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

Halter Your Horse in 3 Steps with Clicker Training

What is your biggest struggle in clicker training? Splitting behaviour? Do you catch yourself sometimes lumping behaviour?

The most challenging task for a positive reinforcement trainer is to ‘thin slice’ your goal behaviour into trainable steps. This process is called a shaping plan.

Key Lesson for Trainers: Shaping plan

One of the 6 Key Lessons for Trainers in HippoLogic’s horse training system is teaching horse people how they can make good shaping plans for their horses.

Shaping plan in 3 easy steps

Step 1 Determine your goal behaviour

Step 2 Divide it into smaller steps. And even smaller. If you can, even more baby steps.

Step 3 Write them all down

#1 Determine Your Goal behaviour

Describe your goal behaviour in a detailed way. Asking questions will help you with this description:

1. How does the horse behave (describe)
2. Does your horse move slow, fast or not at all in the goal behaviour
3. Where are his feet ideally?
4. Where is is head
5. How does he use his neck
6. What about his other body parts: what are they doing and how do they move
7. Where are you: in front of your horse, next to your horse (left or right) or on your horse (riding)
8. And so on

Example: Haltering

1. The horse is calm and is relaxed
2. Horse stands still (otherwise halter becomes challenging)
3. His feet are on the ground (not on my feet), so no pawing or moving around
4. His head is relatively low
5. Neck horizontal (horses that keep their head high or moving are hard to halter)
6. Tail doesn’t move (no swishing)
7. I am in front of the horse (I know traditionally you need to stay at the left. Clicker training is not traditional. It’s OK to break some rules. I like to be in front so it’s easy to teach horses to ‘self halter’.)

#2 Divide Goal into Trainable Steps

When you did a good job describing the behaviour you have a lot of starting points to make a good shaping plan.
In your shaping plan you write down every step you need to teach your horse in order to train your goal behaviour.

It helps to remember that your horse has no clue what you want to accomplish!

Every step in the description above can help you divide the goal behaviour ‘haltering’ into smaller steps.

The first step has to be that the horse stands still and is approachable. We all know how hard it is to halter a walking or trotting running horse, don’t we?

So all the above steps in the description of the goal behaviour can be steps in your shaping plan. If you think this is undue than you’ve probably never tamed and trained a wild horse. Also for halter shy and ear and head shy horses these steps all can be necessary.

Now you have the perfect body posture trained the next step is to bring in the halter. Some of the other steps in the shaping plan of training haltering are:

• Horse stands still and keeps his head still when he sees the halter
• Halter can move towards the horse and the horse keeps his head still
• Head is at a height that is convenient to halter
• Horse keeps his head still or
• moves slightly down when the noseband is around his nose (Key Lesson Head lowering and Key Lesson Targeting are excellent training tools to train this part)
• Horse keeps head still when head piece touches ears (for head and ear shy horses you need to thin slice this even further!)
• Horse keeps head still when head piece goes over his ears
• Horse keeps head still when handler closes the halter

Each and every step in the above list can be divided even small if the horse needs it.
In your shaping plan you also write down when you want to move to the next step, what reinforcers you use and what the set up of the training environment is.

#3 Write it Down!

Studies have proven that writing your goals down help improve accomplishing it with 39%. People who share their goals and make themselves accountable (by sharing their goal with their coach or close friend) even increase their chances to 79%!

If you’ve written your shaping plan down it’s also way easier to remember. You’ve already visualized it in detail in order to write it down. Don’t underestimate the power of the pen! If you need help writing shaping plans, I happen to be a star in it! I also offer accountability for my students, so if you want to increase your chances of success, you know how to find me, right?

Read on

Smart strategy to re-train a halter shy horse with video.

HippoLogic’s Facebook group

Join our Happy Herd 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!

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The Clicker Training Academy gives students personal support and offers online training

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 students who receive extra privileges because they are the first) .
The 25 founding members get a free 90-minute coaching session with me (value $150 CAD). There is still room for you!