Heather Nelson Liberty Training

Heather Nelson Liberty Training Build a bond with your horse through liberty training. www.heathernelsonlibertytraining.com

Improve your horse's performance in any discipline whether you want to trail ride, practice dressage or jump.

Praising for the “wrong” guess in training might sound ass backwards. We think that if we praise an incorrect answer tha...
03/14/2023

Praising for the “wrong” guess in training might sound ass backwards. We think that if we praise an incorrect answer that we will see it all the time. But what if we switch our mindset to praising for trying to answer, for just staying engaged in class?

We can use this feedback to adjust our training so that our desired behaviour is more likely to occur next time. If we set it up better our horses will find the correct answer easily and we can reward it over and over. We will tip the scales of reinforcement to the desired outcome.

Remember that time you answered a question incorrectly and someone laughed at you? Or the time you made a mistake and you were punished for it? Did that make you eager to try again or did it shut you down or frustrate you? Let’s create safe spaces for our horses to try and then set them up for success with questions that make sense.

If they do get it wrong we can have compassion for ourselves too. “Oh well that didn’t work. Let’s see if I can set it up better next time.” It doesn’t mean we are crappy trainers. We just need to smile, observe and adapt.

Is anyone else just ready for spring?
03/05/2023

Is anyone else just ready for spring?

02/02/2023

If your horse is fidgeting, mugging or offering behaviour off cue then one thing you can do to improve your sessions is reward more often for standing.

Standing quietly is a behaviour. We can therefore train our horses to stand and wait for their next activity.

Chelsea demonstrates this with her 2 year old pony, Ashlu. .equine is building lovely duration on her standing and she is reinforcing the stand before, in between and after moments of activity.

They make it look easy, but remember this is a two year old pony. Ashlu is food motivated and she’s a keener, so why not put that keenness to work on learning to stand?

Chelsea has done such a nice job of this that you notice it’s Ashlu’s default behaviour and even as I’m instructing Chelsea, Ashlu stands quietly while Chelsea listens to me blab.

01/21/2023

Jess demonstrates quite a nice stationing behaviour with her wee little pony, Titan, in her lesson. When horses stand still well it looks so easy and boring but actually it’s not a simple behaviour because most horses want to follow, especially if you are only using positive reinforcement and have a bag of hay cubes. Jess has in her goals to get a treat pouch for that industrial sized bag of food but she is a mom with a million uses for a ziplock bag. 😂

12/15/2022

I cue Extra to go and then reward any movement that she offers. If she wanders a slow circle around the pen, she will be fed her hay pellets. If she canters around the pen she will be fed her hay pellets. And if she doesn’t feel like going and doesn’t move 🦧…I will still feed her hay pellets. 😅

So why does she move then?

I find rewarding for less leads to more with horses. We often think, “If I reward my horse for a slow walk, then that will be all I ever get.” That’s just not how horses operate when they are given the freedom of choice on a regular basis.

When I first saw people using the reverse round pen (the horse in on the outside and the human is on the inside of a barrier) I didn’t understand the purpose. I thought, “They miss out on the benefits of lunging such as changing circle sizes and moving from circle to square etc.”

Now I see the reverse round pen as a different exercise than lunging with its’ own set of benefits!

When we are playing in protected contact we are both safer. I can jump and run around inside my pen with no worries that my horse might bounce too close to me. My horse can leave if she doesn’t want to participate. In Extra’s case she can even leave the arena as I rarely close the gate. She knows I’m limited in my abilities to restrict or pressure her. This feeling of freedom opens up possibilities for fun.

12/10/2022

Enrichment game time! I built a fancy food puzzle out of everyone’s favourite toy, a cardboard box.

At first Sailor was so skeptical of the whole operation that he wouldn’t even take carrots out of my hand near the box.

Extra saw what we were doing and was like, “Let’s just destroy this puzzle.” (This is how Extra approaches any food challenge, especially hay nets.)

I repaired and upgraded my design. It provided over half an hour of entertainment until I took it away. bonus, Sailor got accustomed to noisy things swinging around his head.

There was some food stabbed into holes in the box and also holes for food to fall out of the box if it was shaken.

11/17/2022

34-year-old Icelandic, Kolur, is demonstrating how a couple of cones can increase your likelihood of success in your shoulder-in practice at liberty. The first cone helps the horse develop the bend, much like that first step of riding a 10 metre circle when doing shoulder-in down the long line.
It’s best to keep your approach coming into the first cone more gradual than I show here.

Then lining yourself up for the second cone helps prevent the horse from falling on the inside shoulder or cutting across the diagonal. You can spread the cones out as needed.

I like to use a cavesson target to help my horse know which speed and position I would like him to travel in. I’m also occasionally using an inside leg cue. Kolur understands that if I point at the back of his belly I would like him to keep his hind legs out.

Reward often!

Thanks to Kolur for showing that even old guys can learn new things.

Sometimes with Extra I am guilty of expecting too much of her just because she has done so much with me in the past. She...
11/09/2022

Sometimes with Extra I am guilty of expecting too much of her just because she has done so much with me in the past. She’s very smart and well…she’s my main horse. Then I observe her confusion and realize she needs me to concentrate more on an individual cue, instead of combining cues and assuming she knows what I’m talking about. It’s not fair to her and it’s not something I expect of my clients’ horses or my pony, Sailor. I catch myself and must break things down and check, does she really understand? Am I clear?

11/03/2022

Long reining is a great way to challenge yourself to see if you horse understands your communication at a distance. It’s not as easy to turn or stop for example when you are behind your horse, compared to leading or lunging.

Long reining is a bit of a lost art. When I was starting young horses under saddle I used to spend a few days ground driving. The horse and I spent more time tangled up in the lines than anything else. I was always in a hurry to just get on.

Now I have fancy long lining goals. I would love to one day canter pirouette in long reining. I want to be that person that felt like a fly all tangled in web, turned elegant dancer with the long lines. I have a long way to go.

10/19/2022

There are numerous methods to teach haunches-in. In this virtual lesson this mare actually needed to start with something similar to a half pass because she had a good understanding of bringing her shoulders over and her hindquarters just followed. If Chelsea was only to ask for the hindquarters then her mare would fall out the shoulder and lose balance. As she becomes stronger we can phase out the shoulder movement.

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