In this blog I mention the 6 most common pitfalls for trainers that get or keep them stuck in clicker training their horse. Most horse owners have heard the phrase: Setting your horse up for Success, yet I see that they forget to set themselves!.
Pitfall #5: Forgetting to Set YOURSELF up for Success
Are you only thinking about your horse in training? How to serve him best?
Some people realize so well what their horse needs, in order to teach their horse a new behaviour quickly and without many detours. They know exactly how to help their horse to learn!
Yet, they forget what they need, in order to speed up their learning process or keep going with their training. They forget how to make training feel effortlessly and fun for themselves! This struggle often stays under the surface, because we don’t know what we don’t know, right?
It’s like when you discover how to learn to read a street map (or following instructions on Google Maps). Suddenly you realize how many times you’ve taken a detour and it explains why you’ve felt lost. I will share a tool that prevent this from happening. With this tool in hand these things won’t happen anymore!
You can set yourself up for success and speed up your learning process by avoiding making the same mistake over and over.
Reflect on your Training
The best way to learn is to reflect on your learning. Here are 5 tips that will help you do that:
- Track your Training with a Training journal
- Film your training session and watch your session
- Reflect back on your training with your Shaping plan
- Listen to feedback of your coach
- Count your training sessions and duration
Use an easy Training Journal
In the HippoLogic training system keeping a Training journal is on of the 6 Keys to Success for Trainers. I usually advice people to keep it very simple: just jot down 1-3 things that went well and only one learning point.
A learning point is the thing that you want to improve. Just writing down one is best. That’s the one you focus on in your next session or next training. Don’t write more than one, it can be challenging as it is to change or improve one thing.
Make Videos
When you film your sessions you can watch it back in the comfort of your own home. You literally can take distance from your training and that can help you stay more objective. Use your training journal to see what you thought went well and what you want to improve or focus on.
A video can also help a few weeks later to see your improvements or where you got stuck. What has changes in your horse or in your approach. We won’t remember it, but watching a video can be really motivating to see your progress.
I like to watch videos of my students so I can see what trainer and horse are doing. I can focus on details and watch it again or play it in slow motion to see if I’m missing an important clue.
Use your Shaping plan
The more you use your Shaping plan, the more value it gets. Reading through your plan just before you start your session and reading it afterwards to make adjustments, will help you become better and better at shaping behaviours. Write down your adjustments immediately, so you keep a record and don’t forget. Be detailed and also pay attention on environment (weather, things happening in surrounding of the horse) that might have influenced his behaviour. Your Shaping plan and Training journal can amplify your result when you use them together.
Ask for a second opinion or feedback from a coach
Getting feedback on your training or training videos from a coach or more experienced trainer can be of tremendous value. A fresh pair of eyes on your training will help you see what you don’t see. It can help you uncover your blind spots.
When you get stuck in training or you don’t see results as timely as you expected, find someone to help you. You don’t need to find out the wheel, make use of someone else’s experience so you can shorten your learning curve and help your horse better!
There are so many clicker coaches out there, it’s not hard to find someone that has experience with the behaviour you want to train.
Training sessions
Getting insights in how long it takes to train a behaviour or help your horse overcome a fear can help you put things in perspective. For instance if you tell yourself that you’ve been training to trailer load your horse for 3 months and you still can’t load him when you’re going home, have you really been training three months?
When you keep training in your Training journal about the times and dates you’ve been training you might discover that you started in week 1 and 2 very enthusiastically with 4 sessions of 30 minutes a week. After that something else became your focus and in week 3 and 4 you practised once for 15 minutes and then you didn’t train at all. Now you’re in week 12 and you forgot all about trailer loading. Your horse has moved and it’s off the radar… Until next time.
When you would count the training minutes it looks different. Let’s see: week 1 and 2: 4 hours in total, plus 2x 15 minutes in week 3 & 4 makes a total of 4, 5 hours. Four and a half hours is not the same as “three months”.
Now, let’s imagine you stopped practising trailer loading because your were very successful. It didn’t take you 2 or 3 months, just 4 and half hours to change your horse into a happy traveller. That’s encouraging isn’t it?
Keeping track of your training days and duration will also give you insight in your consistency in training. Whenever we (or our horses) learn a new skill, we thrive on consistency. Although I’m always pleasantly surprised about the memories of horses that are trained with positive reinforcement! They have excellent memory!
Emotions in Training
In the next blog I will focus on Emotions in Training, another Key to Success for Trainers. When you can recognize undesired emotions like frustration and redirect them into desirable emotions, training will be so much fun!
Read more:
- Pitfall #1 How to prevent Information Overload when you want to learn ‘Everything‘
- Pitfall #2 Turning vague goals into specific and clear training goals
- Pitfall #3 Focus on result and forgetting about How to get to the result (using R+)
- Pitfall #4 Quitting before seeing results and how to prevent that
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.
Happy Horse training!
Sandra Poppema, B.Sc., founder of HippoLogic & HippoLogic Clicker Training Academy
Join us!
The Confident Clicker Trainer
In this 8-week online course you get personal coaching and support in a group. You’ll teach your horse 6 different foundational behaviours (Key Lessons for Horses, your keys to success in clicker training) and learn to use the 6 Success Keys for Trainers. This course is offered only a few times a year, don’t miss it!
Becoming aware of your wishes for your horse
Not much horse owners think in ‘goals’ if they think about their horse. It’s a hobby so they don’t think it applies. I think it does!
When you know what you want you can search specifically for the help you need to get it. If you want to ride your horse with R+ or create a stronger bond than you look for an experienced positive reinforcement instructor. If you want to ride competitions you can narrow your search for an excellent rider that has didactic skills to help you too.
An accountability partner (another Key Lesson for Trainers) is the one that will help you avoid that pitfall! He or she can also motivate you and help you get new insights and ideas to accomplish your goals.
In order to stay motivated through the year (some goals take time to accomplish) keep track of your accomplishments. It’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking that you haven’t accomplished much. Your brain is always looking to the horizon (that what you haven’t accomplished yet) and it is very motivating to look back once in a while to see how far you’ve already came! Keeping a training journal and filming your training sessions/riding lessons is a really good way of keeping track.
Set a goal and make a plan (see tip #8). Simply start writing in your 
Use a bridge signal in combination with something the horse wants. Positive reinforcement is the one thing that made all my training so much easier, quicker and more fun too! A 
that my theme of 2018 will be ‘trail riding‘.
I wanted Kyra to be an all round horse. A calm, comfortable and agile trail riding horse to feel safe where ever we go, a wonderful demo horse to give demonstrations positive reinforcement training or give an exciting show with. I wanted her to be strong and prepared to carry a rider, so there is where the dressage exercises (long reins and later under saddle) come in: to help her carry a rider in a comfortable way. I also would like her to be a lesson horse to teach riders to use subtle cues instead of commands. Above all I wanted a horse to connect with.
a horse agility competition and practice riding a pas-de-deux. Riding a pas-de-deux is on my goal list since Kyra’s behaviour under saddle and being close to other horses could stand improving.
A training diary is all about making yourself conscious. Keep it motivating and phrase things in a positive way so it will be pleasant to read back.
Horse hug
Standing on a pedestal
a Classical bow. The skippy ball became a ‘target’ and it was really hard to change ‘touching’ the ball into pushing the ball. That didn’t take my pleasure away, though. The Classical bow was a coincidence and I was lucky to ‘capture’ that behaviour. I can’t recall how we got to a Spanish walk.
training/trainer) more enticing? By looking at the motivation of the horse, I can now skip the whole ‘leadership’ and ‘dominance’ discussion in training.
In order to set yourself up for success, start with the basics. This means that you profit from other peoples learning points. Why invent the wheel again?
HippoLogic -> Clickertraining.ca 
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