Step-by-step Guide to Teach Your Horse to Come When Called

This month Horse Rookie published another article that I’ve written for them. It’s a shaping plan to train your horse to respond to his name so that you can get him out of the pasture effortlessly.

Why teach it

The better question might be, why not teach it?! It’s fun to have a horse that responds to his name, but it’s also useful.

Instead of trudging out to the back of the pasture, simply call your horse’s name and watch him come running. 

If your horse ever escapes from his enclosure, whether at home or away, he will come to you when you call his name.

Icing on the cake? People will be quite impressed when your horse responds to his name!

Click the picture below to read the whole article on Horse Rookie.

Join the Clicker Community!

Do you want to have a horse that comes trotting to the gate with a nicker to greet you, instead of a horse that requires you to go into the mud to get (or catch) him? Start small and learn a bit of clicker training. It will almost happen instantaneously. I’ve seen this happen over and over with my students.

• Are you looking for professional positive reinforcement advice?
• Do you need an affordable program?
• Do you want to turn your equestrian dreams into reality, but you don’t know where to start?

If you have answered ‘Yes’ to one or more of the above questions, join the Clicker Training Academy for online positive reinforcement training, personal advice and support in training your horse.

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.

Related article:  How to get your horse out of the pasture. Effortlessly! (with video)

Click with your Horse

Since I was a little girl, I was fascinated by horses. Every year on my birthday and every Christmas I asked for a pony. I dreamt about riding and training horses at liberty. Of course in these fantasies the horse and I were one.

We could communicate in a way that the horse would do everything voluntarily and with ease. I never needed to use force, or use training aids like a bit, a whip or spurs. I dreamt about being friends with my horse and that he would trust me in every situation. That we really could rely on each other…

When I was older I chose to study animal management. A study in which animal-human relationships and animal welfare were key subjects.  After my bachelor degree I became a certified riding instructor. I trained horses, but I still had the feeling there should be something else out there, something better…

The traditional and classical ways of training and riding horses were too focused on getting results. There seemed no place to spent time and effort on the relationship between the horse and the rider. Something I was still longing for. I wanted to train and ride my horse, but wanted to have a solid foundation of trust and friendship first. No one seemed to teach this…

Move away from pain or move towards pleasure

When I started studying learning theory, I learned that there are basically two ways to train behaviour. We all have this in common. We either want to move away from/avoid discomfort or pain or we want to move towards pleasure.  This was when it hit me:  I was still using discomfort to train my horse. Even though I was told I was playing a ‘game’ with my horse, he was still learning by moving away from discomfort (which was called ‘yielding to pressure’ to make it sound more humane).

Apparently you can also do the opposite in order to teach behavior and use ‘pleasure’ to teach your horse new skills. Horses are like humans: we share the same emotions. Like us, horses also like to move towards pleasure.

Change the foundation of your relationship

What really amazed me when I started changing my ways is that the relationship with my pony also totally changed. I used to think that I had a good bond with my pony because I trained him from the day he was born. We spent 18 years together. After changing my training approach and using positive reinforcement, I noticed that my pony was also changing. He became eager to work with me, he started whinnying as soon as he saw me coming and he even started to canter to me in the pasture. Something he normally didn’t do. He didn’t walk away, but I always had to come over and get him. In a short period of time we became really good friends and developed a partnership based on trust, which is an excellent basis for all training.

Don’t get me wrong: it wasn’t easy to throw out all the equipment that I used to force a horse into doing things. It was a process. A long process with lots of ups and downs.

Are you ready to change your ways?

If you are ready to make the change to a more ethical approach of horse training and improve your bond with your horse and have more fun together, let me know by sending me an email.

I offer personal coaching in which I help you train your own horse. I believe that you know your horse best. I think there is more value in you training your own horse than sending your horse to a stranger to get trained. I want you to gain the knowledge and the experience so you become the best friend you can be for your horse.

I wish for every equestrian to have a click with his or her horse.  Visit my website http://clickertraining.ca if you want to learn more about me or my training method.

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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