Reasons why horses won’t lie down in Trick Training

If you’ve seen the post I wrote about Teaching Your Horse to Lie Down, you’re inspired to get training started right away.

It’s great fun to see your bond reflected in your horse doing an amazing trick like this. Of course your horse must like it, too! That’s why I teach this wih positive reinforcement and give horses a choice to do it.

If they say ‘No’ it’s great feedback to check why he doesn’t want to.

Reasons a horse refuses to lie down

• The surface is too hard, too wet, too cold, too muddy
• Your horse is not relaxed. Calm him down first
• He’s exciting about something else happening
• He’s not liking what you offer him, so the behaviour is not reinforced
• He’s in pain and can’t do it
• He has not yet learned to lie down on cue

In my online Trick Training class I share how you can solve these. I also teach how you can train your horse to lie down step-by-step. You can join me in a live webinar February 16, 2020

OR…

You can enter the giveaway and get a chance to win a FREE seat in this webinar (if you can’t make it that day, I have other times too).

ENTER giveaway

Happy Horse training!

Training Webinar Teach Your Horse to Lie Down Good luck!

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.

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“There is nothing wrong with Negative Reinforcement applied properly”

Said someone once to me. I didn’t say anything, but my body screamed: ‘Yes, there is….‘

Although I couldn’t explain in words why I felt that way, now I do. Since it was hard to catch it in words, it is a long explanation, so please get seated.

When I talk about horse training, I like to use the scientific definitions in order to keep the language as clear as possible and to avoid emotional and subjective projection. Let’s start with some definitions because this statement (“There is nothing wrong with R- applied properly”) is one that causes a lot of commotion among horse people.

WIN a coaching session or a ticket for the HippoLogic Clicker Challenge.

If you know me, you know I am a huge fan of celebrating successes. I know this year my blog will hit the 100.000 views! Something I didn’t foresee when I started. Time to celebrate! With you! This is how: I will give away a 30 minute coaching session ($35 value) or a ticket to participate in my HippoLogic Clicker Challenge ($47 value). 

Why I started blogging

I started this blog as an online (accountability) training journal to tell my friends and family (and maybe a few strangers) about Kyra’s training.

She was 11 months old en just caught out of the wild (a nature reserve in The Netherlands). She didn’t want to deal with people, she was super scared for everything and only ate hay. No carrots, apple, sugar cubes of horse treats. Quite a challenge to start with positive reinforcement.

After 3 weeks of daily training (twice a day in the first week) I could approach  (a BIG deal!), halter her, touch her all over, lead her over the premises (only if other horses stayed in eye sight, but it was a start), lift her feet and even disinfect the wound on her leg with a spray can. Every month I put a summary on my blog to list our achievements.

Kyra was my first horse that I made clear goals for (taming her was my #1 goal). It is because I wrote down my goals, discussed them with my best friend, my accountability partner. I also kept track of how I trained behaviours and kept a logbook so I could reproduce my results. This all lead to developing HippoLogic’s Key Lessons, Your Keys to Success in Positive Reinforcement training program. I wanted to develop an easy to follow step-by-step program for horse lovers who want to implement clicker training.

Becoming a blogger was an important step in this whole process. I want to celebrate this with you: my readers and loyal followers of my blog!

2012 the year of many changes

In 2012 we (my husband, our 1 year old son, our 2 cats and Kyra) emigrated to Canada. I changed from working mom to stay-at-home mom without a social network in my personal life or in my horse world. I left all my friends, family and horse riding clients behind and I really missed them.

I struggled, I had happy times, felt lonely, was home sick, was happy again. I felt it all! Then, in 2014, I decided to restart my blog, so I had something to do besides being a mom. I missed teaching riding lessons and helping equestrians so much!

In October 2014 I wrote my first blog in English. I posted 9 articles that year. Yes, that is how I started. Now I publish about 100 each year.

Time to Celebrate!

In order to celebrate my upcoming 100.000st view I decided to give away a 30 minute coaching session ($35 value) or a ticket to participate in my HippoLogic Clicker Challenge ($47 value). 

Since the receiver determines the reward: you choose your price.

Enter the draw in 2 simple steps

Entering the draw is simple: go to HippoLogic’s Facebook page  and you will find a post or click here to go directly to the post you need that asks you:

What is *your* favourite article of all times from my blog?

Visit my blog (https://hippologic.wordpress.com/) and scroll through the categories or use the search bar on the right to find the one that you like best.

• Put the link of your favourite blog in the comments of the FB post
• Share what you liked about it or how it helped you in the FB post

You can win one 30 minute coaching session ($35 value)
OR
participation in my #HippoLogicClickerChallenge ($47 value)

Let me know which prize you prefer best. Draw ends on December 31st, 2017

Sandra Poppema, B.Sc.

I improve the human-horse relationships by reconnecting you with your inner wisdom and teach you the principles of learning and motivation, so you become confident and knowledgeable to train your horse in an effective and FUN way. Win-win for horse and human.

All my programs are focused on building your confidence and provide you with  a detailed step-by-step formula to train horses with 100% positive reinforcement.

Sign up for HippoLogic’s newsletter (it’s free) or visit HippoLogic’s website.

8 Important Life Lessons I learned from Positive Reinforcement Horse Training

When I was a little girl learned quickly that I couldn’t boss around certain horses. I also learned that I liked it much better when I didn’t have to.

A few decades ago I learned about positive reinforcement (+R)  training and now, 17 years later I can truly say +R has become more of a lifestyle than just a training method for me.

One of the best reviews I received from a student is: “You are always very supportive Sandra and make this feel like a safe place (the Facebook support group) to ask questions. Funny, but I’ve met a lot of R+ trainers who a very encouraging and positive with their horses but extremely critical of their human trainers. Sandra you walk and talk R+ in all areas – with horses and people.”

Here 8 of the most valuable lessons and my biggest ‘clicks’ (eye openers) positive reinforcement horse training taught me:

1. The receiver determines the reinforcer, not the trainer, not teacher nor the parent. Once I learned to think from my horses’ point of view and what his motivation is, it became clear on why he did or didn’t want to do it. Same goes for humans.
2. Envisioning my goals before I start, makes it easy to keep on track and go back on track once I get sidetracked. Not only my equestrian goals, but all my goals!
3. Writing down my goals made it easier to find the right teachers. Studies prove that writing your goals down will make you see more opportunities because it puts your unconscious to work.
4. Writing down my goals helped me into dividing them into achievable (baby) steps. Whenever I feel stuck, whether that is in life or in horse training I ask myself if I am ‘lumping’ (making the steps too big) and I usually do. Once I make my steps smaller I can be successful again. This one was a biggy!
5. Different reinforcers have different values and values can change depending on the circumstances. It makes sense that once the receiver can predict when and what the reinforcer is, he can determine if he does or doesn’t want to do the behaviour.
6. I learned to think out of the box, because I didn’t have ready-made solutions for a lot of challenges I ran into. It is an amazing helpful life skill! I love it!
7. I changed my focus to what goes well and improves, rather than the things that doesn’t yet go the way I envisioned. I turned from a Negative Nancy into a Positive Polly
8. When I started to focus on my method of training, instead of only focusing on the results of my training, three interesting things happened: 1) there was now something valuable in it for the horse which made it a huge win-win, 2) the results came much quicker, easier and were way more reliable and 3) the overall relationship with my horse improved tremendously! Wow! Win-win-win!

What are the most valuable life lessons you learned in training? Please share yours in the comments.

Sandra Poppema, B.Sc.

My mission is to improve horse-human relationships by educating equestrians about ethical and horse friendly training. I offer coaching to empower you to train your horse in a 100% animal friendly way that empowers both you and your horse.

Sign up for HippoLogic’s newsletter (it’s free) or visit HippoLogic’s website.

 

 

 

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