More things to do with your mat work! Once you start thinking differently about how you train the possibilities are endless. Take for instance horse agility obstacles. Horse agility seems to be becoming increasingly popular. After watching a video on youtube, I immediately saw fabulous opportunities for the foundation clicker lessons to be expanded upon in these situations. This is a great place for clicker training to help you build the skills and relationship necessary to e

Last week we looked at the ‘no go‘ horse. So now how did this same exercise help sort out the ‘no whoa ‘horse? Once again, we discussed the plan without the horse and walked through it until the handler had the mechanics down pat. Why do we do this? It is important in training to manage the environment to ensure success. By taking the horse out of the equation the handler could focus on what needed to be done without worrying about having to deal with the horse at the same ti

Hopefully you had some fun and success playing with targeting to the mat, but possibly you have one of those horses who has some issues from being MADE to do stuff and so is very afraid to try it. In this case you will need a different approach that allows the horse to make the decisions with regards to how close and when he steps on the mat. This approach will do a lot to build your relationship with him. Shaping Another way to teach this would be to free-shape the behaviour