Category: Uncategorized
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Sprinkles, aka Sprinx, is a 2018 QH x Hanoverian cross. From the ages of 4-6, she was ridden as a gaming horse for Oregeon High School Equestrian Team (OHSET) speed events. She was fast, but she wasn’t happy. Loose in her pasture, Sprinx welcomed attention from her people. But all handling of Sprinx had become…
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Merlin is an approximately 2005 QH x Arabian cross. Merlin arrived at an equine sanctuary with his pasture-mate, Leona. But where Leona was human-phobic and self-protective through fighting, Merlin self-protected entirely through flight. From being one of our earliest clicker-training subjects, Merlin has since graduated to being our “school horse.” He is SO eager to…
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We started working with Jazz, a 2022 Arabian stud colt, during his 1 year old year. Jazz had no behavior problems, he was just a clean slate with a curious owner. With clicker training we have taught him to lead safely, allow hoof handling, accept saddle pad and girth, line up at a mounting block,…
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Leona is an approximately 2006 mare whom we have trained for a local equine rescue and sanctuary facility. She is perhaps a Morgan x QH cross, and came as a pair with Merlin. The two had largely reverted to a feral state after 10 years of pasture with little to no human interaction. They had…
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Wed 12/27/23 I’ve had 5 days with Sprinx so far. Today was the first day that I did any substantial clicker training with her; we began with food manners and progressed quickly to simple targeting. Safe to say she loves it. The first few days, I either spent time cleaning up her field and saying hi…
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It’s easy for any training method to be misused. In the case of positive reinforcement training, we start to lose good results when the training becomes more about the treat than the behavior. I’m working with an Alaskan Malamute at the moment named “Klondike”. He’s a juvenile (20 month) intact male with a behavior complaint…
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Isn’t it nice to know that what you do really matters? That was my first brave response to realizing that Covid-19 was here among us, and dangerous. My ignorant response had been different. By about March 10th, my peers were tossing around the term “social distancing”–epidemiological jargon for get the heck out of my space.…
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Cowboy, the latest of my clicker-training clients, is working with me on yielding space to approaching humans. Cowboy is curious and friendly. He is more apt to smother bipeds with attention than he is to avoid getting caught. He’s cute to the horse-initiated, but at 16.2 hands and over 1200 pounds, his exuberance is intimidating…
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I am one of a growing army of people trying to bring positive reinforcement training to the horse world. The most familiar picture of positive reinforcement training is that of clicker training. Many people have heard of clicker training with dogs; what’s less well known is how useful clicker training is with horses. One reason…
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…continued from previous post So in my effort to get Mr. Ed loaded into the horse trailer, I had begun feeding all of his meals there, trying to de-sensitize or counter-condition him to the trailer. He wouldn’t like it at first, the theory goes, but he’d be hungry and over time–first tentatively grabbing bites of…