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.

5 Benefits of Teaching Your Horse to Stand on a Mat

When you start clicker training your horse you might want to start with something fun and measurable. Key Lesson Mat training is an excellent exercise to start clicker training your horse. It’s a very simple exercise to train and easy to understand for your horse.

What does Key Lesson Mat training look like?

Your horse steps with his 2 front hooves on a mat. Soon you can train for duration and teach your horse to stay on the mat.

Purpose of Key Lesson Mat training

• Safety: It creates distance between horse and handler. If he is standing on a mat he is not in your personal circle
• Practising sending your horse away from you, towards the mat
• Practising asking your horse to come to you, towards the mat
• Groundtying with feet
• Clarity: horse knows what to do, where to go and where to stand
• Great foundation: ideal stepping stone to train other behaviours

5 Benefits of teaching your horse Key Lesson Mat training

1. Horse pays attention to the mat, not your hands or your pockets
2. Horse learns he has to do something in order to receive a click and reinforcer (C&R). He also learns that he can influence the C&R with his own behaviour
3. Makes it way easier and quicker to teach your horse other useful behaviours
4. Teach your horse to move towards something, instead of moving away from something which is so common in other training methods
5. Mats can become ‘safety blankets’ because of their positive reinforcement history. If the horse spooks there is a huge chance that he will look for the mat to stand on to give him comfort.

In this video you can see what happens when Kyra spooks: she doesn’t run to me or run me over. Instead she runs to the mat for comfort and safety. Super powerful benefit, wouldn’t you say?

 

Advanced Mat training ideas

• Put 5 or 6 mats in a circle and teach your horse to go from mat to mat
• Exercise your horse without riding by sending him from mat to mat with a few poles or low jump in the middle
• Teach your horse to stand on other (unfamiliar) objects like tarps, pedestals, trailer ramps, wooden bridges, hoof jacks, into a bucket of water and so on.

 

 

 

 

 

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Preparing for a hoof stand.

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Sandra Poppema, B.Sc.

I help horse owners create the relationship with their horse they really, really want.  I do this by connecting them 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.

Sign up for HippoLogic’s newsletter (it’s free and it comes with a gift) or visit HippoLogic’s website and discover my online course Key Lessons, Your Key to Success in Positive Reinforcement Horse Training.

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Join our group on Facebook where you can ask questions, interact with like-minded people and get support on your clicker journey. In the last quarter of 2019 I will do weekly LIVE videos in the Happy Herd. Don’t miss out!

Join the Clicker Training Academy if you want personal support

What is the HippoLogic Clicker Training Academy? 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 and become one of the 25 ‘founding members’ (those who receive extra
The first 25 founding members get an additional 90-minute coaching session with me for free (value $150 CAD).

Tons of Winter Training Ideas

Here in Canada it is Winter again. Normally the climate is mild here in Vancouver, BC but this winter we’ve already had snow that’s lasted for almost two weeks.

We all know that frozen pastures limit our horses ability to exercise themselves and horses generally are more spooky and more forward in cold weather conditions. Riders with an outdoor arena can’t ride due to the frozen ground. How can you get the most out of this time of year? Here are some tips.

Work on Simple behaviours

Choose to work on some smaller, but still important behaviours that will make your life easier and improve the relationship with your horse. Does every ride start with a bit of irritation because your horse lifts his head every time you want to halter/bridle him? Does he always walk a few steps while mounting?

How does that influence your relationship? Imagine how you would feel to have a horse that would put his head into his own halter or bridle, align perfectly next to your mounting block and stand still until you give the cue to walk on?

Simple behaviours you can work on in Winter that would improve your life at the barn can be:

• A self haltering horse
• A horse that aligns along the mounting block and wait patiently for your cue to walk on (watch video)
• Head lowering
• Mat training
• Backing
• Patience (standing head forward, neck in a neutral position)
• Targeting
• ‘Table manners‘ for your horse: teach him to stop mugging you
• Trailer loading
• Stop grazing cue (video , blog post or sign up for my free training)

Have some fun with your horse

If the weather isn’t allowing you to ride you can spend time with your horse , groom him and do a wonderful photo shoot. Maybe you can have eternalize some of your equestrian goals you worked on this year.

You can take your horse on a walk to hand graze your horse. This would be a perfect time to start teaching him how to quit grazing on a cue, since winter grass is less enticing than the juicy green Spring grass that will be back in a few months.

Start trick training and have a good time! Here is a good book that will get you started on a few easy tricks.

What does your favourite Winter training looks like?

Sandra Poppema

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

 

 

 

More about Mat Training

One of the key lessons in my positive reinforcement course is mat training. In mat training you teach your horse to stand on a mat with the two front feet. Once your horse knows what is expected of him, you can turn this exercise into a powerful tool to teach new behaviours.

 

 

Applying Mat Training

Once your horse is happy to stand on a mat you can:

• Build ‘duration’. This will help to teach your horse to ground tie.
• Use the mat as indicator for your horse where to stand, aligning next to the mounting block
• Teach him to step onto other objects like a pedestal, tarp or trailer ramp. You can start placing the mat on or next to the new object first if your horse doesn’t respond to the cue for ‘step up’ or if he is nervous
• Teach him to put one foot on a stool as preparation for the farriers hoof stand
• Place mats in the arena and use them to send your horse from mat to mat.
• teach your horse to go over bridges or step into water
• Send your horse from mat to mat with a pole or small jump in between
• And so on

If you want to know how to start mat training with your horse, read this post.

Every horse has a different learning curve

At the SPCA barn were I teach the horses with positive reinforcement, I work with 5 horses. Last week I introduced the mat (a foam puzzle mat) to four of them. It was really interesting to see how each horse reacts in a different way to the mat.

Horse #1

Horse #1 tried to avoid the mat in the beginning and did everything not to step on it. He didn’t even sniff the mat at first. So my first criterion with him was clicking for ‘moving a hoof closer to the mat’. It didn’t take long before he figured out that the mat had something to do with the clicks and he started pawing the mat. Well done!

Horse #2

Horse #2 sniffed the mat right away. It could be that she had seen that the mat had something to do with earning a click and reinforcer or maybe she just has a different personality and training history.

After sniffing, she started touching the mat with her nose. She knows how to target a target stick and a cone with her nose. My first criterion is always ‘interact with the mat’, so I reinforced the sniffing and touching with the nose.

Then I raised the criterion to ‘touch with a hoof’ and I had to ‘set it up for success’ by manipulating the environment a bit. I put the mat in front of her feet and asked to touch the target stick which I held far enough for her to do one step. Indeed she touched the target and stepped onto the mat with one hoof. Then I faded out the target stick and she figured out quickly that touching the mat with her hooves was the way to earn clicks and food.

Horse #3

Horse #3 started pawing the mat right away. This horse has a habit of lifting her legs in order to ask for attention, during feeding time or if she is stressed. If she doesn’t get what she wants, she often alternates legs.

Mat training is a good way to teach her to ‘keep her 2 front feet on the floor’ since this is incompatible behaviour with the leg lifting she does. She is amazingly smart and was the first horse that stood properly with both of her feet on the mat within the first session. It seemed to ‘click’. I have clicked for ‘4 feet on the ground’ many times during previous training sessions. The mat clearly helped her to focus on ‘standing’. I can’t wait until our next sessions to build duration.

Horse #4

Horse #4 stepped on the mat right away as if he wasn’t aware of it. Of course I clicked and reinforced for stepping onto the mat, even though it really looked like he didn’t see the mat. After reinforcing stepping onto the mat a few times I placed the mat a bit further away and he immediately walked over there to stand on it. Bravo! He did step on the mat on purpose.

Mat training was an excellent preparation for stepping on a horse scale. Our clicker trained horses were the best behaving clients that day

Each horse reacts differently to a mat, depending on his character, history, experience with new objects, clicker experience and so on.

How did your horse do in the first session with the mat? How did mat training helped you in other situations? Please share your story in the comments below. Thank you.

Join HippoLogic’s Facebook group

Join our group on Facebook where you can ask questions, interact with like-minded people and get support on your clicker journey. In the last quarter of 2019 I will do weekly LIVE videos in the Happy Herd. Don’t miss out!

 

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

 

Join the Clicker Training Academy if you want personal support

What is the HippoLogic Clicker Training Academy? 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 and become one of the 25 ‘founding members’ (those who receive extra
The first 25 founding members get an additional 90-minute coaching session with me for free (value $150 CAD).

 

Fun Friday: Easy Tricks & Tips for Fun

Get out of your normal routine and do something new and exciting with your horse this weekend. Here are some tips and tricks you can do.

One day tricks

If your horse is already clicker savvy and knows basic behaviours like leading, standing still, targeting, follow a target, mat training and backing it is very easy to teach one of these simple tricks.

Clicker trained horses are very eager to learn new things because in their experience there is a lot of good things (clicks and treats) involved. It is fun for your horse! Want to start clicker training? Start here.

Horse hug

Basic behaviours: standing still while handler stands next to shoulder and targeting.

Teach your horse to follow the target that you keep behind your back, click and reinforce for every inch his head moves in the right direction behind your head. Last step is to fade out the target. More detailed instructions can be found in this book Horse Trick Training

 

Standing on a pedestal

Most horses like to be a bit taller and think this is a fun exercise once they have learned it. Mat training is a good basic skill to start with.

Set your horse up for success and click and reinforce for every small step like approaching the pedestal, then investigating it and touching it with a hoof, et cetera. Raise your criteria slowly.

Before you know it your horse wants to stand on the pedestal. Therefor it is equally important to teach him to backup and dismount it. Don’t forget to reinforce that, too.

General tips

• Keep the sessions short (5 minutes) and repeat over the weekend.
• Give your horse a short break in between the sessions.
• Make pictures or a video on Sunday to record your success. Please share your pictures with me on Facebook.

More fun things to do

• Explore your surroundings and take your horse for a hand walk or hand grazing session. Read here how you can teach your horse to leave the grass voluntarily.
• Ask a friend to go with you. Do a photo session with your horse during the sunset.
• Hide a treat under a cone and teach your horse to find it.

Have fun with your horse! If you have fun tips & tricks to share, please write them in the comment section. I am looking forward to hearing about your fun time with your horse.

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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5 Benefits of Trick Training in daily life

Today I had a really hard time to sit down and write a blog because my horse Kyra is on my mind. Last week she was diagnosed with EMS (Equine Metabolic Syndrome): obesity, laminates (foundering) and insuline resistance are three very important components of this syndrome as well as Cushing’s. 

Change of life style

Kyra needs a different life style for now: no grass, a restricted intake of calories, as little sugar as possible (only soaked or low sugar hay and no apples, carrots or other sugary treats) and more exercise (which is hard since she is very sore on her front hooves).

How trick training helped

Sometimes previous training benefits you in situations you never could have expected. So can trick training. Many tricks may seem useless when you train them, however they can benefit you in surprising ways. Here are some examples.

When the vet came I wanted him to take X-rays of Kyra’s front feet to see if there was any rotation of the pedal bone. She needed to stand on wooden blocks with her front feet to take the pictures.

1) Clicker Challenge and 2) Mat Training

Kyra knows how to stand on different kinds of pedestals, mats, tarps and last year we participated in an online  ‘Clicker Challenge’. She had to stand for 5 seconds on two small wooden blocks. Exactly the same blocks the vet brought. How amazing is that!? In hindsight this was the perfect preparation for taking the X-rays.

I joked to the vet and asked if I could get a discount since Kyra behaved really well and safe. First he said ‘no’ but then he told me I actually just saved $ 50 on the bill because Kyra didn’t need sedation to make her stand on the blocks.

3) Trick training: financial benefits

When I wrote a cheque he did give me an additional discount (Thank you!). So our trick training paid off! Not to mention the stress we avoided because we didn’t have to make her do something she was afraid of. I didn’t need to stress about it, too. So, this was a triple bonus.

4) Muzzle and 5) boots

The vet also recommended a grazing muzzle so she can be in the pasture with her herd. I really have a hard time putting horses in a solitary paddock. The stress she has in there worries me. Stress has a negative impact on the immune system and wouldn’t benefit the healing of her laminates (which is an inflammation of the lammellae in the hoof).

Targeting helped me get the muzzle on in no time. Kyra didn’t seemed to mind the muzzle to try it. She doesn’t realize yet that she is rewarded by getting it on, but will miss out on the grass later in the pasture. I feel like I tricked her, but it is the best I can do if I want to get her healthy as soon as possible.

A few weeks ago I had started training Kyra to accept a soaking boot. This related well to the need to have Kyra use soft ride boots now to protect her feet and I didn’t need to start training this behaviour from scratch. It saved us a lot of time and stress when it was needed most. Having trained Kyra in all the basics and having experimented with different tricks has prepared her for a lot of different situations.

Practising for the Clicker Challenge in January 2015:

Here the video in which the behaviour of the Clicker Challenge is established and how Kyra did with the vet.

Ignoring grass

Now I hand walk Kyra daily to give her the exercise she needs. I have a really good barn friend who loaned me some horse boots that really give Kyra some relief. Thanks to the many hours of training her to ignore grass, I don’t have problems walking the street with the very juicy banks of grass.

How did trick training help you in a situation you had never thought it could be useful? Please share your story and help inspire others to enjoy trick training (more about trick training).

If you think this is a blog that someone can benefit from, please use one of the share buttons  below. Or just hit the like button if you appreciated this blog. Thank you!

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.

Sign up for HippoLogic’s newsletter (it’s free and it comes with a reinforcer) or visit HippoLogic’s website and discover what else I have to offer.

How Mat Training Paid Off

Mat training is one of my key lessons in positive reinforcement training. It is a very versatile exercise and a good base for more advanced exercises.

Standing on a mat

Standing on a simple puzzle mat is a fun exercise to teach your horse. The goal is simple: the horse has to stand with his two front hooves on the mat.

Preparation for other exercises

Mat training can be a good preparation for the horse to stand more willingly on all kinds of surfaces like tarps, pedestals, plywood, trailer ramps, wooden bridges etc.

I found mat training also very useful as a preparation to teach your horse to soak his foot in a bucket of water.

Hoof care

Kyra is having some hoof issues that require me to soak her feet. I looked up some do-it-yourself hoof soaking solutions since I don’t own a soaking booth. One of the suggestions was a diaper soaked in water and put the hoof in a Ziplock bag reinforced with duct tape.

It was no problem for Kyra to go from standing on a mat to putting her feet in a rubber bucket. Next step was to teach Kyra to step into a bucket filled with water. I practised this a few weeks ago already, not knowing that I would soon need this behaviour.

Because Kyra already has a long positive reinforcement history of mat and bucket training, today she was not startled when i attached a soaked diaper around her hoof. She was a lot less surprised then I would be. Also stepping into a plastic bag with fluid was no problem at all.

She was totally OK with me tying the plastic bag full of water to her feet. This was totally new to her: she had never worn bell boots or leg protection before, but a plastic bag with water on her hoof was totally fine. It only took me a few clicks to get her walking around with the bag confidently.

The only downside of using the diaper was that I used a fancy one. One with silicone inside in order to keep your baby extra dry.

As soon as Kyra put her hoof with the diaper around it down, the diaper tore and all the soaked silicone came out. It was a big mess. Not something I would recommend using for equine use. Maybe the cheap diapers don’t have this feature. So make sure you check the inside of the diaper if you want to use it to soak hoofs in.

My point is that once your horse has a solid basis and a long positive reinforcement history with a certain exercise, it is not a big deal to tweak a few things and train different context shifts. In this way you train new behaviours very quickly.

Hooray for this key lesson I invested so much time in.

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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How to teach your horse anything

Whenever an idea forms about what I want to teach my horse Kyra I set it as a goal. I then start writing a training plan and make a shaping plan to achieve this goal.

Goal setting

My goal in this example is teaching Kyra to stand still, next to a mounting block, until I mounted and give the cue to walk.

Shaping plan

After I set my goal I make a shaping plan. I think about all the possible steps I have to teach Kyra to achieve my final behaviour: standing parallel to the mounting block so mounting is safe and easy for me. I have to teach her to stand still when I’m mounting, put my feet into the stirrups, taken the reins and I am ready to ask her to walk.

I write all these steps down. I don’t even have to bring it to the barn. Just writing it down makes me focused.

A few of the building blocks of this goal are:

• making her comfortable near the mounting block
• teaching whoa
• mat training
• hip targeting (to be able to align her to the mounting block)
• aligning with the mounting block without stress
• waiting until I have mounted
• and walking on queue

Context learning

Horses learn in a certain context. I use this into my advantage when I am teaching Kyra something new. I practise as much as possible in the same circumstance (context).

If I have a portable mounting block I always put it in the same place in the arena to practise. I will only put it in another place if she has already mastered lining up in the first spot.

I lower my criteria a bit when I change something in the context she learned the behaviour. In this way I always set Kyra up for success and I always have a good feeling too!

Set it up for success

I always take into account my horses emotions when I teach her something new. I recently saw a video in which the trainer put the mounting block next to the track in order to mount. Unfortunately this was the place where her horse was the most nervous (‘trapped in between the fence and the mounting block.) She made her training much more difficult than it needed to be.

For Kyra the most comfortable spot in the arena was in the middle where she has the most space and couldn’t hurt herself. Secondly I noticed that facing the door was more comfortable for her than facing the opposite side of the arena. I guess she likes to know where the exit is… After all it is an enclosed area and horses are flight animals.

Practising

Then I started to practise the steps in my shaping plan. I usually go up one criterion if Kyra masters it three times in a row.

Latent learning

After a few days of practise I give Kyra a break or I train something completely different. Often something she has already mastered. After giving her a ‘weekend’ off she performs much better. This latent learning is very valuable to me. It saves time!

Rinse and repeat

After a short break I lower my criteria a bit and start with some repetition to give her the confidence that she knows what is expected. After that I can move on very quickly.

Context shift

After Kyra has mastered the basics of the new behaviour, I change one thing in the context. I put the mounting block somewhere else in the arena. Not too far away from where she was used to.

Generalize

After a few times of putting the mounting block in different spots in the arena, I noticed that Kyra generalized the mounting block. Time for a real change: a different kind of mounting block.

I started practising with benches in the park, fences, rocks etc. Now Kyra is used to all kinds of mounting blocks and she is very safe to mount.

This is the general ‘recipe’ I use in teaching my horse new behaviours. You don’t have to use positive reinforcement training to use this in your training.

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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!

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Key lesson: Mat training

In this series about the key lessons (the key to successful clicker training) I’ve already talked about five important exercises. There are two more important basic lessons for the horse: ‘patience’ and ‘mat training’.

Standing on a mat
The purpose of mat training is to teach your horse to stand on a mat with his two front hooves. It is basically targeting with hooves. If your horse learns to stand on a rubber mat, he learns to trust you and standing on new surfaces. Horses have a lot of ‘feel’ in their hooves and therefor it can be scary in the beginning to stand on a item that is soft and squishy, like a puzzle mat.

Other behaviours
Once your horse has learned to stand on a mat on cue, you can build ‘duration’. Just like in targeting. If you train for duration in easy exercises it will be easier in the future to train duration, like in exercises under saddle. Your horse can learn to generalize. You can introduce a keep-going signal to make it more clear what you want to train.

Train opposite behaviour
Always reinforce the opposite behaviour of what you are training as well. You want don’t want teach him to stand on the mat only, but you also want him to step down on command. If you don’t do this, you will create a horse that always runs to whatever mat or similar surface he spots. And expects a treat!

After introducing a mat, you can ask your horse to mount other surfaces like a piece of plywood. Or ask your horse to walk over it. The sound of his hoof beat might scare him at first, but if you reinforce every little step (literally!) or even weight shifts he will soon gain the confidence to walk over it. This is a really good preparation for walking up ramps or entering trailers or walking over (wooden) bridges. It makes it easier to teach your horse to mount a pedestal.

Mat training also helps to make clear where you want your horse to be. If you want this to teach him to stand next to a mounting block, the mat can help indicate where you want your horse to stand.

Slow horses
If you have a horse with more whoa than go, it can help to teach him to walk from mat to mat in the arena. First at walk, then trot and finally in canter. It can make energy-saving horses really enthusiastic: it is clear that they have to go from mat to mat. So they know when to go and where they can stop. It can give them a feeling of control and makes it predictable for them. It can also help the trainer to be happy and content with little progress because the mats make the criteria and progress ‘visible’.

Fast horses
If you have a horse that has more go than whoa you can also teach him to go from mat to mat. Place the mats close together at first until your horse knows what is expected. You can teach him to slow down, walking over a mat, but keep going. Or you can ask him to stop. Experiment!

Jumping at liberty
Mats can help send a horse over a jump by himself, without chasing him with a whip over a jump. Simply place two mats on either side of a pole and ask your horse to go to the other mat. Place the mats a bit further apart each time,then you can raise the criteria by making a low jump and built from there.

Links to other key lessons

• Horse, stay in training mode: equine emotions during training
• Table manners for Horses: safe behaviour around food and treats
• Targeting
• Head lowering & backing
• ‘Patience’

Thank you for reading. Let me know how what your favourite key lesson is and why.

Read more

Read the blog about advanced mat training and 5 Benefits of Key Lesson Mat Training

Happy Horse Training!

Join HippoLogic’s Facebook group

Join our group on Facebook where you can ask questions, interact with like-minded people and get support on your clicker journey. In the last quarter of 2019 I will do weekly LIVE videos in the Happy Herd. Don’t miss out!

 

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

 

Join the Clicker Training Academy if you want personal support

What is the HippoLogic Clicker Training Academy? 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 and become one of the 25 ‘founding members’ (those who receive extra
The first 25 founding members get an additional 90-minute coaching session with me for free (value $150 CAD).

Follow my blog  on Bloglovin

How to turn “Standing on a mat” into a reward for your horse

Mat training is one of the Key Lessons, the basics for success in clicker training. In the beginning the goal of mat training is to teach your horse to “stand on the mat”. Then you click and reward. Simple. But, do you know you can also use “standing on the mat” as a reinforcer for another behaviour?

Make standing on the mat rewarding
You start with building a lot of positive associations with the mat. You start using primary reinforcers to reward your horse for standing on the mat, like treats. Don’t forget to bridge and reward for stepping off of the mat.

After a while the mat is supercharged with pleasurable associations. Every time the horse goes to the mat or stepped on the mat a click and reward had come his way.

The mat as reinforcer
Once the mat is very attractive, you can start using it as a secondary reinforcer. You will notice when the mat is supercharged: your horse will be drawn to the mat as a mosquito to a lamp.

Start asking a very simple exercise to perform on the mat, for instance ‘head lowering’, then you click and reward. In this way you create a chain of behaviours. This one consists of three links: stepping on the mat, standing on the mat (duration) plus head lowering. You can variate the rewards you offer your horse.

If the mat is used as a reward, you click and let your horse step on the mat. The click and going to the mat both act as ‘end of exercise’. Your horse can also enjoy a little break on the mat, which can be rewarding in itself. Don’t forget to still use a primary reinforcer most of the time.

If you want to create reliable behaviours you still have to reinforce the secondary reinforcer (mat) with primary reinforcers, like treats. Don’t phase out the primary reinforcers one hundred percent.

Practical use
You can put a few mats in the arena while riding. You can use the mats as reward. You can practise a certain exercise riding from mat to mat. If you are working on canter you can canter from mat to mat. The mat indicates the start and the end of an exercise and can help both rider and horse. Or you can lay down the mats only a few meters apart and work on lateral movements where you ride from mat to mat.

Because the mats are supercharged, you should click and reward for ignoring the mat while passing by, walking, trotting and cantering over the mat. Your horse has to learn that only if you ask to stand on a mat, he will get rewarded.

I have used mats to teach Kyra to jump at liberty. I started off easy with one mat before a pole on the ground and another mat just after the pole and I sent her or walked with her from mat to mat. This is why it is important to reward right from the start for stepping off of the mat. Each session I either increased the distance between the mats or I heightened the jump a bit. Now I can send Kyra around the arena with 2 jumps all by herself. She really seems to like it a lot.

Sandra Poppema

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10 Tools that changed my Training Approach (III)

This is part III of ‘What is so powerful about clicker training’? What changes have I made since I switched from Natural Horsemanship to Clicker Training? In this series I talk about my 10 favourite tools for training horses and how they changed my training approach to a much more horse friendly way of training. You can read about Training tools # 1 – 3 here and read about Training tool # 4 here.

# 5 Mats
One of the 7 Key Lessons I teach my clients is ‘mat training’. Mats are very versatile training tools. First I thought you could just teach your horse to stand on it and that was it. Now I know how much more there is to mat training. You start by teaching your horse to stand on the mat with two front feet, that’s just the beginning.

Turning a whoa-horse into a go-horse
The results of the at liberty mat training made me use the mats for other exercises. I started to ride from mat to mat. She knew standing on a mat meant a break, a click and a reward. Double bonus for my more-whoa-than go-horse.

By using the mats I changed Kyra into a more go-than-whoa-horse because she learned quickly that the faster she went the faster the reward came. And the faster she went the more fun it was. Of course I had to teach her the “opposite” behaviour too: I clicked and rewarded a lot for just walking and trotting over the mats and for ‘ignoring’ the mats when I didn’t give her a sign to step on them, too.

Mats are also useful to teach a horse to stand on unfamiliar objects. Horses have ‘feeling’ in their hooves and they use their hooves to test surfaces. A squishy rubber mat will help in building trust, mounting pedestals, trailer ramps, bridges, tarps, water and so on. Instead of mats you can also use large pieces of plywood. Or use them both. Experiment!

Jumping at liberty
Then I used two mats so I could let Kyra walk from mat to mat at liberty. It helped me to make Kyra more active in walk and trot, because she loved to go over and step on the mat.

Then I placed a pole in between the two mats so she had to step over the pole. The pole became a cavaletti and later a jump. In this way I taught her to jump at liberty without chasing her with a whip or using a chute to make her jump. She got the concept of running from mat to mat. The faster she went the bigger reward she got. In this way you can create a ‘chain’ of behaviours’.

In the video the chain of behaviours is: walking of the mat, trot, jump, trot to the second mat where the click and reward follows. You can also see that the mat has become a ‘security blanket’  for Kyra when she was startled by noises outside the arena.  She runs to the mat, not to me. That’s how powerful the mat has become for her. It has become a secondary reinforcer: standing on the mat itself has become a reward for her.

The process of teaching her to jump at liberty was longer this way than chasing her over it each time, but it was worth it. She started really to enjoy jumping and became really crazy and playful, something I am sure I wouldn’t have accomplished by sending her over a jump with a whip behind her butt. Mat training turned out to be very useful under saddle, too.

Other uses
Mats are can be used to teach your horse to ground tie, it’s a good place to use as a starting point for an at liberty exercise or teaching your horse to stand patiently next to a mounting block. 

I used a mat in the middle of a circle to reward Kyra for walking a nice circle outside the poles.

I am looking forward to hear about your creative way of using mats in training. Let’s share and inspire one another. Thank you.

If you think this is a blog that someone can benefit from, please use one of the share buttons  below. Or post your comment, I read them all!

Or simply hit the like button so I know you appreciated this blog. Thank you!

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.

Sign up for HippoLogic’s newsletter (it’s free and it comes with a reinforcer) or visit HippoLogic’s website and discover my online 8 week course Key Lessons, Your Key to Success in Positive Reinforcement Horse Training.

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10 Tools that changed my Training Approach (II)

What is so powerful about clicker training? Why does it work and what do you need to succeed?

In this post I will talk about one of my favourite tools for training horses and how it changed my training approach to a much more horse friendly way of training.

You can read about Training tools # 1 – 3 here.

4 Choices

A scary and yet very powerful tool you can give your horse is ‘choice’.

When I started to give horses a ‘voice’ by allowing them to make decisions in training I started to learn so much more about them. I was willing to accept whatever my horse was communicating and act on it, too.

I learned what they liked and what not, how long their attention span was for specific exercises, when they wanted to stop training and when they lost concentration learning new things. I use that information to optimize our training. I learned what exercises were so rewarding in itself that I started to use them as secondary reinforcers. You can reward horses with exercises too, you know. See # 5 Mats.

In hindsight my whole relationship with my horse was raised to another level when I started using ‘choices’ as a training tool. Before that I was convinced that I had the best relationship I could imagine. Giving my horse a voice by allowing him to make choices works best in combination with reward-based training. Clicker trained horses in general are encouraged and rewarded for trying out things. It might be less effective in a traditional training approach.

Kyra sometimes indicates that she wants to leave the arena while riding. I take a mental note and after I am done with our arena exercises we end our ride with a stroll along the road. She loves to explore.

There is a wonderful exercise that is called ‘101 things to do with a …’ You give your horse an object, for instance a carton box or a barrel and you click and reward once for every interaction with the object your horse comes up with. For example he sniffs it, one click, he paws it with his right front foot, one click, he only gets another click if he paws the box with one of his other feet. And so on. You can teach your horse to be creative.

I’ve heard riders that give their horses a ‘Please dismount me’-signal to communicate. In the beginning the horses used their newly gained power a lot. Over time they started to use it less and less. I think I am going to teach Kyra a ‘Please dismount me’-signal and see what happens.

Do you use ‘choice’ as a tool? I am curious to hear about what you allow and or if you encourage your horse to make choices?

Read here part III

Read here part IV

If you think this is a blog that someone can benefit from, please use one of the share buttons  below. Or post your comment, I read them all!

Or simply hit the like button so I know you appreciated this blog. Thank you!

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.

Sign up for HippoLogic’s newsletter (it’s free and it comes with a reinforcer) or visit HippoLogic’s website and discover my online 8 week course Key Lessons, Your Key to Success in Positive Reinforcement Horse Training.

Follow my blog  on Bloglovin