there. You don’t have to go through extinction bursts, nor should your horse. Taking a step backward can be a step forward!

15/04/2022

Training is great. It’s important. I love it. But today we took a nap together, and then Guin ate some hay while I scooped p**p. We just hung out. I asked nothing of her (except for a few selfies) and she asked nothing of me in return. It was blissful.

Do nothing with your horse. Spend time hanging out. Give scratches if they’re welcome, but be ready to keep your primate hands to yourself too. Take a nap.
Your horse will love it.