3 Tips to Succeed Clicker Training your Horse

Do you struggle implementing (more) clicker training into your daily interaction, riding and training your horse?

Would you like to use positive reinforcement in more areas of the relationship with your horse and don’t know how to do this?

Do you feel uncomfortable because you’re the only odd one at the barn who uses clicker training?

#1 Focus on one goal

  • If you focus on one behaviour you want to train or re-train you can fully emerge yourself in finding solutions to training that one behaviour or overcoming that one struggle.
  • It’s easier to ask for help if you know what your wanting help or advice on.
  • Write down your goal. Writing it down will help your brain focus on finding solutions and it’s easier for tip #3.

#2 Make yourself Accountable

  • Set yourself up for success by finding someone to share your goal with. Preferably someone who can help you with advice when needed, but that isn’t even necessary. If that one person will ask you about your progress on, let’s say Monday, then you know on Saturday that you better come into action if you want to share something on Monday.

    The accountability will help you come into action and overcome fear of failure. I speak from experience. When I did a bi-weekly accountability with a friend I usually did nothing about the goals I shared with her (fear of failure) until 3 days before we would meet. Then I started clicker training Kyra and usually I had success in one area, got stuck in another. Only by coming into action I found my struggles and could overcome them. Weekly accountability is better than bi-weekly. Bi-weekly beats monthly and monthly beats not making yourself accountable at all. But if you want to book successes more often, find weekly accountability!

#3 Celebrate!

  • BY celebrating your wins you stand still and enjoy. This is what success feels like! Enjoying your Wins! Make sure you take the time to do this.
  • Celebrating your wins, big AND small ones will motivate you in going after your next goal.
  • It also gives you an ‘end ritual’ that tells you ‘Goal accomplished’. You can only know if you have accomplished if you’ve written your goal down, see tip #1. Don’t fall into the pitfall of stretching your goal endlessly and ending up feeling like a failure.

In my Key Lessons for Trainers, your Key to Success in Horse training, you’ll find these three. If you want to learn about the other 3 Key Lessons for Trainers, join my 8-week home study program Ultimate Horse Training Formula.

Join the Clicker Training Academy if you want to improve your clicker skills

What is the HippoLogic CTA? It’s an online place where you can learn to train every behaviour you have in mind with R+. We have a small, all-inclusive community in which students can thrive and develop.

  • Professional, personal positive reinforcement advice on your training videos
  • Super affordable
  • Student levels are novice to very advanced clicker trainers

Join the HippoLogic Clicker Training Academy for personal advice and support in training your horse with positive reinforcement.
The first 25 founding members get an additional 90-minute coaching session with me for free (value $150 CAD).

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!
Get a free 5 Step Clicker Training Plan.

Follow my blog with Bloglovin

WIN a coaching session or a ticket for the HippoLogic Clicker Challenge.

If you know me, you know I am a huge fan of celebrating successes. I know this year my blog will hit the 100.000 views! Something I didn’t foresee when I started. Time to celebrate! With you! This is how: I will give away a 30 minute coaching session ($35 value) or a ticket to participate in my HippoLogic Clicker Challenge ($47 value)

Why I started blogging

I started this blog as an online (accountability) training journal to tell my friends and family (and maybe a few strangers) about Kyra’s training.

HippoLogic mei '09

She was 11 months old en just caught out of the wild (a nature reserve in The Netherlands). She didn’t want to deal with people, she was super scared for everything and only ate hay. No carrots, apple, sugar cubes of horse treats. Quite a challenge to start with positive reinforcement.

After 3 weeks of daily training (twice a day in the first week) I could approach  (a BIG deal!), halter her, touch her all over, lead her over the premises (only if other horses stayed in eye sight, but it was a start), lift her feet and even disinfect the wound on her leg with a spray can. Every month I put a summary on my blog to list our achievements.

Kyra was my first horse that I made clear goals for (taming her was my #1 goal). It is because I wrote down my goals, discussed them with my best friend, my accountability partner. I also kept track of how I trained behaviours and kept a logbook so I could reproduce my results. This all lead to developing HippoLogic’s Key Lessons, Your Keys to Success in Positive Reinforcement training program. I wanted to develop an easy to follow step-by-step program for horse lovers who want to implement clicker training.

Becoming a blogger was an important step in this whole process. I want to celebrate this with you: my readers and loyal followers of my blog!

2012 the year of many changes

In 2012 we (my husband, our 1 year old son, our 2 cats and Kyra) emigrated to Canada. I changed from working mom to stay-at-home mom without a social network in my personal life or in my horse world. I left all my friends, family and horse riding clients behind and I really missed them.

I struggled, I had happy times, felt lonely, was home sick, was happy again. I felt it all! Then, in 2014, I decided to restart my blog, so I had something to do besides being a mom. I missed teaching riding lessons and helping equestrians so much!

In October 2014 I wrote my first blog in English. I posted 9 articles that year. Yes, that is how I started. Now I publish about 100 each year._sandra_kyra_hippologic2017.jpg

Time to Celebrate!

In order to celebrate my upcoming 100.000st view I decided to give away a 30 minute coaching session ($35 value) or a ticket to participate in my HippoLogic Clicker Challenge ($47 value)

Since the receiver determines the reward: you choose your price.

Enter the draw in 2 simple steps

Entering the draw is simple: go to HippoLogic’s Facebook page  and you will find a post or click here to go directly to the post you need that asks you:

What is *your* favourite article of all times from my blog?

Visit my blog (https://hippologic.wordpress.com/) and scroll through the categories or use the search bar on the right to find the one that you like best.

  • Put the link of your favourite blog in the comments of the FB post
  • Share what you liked about it or how it helped you in the FB post

You can win one 30 minute coaching session ($35 value)
OR
participation in my #HippoLogicClickerChallenge ($47 value)

Let me know which prize you prefer best. Draw ends on December 31st, 2017

HippoLogic.jpgSandra Poppema, B.Sc.
I improve the human-horse relationships by reconnecting you with your inner wisdom and teach you the principles of learning and motivation, so you become confident and knowledgeable to train your horse in an effective and FUN way. Win-win for horse and human.
All my programs are focused on building your confidence and provide you with  a detailed step-by-step formula to train horses with 100% positive reinforcement.
Sign up for HippoLogic’s newsletter (it’s free) or visit HippoLogic’s website.