Move Your Horse with Positive Reinforcement!

The 2024 program starts in May 2024. Enrollment is open: Apply here

Enrollment is OPEN!

Here is what the program looks like and what the 4 trimesters in the HippoLogic Clicker Training Academy offer. We learn by repetition and every time we’ll go through the basics, you’ll learn more, see more and understand more. Each level in your education will have it’s own challenges: the more you know, the more you’ll understand that there is more…

The foundation of each season is always The Confident Clicker Trainer. 

It’s my 12-week foundation course that includes everything! From: Appetitive to Zen behaviour.

This program takes you from Confused to Clear about Clicker Training! You’ll discover new things every time you go through the course and your horse will develop and improve his skills and behaviours!

R+ MOVEMENT Training! Exercise your horse with positive reinforcement! Time to get your fat horse fit and your whoa-horse a go-horse 

 SPRING
Each season has it’s own challenges, for instance Spring is the time we have to compete with lush, yummy grass and greens every where!

Grass Training! Useful in Movement Training (especially at liberty) as well as in hand walks and on trails How to keep your horses’ attention while being in nature’s candy store 

Spring Movement Training
Horses gain weight in Spring (as is in their nature), days getting longer and maybe your horse gets more pasture time. You’ll have to adjust your Movement Training to those challenges!

SUMMER

Confident Clicker Trainer. When you’re new this is what you need, when you’re going through the course again, you’ll notice things you’ve never noticed before. It’s all about refining your training skills, improve your observation skills and develop a clear eye for the tiniest improvements in your horse. 

Summer Movement Training
What exercises are best for when the weather is HOT? You’ve built some momentum in Spring and now you don’t want to lose it.

Your horse might be 24/7 out and still gaining weight? Or is harder to motivate due to warm weather. How to deal with these challenges!

‘Trails and Trailering’
This is the season to get your horse out and expand your horizon! Taking your horse out on trails can be challenging when your horse doesn’t load into the trailer. Or you can’t take him out on the road because of the traffic 
Or your horse is herd bound, your other horse has severe separation anxiety and you simply can’t go out for a walk or trail ride.
This is where you can use more clicker training to help your horse overcome his fears and help him become a trustworthy, confident trail partner.

AUTUMN
We go through The Confident Clicker Trainer program and you’ll discover there is still more to learn! Also the weather effects your horses behaviour and he might need to refresh his skills. 

Autumn Movement Training

The grass has the last grow spurt before winter hibernation. Suddenly your horse gains weight again! How to overcome this challenge?
What about the weather?  Your horse freaks out about your umbrella or rain pants. What exercises can you do when it’s muddy. Maybe your horse has more indoor (Stable) hours and gets really “fresh” when taken out. Or the spooky corner when there is stormy weather. How do we deal with those challenges safely?

Husbandry Skills: From Haltering to Hoof Cleaning
Days are getting shorter but we can still teach our horses so much! Husbandry skills help us keep our horses and us (!) safe and making sure that our horses stay in good health.

Deworming is something that you might only do a few times a year, but even those times you don’t want it to become a struggle. You want to do it with consent and ease.

Hoof care, taking care of their feet (especially in mud) is really important. All husbandry training contributes to trust and the relationship you have with your horse. 

WINTER 

The Confident Clicker Trainer. Your horse behaves different in Winter. You behave different. Maybe you need to blanket your horse, he spents more time indoors and reacts differently to treats. The hay cubes that had almost no value in Summer are now the bees knees in Training! While in Spring you’ll *have* to offer something better than hay cubes because of the grass all around.

Winter Movement Training
Dealing with snow, cold (what gloves to use in -20 ºC and what treats that you can handle with gloves) and frozen ground will have it’s own challenges.

Maybe you’ve come a long way since Spring Movement Training and you need to find ways to keep your horse fit in Winter, so Spring will be a “breeze”. Even when Winter has it’s own challenges, we’ll find ways to keep you up with your training, so you won’t have to start from scratch when Spring comes around!

So many fun exercises you can do, even when it’s dark, cold and snowing! Snow fun! Enrichment to keep your horse occupied in long Winter nights.

Clicker Challenges
There are so many ways to put your training skills into practise. One way is to engage in entertaining Clicker Challenges! Teach your horse to paly “Jingle Bells” (with a twist) or build a chain of behaviours for one click! I’ve got many Clicker Challenges for you to keep you entertained!

All will be based on and tailored to YOUR personal goals with your horse 

Enrollment is OPEN Apply here

Only 40 spots available, don’t miss out!

Question? Drop me an email at hippologic@gmail.com

Happy Horse training! You are the trainer!

Sandra

FAQ’s about Grass Training for Horses

Are you a tiny bit curious what happens in HippoLogic’s Grass Training?  Here’s what people asked me: >> ‘If my doesn’t respond to the click I tap with the lead rope, is that OK?’, asked one of the participants in my Grass Training course with coaching. This is such a great question! I understand where it’s coming from and I was glad she asked. The answer is ‘No’. Don’t mix R- (negative reinforcement) or P (punishment) with R+ (positive reinforcement) in Grass Training. You want to keep Grass Training 100% positive reinforcement if you want predictable and solid results that last. >> ‘It’s Autumn here and almost Winter, can I start Grass Training’? wanted an Australian clicker trainer know. Yes, and Winter is actually the best time to start! Why? Because the grass you’re competing with (over your horse’s attention) is not as enticing as super lush, sweet Spring grass. You can start lying the fundamentals now of this important training and you’ll reap the fruits when you need them! In the course I will teach you how you can setup your Grass Training without grass.  >> ‘My horse is overweight (has EMS) and is on a strict diet and can’t have grass. Is this training for us’?,   Yes, and it’s actually the best course for your horse! In Grass Training you train your horse to ignore grass (and you’ll be more interesting!) and teach your horse a Stop Grazing cue with positive reinforcement, so that your horse will choose NOT to graze. Especially when your horse has EMS or is overweight you get into endless tugs of war with your horse over grass, right? What if that stops? What if your horse will ignore grass by choice? Wouldn’t that make everything more fun? It was for me! Why R+ actually works so well and all other details, I explain in the course. I also teach you how to setup your Grass Training without grass! Learn more

What can I expect from the HippoLogic Grass Training course? After this course if you follow the step-by-step instructions your horse knows Stop Grazing and Start Grazing-cues. You’ll understand why everything you’ve tried before didn’t work and what you need to do instead in order to get predictable, positive and long lasting results. The aim of this course is to teach you how you can train your own horse so that you can enjoy your horse more when you trail ride or have to lead him near or over grass without getting into a tug-of-war. What is included? Step-by-step instruction videos Written instructions Detailed Shaping Plan ‘Grass Training’ Practical printouts that will make training easy Happy Grass Training! You are the trainer! Sandra

Continue reading about Grass Training your Horse

Here are some blog for you:

• 10 Benefits of Grass Training Your Horse
• Grass Training Step 1
• Grass Training Step 2

Want to start today? Buy the course!

Grass Training: Teach Your Horse to Ignore Grass

Haven’t we all experienced that a horse pulled you towards some grass in order to grab a few bites? Isn’t that annoying? I think it is!

I didn’t want to be pushed around anymore by my horse every time there was some juicy patch of grass growing around. Grass is everywhere! 

I decided to look for a proper, force-free way to teach my horse to behave on and near grass.

I tried a so many different approaches, before I found one that works well, gave me a solid result and is totally force-free. I would like to share it with you.

Define ‘proper behaviour’ around grass

It took me a while to teach Kyra to behave ‘properly’ around grass. With ‘properly’ I mean: no more pulling me towards grass, wait until I give the ‘graze’ cue and ‘stop grazing and come along’ if I ask her to. I was tired of pulling Kyra off the grass.

Preparation

I must say before you can start training this you need a bit of preparation and… lots of practice time. After all, what is more enticing than grass? Well, a click can be…

What really helps is already have a solid history of click & reinforce. Secondly a horse that walks with you properly and the key lessons ‘head lowering’, ‘patience’ and ‘targeting’ are required to make this challenge most likely to succeed.

Shaping plan Grass Training

Here is a summary of my shaping plan:

• solid reinforcement history of the clicker
• teach Kyra to walk on a lead rope
• halt
• key lesson patience
• key lesson targeting
• key lesson head lowering

How I trained it

I started to reinforce lifting Kyra’s head while grazing. Why? Because this is the first step to move away from the grass. I began with leading her to grass and I would cue her to graze. Then I just waited (very, very patiently) until she lifted her head by herself. That is the moment I wanted to capture and reinforce.

I can’t stress how important it is to wait until the horse moves (his head) away himself. I tried other methods like pulling the head up/preventing the head from going down or asking Kyra to target while grazing in order to lift her head, but reinforcing her own head raise worked best.

High value treats

Every time she would lift her head , I clicked and reinforced Kyra with a very high value treat. One that could compete with grass. After she ate the treat I immediately gave her the cue to ‘graze’. Here is when the key lesson ‘head lowering’ comes is really handy.

I also clicked and reinforced the ‘graze’ cue. But instead of offering a treat off of my hand, the reward was to graze as long as she wanted.

Every time she would lift her head again, I clicked, reinforced and would then give her the ‘graze’ cue.

Next steps

After a certain amount of training sessions, which Kyra enjoyed very much (!), I noticed that she started to lift her head more often during grazing sessions. This is a perfect time to add a ‘lift head up’ cue. The key lesson targeting helped me a lot.

So my next clicker session looked like this:

• walk to the grass
• give the cue ‘graze’
• wait until Kyra lifts her head
• click and reinforce
• give her the cue ‘graze’
• let her graze until I thought she was likely to lift her head up again, ask ‘touch’ target stick
• click and reinforce
• cue ‘graze’
• et cetera.

In this way she is always reinforced for whatever I ask.

Raising the criterion

After several sessions I noticed that Kyra didn’t seem to mind lifting her head up anymore. She was eager to see what I had to offer her. The ‘diving into the grass’ behaviour was gone. She seemed so much more relaxed on grass.

I thought this would be the perfect time to raise a criterion. Now I wanted to lift her head and take one step forward before I gave the ‘graze’ cue again. I literally built this behaviour step-by-step.

The final step in this process was to teach her to wait for the ‘graze’ cue when we would walk on or approach grass.

Result Grass Training with Positive Reinforcement

Now I can ask Kyra to leave grass at any time. She is very willing to come with me. She never pulls me towards a patch of grass and I never have to pull her off of the grass. Win-win, for her and for me.

Kyra turned from a I-need-to-graze-now-and-store-fat-before-winter-comes-horse into a I-see-grass-so-what-horse. She knows she can trust me and is allowed to have her share… only when I say so.

Join my online Grass Training

Amazing Fun Fact

Today I wanted to make a video for the Facebook Grass Training group. Kyra didn’t want to graze, so I couldn’t show how to start. Never thought I could be in that position: a horse that doesn’t want to graze because training is way more valuable.

 

 

Sandra Poppema, B.Sc.

HippoLogic helps establish, enhance and excel horse-human relationships

 

 Buy the HippoLogic Grass Training for Horses that lead to a well behaved horse on grass.