emotions

Using Start Buttons and Consent Cues in Horse Training

How do horses communicate their preferences or willingness? How do we make sure we’re listening and respecting them?  Consent comes down to emotions as it’s about how your horse feels about certain situations. Giving horses a voice and enabling them to communicate with us is a key part of building a great relationship and connecting […]

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Horses Saying “Yes” and “No” – How to Read Your Horse’s Emotions

Listening to your horse means being able to read what he’s saying through his body language. Horses express fear, joy, confidence, anxiety, confusion and frustration through movements and actions – when you watch for these behavioural signs and respond to them, you start to open up the conversation between you and your horse. Even though

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Getting Off to the Right Start with Positive Reinforcement – Spotlight on the Foundation Course

[🎄It’s our Christmas Sale this weekend! Click here to find out more!🎄] The way you introduce positive reinforcement training to your horse can make a huge difference on how successful it is. The early lessons set the tone of the training – does your horse associate reward based training with feeling excited, anxious, frustrated or

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Making Connections – 2. The CARE System

This video is all about understanding what goes on in the brain when your horse is building relationships, both with you and his pasture mates. How can you use this to strengthen your connection and build your relationship together? Watch this video to find out… (If you haven’t watched the first in this series, yet,

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The Way Horses Feel: 1. Living the Good Life – The SEEKING System

Ever wondered how your horse’s emotions affect your training? In this video, Rachel explains what makes horses curious, enthusiastic and happy to learn. This is the first in a series of 7 in which Rachel will explore the full range of your horse’s core emotions. Find out how a great emotional connection is the key

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The New Emotional Learning Quadrant: Adding in Arousal

In a previous blog I developed the traditional behavioural consequences model (aka the “learning quadrant”) to include my ideas of how Panksepp’s emotional systems may be considered in that framework. In this blog I want to take this further to look at the next consideration: arousal and threshold. Arousal levels have a massive effect on

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The Emotional Learning Quadrant

Did you see this good article, Positive Reinforcement: Where Does It Fit in Equine Training? about learning theory and horsemanship (with great comments on our own Shawna)? I particularly like the graphic that Henderson used to illustrate the four quadrants of operant conditioning: The Original Learning Quadrant This is often known as the “learning quadrant”

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