The Downside to Negative Reinforcement Negative Reinforcement (R-) also known in the horse world as “pressure and release” training does work, no one is denying that. But we have to be honest with ourselves about how it actually works in the context of horse training and put ourselves in our horse’s hooves. If someone squeezes […]
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Don’t Hit Your Brother Imagine a world where we said to children, we’re not going to force your beautiful pony with kicks and crops like those other people!! We are going to train them in a way that you BOTH have fun, by using Positive Reinforcement training, with clicker training, by training with food and
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Synchronicity & Matching Steps When we clicker train, there’s lots of different ways that we can convert what we are doing on the ground, to ridden behaviours. I thought this video was a great example of true liberty work. No whips directing her shoulders or body, no need for extensions of my arm, no body
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It’s ok, you can comfort your horse FF R+ dog trainers talk a lot about encouraging people to comfort their dog when they’re afraid. Patting and praising them when they’re scared, wont reinforce their fear. I’m a FF R+ equine trainer and I say the same about horses. If your horse is afraid, giving them
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Horses Are Herd Animals Horses are such amazing and beautiful creatures! But do we truly understand them and what their needs are? One of the most important requirements that is often misunderstood is that horses are complex social herd animals. They would never choose to live alone, they need company! In a herd, they enjoy
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Run with Food? OR Stand and Train? One thing that I really love about R+ training is shaping behaviour and putting it on cue and playing around with cues. I’d encourage all of you to develop your shaping skills, allowing the horse to offer behaviour and most importantly, get those behaviours on cue. All my
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Running around horses when you have food? What is it really? I often see videos and descriptions of happy horses, or playing horses or horses generally having fun. But when I look at the horse’s body language and the context, where they are often in an arena with a human, a human who is often
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Choice & Control in Clicker Training I’ve heard interesting statements over the years from those who are against training with Positive Reinforcement (R+). That means training without pressure, coercion or force. What I find interesting is that detractors of R+ training claim it is manipulative, coercive, transactional, controls the animal and their mind and that
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How to Approach Fear in Equines from a Human & Ethical Training Perspective Helping a horse who is experiencing fear should never be about making them “face their fear” or “get over it”. What can fear look like? It can look like anything from a horse freezing, refusing to go forward, baulking, napping, looking off
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Contiguity – What is it? Although people struggle with the terminology of R+ training, I’m a big fan of using correct terms, not for the sake of it, or to look super brainy, but because it improves our training. Knowing what something is, or what to avoid or the name of something you want to
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