Prevent Your Horse from Becoming ‘Treat Crazy’ With this Simple Solution

I like to call all horse people who use treats as reinforcers in training (to get behaviour) horse trainers. They are deliberately influencing their horses’ behaviour. I love that!

When they talk about using treats in training often lots of objections are raised. In this series I give solutions for these common objections and beliefs.

Common beliefs about Treats in Training

I asked my Facebook friends to help me out with some common believes that live in the equine world about treats in training. Thank you all for helping me. I will quote the answers:

1. Hand-feeding creates mugging horses
2. Hand feeding makes them bite.
3. That it instantly makes them fat.
4. Hand feeding horses is bad because it turns them into monsters, they get rude, pushy and bite everyone.
5. That’s bribing and horses do X only for treats but not out of respect towards the person treating them!
6. They get Treat Crazy, and will not be able to think or focus on what they are doing.
7. It will make your horse aggressive pushy and mouthy.
8. Hand-feeding makes them spoiled and they will refuse to eat out of a bucket and you will have to exchange it for a gilded bowl.
9. It makes them nippy, aggressive, pushy, space invading.
10. You can only hand-feed your horse twice.
11. They’ll kill you if you forget your treat bag once upon a time in the future.
12. It’s unnatural (as opposed to using carrot sticks and spurs and what not), since horses don’t feed one another in reward for tasks.
13. It’s super dangerous, for when done incorrectly it turns them into raging killing machines that can never be re-educated.
14.  Only hand-feed grain and hay but not treats because it will send the wrong message to the horse.

Let’s see how we can prevent these objections from happening.
In this blog I gave solutions for objections 1, 2, 4, 7, 9 and 13. In my this blog I tackled objection #3.

Today I will share with you how I handle ‘Treat Crazy Horses’. I love that expression! I think it’s expressing exactly how eager that horse is! You can use that into your advantage in training!

Solutions for Horses that became ‘Treat Crazy’

How to deal with a horse that is treat crazy is really simple in fact. It is often not only the high value of the treat that causes frustration in the horse, it’s also the lack of clarity that makes horses behave this way. Part of the solution is to change to lower value reinforcers.

If you can give your treat crazy horse clarity when to expect a treat and when he can’t, he will become way calmer around food and food reinforcers. That is the other part of the solution: clarity.

The way you teach him is by using a ‘bridge signal’ or ‘marker signal’ in your training. You can use a specific word you never use for something else or a specific sound like a click from a box clicker.

Stop feeding (from your horses’ perspective) ‘random treats’. 

When you start using a marker signal, that marks the exact behaviour your horse got the reward for, the reward will turn into a reinforcer. It will strengthen the clicked behaviour. This is how positive reinforcement trainers use treats to train behaviours.

Horses are smart and they figure out quickly to ‘get you to click and reinforce’ them! When they start to offer the new behaviour consistently it is time for your next step in training. Teaching your horse to pay attention to the click is only the first step. In the Ultimate Horse Training Formula I explain how you start green horses with clicker training and how to avoid pitfalls.

This is how you can turn a Treat Crazy horse into a horse that loves your training!

If you want give your horse even more clarity start using a start session-signal and most importantly: an end session-signal. That is a simple way to teach your horse now your lesson starts and you can expect to earn treats. With your end of session/end of training-signal you tell your horse ‘Sorry, no more treats to be earned. Lesson is over.‘

The third piece of advice is to teach your horse the HippoLogic Key Lesson Table Manners for Horses (safe hand-feeding) with clicker training. This is the Key to Your Success to train with food reinforcers. This and more is covered in the complete home-study program Ultimate Horse Training Formula.

More blogs about Mugging and how to re-train it

What to do if your horse is mugging you

Horse, Stop Mugging Me!

Myth Monday: Training with Food rewards causes pushy Horses

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 in training in order to enhance the bond between horses and humans!

Join my mailing list to get more positive reinforcement training: HippoLogic’s website.

Clicker Training 101: Your first clicker session (including a step-by-step training plan)

When you are new to the idea of clicker training your horse you might ask yourself: How do I start? What do I need? Where do I buy these things? How do I teach my horse to respond to the clicker? These and more questions are answered in this blog to help you get started.

‘Help, my horse turned into a monster since I started clicker training’

Click here to find the blog (and don’t forget to subscribe on my website: https://clickertraining.ca/help-my-horse-turned-into-a-monster-since-i-started-clicker-training/

Sandra Poppema, BSc
Founder of HippoLogic
Enhancing Horse-Human connections through clicker training

Husbandry skills: Hoof Care (part II)

In this series I will keep you posted about the young horse I am training in order to prepare her for the next farrier visit. I will call her A. in this blog. A. is scared to let people touch her legs, especially her hind legs. She kicks out when she feels something touching her hind legs.

In my last blog I wrote how I started her training. She is now used to the clicker. She knows that a click is an announcer of good things coming her way: appetitives (in this case treats). She understands my end of session signal that tells her that there are no more treats to be earned.

Training Tools

Besides a clicker and treat I use a target stick that I made from a piece of pool noodle on a stick. I chose a pool noodle because they are soft, light weight and cannot hurt the horse accidentally.

I did not start with nose targeting this time. I used the target to touch A. The aim is to teach her that touching her hind legs is safe, will lead to appetitives (something the horse likes to have, such as a treat) and that she is in control (no force or coercion) about accepting her body to be touched. For obvious safety reasons I still work with protective contact. A. is allowed to kick the pool noodle in case I go too fast and nobody will get hurt.

Introducing the Pool Noodle

I already knew A.’s favourite spots to scratch her, so I kept those in mind while training.

I introduced the pool noodle by holding it in front of her and click and treat her for looking at it. I am still working with protective contact (a barrier between her and me). She wouldn’t touch the target in the beginning.

Then I held it a bit more to the left on my side of the fence, still not too close, and clicked and reinforced A. for ‘standing still’. Then I held it a bit more to the right, near her withers and so on. Clicking and reinforcing every little step in order to give her confidence that standing still is what I want from her. Nothing else.

Little by little I could hold the target closer and closer until she could touch it. I haven’t clicked and reinforced much for touching with her nose or sniffing since my goal is not to teach her to touch the pool noodle with her nose. She wasn’t afraid of the pool noodle target by the way, just curious.

Training logbook

After 3 sessions of each 5 minutes I could touch her with the pool noodle on the withers, her chest/throat/mane and her bum. If she moved away, even a little weight shift, I went back to the previous steps when she was still relaxed and OK with it. I would take a step back and continue a bit slower. In positive reinforcement training you mark the desired behaviour. If A. wants to move away that is OK. I just wait until she is ready to come to me and present her body close to the fence so I could touch her with the pool noodle again.

I don’t keep the pool noodle on her body until she stops moving. That would be negative reinforcement (strengthening the behaviour (standing still) with taking away the aversive (the thing she wants to escape).

I know it took 3 sessions because I keep a training logbook. I keep track of time, how many sessions we do each day, how long the sessions are, how long the breaks are (usually 2-3 minutes), where we train (A. lives in an in/out stall and sometimes we train outside, sometimes inside) and how much progression we made and also what startled her or what body parts he becomes anxious. I also wrote down the next steps of her training.

I end every session with an end of training signal. Sometimes A. keeps standing aligned to the fence in the hope of getting scratches, sometimes she walked right back to her hay to eat.

In the next blog I will tell you more about how A.’s training is progressing.

Read the previous blog: Husbandry skills: hoof care (part I)

Sandra Poppema, B.Sc.

Are you inspired and interested in personal coaching or want to be a part of my HippoLogic Clicker Training Academy in which we have weekly group clicker coaching, clicker courses and a private online R+ community take action! CLICK the links to learn more.

Leg lifting for trimming

Pitfalls of Positive Reinforcement

Clicker training or positive reinforcement is based on a simple concept: adding something the learner wants (an ‘appetitive’) in order to strengthen a behaviour. What can possibly go wrong with a simpel concept of noticing (a tiny step towards) the desired behaviour – mark the behaviour (‘click’) and  reinforce (strengthen) it by giving the learner something pleasurable?

Theory versus Practice

Like every training method there is the theory which assumes the trainer, the target animal (learner) and the environment are perfect and then there is reality…

History of the Horse

Not all horses are blank slates. It is very rare to come across a horse that hasn’t been handled by humans  before he’s trained by an experienced positive reinforcement trainer.

In other words, almost every horse already has a history with humans and he has already made lots of associations with situations, humans, things et cetera. Both good and bad.

Solution

If the horse has negative associations with certain cues, tack or situations the trainer has to counter condition (make them ‘neutral’ or ‘positive’) them first.

Frustration

In positive reinforcement an appetitive is added to strengthen a behaviour. When the horse doesn’t understand what he has to do in order to earn the treat or if the horse is too excited by the high value treat, he can become frustrated.

If the trainer is not noticing little signs of frustration in the horse and doesn’t respond adequately the learned behaviour can regress or the horses loses interest in the exercise. If the frustration builds up the horse can even become aggressive.

Solutions

Make sure your horse understands when he can and when he can’t expect food rewards. Implement a ‘start session’-signal and an ‘end of session’-signal.

Lumping criteria (making your steps too big) or raising criteria too quickly can cause frustration. Split the goal behaviour into enough steps that you can reward.

If the treats are too distracting and causing frustration, use low(er) value treats and make sure the horse is not hungry during training. Provide a full hay net during training.

Over-aroused

Some horses are very excited once they discover that (high value) treats or other very desirable rewards can be earned in training. Due to their excitement they can get aroused or even over-aroused. If not properly addressed the physical signs (like dropping the penis or erection) can be reinforced (unconsciously) in training.

Solutions

Prevention works best but in order to prevent this you have to have a keen eye for body language and behaviour. (Over)arousal can be caused by frustration, see above.

In order to counter condition and/or prevent reinforcing physical signs of arousal, start marking and reinforcing before the arousal happens. In other words: split the behaviour, increase the rate of reinforcement and counter condition the behaviour.

Preventing pitfalls

Like in any other training method there are many mistakes a trainer can make. I think that is inherent to learning a skill.

Find an experienced teacher to guide you around the pitfalls. There are enough things to learn without falling into them.

Sandra Poppema

Are you interested in online personal coaching, please visit my website

 

 

7 Tips for Clicker Trainers

In clicker training you use the clicker to teach new behaviours and every once in a while to confirm established behaviours.

1. Let your click always be followed by a reward, even if your timing was wrong. That’s ‘part of the deal’.
2. The receiver, the horse, determines the reward. Not the trainer. We can reward our horses with money or slaps/pats on their necks, but if we want to make clicker training ‘work’ we have to figure out what really motivates our horses.
3. Keep training sessions short if you are teaching a new behaviour. I often use a kitchen timer to make sure my sessions are only 5 – 10 minutes, depending of the horse and the circumstances. Or I put a certain amount of treats (about 10 -12) in my pocket. This has taught me to check my treat supply often, and if I’m running out of treats I know it is time for a break. It prevents a click with no treat to follow up.
4. Give your horse an “end-of-session”-signal so you can give him a break and you can get a refill. These tips help you not to over-train your horse. You can do multiple sessions in one training. Make sure you give your horse a break in between sessions. Sometimes allowing a roll or some grazing in between is a break. Or just getting on the other side of the fence will give your horse a break. Start your session with a “start-session”-signal, like clapping your hands or giving a verbal cue.
5. Start teaching your horse the Key Lessons. It will give you and your horse the perfect building blocks for all kinds of other behaviours. It will teach the trainer timing and creates opportunities to practice basic mechanical skills like: cue- wait for behaviour – click- take a treat- present treat to horse- cue again, practice working with a training plan and logbook and train your observational skills.
6. Train with the end goal in mind, then divide that behaviour into as many building blocks as you can think of. Write them down.
7. Keep a training journal to keep track of your successes and of your points to improve.

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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.

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