Our surroundings influences our behaviour! Everyone knows that and use that truth on a regular basis clicker coaching our horses. How does your surroundings profit you?
We arrange our horses for achievement on a regular basis. We current a goal (surroundings) to our horse, so he can contact it!
We train our horses to not mug us after we’re coaching with meals. The meals in our pockets and our presence turns into the ‘On’ swap for Studying, for our horses.
Your horse begins to assume what behaviour does result in treats? They work out in minutes that mugging isn’t the reply anymore.
After a number of clicker coaching minutes your horse is already pondering “How can I affect my surroundings [the treats] with my behaviour?” . We modified the training surroundings for our horses and helped him study quick with constructive reinforcement (R+).
You already know and skilled that the surroundings performs a big position on the behaviour and studying technique of your horse.
But, I nonetheless see so many people fall again on detrimental reinforcement-thinking and subsequently struggling massively with utilizing clicker coaching successfully. I’ll elaborate on that under.
Considering mistake #1
That is if you get begin pondering that clicker coaching possibly takes longer than detrimental reinforcement… NO!
Unfaithful! Once you fall into this pondering mistake, it’s since you attempt to use constructive reinforcement in a detrimental reinforcement surroundings! Or attempting to make use of a instrument in your clicker coaching that’s designed for R-!
Have you ever ever consciously modified your individual surroundings to boost your clicker coaching? Clicker coaching might be pointless tough and onerous when your complete surroundings is ready up to achieve success as detrimental reinforcement coach! It’s attempting to suit a spherical peg right into a sq. gap.
Methods to set YOURSELF up for achievement
Change your surroundings!
How?
You’ve in all probability already carried out it up to now. Once you
- Went to a clicker clinic. You surrounded your self with likeminded folks and emerged your self in constructive reinforcement method/pondering.
Do you bear in mind how a lot you discovered in only one weekend? That’s the facility of your surroundings! It’s simple to clicker prepare your horse and to consider new R+ approaches when everybody else is providing you with constructive enter and concepts! Once you see different ladies clicker coaching their horses efficiently, it conjures up and will get your artistic constructive reinforcement juices flowing!
- Watched movies about clicker coaching simply earlier than you went to your horse.
You’ve modified your (inside!) surroundings and it sparked concepts and motivated you to do the identical.
- Spoke with one other clicker coach, or a buddy and also you mentioned your battle. You bought new insights of fixing your battle and acquired your momentum again.
By making a distance ( your battle, problem or downside) from a special angle, it was doable to consider a special method.
Sounds acquainted?
What retains you struggling in clicker coaching your horse
Typically the reply is: Your surroundings!
How?
Considering mistake #2
Once you attempt to use constructive reinforcement utilizing detrimental reinforcement coaching instruments (surroundings)! You set your self up for FAILURE!
Spherical pen
You utilize a spherical pen to train your horse with constructive reinforcement and you may’t get your horse transferring successfully and burning energy. Why is that?
A spherical pen is purposefully designed to chase a horse a-spherical! There are not any corners to flee.
Have you ever ever seen that horses discover the corners of the world if you chase him round? They alter course: they need to have a selection and attempt to affect their surroundings: your behaviour!
Unfavorable reinforcement trainers struggled with that downside, so that they took out the corners! They made the pen so small they might attain the horse at any time, in anyplace with a purpose to apply the aversive (ache, the specter of ache/harm) successfully. They wanted to succeed in the horse with their whip, coaching stick, carrot stick, the ‘extension of their arm’, rope or no matter instrument they’re utilizing to make the horse transfer.
A spherical pen is designed to chase the horse round, with out an escape. It’s designed to ‘train’ the horse that there’s just one reply doable: go ahead till the coach says in any other case!
Now, if you don’t understand that and also you need (count on) the identical consequence utilizing constructive reinforcement, you’re setting your self up for failure!
You possibly can’t be as profitable in clicker coaching in case you’re attempting to make use of a coaching instrument that’s designed to create success with R-! You must consider methods to design constructive reinforcement instruments and use the surroundings to help your coaching technique. The one who invented the reverse spherical pen was properly on her method!
Coaching instruments, methods and folks
Choosing the proper instrument for the job is detrimental for you success! The higher your instruments, methods and folks you encompass your self with, the higher outcomes you get!
R+ Instruments & Methods
It is a half most clicker trainers do already rather well: they use targets, mats, meals reinforcers and bridge indicators (click on).
Do you’ve the help you want, to assume extra like a constructive reinforcement coach?
Considering Mistake #3
Considering you possibly can change conventional horse folks to see the advantages of clicker coaching… Reality is: you possibly can’t change anybody! You possibly can solely change your self. Making an attempt to persuade R- trainers of constructive reinforcement could be very onerous and sometimes unimaginable. Cease doing it, it’s going to drain your vitality. As an alternative concentrate on discovering higher folks to spent your time with.
Encompass your self with Optimistic Individuals!
This seems like an open door! But, so many individuals encompass themselves with unsupportive folks. Then they inform themselves they’ll’t do something about it, and again that up with an excuse (“There are not any clicker trainers or barns in my space”). Now they’re actually caught! They get very sad, typically even determined. I’ve seen folks critically spiral down from there. They begin doubting themselves or their method. They begin to assume clicker coaching isn’t the easiest way. Don’t let that occur to you!
Are your barn folks supportive?
Certainly one of my purchasers boarded her horses in a really conventional boarding facility. Quaint cowboy strategies, like tying up 2-year previous horses of their stall for hours to ‘train them to be tied up’- form of methods. It was very onerous for her to clicker prepare her horses in that surroundings as a result of the ‘norm’ was to be abusive and use coercion to get issues carried out. They weren’t solely abusive to their horses, but in addition to her!
They instructed her that she was a nasty horse proprietor, not an actual horse individual and that she was spoiling and ruining her teenager with treats and delicate approaches. That it was time to place a saddle on her horse and cease being a pussy.
No surprise, it was a battle for her to clicker prepare her horses. She was all the time nervous that she would run into different folks on the barn. That somebody would watch her and commented. As a result of they did… On a regular basis!. I used to be horrified to listen to how they crapped on her coaching. It was verbally abusive! Not supportive in any respect.
Do you keep away from clicker coaching when persons are round?
It was additional onerous on her as a result of she already was already a bit insecure (who isn’t typically?). She was comparatively new to being a horse proprietor. She’s in her forties and acquired her first horse solely two years in the past. She’s not an individual ‘who grew up with horses’. And she or he was additionally new to clicker coaching. Nonetheless she did such job clicker coaching her horses! Her outcomes spoke for itself.
In case you have folks in your surroundings commenting negatively in your clicker coaching and your method, ask your self how one can encompass your self with higher folks!
When my consumer turned part of my R+ neighborhood (the HippoLogic Clicker Coaching Academy) she typically expressed her mitigation of being in a supportive, uplifting and constructive surroundings the place folks believed in her and her method!
She leaped ahead and developed her clicker coaching expertise inside a yr. It was a pleasure to observe her evolve and she or he her enhance her horses behaviours! Finally she moved her horses to a special boarding facility.
Are you able to think about the way it’s like, to dread going to the barn each, single day? Are you able to see how this may intrude together with your happiness of being a horse proprietor? The way it will intrude together with your clicker coaching? How this may forestall having fun with your horse and having enjoyable coaching and driving? In spite of everything, we’ve got horses to complement our lives, proper?
Change your surroundings, change your end result
- Use or design a coaching surroundings and instruments that help and improve constructive reinforcement! For instance use a reverse spherical pen (and even higher the HippoLogic Reverse Rectangle) to train your horse
- Change your inside surroundings (concepts, options, approaches) by watching clicker coaching movies and/or trainers or focus on your coaching with different constructive reinforcement trainers earlier than your coaching in order that thinking like a constructive reinforcement coach turns into your behavior.
- Discover a tribe that conjures up you! They’ll be a every day reminder to maintain going with R+!
- Encompass your self with constructive folks, who help you and respect you and your R+ coaching! Let go of Debby Downers and Unfavorable Nancy’s!
Are you a compassionate horse proprietor who likes to study and wish to get private teaching in a bunch? Do you need to have entry to on-line clicker coaching programs and a superb, supportive R+ neighborhood, then be part of our HippoLogic Clicker Coaching Academy. Try the hyperlink!
Or begin with a free clicker coaching evaluation to get style of what it feels prefer to work with me. Uncover your sturdy factors and weaker factors in coaching (you probably have some) in order that you realize what to focus extra on, with a purpose to get the outcomes you need.
After your evaluation you’ve a transparent plan and know precisely what the next step can be with a purpose to accomplish your dream behaviours together with your horse. Ebook right here
Blissful Horse coaching!
Sandra Poppema, B.Sc., founding father of HippoLogic & HippoLogic Clicker Coaching Academy
