What is grass training? Teaching your horse with positive reinforcement to ignore grass in training, leading and riding. In Grass Training you teach your horse to leave grass with a Stop Grazing-cue, and a Grazing-cue. It’s easier than you think, as long as you’ll use the right approach and don’t use R- or P.
Benefits Grass Training
Yummiest training ever for your horse! He will immediately pay attention to you when he understands there is a Start Grazing -cue. This will be the quickest learning of a cue.
By giving your horse something she wants, you immediately have her positiveattention!
No more unsolicited grazing on trails! You can ride, lunge and train at liberty on grass without losing your horses attention!
If you do fun stuff, your horse will trust you, looking out for your next visit. It’s a great foundation for friendship between you and your horse
It will give you incredible results. You’ll notice how annoying and frustrating it was, once you’ve solve it.
Your horse won’t snack on grass during at liberty work, leading or riding!
Your horse will become easy to get of out of the pasture. Simply call his name.
You both stop being frustrated while grass is available during riding or training
It will improve your communication
It will enhance to bond with your horse
Join the HippoLogic’s DIY Grass Training and get some fun and useful training time done. Happy Horse training!
Is your grass diving horse the most annoying in Spring? When the grass is lush and green and enticing? Is that when you think about teaching your horse to Stop Grazing on cue?
Do you know why this is the most challenging time of year to start Grass Training? Right: when you need it the most!
It’s also when you need it, it’s hard(er) to take the time to train it and practise patience!
It’s also the hardest time of year for your horse: when the grass is like candy, sweet and juicy and their body’s want to store energy for court shipping, breeding and maybe even already for Winter. They just can’t help themselves and then they have to deal with being pulled on their lead ropes all the time. It’s just not fair….
Southern hemisphere
If your living in the Southern hemisphere you might think this is not the time to start Grass Training. Winter is coming and you have other things on your mind…
I’ll let you in on a little secret: it would be the Best Time of the year! You can start with less enticing grass (or even hay) and make the Stop Grazing behaviour already a strong habit then when the grass starts to grow YOU are prepared and your horse won’t even try to dive into grass.
Step 2 is: Start before you need it! If you can… JUst like all other training, start before you need it.
Sounds unbelievable?
The year after I perfectionate my 100% R+ approach to grass training Kyra got Equine Metabolic Syndrome. And laminitis. I had to exercise her AND put her on a restrictive diet.
She went from 12 hours of pasture with friends to 24 hours solitary confinement. During the day she lived in a small paddock and at night in a stall, just like the other horses.
I had to hand walk her over the road at the end of Summer when the grass was just about to do another grow spurt… See picture left: Kyra with her special boots, offering Key Lesson Patience so I can make a picture. She\’s ignoring the grass!
I was so afraid that I would have to struggle with a grass diving, hungry horse. I worried that I had to battle a tug of war over grass and that I would loose. I was already in pain, seeing my horse suffering.
She was so good! It was truly amazing!
Lasting results
Honestly, I couldn’t believe that I still reaped the benefits of the grass training we did that year before! Kyra didn’t pull me towards the grass and in the moments it did happen (occasionally) I cued her to stop and she listened! Once you a behaviour becomes a habit, it will be very, very strong!
Start today, making heads up a habit on grass! You never know when this comes in handy!
Join me in Grass Training if you want to get rid of the grass diving. I show you how you can teach your horse to ignore grass, teach a Stop Grazing-cue and make this a great training for your horse and for you: both get what you want! How does that sound?
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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.
Here is step 1 in your free mini course Grass Training. If you want to join our in depth 2-week online course, then click here. If you\’re more of a DIY person and want the self paced course, click here.
Biggest pitfalls in Grass Training
Do you know the biggest pitfall most horse lovers fall into, when they want to teach their horse manners on grass? They use negative reinforcement or punishment to train it .
They don’t do this on purpose. And hey, to be honest: I’ve fallen into this pitfall myself!
This is what happened:
I held the lead rope extra short so my horse couldn’t\’t reach the grass, if he pulled he\’d feel pressure. Especially with a rope halter. Yes, it can hurt when they dive strong and quick into the grass and yet … he would dive into the grass the next opportunity he got!
So no real training (behaviour modification) there. Only prevention. And only as long as I kept the lead rope tight!
What else did I try?
Yes, I wiggled the lead rope when my horse took a bite until he\’d lift his head. In training terms this is P+ (positive punishment: adding an aversive in order to decrease a behaviour (the grazing)). This tactic hasn’t given me long lasting results…. You? (In the course I explain why this won\’t work)
I mixed these together with a click and treat for good behaviour.
It still didn\’t work. With these techniques I never gotten long lasting results. Only very short -in the moment- results and my horse seemed to forget the whole spiel already after our ride. So frustrating!
Therefor I didn\’t had the confidence to trust the process of pure R+ (positive reinforcement) until…
I started to be really precise and take a good look what was I doing that was R-, R+, P- and P+ in my training? Then I let go of everything NOT R+ and …. What happened? I got really, really good results!
This was a difficult process, but since I\’ve been through this myself and helped hundreds of people do it, I can do this very efficiently now.
So don’t fall into the pitfall of using R- or P+ in Grass Training. Not even a little bit!
Step 1: Start using only Positive reinforcement and TRUST the process!
Click and treat for desired behaviour
Use high (enough) value appetitive to reinforcer the wanted behaviour
Start small: make a shaping plan to help you start small
In the course I will explain in more detail how you can shift to 100% R+ and why you will get long lasting results.
I also share 6 other reasons people are not successful in teaching a solid Stop Grazing-cue and what you can do to change them.
What do you think is your pitfall in Grass Training? Share your thoughts in the comments.
PS if you’re going to visit my site, why don’t you join my FREE Clicker Training course!
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.
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 more desired behaviour around grass.
I tried a few 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.
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 step
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
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.
Today I wanted to make a video for the FB Grass Training FB Group. Kyra didn’t want to graze, so I couldn’t show how to start walking on grass when all your horse wants to do is graze. 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 leads to a well behaved horse on 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.
HippoLogic -> Clickertraining.ca 
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