What would you like to accomplish with your horse in 12 months?

What is ONE thing you would love to accomplish with your horse (using R+) within the next 12 months?

That’s one of the questions I asked my Facebook community and I’m looking forward to the answers everyone gives.

The answer is of course, very individual. When I ask this question, most people don’t have an answer right away.

I think this is a good question to ponder about and let it sink in: What would make your heart sing, if you could do X with your horse?

Benefits of writing your goals down

When people have a goal write it down AND share it, they immediately increased the likelihood of accomplishing it!

Please share yours below!

In the Clicker Training Academy we have monthly interactive workshops on Zoom. In September we’re going to create a ONE YEAR Personal Clicker Training Plan for each member! It’s about:

Becoming aware of your wishes for your horse

Creating your personal guideline for your clicker training

Working diligently towards your Personal goals with clicker training.

Living the life you want, accomplishing what you wish to do with your horse

Send me a n email (hippologic@clickertraining.ca) if you want to hear more about the workshop or the Academy.

What will you accomplish with clicker training?

It will be so much fun to look back in 12 months from now and see how MUCH you’ve accomplished, just because you created a focus!

I would love to tag you in one year in this very same post to ask you: “How much of your goals have you accomplished?”

Need help training your horse?

Are you a compassionate horse owner who wants to build a strong friendship with your horse? Would you like to understand your horse better and help your horse to understand YOU better? Get access to many online clicker training courses and a fabulous, supportive R+ community in our HippoLogic Clicker Training Academy. Check out the link!

Not sure? Start with a free clicker training assessment to get taste of what it feels like to work with me. When you have a specific struggle that you want to overcome, don’t hesitate to contact me. In this assessment you’ll discover what’s holding you back from accomplishing the things you want with your horse. After our conversation you’ll know exactly what to do, in order to move forward towards your goals.

Book here

Happy Horse training!
Sandra Poppema, B.Sc., founder of HippoLogic & HippoLogic Clicker Training Academy

Join us!

https://mailchi.mp/5d676526ba5a/clicker-training-academy

5 Steps to Accomplish Your Equestrian Goals in 2019

For those who are following my blog or my students it is obvious: I like to accomplish things! It also makes me very happy if I see other people accomplish their goals! That is why we live, right. To evolve and learn and enjoy life!

Goal setting? But horse riding is my hobby…

Not much horse owners think in ‘goals’ if they think about their horse. It’s a hobby so they don’t think it applies. I think it does!

Remember why you bought your horse in the first place: to ride, to trail ride, to drive or to have fun with (specify that). Are you?

There are your goals. They are just a bit buried and you have to unwrap and reveil them. ‘Riding my horse’, what does that mean to you? Trail riding? Winning dressage competitions? Once a week a lesson with your own horse, ride 3 times a week for 20 minutes or ride 5 days a week for an hour?

Are you living your dream?

Do you do what you had in mind when you bought your horse? Yes? Congrats and I want to hear all about it (share it in a comment)! If not, why not?

Maybe you did bought your horse to ride and you did ride him for many years, but he is a senior and you stopped riding. Or you did ride your horse, but fell off and now you’re scared to go back on. Or you bought a young horse and then got into clicker training and you simply don’t know where and how to start…

Step 1: Knowing what you want

If you know what you want it’s easy to get it. Sometimes you have to dig deeper and ask yourself at least 5 times ‘Why’? This gets you to the root of what you want. Why did you get this horse?
Another approach I use in my online goal setting course for equestrians is to find out what you dreamt about before you got a horse? Or go back to your childhood to get clues about your dreams and desires.

Step 2: Get help in order to speed things up

When you know what you want you can search specifically for the help you need to get it. If you want to ride your horse with R+ or create a stronger bond than you look for an experienced positive reinforcement instructor. If you want to ride competitions you can narrow your search for an excellent rider that has didactic skills to help you too.

No one has accomplished great things on his own! You don’t have to. If you get the help you need to accomplish your goals it is time and money well spent! It saves you time, money, frustration and making unnecessary faults (that can impact the relationship with your horse or with yourself!) if you don’t want to invent the wheel again.

Don’t worry about ‘skipping the learning process’ there is plenty to learn! I speak out of experience.

Step 3: Divide your goal into achievable steps

Clicker training improves the bond with your horse

When you know what you want you can divide your goals into smaller steps. This is one of the 6 HippoLogic Key Lessons (Your Key to Success) for trainers: make a plan.

The more steps the easier it is to accomplish them. Write them down, so it becomes very clear. Don’t forget to celebrate each step in order to stay motivated!

Step 4: Find yourself an accountability partner!

This is where I see things go off track easily. It is easy to make plans, but without coming into action nothing will happen! When nothing happens you will feel bad. If you feel bad you get paralyses and voila: procrastination happens!

An accountability partner (another Key Lesson for Trainers) is the one that will help you avoid that pitfall! He or she can also motivate you and help you get new insights and ideas to accomplish your goals.

I have helped many equestrians over the years. It works! You need to get weekly accountability in order to make it work. That is what I offer in my membership program.

Your need someone to cheer you on and celebrate with you! Who can do this better than the person who knows what your starting point was!

Step 5: Keep track, so you can look back

In order to stay motivated through the year (some goals take time to accomplish) keep track of your accomplishments. It’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking that you haven’t accomplished much. Your brain is always looking to the horizon (that what you haven’t accomplished yet) and it is very motivating to look back once in a while to see how far you’ve already came! Keeping a training journal and filming your training sessions/riding lessons is a really good way of keeping track.

Need help? Accountability or professional support?

January 1st 2019 starts HippoLogic’s online course Ultimate Equestrian Goal Formula. You will walk away with a clear goal and a clear training plan to accomplish it.
Are you going to make your Equestrian Dream come true in 2019?

Sandra Poppema, B.Sc.

I help horse owners get the results in training they really, really want with joy and easy for both horse and human. I always aim for win-win!

Sign up for HippoLogic’s newsletter (it’s free and it comes with a gift) or visit HippoLogic’s website and join my online course Ultimate Horse Training Formula in which you learn the Key Lessons, Your Key to Success in Clicker Training.

Follow my blog  on Bloglovin

PS Did you know HippoLogic has a membership (accountability) program?

5 Steps to your Personal List of Horse Training Goals

In April I asked the members of my Happy Herd Facebook group  “What struggle in Horse Training would you like to overcome?” One of the answers was “I wish I had a system or list with “to work on”-goals for the week”.

Here is how you can create your personal list of training goals that keeps you going.  It is not a simple 5 step list, it’s a process. Ready? Make sure you have a pen and paper.

Here is the video

 Step 1: Personal values

Make a list of the values you find important in the relationship with your horse and in training. If you take a moment to really think about your values it will become clear why it is so hard to work on certain goals. Chances are that they don’t fit your values anymore (see step 3).

Step 2: Future goals

Think about what you would like to have accomplished in 10 years, 5 years or 1 year from now with your horse.

If that’s too difficult, think of other equestrians. Ones who you admire. What can they do with their horses, that you would like to do, too?

Are there YouTube videos about horse training that inspire you?

Or just think back before you bought your horse: what did you have in mind when you were looking for your perfect horse? What was your goal?

Step 3: Does your goal fit into your values?

What part of your goal or goals fit your values? If it all fits: Great!

Are there parts of your goals that don’t fit in with your values? No worries, now you have your list with values you can think about the part or parts that don’t fit. Think about how you can adjust your goals so they do fit.

In the video above I give an example how I made my goals fit my values.

Step 4: Split your bigger goal into smaller goals

Now you have goals that fit your values think about the different aspects of that bigger goal. For trail riding you might need to practice trailer loading to go to trails, or if you need to cross a road you want your horse to be safe in traffic (despooking) or you need to work on separating your horse from the herd.

Think about how you can split these bigger goals into smaller goals.

Step 5: Make a list

If you made a list of your goals and all aspects of your bigger goal you can split them even further into smaller parts. Now you can make monthly goals, weekly goals and daily training sessions.

You can dedicate each month to a specific theme: January for despooking, February for separation training, March for traffic training and so on. Or you can work each training on a tiny bit of despooking, a tiny bit of separation anxiety and a tiny bit of something else that contributes to your goal.

[Step 6:] Just do it!

The last step is to plan your sessions in your agenda and stick with them for a month to see if this works for you!

Please share

If you think this is a blog that someone can benefit from, please use one of the share buttons  below. Or post your comment, I read them all!

Or simply hit the like button so I know you appreciated this blog. Thank you!

Sandra Poppema, B.Sc.

My mission is to improve human-horse relationships. I reconnect horse women with their inner wisdom and teach them the principles of learning and motivation, so they become confident and skilled to train their horse in a safe and effective way that is a lot of FUN for both human and horse. Win-win.

Sign up for HippoLogic’s newsletter (it’s free and it comes with a gift) or visit HippoLogic’s website and discover my online courses that will change your life.

Follow my blog  on Bloglovin

This is how I plan my Equestrian Year for 2018

Being successful gives me so much joy! Let’s talk about ‘success’ for a moment. This is what is mean to me. Success is what you want to achieve, not what others want for you or wanting to achieve what others have achieved.

I think the best way to ‘measure’ success is 1) Only look at your own accomplishments and only 2) compare yourself with yourself. 3) Achieving goals that you’ve written down (so you can actually achieve them and the criteria are not changing all the time). 4) Having fun and enjoying the journey is a big part of success for me!

3 Tips to Turn Your Training Journal into your most Effective Training Tool

The other day I was reading back in my training journal. I was in a bit of a rut and I realized how important my journal really is and what it brings me. I have accomplished more in horse training in the past 8 years, thanks to the use of my journal, than in the 25 years before that.

I used to have a ‘diary’ in which I wrote about my training, but it wasn’t helping me. My training journal became a very effective training tool when I changed how I was using it. Here is a little blurb based upon January 9th 2017,  ten months ago. It shows why I like using my journal. You will understand why I recommend it to all my clients.

 

Why writing down your goals is so important

The short term goal I wrote down in my journal in January this year was ‘cantering on the long reins over one long side of the arena‘.

 

My pitfall is -and maybe you do this too- is that I have a tendency to move the criteria of my goals all the time. The more progress I make, the more I ‘stretch’ my goal. I keep adding tiny details to it when I almost accomplished it.

The result is that I never feel ‘successful’ because I keep changing (adding to) my goal. Sounds familiar?

 

This doesn’t set me up for success, at all! I feel like a failure because I can never reach my goal. It is like the horizon: you can always see it, but never reach it.

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Pitfall #1 in horse training: people feel like a failure and give up.

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Success tip #1 Write. It. Down.

Is important to set your destination (not be the ‘horizon’) and divide it into smaller, achievable steps. It is important to describe it in detail. In other words: set clear criteria that you can measure. Suddenly it will be clear when you can check off your goal!

 

Write it down! That is so important! You won’t remember, you will add things to it if you don’t write it down. Believe me, I am doing this for 8 years and I never been so effective in my training!

 

I teach my clients this all the time and I see how much it helps them to look back at their goals from three weeks earlier. Then they see that they did make lots of progress and they start celebrating and patting themselves on the back and feel good! It’s awesome to see when that happens.

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Write down your goal and criteria for that goal before you start training!

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Quote from my training journal:

“When I practised long reins last Friday, Kyra cantered along one side of the arena! I didn’t realize how awesome this was. Instead I caught myself thinking: ‘This is not enough. She has to canter more collected.’ I also caught myself thinking: ‘She tried to get off the rail. I still haven’t reached my goal.‘

 

Then I stopped myself and thought: ‘This was not my short term goal: collected, and in a straight line and…, and… and…’

 

My goal was: Cantering along one long side of the track. Well, mission accomplished! We can do this now! Yeey us!

 

It was weird to realize that I reached my goal! Indeed, it was not yet a whole track in canter, but I did reach an important step towards that bigger goal!”

Success tip #2: Celebrate!

When I read back in my training journal I realized that cantering on the long reins on a straight line had been a struggle for us for over a year! So I decided I could use a little celebration to motivated me to keep going.

In order to celebrate I made a video and shared my success with my best friend, I dedicated a blog post on it and I shared it with my accountability partner. I got lots of praise and checked off my goal with a big green check mark in my journal! Wow, that felt good!

 

Time for the next step

My next (short term) goal is to work on ‘a collected canter along one side of the arena’ so I don’t have to run along. I will be satisfied with one stride, then two and so on, until be can do one long side of the arena. That is what I wrote in my training plan.

 

Another goal is to do this at the other long side of the arena (context shift), a separate goal is the other lead in canter and so on. Until everything comes together in a collected canter for minutes and including exercises as a circle.

 

Watch the video here:

https://youtu.be/af3FnEVybtQ

 

Be specific!

Writing goals down before you start is so important. The more specific you are the better. I tell myself that the criteria I didn’t wrote down or added later don’t count as criterion to celebrate!

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Make it a habit to write your goals down first!

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By working on this one goal (‘catering on the long reins’) I provided many smaller, short term, goals for myself. That is what I like best about training: one thing leads to another.

 

Success tip #3: Keep track

Another important thing is that helps me succeed in my training is to keep track of my accomplishments in my journal. I do this by making videos and pictures of our accomplished goals. I tend to forget what our starting point was, which is very human. My videos and photo albums with our accomplished goals are very tangible and keep track of our journey: Kyra, from feral filly to success story.

 

The feeling of accomplishment is MUCH bigger and more satisfying when you see where you really came from (your starting point) than when you only look at your latest achievement, which is always only a small part of the total of your bigger accomplishments.

 

When I am frustrated that things aren’t going as fast as I wish I have to remind myself that Kyra was a real wild horse and the first horse I started under saddle with positive reinforcement. I have to remind myself that I emigrated halfway the process and that this influenced our flow.

 

When I am frustrated the best thing is to take a look at my training logbooks, videos and photos of all our accomplished goals in order to feel better. When I do this I become always are very eager to go to the barn immediately and work on our next (tiny) goal.

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It's always the tiny goal that leads you to your biggest achievements!
- Sandra Poppema

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Read more about using a training journal successfully:

• Key to Success: Make a Plan
• Feel more Successful in Riding and Training your Horse
• Achieve Your Equestrian Goals in 5 Simple Steps

Sandra Poppema, B.Sc.

My mission is to improve horse-human relationships by educating equestrians about ethical and horse friendly training. I offer coaching to empower you to train your horse in a 100% animal friendly way that empowers both you and your horse.

Join the HippoLogic Clicker Training Academy to get online mentorship, coaching, R+ courses and a 100%R+ community!

How to Achieve Your Equestrian Goals

In December 2016 I started to offer an online course about Equestrian Goal setting. It’s one of my fun projects and my students really liked it.

What is your goal?

I enjoy helping other enthusiastic equestrians with splitting their goals into achievable steps. It has been so rewarding for me to see people achieve their own goals with a bit of help. I’ve been a riding instructor for decades and it always surprised me that experienced riders assumed I would set their goals. Their homework was: ‘Think about what you want to do with your horse” so I can help you achieve it.

I can help clients become a better dressage rider, but if they really want to be a jumper and I don’t know about it, they will never become be a good jumper if we don’t focus on some jumping techniques in the lessons.

Competitions

One client wanted to ride competitions, but her stallion hadn’t left her property for years. We trailer loaded him and drove to a nearby competition ground to practice. It was the day before the competition, so no one was there. It was a very good experience. We kept going to competitions until he was more settled being in an unfamiliar surrounding with unfamiliar horses. At home we worked on riding techniques. The day she was ready for a dressage competition, her stallion was ready, too.

Trail riding

Another client lived near a forest and she bought a horse for trail riding. She didn’t have an arena at home and trail riding was her dream. Her horse was really herd bound and on top of that he was terrified to walk pass the mailbox at the beginning of her drive way. She couldn’t get him of the premises without being afraid to land in the ditch next to her mailbox. After a few clicker training lessons and some groundwork we went out for rides together: she on her beloved horse and I rode her bike. Mission accomplished.

Other examples of goals my student have are teaching their horse to stand for the farrier, align their horse to the mounting block/standing still while mounting, Spanish walk, cantering under saddle and trailer loading.

Some goals are simple (just one behaviour) and others are much more complex (a chain of behaviours), but they all give you that satisfied feeling when you accomplish them. I always encourage people to celebrate their successes: big and small. In hindsight the small steps are big ones!

Read more about goal setting:
It’s December, start planning for next year
How to plan your week in 5 easy steps

Are your struggling with goals you want to achieve with your horse?

Do you have the feeling you haven’t made much progress or you could have achieved more if you only had some help? This is the course for you!

Benefits:

• Discover what your equestrian goals really are
• Learn techniques to set achievable goals
• Learn how to brake down a big goal into training sessions order to make it  achievable and realistic
• Learn how to stay motivated and on track, even if you ‘fail’ or if ‘life happens’
• Learn to track your achievements
• Celebrate your successes with like-minded people!

Once you master the tools and techniques I hand you in this course, you can benefit the rest of your life from it.

What students said about the course

“I had a really empowering online coaching from Sandra, helping me put my problems in perspective. Now Iliana and I are really focusing on not grabbing for food wherever she goes, and with baby steps we are getting there. Lots of other things to train too, but one thing at a time I think. Thank you, Sandra, you are in inspiration!” Patricia, Spain

“Through her online course on goal setting, Sandra has given me excellent help in how to set achievable goals for my horse training. I’m now better able to see what I need to work on and enjoying achieving my goals. Thank you Sandra!” Ananja, The Netherlands

“I have enjoyed all of it. The course has really helped me think about what I actually want to do with my horse. You do a good job of helping focus on a goal. Loved the advice and support.”

“I have gained a lot so far. I’ve always had a bit of butterfly mind and tend to jump from one exercise to another too fast and not getting anywhere! Sandra have taught me to focus and take things in small steps. And its so helpful to read everyone else’s progress as well” (student is referring to the Facebook support group for this online course)

“What I like is that they (the exercises) are very doable as you have to answer to one thing at a time. I appreciate the way you give support a lot. You are critical in a good way, not letting me feel like everything I do is already perfect but also giving advice in a good way and helping to keep sharp.
I also got a little more insight into why I find it hard to succeed with training plans and what I could do to help myself with this.”

“I think this course is an excellent idea 🙂 You are always very supportive Sandra and make this feel like a safe place (the Facebook support group) to ask questions. Funny, but I’ve met a lot of R+ trainers who a very encouraging and positive with their horses but extremely critical of their human trainers. Sandra you walk and talk R+ in all areas – with horses and people 🙂 “

Here is why and how I started to set goals for myself:

More blogs about setting goals:
Key to success: make plans
5 Reasons to make a planning for your horse

If you think this is a blog that someone can benefit from, please use one of the share buttons  below. I’ also would love to read your comments, I read them all!

If you don’t know what to say simply hit the like button so I know you appreciated this blog. Thank you!

Happy Horse training!

Sandra Poppema, B.Sc.

My mission is to improve human-horse relationships. I connect horse women with their inner wisdom and teach them the principles of learning and motivation, so they become confident and skilled to train their horse in a safe and effective way that is a lot of FUN for both human and horse. Win-win.

Sign up for HippoLogic’s newsletter (it’s free and it comes with a gift) or visit HippoLogic’s website and discover my online course Key Lessons, Your Key to Success in Positive Reinforcement Horse Training.

Follow my blog  on Bloglovin

Unconventional Training Solutions

Clicker training is brain training. I simply have to break out of the box of conventional ideas to come up with solutions that are ethical (pain free and force free) and horse friendly (easy to understand and rewarding for the horse). This is not always a simple task with these self-imposed regulations.

Challenge

Sometimes it is a real challenge to come up with solutions for difficulties I encounter in my own training with Kyra. If I work for a client it’s really easy, because I am the outsider. To come up with creative training solutions for my own situation is much more challenging. That is why I like to have a mentor too.

If my mentor is not available, I have to focus on what I want and how I want this instead of ‘how I know I can solve this’. Because ‘I know how to solve this’ with coercion, negative reinforcement, punishment and other methods I am not willing to use anymore.

Training goal

Kyra is up for a new step in her training on the long reins. I want her to canter on the long reins. That means she has to learn to collect herself, otherwise I can’t keep up with her.

I started her on a circle in canter because she was too fast. On a circle I didn’t have to run. I created a problem by staying on the circle too long. She didn’t want to follow the rail on the long side of the arena, because she thought she had to stay in a circle.

Couldn’t you just use the outside rein?

I didn’t want to pull on the outside rein. Her head moves up and down a lot in canter so the reins are already moving and causing too much ‘noise’ to be subtle with the rein aids. I don’t want to pull (force) her with the reins since I think the reins should stay a subtle aid.

Pulling on the outside reins causes her body to bend the wrong way (outside ‘Stellung’) which is a hard problem to solve later.

Why didn’t you use the whip to prevent her coming off the track?

I don’t use a whip. This would only work if she is used to yielding for the whip and/or is afraid of the whip. Using a tool that is developed to cause pain, discomfort or help motivate (in a negative reinforcement way) a horse move is not what I want. I think it can be too enticing to use it for what it is made for in a moment of frustration.
I don’t want to teach Kyra what she is NOT supposed to do (she is ‘not supposed to come off track’), I want her to teach what I want her to do: stay on the track. It is a different way of thinking. Focusing on what you want to teach instead of what you want to prevent.

How did you solve it if you don’t use rein aids or a whip?

Thank you for asking! I had to figure out a way to communicate to Kyra what it is I was looking for: staying on the track in canter.

Step 1

First I laid some poles next to the track parallel to the wall on the long side of the arena. She just stepped over them to make her circle. So I split the goal into smaller steps: I practised cantering at liberty and under saddle along the poles. That made it easier for her to understand that she was suppose to follow the track. It wasn’t fool proof and she was still confused on the long rein.

Step 2

Then I used some cones which she knows how to target. I made it really easy and asked her to touch the cone then canter a few strides to the next cone and asked her to touch that other cone. She understood quickly and so I made the distance between the cones bigger. The poles were still parallel to the track but she didn’t want to jump over them now that she was focused on the cones.

Step 3

Now we made really quick progress: she started to canter on the long side of the track. In 3 training sessions of 5-10 minutes I could take some of the poles away and start cantering on the other side of the arena on the long side.

Step 4

The next step was to fade out the cones and the two poles at the beginning and end of the long sides of the tracks. The cones were not important anymore because now I could click and reinforce for cantering on the track.

Step 5

Now I started to canter on the other side of the arena as well and it was no problem for her to understand to stay on the track.

Step 6

The next step is to change reins and practise everything she now learned in the left lead canter to the right lead canter.

Step 7

Now we are working on speed in canter. She is still a bit too fast and she has to learn to collect more so I can walk along her side instead of jogging. We already worked on this in session 4 and 5.

In this way I taught Kyra to stay on track and canter more slowly in only 7 sessions of 5-10 minutes. No frustration (only a bit of a brainteaser for me), no force, pain or threatening. I really like to come up with training solutions like this so I don’t have to damage the bond of trust I have been building so carefully.

What are some of the force free and R+ solutions you came up with in your training?

Please share this post if it was helpful. It might help other equestrians to think out of the box.

Sandra Poppema

Are you interested in online my online course Set Your Equestrian Goals & Achieve them click here for more info

Follow my blog with Bloglovin

 

It’s December, start planning for next year

Do you know that story about that philosopher teacher that uses a jar and fills it up with golf balls, small pebbles and sand as an analogy for creating the life you want? You can read it here.

The moral of the story is to plan your life and start with the most important things first: your health, family, children,  friends and passions (horse!). Those are the golf balls.

The pebbles represent other things in life such as your house or your job and the sand represents the small stuff. If you fill the jar and you want the best of life start putting in the golf balls first and the sand last. If you put the sand in first there is no room left for the pebbles or the golf balls.

The same analogy can be used for training your horse. Most riders are focused on the sand and they don’t see the bigger picture of what they want to achieve in the relationship with their horse.

If you start planning, start with the important things like the kind of relationship with your horse you want (if that is important to you) and your bigger goals. Then you can think of the smaller goals and the fun stuff you want to do.

Do you set goals or plan the future with your horse?

PS You can sign up for free until December 31st  2016 for the course Set your Equestrian Goals & Achieve them (with personal support on our private Facebook group). Canter to my website clickertraining.ca and fill in the pop-up.

 

Sandra Poppema, B.Sc.

My mission is to improve horse-human relationships by educating equestrians about ethical and horse friendly training. I offer coaching to empower you to train your horse in a 100% animal friendly way that empowers both you and your horse.

Sign up for HippoLogic’s newsletter (it’s free) or visit HippoLogic’s website.

Follow my blog  on Bloglovin

Setting your equestrian goals for 2017, start now!

It is already November, almost December. This time of year I like to reflect. This way I can see what my accomplishments were in 2016 (and feel good about myself), figure out what my pitfalls were (if I had any) and use this information to improve my training approach in 2017. Do you want to join me? Sign up for my newsletter to stay updated about my online courses.

Reflecting on 2016

When I read in my training logbook of 2016 I smile. I see so many small improvements we made, but all together it is a big improvement. Here are just a few of the achievements I found, reading back. The list is really too long to summarize here.

Husbandry skills

• We worked on the ‘Carpet of Motivation‘ (I taught Kyra to ignore grass and also to stop grazing on a light cue and even leave a juicy patch of grass when I ask her to come along)
• We worked on her behaviour during hoof trims. We practised to keep her legs longer up in the air without losing balance, don’t pulls the leg back, lift legs before the farrier starts using R-techniques like squeezing chestnuts or tendens. This seems like an on going training goal, but this year I really see a lot of improvement.
• Haltering skills. I retrained another horse and taught him to put his head in the halter. This was such a nice little touch that I came up with the idea to teach Kyra too to ‘halter herself’. Now I hold the halter in front of her and she puts her head in there herself.
• Improved positioning at the mounting block. Now we can do this even at liberty (thanks to the hip target), watch the video here.

Trick training

• Hug (from this book Horse Trick Training)
• Simple bow
• ‘Score‘: Kyra picks up take an object on cue and puts it in a bucket
• Hip target: move towards the target with her hip. She can do the hip target left and right. If I would have known that this exercise would be so easy to teach I would have started this years earlier. I thought it would be very complicated so I procrastinated starting. It comes in handy in all kinds of situations.
• Confirm and polish Spanish walk at liberty, under saddle and on the long reins. It turned out to be very simple to transfer this exercise once she understood it.

Riding

• Practised riding with other horses/riders in arena. Kyra acts scared and defensive towards other horses if they come too close. She has improved, but with a new horse it starts all over.
• Improved cantering: transition trot-canter and we worked on duration of the canter successfully.

Long reining

• Made a start with cantering on the long reins

At liberty:

• Jumping at liberty
• Jumping at liberty over a double jump

This is just a small selection of things we worked on. I really like to read back in my journals because it makes me realize how easy we forget the good things and all the improvements.

Goals in 2017

My goals for next year will be simply building upon the achievements from this year. I will start on lateral gaits in canter and improve the lateral gaits in trot under saddle and on the long reins. I also want to add some new tricks like catching a cloth, levade and kneeling on one knee.

My 2017 To do-list

I will also write down some fun things I want to do that aren’t real training goals but things  I like to do with my horse such as trail rides, a photo shoot, participating in a horse agility competition and practice riding a pas-de-deux. Riding a pas-de-deux is on my goal list since Kyra’s behaviour under saddle and being close to other horses could stand improving.

Do you want to join me?

Are you inspired yet? I know I am!

December will be HippoLogic’s Goal Setting Month. I am thinking hashtag #decembergoalsetting. Do you need some help to set some goals and stick with them?

If you want to get inspired or become an inspiration to other equestrians join my Facebook group Happy Herd and keep in touch! Clicker trainers welcome!

Happy goal setting!

Sandra Poppema, B.Sc.

My mission is to improve horse-human relationships by educating equestrians about ethical and horse friendly training. I offer online horse training courses to empower you to train your horse in a 100% animal friendly way that is FUN for both you and your horse.

Sign up for HippoLogic’s newsletter (it’s free) or visit HippoLogic’s website.

 

Key Lessons for Horse Trainers

This blog has moved. Click this link to read more: https://clickertraining.ca/key-lessons-for-trainers/

How to plan your week in 5 easy steps

If you are serious about making your equestrian dreams come true in the future start planning it today. Make it easy for yourself and start really easy if you are not yet in the habit of writing your equestrian goals down.

It can be scary to make a training plan for a whole year or multiple year. If that is the case, you can start simple and try planning just one week for your horse. Here are some ideas on how you can start.

Evaluate at the end of the week: was is nice to have some kind of schedule? Was it hard? What made it hard to stick with it? Did you like it? Did you feel like you were working on your long term goals?

Step 1 List goals
You can just start making a list of 5 things you would like to do in the future with your horse. You can also put things on your list that you are already doing, but want to do more often. There is no particular order.

Step 2 Specify preparations
What steps do you need to take in order to reach these goals? In my case I have to go by trailer to the nearest forest, so trailer loading is very useful for multiple goals. Another preparation could be working on Kyra’s stamina under saddle.

In order to cross a shallow river for the first time I would like Kyra to go with an experienced trail horse. And I would like an experienced guide with me because I have no experience crossing rivers on my own. Another preparation is making Kyra water savvy of course. The same preparations would apply for swimming in a lake or the sea with Kyra. And so on.

These are just examples to give you an rough idea and hopefully give your some inspiration to make a training plan for one week.

Step 3 Evaluating week schedule
Think of your own week schedule and about what days and times you would go to the barn. Maybe there are days you have less time to train your horse. Do you go mornings, afternoons or evenings. In summer it can be hot so mornings and evenings are best for riding or intense training. Keep that in mind when making your schedule.

On the days I am taking my 4 year old son to the barn, I don’t plan to ride Kyra. Usually I stick to groundwork exercises on those days in order to avoid stress and frustration.

My week evaluation looks like this in the summer:

– Monday I take my son to the barn: groundwork to practise a new skill/do a short repetition of one behaviour/ do something that involves my son (let him ride)
– Tuesday I have 1- 2 hours so I could plan a trail ride or ride in the arena
– Wednesday: same as Tuesday
– Thursday:  same as Monday so I stick to a little groundwork, working in hand/long reins or hand grazing
– Friday, Saturday, Sunday: I have 2 or more hours so I could plan a trail ride or ride in the arena

In winter when days are short, trail riding is only possible during daylight hours, so I can only plan them in weekends. Now I can take another look at my goals and start planing my week.

Step 4 Planning 
Now I know what I want to accomplish and how much time I can spent, it is so much easier to make a schedule for the week.

If I have to or want to adjust my schedule that is ok. Since I have written down my goals in step 1, I will find something to practise that will support my goals in one way or another. If someone has left a few small jumps in the arena I can practice jumping or do some flat work because I can see how that would be helpful in my future trail rides. It can help build muscle and stamina too.

It is also possible that I would choose not to practice jumping because there are more urgent goals to work on and I know that the forest or park I am going to ride in on Sunday doesn’t have any jumps on the trail.

Step 5 Writing it down
Last step is to write it down. Take your plan to the barn and hang it in your locker or another place where you can see it.

It helps me to have a copy of my plan at home in a visible spot, so I won’t forget what I have planned. The best thing of making a plan is crossing off the things I scheduled! It makes it easier to journal about it too.

Good luck planning your week schedule and let me know how it went.

Enjoy your horse!

Read more: Key to Success: Make a Plan

Sandra Poppema, B.Sc.

Are you inspired and interested in personal coaching or do you want to sign up for the next  online course ‘Set Your Equestrian Goals & Achieve them‘, please visit my website

Key to success: make plans

What is a training plan? Is it really necessary to write it down? Isn’t that time consuming? These are the things people ask when I talk about training plans and shaping plans.

How a training plan can help you (purpose)
You don’t have to make a training plan, but it will help you become a better clicker trainer faster. Why? Because it forces you to think about your training goal, your approach and all the steps you need to take to get to your goal.

If you are at the barn and you don’t know what to do, a plan can help you move in the right direction.

Difference between a training plan and a shaping plan
Your training plan contains all the behaviours you want to teach your horse, in your shaping plan you write down the step-by-step approach of each behaviour.

Goal setting
First thing you have to think about and write down is your goal. What it is it and how would you recognize it when you achieve it? That is a hard question to begin with. That is one of the reasons people would like to skip this step. If you avoid it, it doesn’t exists, right? Wrong!

How can you achieve your goal if you don’t know what it is you’re looking for? How can you enjoy a satisfied feeling of accomplishing something if your goal is so vague you can’t even write it down? I know it is hard, but when you practise it this will become easier and easier over time.

It’s OK to start ‘big’ and write down a vague goal, the next steps will help you through the process of making it more clear.

Shaping plan
Once you have determined a goal it is easy to divide it into little training steps, the building blocks of your end behaviour. This is how you shape a behaviour.

Ask questions like: what does my horse need to do in order to achieve the goal? What skills must I train first? And think about the training tools that can help in this process.

Criteria
Try to visualize and write down how many times your horse must do a certain behaviour before you raise the criterion. It doesn’t have to be accurate right away, but thinking about it helps when you are at the barn training your horse.

If you have set the criterion ‘Horse touches target when it’s near the ground’ you can raise it after he has done it three times. Then you hold the target in another place where the horse has to reach for it: maybe more to the left and then more to the right.

Rewards
It is also very important to write down which reward and how much of that reward you will be using. Some rewards will wear down their value over time in some horses.  Some horses are more motivated if they get a variation of rewards.

Experiment and write down what you’ve learned about your horse. It is fun and very educational to read it back one day.

Personalize your plan
Another very important part of your training plan is to put in specific information about the target animal and things for the trainer to remember. If you read your training plan before you start training it can help you remind you of  certain things like: I have to click first and take the reward out my pocket (instead of taking the treat before I click). Or remember that this horse has separation anxiety and training him works best if there are other horses in sight.

Results
Write down your results in order to start the next training at the point where you stopped or so you can take one step back to refresh the horses memory and raise the first criterion after one time instead of three times to improve and get to the next steps.

Starting a training journal can be very simple and it doesn’t have to take much time. Sometimes a few simple keywords or just circling the training step where you have stopped is enough to help you remember.

Have a creative clicker training!

 

Sandra Poppema, B.Sc.

My mission is to improve horse-human relationships by educating equestrians about ethical and horse friendly training. I offer coaching to empower you to train your horse in a 100% animal friendly way that empowers both you and your horse.

Sign up for HippoLogic’s newsletter (it’s free) or visit HippoLogic’s website.

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Training ideas for Trail riding

Today my barn friend took me and Kyra to the forest for a trail ride, here in BC, Canada. All went well and I realized that it took me many tiny training steps to turn my 11 months old feral filly into this reliable non spooking trail horse I have today.

Basics
I had to tame Kyra first, since she was born in a nature reserve and was not imprinted on humans and things like stalls, paddocks, all the sounds in a barn and so on. Then I had to teach her some basic skills like haltering and leading. When she was about two years old I started very slowly on her education on the long reins. When she was four years old I started her under saddle. By then she already knew the basic commands walk, trot, canter, halt and she could make left and right turns.

Despooking
Kyra and I did a lot of despooking exercises over the years. In The Netherlands we had different challenges than here in Canada. Here is a list of challenges I specifically clicker trained her on:

• walking through water
• puddles on the street and on trails
• pedestrian crossings and other markings on the road
• shadows
• overpasses
• approaching plastic bags
• flags & balloons
• fireworks
• all kinds of heavy farm equipment
• cars & motorcycles
• bike bells
• cyclists with children and flags
• cyclists on road bikes, which bike very fast and can sneak up on you because they almost make no sound. They often ‘travel’ in packs which can be very scary to horses
• strollers & shopping carts
• children on inline skates & skateboarders
• road signs
• rail road crossings
• manholes
• weird appliances for fresh water in the forest
• people walking their dogs off leash

Useful trail skills
In horse agility training we practised a lot of useful things too. One of the things you encounter on trails can be a “squeeze”. A squeeze is a very narrow space. Horses usually don’t like to go through narrow spaces because it can be an ambush for predators. If horses are not used to going through narrow spaces they tend

Ready to go for a ride

to race through them to make the time they are vulnerable as short as possible. This can be dangerous if the horse doesn’t take into account that your legs make him wider.

On our trail ride we encountered several squeezes: gates that enclose the road with big boulders next to it to prevent cars from passing. Sometimes there was also a road sign next to it. That can be dangerous if your horse spooks and it hits you right in the face.

Getting your horse used to fly spray is also very useful in the woods here.

Trailer loading
We take the trailer to get to the forest, so in our case trailer loading is also a part of trail riding for us.

Here is the video of the trail ride:

Sandra Poppema

The secret of success: find an accountability partner

Your comfort zone is where you feel good. You can feel like an expert in your comfort zone. That’s a wonderful feeling.

The downside is that you can’t grow inside the boundaries of your own comfort zone. Try something new, something scary. Achieve your equestrian goals, develop yourself as rider or horse trainer.

Accountability partner (AP)
Have you ever heard of an accountability partner (AP)? No? What can he/she do for you, you might ponder?

An AP is someone with who you can share your equestrian dreams, who helps you define your goals and who inspires you and helps you to accomplish them. I think we all need one.

Anyone can be your accountability partner: your instructor, a barn mate or a friend. The difference between a mentor and an AP is that you are mentoring each other. You are equals.

Qualifications
Choose someone who is just as passionate about horses as you are, someone who inspires you, someone who has knowledge and is honest. Honesty is very important because your partner has to tell you what you can do to improve and you have to listen and respect them enough to consider their advice.

There has to be mutual respect. You don’t have to follow his or her ideas all the time, but you do have to listen with an open mind and think his or her advice over. I always encourage people to ask skeptical questions (‘why’ questions), it tickles the mind. 

Choose a nice person, someone who can put things into perspective for you. Choose someone with who you can have a good laugh!

Keep your mind open
Ideas about horse behaviour or training with which you grew up with, might not be accurate anymore. Don’t take any information at face value, because ‘your instructor told you’ or someone ‘who has been in the horse business all their lives’.

Knowledge regarding horse behaviour, horse welfare and training has evolved in the last decades. Don’t be afraid to learn and take on new ideas! This can be a bit confronting sometimes, but the up-side is: the advice of your AP is meant to help you and to accomplish your goals.

Stepping outside your comfort zone (or being pushed outside it), can feel awkward in the beginning. But I promise you: it is worth it!

I can’t find someone!
If it is hard to find someone at your barn because there is nobody who shares your training method or way of thinking, find a person or a group on the internet. Use Facebook or Meetup.com to find like minded people who can challenge you, and with whom you can share your success stories too.

I created a platform for equine positive reinforcement trainers, a place where clicker trainers can share their goals, tips, feel-good stories and ask for advice. Click here for the link . Our R+ community also provides you with an accountability partner. You can share your training videos in our community to get feedback and advice so you stay on track with your own training and much more.

Work towards a goal
With an accountability partner your progress can double or even triple. Agree to visit each others horse once a month so you can show what you’ve been working on, ask questions and enjoy your time with someone who is really interested in your success.

With an accountability partner you have to work on your goals with your horse. You don’t want to disappoint him or her or tell them that you didn’t work on any of your goals, right?

Confession
I had an AP in The Netherlands and we visited each others barns once a month. Sometimes I only practiced a few days before my accountability partner was visiting me and Kyra.

It always surprised me how much progress I could accomplish in just a few clicker training sessions if I set my mind to it. Without her I wouldn’t have trained so much little things and wouldn’t have achieved so many small goals.

These small steps are now merged into big achievements, like a happy horse that trailers well, a horse that is started under saddle with clicker training, a horse that can perform almost all lateral gaits in walk and trot and so on.

Try it!

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Sandra Poppema, B.Sc.I help horse owners get the results in training they really, really want with joy and easy for both horse and human. I always aim for win-win!

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Connection call

Book a free 30-minute Connection Call and get a glimpse of a new future with your horse. I believe nothing is impossible when you train with R+. I’ve seen miracles happen and the most traumatic horses turn into safe, confident horses that seek out human contact.
In this conversation we’ll explore:

• Your hopes and dreams and goals so that we can see what’s possible for you and your horse
• Where you’re now, where you want to go and which path is right for you
• What’s holding you back so you can make a plan to get these hurdles out of your way.

At the end of the call I’ll give you some ideas and advice for your next step and if it looks like a fit, we can explore what it looks like to work together.

Simply check the best time for you in my online calendar and click to reserve your free call today.

Reach your goals quicker

Have you ever had the feeling that you weren’t accomplishing your goals, or weren’t improving as quickly as you would have hoped? I have.

When I was starting riding lessons, my mom thought that it would be like driving a car. That it would take about twenty to thirty lessons to tackle riding. She wished! That wasn’t the case at all. I was eight years old and I didn’t care how many lessons it would take, I was riding. My main goal was “to be around horses” and riding meant “sitting on a horse”. At the age of eight I just “wished” that one day I became that rider. The talented dressage rider, that is.

After 7 years weekly riding lessons at the riding school I quit. I was disillusioned. I still “wasn’t a good rider” even though I didn’t really know what being a “good rider” precisely meant. But I didn’t realize what was going on, I just thought the riding school wasn’t that good.

I became frustrated because I didn’t have a clear goal. I could get a horse to walk, trot, canter, halt, make a turn and get over a small jump. I had vague goals about leg yielding in trot and canter pirouettes but I never thought to communicate it to my instructor or parents.

Now I know that when I become frustrated I have to take a good long look at my goals. Are they S.M.A.R.T.?

I ask myself question like:

• Did I make a training plan and write down all the steps to get to my goal?
• Were my steps small enough to succeed?
• Did I need help in the process and didn’t ask?
• Did I record my successes?

Sometimes there is no reason to be frustrated. All it takes is some time to look back and see where I came from and realize that I already came a long way. I would just forget to celebrate my success along the way.

Sometimes I let myself be distracted from my goals and would asking myself “why are you not making progress?” while in fact I wasn’t even working on them. Why?, I ask myself. Sometimes the answer is just because I didn’t know where to start or I didn’t know if I could succeed.

Think about your next goal, write it down and make it happen. Then keep a record in order to celebrate your success.

Read more about creating TRAINING GOALS [<-click this]

Read more about starting a TRAINING JOURNAL [<- click this]

Sandra Poppema

Are you interested in online personal coaching, please visit my website or send me an email with your question to info@clickertraining.ca

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Are your old dreams still valid?

When I was looking for a horse a few years ago a friend of mine kept asking nagging me about my ‘goals’. What was my purpose with this soon to buy horse? She was not satisfied by my vague answer ‘I just want to ride dressage’. She kept asking ‘What do you mean by ‘just’ and what does  ‘dressage’ mean to you?’.

Annemarie Sanders-Keyzer and Amon during the Olympic Games in Seoul 1988. Source: http://www.anp-archief.nl/page/2109653/nl

I remembered vividly the poster in my room when I was a little girl. Annemarie Sanders-Keyzer was in that picture with Amon. She rode in the Dutch dressage team in 1986 and they won a silver medal at the World Championship Dressage. In 1988 she rode in the Olympic Games in Seoul. That’s what I wanted! At least that was my dream when I was a young girl.

Many years later I still held on to this dream ‘to become a dressage rider’. In reality I don’t like competitions with animals! There is too much stress for the rider(s) and therefor too much stress for the horse(s). This is why I had to revise this equestrian dream.

I still enjoy watching good dressage. I mean: when the horse is dancing and horse and rider become one. The riding which gives you goosebumps if you watch it. Pure balance and beauty. I want this without the competition part where the riders ego often gets priority over the horses well-being.

I also have a love for classical dressage like the Spanish Riding School in Vienna. I am intrigued by the ‘airs above the ground’. There is more: I love trick training. We have a lovely word for it in Dutch that embodies the concept very well. We call it ‘freedom dressage’ and it implies that the horses are taught tricks without force or fear.

I searched for a way to get all these different dressage parts and showing it to a public, without the downsides of a competition in one goal. I found that in a demonstration/show team ‘Alegría‘.

I am the woman in the yellow Spanish dress at 0:10-0:15

I joined them while I was ‘in between horses’. I was looking for a horse and I already knew that a Lusitano or Andalusian horse would be my next choice.  Show team Alegría has as mission to promote the Iberian horse breeds. This was my chance to get a preview of what it would be like to ride dressage on an Andalusian horse in front of a public and do trick training. I really loved being part of the team. Unfortunately I immigrated to Canada before Kyra was started under saddle and I have never ridden in front of a public. But this is still my dream. I am working every day on tiny goals that help me prepare Kyra for this.

So my thought of today is: What are your dreams? Maybe you still have an old dream from your childhood? Are those dreams still valid? If not, can you adjust your dream somehow so it fits into your standards and values you have today?

Sandra Poppema

10 steps to your dream horse

I dream about ‘airs above the ground’

1 Think about your dream

What would your ultimate dream with your horse look like? What are you doing? Who is involved? Are you excited (eventing) or relaxed (trailriding)? Take your time to figure out what your ultimate dream really is.

2 Set goals

What do you need in order to achieve your goal (see #1). What skills do you and your horse need? Make your goals S.M.A.R.T.

• Specific – target a specific area for improvement (e.g. dressage)
• Measurable – quantify or at least suggest an indicator of progress (e.g. dressage test level 1 with X points)
• Assignable – specify who will do it
• Realistic – state what results can realistically be achieved, given available resources
• Time-related – specify when the result(s) can be achieved

3 Learn more about reward-based horse training

Reward-based horse training makes the results (behaviours) very reliable. Antoine de Pluvinel (1552 -1620) already said: “You can never rely on a horse that is educated by fear. There will be always be something that he fears more than you. But, when he trusts you, he will ask you what to do when he is afraid.” In reward-based training the horse is allowed to ‘ask questions’ and make mistakes. He will simply learn quickly because he is rewarded by something pleasurable when he ‘gives the right answer’. That makes the horse looks actively for the right answers. In other words: he will be eager to work with you and do as you ask.

4 Divide your big goals into smaller goals.

Make a list of all the behaviours your horse needs to master. Make for each behaviour a list with as many steps as you can think of to describe all the building blocks of the behaviours you want to teach your horse. The smaller the steps, the easier it is to achieve them. Think about your criteria: when are you going to the next behaviour? And write down what rewards you will be using. Remember: it must rewarding for the horse. It is the receiver that determines the reward, not the trainer. You might be reinforced by money, I bet your horse doesn’t care about it.

[-> click here to learn more about dividing big goals into small building blocks <-]

 5 Set up for success

Make sure the right answers are made easy for your horse and the wrong answers a bit more difficult. If your horse outsmarts you, change the setting. Remember: it is your goal to reward your horse as much as possible!

6 Start training

Try it and prepare to fail. Try again. Every time you fail is it just another step closer to your goal. Learning is a process. Not only for your horse, but also for you as trainer! Enjoy your journey. Keep notes, see #8.

This is rewarding

7 Reward the slightest try from your horse

Yes it is time to reward! Ask again and reward his successes. His successes are yours! Go to the next step after 3 times. Increase the difficulty slightly.

8 Write down your achievements

See this post to learn about 4 easy ways to keep a training journal! [-> Click here <-]

9 Adjust training where necessary

And don’t forget to give your horse a break or holiday. My horse performs the best after a break. It keeps fascinating me how well a break works. I wish I could give my horse only breaks and still perform.

10 ENJOY time spent with your horse.

Smile! Make pictures, poems, write a blog and enjoy even more! Enjoy not only training sessions, but also spent some ZEN time together!

Sandra Poppema

Imagine your horse in 2020. How to start today

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Setting goals makes my life at the barn interesting. It keeps me on track. My goals are my guideline, not a straight-jacket.

Without my training goals I would be lost. I write my goals down and then I think about the things I ‘need’ in order to accomplish them. Do I need special equipment? Do I have enough knowledge? Do I need to create a special environment: ‘traffic’ if I want my horse to get used to cars, motors, tractors and so on? Does this sound a little vague? Let me give you an example. When Kyra came into my life, she was a feral filly and almost one year old.

Today Kyra is 6 years old. She is bombproof (flag, tarps, balloons etc), we did a few trail rides and I taught her to jump- instead of stumble- over cavaletti. She can walk, trot, canter, leg yield,  shoulder in, haunches in, leg yield in hand, in hand, on long reins and under saddle.

She accepts toddlers and unknown and even inexperienced riders on her back. She also has a few tricks up her sleeve like pick up and fetch objects, shake ‘No’, laying down, back crunch, kiss, standing on a pedestal, groundtying, smiling in two different ways and  more.

How did I accomplish this?

I started to find out what my ultimate horse dream looked like and then I made a 10 year plan. So my plan says that when Kyra will be 11 years old she will be experienced in Classical Dressage, she will be an excellent demonstration/show horse/trail horse/lesson horse (on her way to become a School Master) and she will be fully bomb proof and know a lot of trick training tricks. She will be still very sensitive, willing to learn, healthy, happy and physically well prepared for her ‘job’.

Kyra became a reliable and toddler proof horse

Next step was to divide my 10 year plan into a 5 year plan, 1 year plan and 12 monthly goals. I divided every monthly goal into a lot of building blocks. In this way I see each step of our progress. The first monthly goal was ‘simply’ taming her. I didn’t know how long this would take or if I could do it at all. So I made my building blocks very small, like looking at me was already worth a reward.

Within about 3 weeks I could halter Kyra, touch her all over, lift her feet and clean them and lead her over the premises. I kept a training diary, that’s how I know how long it took. I think I wouldn’t accomplish all these without a my planning and preparation. Don’t forget to keep a training journal, see this post [click here].

Sandra Poppema

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How to Create More Training Ideas

Are you running out of ideas what to do with your horse? Especially in winter? I am never out of ideas when I am with Kyra. I always have many suggestions what to work on.

How do I do that? Well, I make goals. Long-term goals and I divide those into short-time goals. Then I divide those into even smaller building blocks, which are my every day ideas to choose from. I write them down in my training journal and then I print out a list to hang in my tack locker.

When Kyra was a still a feral filly I had many little goals to work on every day. Coming towards me instead of jumping into a corner of her stall when I opened a door, touching my hand/target stick/halter, standing still while being touched and so on. These where obvious goals.

What about my daily goals after 5 years of training? Kyra is 6 years old now and  she is almost fully bomb-proof, very athletic and sensible and knows a lot of tricks. Are there any goals left for us to work on? Yes, plenty. If I get stuck I take a look at my long-term goals (10 year plan, 5 year plan, 1 year plan, 12 monthly goals) and I know what to do.

Every ‘dream goal’ has many ‘pillars’, take for instance a dressage level 4 test as one of my ‘ultimate’ goals. One pillar is a collection of all the exercises in that test (half pass, half pirouettes, collected walk, trot, canter, etc).

Another pillar contains all the building blocks to prepare a horse mentally for a competition. At a competition terrain there are many unfamiliar things happening, like music, flags, strange horses, white fences, flower pots and so on.

A third pillar could consist of all the building blocks required to make your horse a happy traveller. A fourth pillar could contain all husbandry skills, like standing still while saddling, braiding, or saddling in a strange environment.

There are hundreds of building blocks one can distill from just one long term goal, like riding a level 4 dressage test. If you make a sketch, it would look like this:

If you do the same thing with one behaviour and divide it into very small baby steps, you’ve created a shaping plan.

A shaping plan for ‘targeting‘ can look like this:

Sandra Poppema

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Working with goals

Like many other horse owners and riders I also sometimes “don’t feel like going to the barn”, or the feeling “I don’t know what to do” (riding or training). Why is that? My horse is my passion!

Sometimes I get this feeling because it feels like I don’t have a goal in mind to work on. But in reality it is because I haven’t divided my goal into small enough steps. So my next step looks too big to accomplish and it demoralizes  me. On my way to the barn I often think of my goal and how my training approach will be this day. Sometimes I just don’t know and it comes while I am riding or training (groundwork). So in this case it is just a matter of start doing it and see what happens.

Or, I just don’t know how to accomplish the next step. Often that means: my steps are too big or I need some input or help with the next step. So I reconsider my steps and my goal and think about how to set it up for success. An accountability partner can be wonderful help. It doesn’t have to be my instructor. I have two training buddies to whom I can turn for help. Simply sharing my problem can be good enough to think of a solution, but also if my training buddy is asking me questions about my next step or about my approach is always very helpful.

Sometimes I am too stressed out for whatever reason. The best remedy for that, is actually going to the barn and enjoying my horse.

I like setting short time and longtime goals, but sometimes our best days are: to forget about achieving them and go without any expectations.

Another time I will write more about my goals and how goal oriented training motivates me.

Sandra Poppema
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