Tips to Overcome Trail Challenges By Stephanie Kwok and Sandra Poppema For many horse owners, trail riding is the ultimate bonding experience for a rider and his/ her horse. Are you doing as much trail riding as you had hoped to do with your horse? If not, what is holding you back?
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s your horse spooky or is he still green? Challenges both big and small abound on the trails - new sights, smells and sounds, new riding companions, gates, logs, water crossings, bridges, steep grades, gnarly footing, bears, mountain bikers and more. You need to prepare your horse for the variety of challenges you will face together on the trail. But how can you train your horse to overcome his fears in a way that reduces his stress, builds his trust in you and ultimately makes him a reliable trail horse? The answer is reward-based training. This is not a new concept. One of the first riding masters and founder of modern dressage, Frenchman Antoine de Pluvinel (15551620), said: “You can never rely on a horse that is educated by fear! There will always be something that he fears more than you. But, when he trusts you, he will ask you what to do when he is afraid.” The elements of reward-based training are simple. You identify your goals and then divide them into easy-to-achieve mini-goals. Next, you give your horse opportunities to learn and practice each one, pinpointing the wanted behaviour with a marker signal (a “click” from a hand-held clicker or a tongue-click) and rewarding him each time he is successful. If you reward your horse specifically and consistently after the “click”, he will quickly understand his lessons and be motivated to learn more. The net effect is that he doesn’t have to guess what he did right, which prevents frustration for each of you. Let’s look at these elements in a little more detail:
1) Patience and a Plan Building trust takes time. To begin, spend time thinking about the types of challenges you face on the trail. Which activities does your horse find difficult? Formulate those into training goals. For each one, think of a positive and specific “can-do” sentence (e.g. “We will open/close the gate at the trailhead while mounted”). Next, divide this goal into several smaller training goals, with the first of these mini-goals being one that you are confident your horse can easily achieve and, ideally, is one you could practice 14 • Saddle Up • October 2014
at home (e.g. “We will stand facing the paddock gate with four feet on the ground for one second”). Gradually, over multiple sessions, build up the levels of difficulty and duration.
2) Clear Criteria and Good Timing Before you begin a particular learning session on the trail, decide what sort of “clickable moment” you’re going to be looking for, so that you can promptly click/reward when you see it. For the gate skills scenario, you might “set your horse up for success” like this: “Last session, I rewarded when he could stand next to the gate with his chest up against it for 10 seconds. This time, I will bend forward to unlatch the chain. I will click/reward when I first touch the chain, if he remains still.”
3) Consistency and Rewards
Merlyn stands very close to the gate so his rider can reach the chain. (Photo by Karen Nixon)
Looping the chain around the post is tricky from the saddle. Merlyn stands perfectly still, waiting for his rider to complete the task. (Photo by Karen Nixon)
Horses relax and learn better when there is consistency from their people. Be a reliable teacher: if you click your horse for a task, give him a reward. But make sure the reward is valued by your horse! Horses who are not food oriented at all may work earnestly for scratches in their favourite spot. Experiment with different rewards to see what motivates your horse best.
Taking it to the Trail Below are some tips showing how to use a reward-based approach to overcome some specific situations you may encounter on the trails.
SCARY OBJECTS - such as bear-shaped tree stumps and giant “horse-eating” boulders; begin standing at the closest distance possible for your horse’s comfort, while facing the object, and click/reward for a short-duration halt, then a longer-duration halt. Approach slowly, with a click/reward for each step. If the fear shown by your horse seems too great, dismount and approach the frightening object ahead of your horse to demonstrate that it is safe, then encourage him to take a step HCBC 2010 BUSINESS OF THE YEAR