Setting your horse up for success: context shift

Horses learn in a certain context. Each change in the context of training your horse should be considered as a new criterion. Use this to set yourself and your horse up for success.

What is a \’context shift\’?

If you want to teach your horse something new, like targeting, practise this in the beginning always in the same place, the same context. Maybe you start this exercise in the round pen or in his stall where you can train with protective contact (a barrier).

After a few session in which your horse made progress you might decide that you want to train without the barrier. Now you\’ve changed the context. Expect a change in performance and lower your criteria in the beginning so you can give your horse confidence. If you always trained indoors and you ask the same exercise outdoors, your context (indoor/outdoor) has changed.

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Not only the horse experiences \’context changes\’

If your horse masters the exercise and you want to show it to your friend or film it: the context changes for you. Have you noticed that it is suddenly much harder to perform at the same level when some one is watching? 

Why horse and rider perform much better at home

The same thing happens (for rider and horse) if you train for a competition and you as team perform great at home. Once you are in the dressage ring in a new place, with white fences your horse never saw before and you know there is a two person judge watching you, the context in which you have practised has changed. A lot. No wonder is doesn\’t go as smoothly as it always goes at home, with your own instructor who you trust. Again, start lowering your criteria and set yourself up for success: consider the first competitions in a strange environment as training. Boost your horse\’s confidence by communicating what you want. Positive reinforcement is an excellent way to communicate what you want and see more of.

How to handle context shifts

You will soon notice that you only have to lower your criteria (and your expectations) just a little bit and for a little while. If you don\’t do this, the chances of getting dissapointed and/or frustrated are much bigger. Also for your horse it is much easier to learn to generalize certain aspects of the surroundings that have nothing to do with the cue for the behaviour.

Conclusion

You can use the context in teaching new exercises to your advantage, then if you want to teach your horse to generalize certain things in the setting you can change the context of your training. In this way the horse learns to generalize and he will soon learn is important to pay attention to (your cues) and what is best to ignore in order to get a click and reward (for instance certain things in surrounding, that are not part of your cue).

Related articles

Set you horse up for success: Splitting behaviour

Setting your horse up for Success: Short sesssions

Sandra Poppema
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5 thoughts on “Setting your horse up for success: context shift”

  1. Rhonda Simmons

    Thanks for this. The time has come for me to move from my comfort zone! We have a lovely routine in the menage & actually when I think about it, we have learned a lot in the year (yes, a whole year!) since introducing the clicker, all on the ground. I’m about to saddle up again & also would like to be getting out & about again so I’ve got to come up with a plan for us to get there. I guess I worry too much about what other people think at times of the slow way we’re going about things, & that maybe Billy would be better off somewhere where he could be doing so much more. Then we have a session & my heart melts & I smile & his nostrils wobble (!) & he tries so hard, I can’t part with him. Anyway I digress, think tomorrow I will get on board, (he now stands still to mount thanks to the clicker) walk into the menage, maybe do a few steps then get off & do our familiar routine, what do you think? To work our way out of the menage I was thinking about using his props, like his mat & posts that he targets, working it from there. Thanks for reading this, I got carried away! ????

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