Horse Training Articles

•  What Clicker Training Can Do For You...

   
  

• Communication that Clicks with your horse (part 3)

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S.M.A.A.R.T. Horses Blog Posts

• It´s Not About the Food !!   NEW !!
• Horse Trailer Break Down - Part 1   NEW !!
• Horse Trailer Break Down - Part 2 (Pilates)   NEW !!
• Dancing with Horses  
• Preparing for the Trimmer or Farrier   
• Capture The Saddle   - Training a Young Horse
• The 10 Laws of Shaping a Behaviour  
• Training a Young Horse  
• Stand on Your Mat - Shaping on a Point of Contact  
• Ground Tying  
• Horse Tricks...and more  
• Post Traumatic Stress Disorder in Animals   
• Click the picture below to read more blogs from SMAART Horses  
  

 

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 Enriching Your Horses Environment

Horses are naturally inquisitive and enjoy exploring their environment. They are excellent at foraging for food, spend approximately 75% of each 24h period grazing and move their feet every 3-5 seconds when grazing.

Being stabled removes these natural behaviours however, we can take measures to return the ability to perform these natural behaviours and prevent stereotypies(vices) by enriching their environment. Below are 7 ways to enrich your horses environment (stabled, field or barn kept):

1. Feed hay off the ground with more than one pile of hay.
2. Hang fruit and vegetable kebabs or hide fruit and vegetables in the bedding and in/under objects.

Read this article in full.....

 Clicker Training for Horses

I’ve been using clicker training to train horses (training young horses, old horses, problem horses all horses) for a number of years now, with stunning results.  It’s such a fun way to train and has really shown how fast horses can learn, and what great problem solvers they are.  As with any training that starts to catch on, it comes with myths and misconceptions.  I have encountered many of these along the way and hope that as I take you through what clicker training is for me that I can help to dispel some of the myths and misconceptions.

What is this new fangled horse clicker training method?

It no longer phases me when people look at me oddly with my treat pouches, carrying a mat for my horses to stand on, or setting out my cones as marker points (for the horse, not - yes they do use markers).

What’s that clicking noise?

 Loading the problem Loader:  The Effects of Target Training and Shaping on Trailer Loading Behaviour of Horses

There are a variety of reasons for people to load horses into trailers, including taking them to the veterinarian when they are ill, to a horse show or competition, or on vacations. Unfortunately, many horses fight during loading. They exhibit behaviors such as rearing, pulling back, head tossing, pawing, and turning sideways. These behaviors are likely to be negatively reinforced when the owner fails to load the horse (cf. Baron, 1991). The combination of a horse that fights loading and an owner who uses physical force can produce a very dangerous situation.

 Could Work Be a Source of Behavioural Disorders?

A Study in Horses

Stress at work, as shown by a number of human studies, may lead to a variety of negative and durable effects, such as impaired psychological functioning (anxiety, depression…). Horses share with humans this characteristic of working on a daily basis and are submitted then to work stressors related to physical constraints and/or more “psychological” conflicts, such as potential controversial orders from the riders or the requirement to suppress emotions. On another hand, horses may perform abnormal repetitive behaviour (“stereotypies”) in response to adverse life conditions. In the present study, we investigated whether the type of work the horses are used for may have an impact on their tendency to show stereotypic behaviour (and its type) outside work.

 The Thinking Horse

Cognition and Perception Reviewed

Cognition and perception in horses has often been misunderstood. Not only in the past but even today, people proclaim that horses react only by instinct, that they are just conditioned-response animals, that they lack advanced cognitive ability, and that they have poor visual capabilities (e.g., acuity, color vision, depth perception). Until relatively recently, there was little scientific evidence to address such beliefs. Change, however, is underway as scientific and public interest in all aspects of equine learning and perception intensifies. A review of the scientific literature, as well as practical experience, shows that horses excel at simpler forms of learning such as classical and operant conditioning, which is not surprising considering their trainability when these principles and practices are applied. Furthermore, horses have shown ease in stimulus generalization and discrimination learning. Most recently and unexpected by many, horses have solved advanced cognitive challenges involving categorization learning and some degree of concept formation.