5 Tips for Clicker Training Overweight Horses

When your vet just told you: “No more treats for your horse! She needs to lose weight immediately!”. You might worry how to clicker train your horse, now treats are forbidden by a professional you trust! 5 Tips to keep clicker training your overweight horse.

Feeding Treats vs Using Food Appetitives

I find that there is a difference when someone with a traditional background tells you “No more treats”. In the ‘general horse world’ treats mean: commercial horse treats made with lots of molasses, apples (high in sugar), carrots (also high in sugar), maybe even sugar cubes (when I was a kid I was told that horses love them!).

Horses need to eat! Even fat horses need forage. That’s tip #1.

Tip #1 Use Food Reinforcers From Your Horse’s Diet

The reason equine vets are against feeding obese horses treats is obviously for health reasons! Remember: they are the ones that see all the bad things that are a result of overfeeding horses, or feeding the wrong diets! We usually don’t call our vet to check on our healthy horses, unless when we buy a horse. So vets have plenty of good reasons for this advise!

Instead of adding treats or food reinforcers to your horse’s diet, subtract them from his diet, so that you can use them to train!

Does your horse get hay cubes or soaked beetpulp? Those can be great appetitives in training. You already know that your horse loves these! Even vitamin/mineral pellets (in small quantities!) can be used in training.

Tip #2: Measure the Amount of Appetitives

Before you start clicker training your horse, take out the total amount of food your horse is able to have that day. Put that amount aside for training. Don’t add anything else!

I have two mini horses now and they are getting chubby. So I really am strict to set aside two little hands of normal grass pellets (no molasses) for their training. It looks so little! It’s difficult!

I made up a rule for myself to help me: once my treat bag is empty I can’t have any refills! When I had Kyra, who was 14.2 hands tall, I could use way bigger amounts. I realize that this is just something in my head. I will get used to it

Tip #3 Feed Smaller Portions (Without Frustration)

I don’t recommend being really frugal with treats in training, but using a high rate of reinforcement (RoR) can help train faster. I prefer 3 or 4 pellets for each click, use a high RoR and also give general amounts for really good outcomes. Keep in mind that I train mini horses! But this might work for your horse, too

I rather train a bit shorter (because the daily ration is used up) than train longer and get worried about feeding more calories in training than they use up.

Feeding less food in training will help you become more clear about your goal! If you’re worried that the calorie intake during your sessions are bigger than than that your horse burns off: choose movement behaviours.

Tip #4 Focus on Movement in Training!

Ask your horse to burn some calories with clicker training! This will make Force Free Movement Training FUN for your horse. Even though exercising is aversive for most overweight horses, they are also often highly motivated by food! There is a reason they are obese.

Tip #5 Use Non Food Reinforcers

Did you know you can reinforce behaviour with … behaviour!

When you have a limited amount of food for training, find those things your horse loves to do, to reinforce the behaviour! Most overweight horses like to do ‘nothing’. I’ve successfully used Key Lesson Mat Training as reinforcer for high energy behaviours in the beginning of our Force Free Movement Training.

You can also make a ‘behaviour chain’ (I like to back chain behaviours for quick results) so that you get more behaviour for one appetitive.

Train without Frustration!

Make sure your horse doesn’t get frustrated in training, or you might have to fall back on a high RoR or even feeding more, instead of less. It can happen to the best of us. Point is that we learn (quickly) from our mistakes and avoid them in the future!

Force Free Movement Training for Laminitis Horses

Is your horse overweight? Did the vet recommended: No more treats!” or “More exercise” to get your horse in shape? Join my R+ for Overweight Horses program. We’ll address your biggest struggle in getting your horse to move with positive reinforcement. You can only join after a personal conversation, so I can tailor this 2-week online coaching program towards your horse, your situation and your needs! You can book a call here.

If you want to get better at things like:

• Building duration in exercising your horse with R+
• Getting your horse in shape and lose weight without a crash diet
• Creating fun in movement training so you don’t have to keep running along

This is for you. Check out the information page here!

Sandra Poppema, BSc

Founder of the HippoLogic and creator of Force Free Movement Training for Laminitis Horses

Two week online program

Pitfalls to get my fat horse fit with clicker training (and how I overcame them!)

When Kyra got laminitis one of the things I had to do was exercise her!

It was such a nightmare falling back onto negative reinforcement that after 2 days of lunging, I decided to try to get her moving using clicker training.

I did this because Kyra was really agitated with me. She was telling me she didn’t like to be suddenly coerced. At. All.

I never seen her making those faces to me, see photo. ->

It broke my heart, seeing Kyra so unhappy.

Falling of the Exercise Wagon

I tried many times before she got laminitis to exercise Kyra with the aim of weight lost. I fell of the exercise wagon over and over. Then there was this, then that. ‘Life happened’, and so on.

Real reason -in hind sight- was that I didn’t know how to train a whoa horse and turn her into a go horse with positive reinforcement.

Kyra didn’t offer forward movement in the first place. She was never a forward horse (so I thought). Over time, this changed by the way! I set up accountability for myself and a support group of supportive people!

Duration in movement: Training for Trot

Duration was a struggle (trotting for more than a few steps was hard at first), to get her moving at all was a struggle.

Getting ‘more movement’, for less treats wasn’t really happening. Normally I hadn’t any trouble fading out treats after behaviours got consistent and on cue.

These things made me feel like I couldn’t do this, so I quit. I told myself: She’s happy like she is, so…

I also wanted to believe: It ‘s not as important because, she’s always been ‘chubby’, it’s her breed (Exmoor pony x Andalusian) and she was happy and healthy…. Right? (I was wrong!)

So she slowly gained weight over the years, and I kept looking away. I literally didn’t ‘see’ how overweight she really had become! The master’s eye fattens the horse: we see what we want to see.

You can only train for duration is when you are measuring what duration you’re getting. Do you get 2 steps of trot, then you can aim for 3. And add a step (or a few seconds of a behaviour ) more.
Biggest pitfall is lumping when I was aiming for duration. Once I started tracking it became easy.

Exercising became matter of life and death

When Kyra got laminitis I had to rethink my movement training! I had to prioritize it!

The vet told me to stop giving treats and start exercising her. Weight loss became a matter healthy or sick and even a matter of life and death. He gave her a body score of 9 (the highest score there is!)

I tired lunging and round penning twice. It broke my heart to see that R- damaged our relationship, that I had so carefully build over the years with clicker training.

Having the fear of losing her, made me dedicated!

What I leaned using R+ to get fat Kyra fit

I decided to change back and use R+ in exercising her. One I made a firm decision I found ways to exercise Kyra and to help her loose weight. Learned a ton. It wasn’t always easy, but now I know what works and what doesn’t I help other horse owners who are struggling to exercise their overweight horses with positive reinforcement.

Here is a video of 5 things I learned using positive reinforcement to exercise Kyra and let her lose weight.

Helping Kyra loose weight with my Movement Training strengthened our bond. Over time, she turned into a happy, forward moving horse! She became fit and recovered from het laminitis!

Join our Force Free Exercising for Laminitis Horses Facebook group

If you struggle getting your overweight horse fit with clicker training, join our support group.

Happy Horse training!

Sandra

Exercising your laminitis horse

When your horse has or had laminitis, one of the recommendations you’ll get from your vet is to exercise your horse, so he’ll lose weight.
Where to start?

Before you start exercising

• Make sure that the trigger for laminitis is identified and removed
• Your horse is off all pain medication
• You have a tested (low sugar) and balanced diet in place
• Your vet has given you clearance for exercising your horse

Start where your horse is at

You may have to start really short walks in hand. With short I mean 5 minute walks. You can gradually build duration. Keep in mind that even a little exercise is better than none!

We have to start our horse somewhere. Starting with a short exercise regime can also help us build the habit of exercising our horse on a very regular basis!

Make exercising appetitive (fun!) for your horse

Exercising can be hard for overweight horses! They might not enjoy it. Using positive reinforcement can really help shift this for your horse.

In positive reinforcement training, you strengthen a behaviour by giving your horse something valuable for what he just did. When you use a bridge signal to ‘bridge’ the time gap between the desired behaviour and the moment you’re able to deliver a treat, your horse will pay attention to what he just did and do more of that behaviour.

Here is how you start clicker training your horse.

Use positive reinforcement to help your horse move

When your horse doesn’t want to move you can wait until he does a slight weight shift forwards, then click and give a treat. With a ‘treat’ I mean a sugar free food reward, something that is low calorie, yet still yummie for your horse.

The next step is to click for a step forwards. This way you can literary raise your criteria for a click and treat, step-by-step. That’s how I did it with Kyra. She was already clicker trained, so she understood that she had to take initiative and move.

I found it very rewarding to use clicker training to exercise my laminitis horse, because she didn’t want to move in the first place. Using force would have negatively impacted my good relationship with Kyra and I didn’t want that to happen. I’ve tried it at first, but it was clearly the wrong choice for us! She resented lunging and working at liberty in the round pen, so I had to come up with alternative ways. And I did.

Do you struggle with exercising your overweight horse and help get your fat horse fit?

Make sure you find a tribe that understand the struggles that you’re going through. When you are a clicker trainer, it can be extra challenging to exercise your horse using food rewards, because the majority of people, including vets an farriers, don’t understand this training method. They only see a horse that struggles with movement AND that gets ‘treats’.

Contact me if you would love to have support in getting your overweight horse in shape with clicker training.

Happy Horse training!

Sandra Poppema, HippoLogic

What to do when your horse gets chubby (Fionn’s progress)

Fionn and Odin are getting a tad bit chubby! They have to get back to a healthy weight asap! I would like them to be like this. This photo was taken in May 2022. Fionn (right) looks a bit chubbier because he has a different build than Odin (left), who is more elegant.

I started to develop ways to teach horses to offer movement in 2016, when Kyra got laminitis and was a 9 out of 9 on the body score index.

Kyra even got rain puddles on her back when it rained. Yet, I told myself she was “OK”. After all, she was (fat and) healthy for the first 8 years of her life… So, I postponed doing something about it. Because I just didn’t know how!

I started exercising her, but I got discouraged… I stopped. I told myself ‘It isn’t that bad…She’s a barok horse.”. I did what I could: slow feeders and less food at night…

Exercising enough with positive reinforcement was hard. It “didn’t work” and I didn’t kept going with it. In hind sight I expected too much, too soon (‘lumping’) and quit. I wish I had known then what I know now.

Little did I know that EMS shows itself between 9 and 12 years of age. She just turned 9 and one month later… Laminitis! I won’t let that happen again.

Fionn and Odin gained a bit of weight in August and I’m doing everything I learned, in order to reverse that. I’ll d get them back at a healthier weight, before it’s too late. I know now how to do this with clicker training. I don’t have to worry about damaging the bond I built with both of them in the past 10 months, since I got them.

Here’s what I learned training overweight horses back to health

• Laminitis can be prevented! And healed.
• Obesity in horses can be managed (even when horses suffer from diseases like EMS)
• Most regular weightless advise damages other parts of the welfare of the horse (like putting them in solitary confinement and/or on a crash diet that the vet advised me for Kyra)
• You can get them healthy and HAPPY while helping them to lose weight with exercising and management changes

Most important of all:
What you have to do when your horse gets sick (laminitis) is only temporarily! I spent 2-3 hours, 7 days a week during the first 6 – 8 weeks or so to get Kyra back to health!

It’s important to realize that, when you’re in a similar situation: This is not forever! And… when you prevent your horse from getting sick, you’ll save lots of time, effort, money and worry!

You have to put in a huge amount of time, effort and money to nurse your horse back to health once he gets sick.

Once I got Kyra to a healthy weight and laminitis free I could change back to my regular amount of spending time with her. It was devastating to see her suffer! The amount of worry and sleepless nights (apart from the financial burden of a sick horse 😉 ) is huge!

Mini’s and laminitis

This time I will do anything to prevent this from happening. Especially because I know miniature horses/ponies are prone to EMS and laminitis.

I’ll keep you posted with some of my training. I’m so happy that I know exactly what to do now and I don’t have to look the other way, until the vet would confront me with some bad news. I won’t let that happen again!

Videos of Movement Training with Positive Reinforcement

From the blog R+ Movement Training for Overweight Horses
Here’s how to start. This doesn’t look like anything of the goal behaviour! After all, this is not negative reinforcement! Watch the second video of training day 4 to get the idea what it will look like eventually when we built duration.

Fionn at training day 4: the target is been faded out and my body language is getting smaller and smaller already.

More reading

Tips for Treats

Move Your Horse with a Click

Do you really need to stop giving treats in training when your horse needs to lose weight?

Force Free Movement Training for Laminitis Horses

Is your horse overweight? Did the vet recommended: No more treats!” or “More exercise” to get your horse in shape? Join my R+ for Overweight Horses program. We’ll address your biggest struggle in getting your horse to move with positive reinforcement. You can only join after a personal conversation, so I can tailor this 2-week online coaching program towards your horse, your situation and your needs! You can book a call here.

If you want to get better at things like:

• Building duration in exercising your horse with R+
• Getting your horse in shape and lose weight without a crash diet
• Creating fun in movement training so you don’t have to keep running along

This is for you. Check out the information page here!

Sandra Poppema, BSc

Founder of the HippoLogic and creator of Force Free Movement Training for Laminitis Horses

Two week online program

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