Grass Training for Horses

This title may not make sense to non-horse people and may not even be understood by seasoned horse people...

What is ‘Grass Training’ for Horses?

With Grass Training you teach your horse to 1) ignore grass when you’re leading him (no more grass snacking), 2) stop grazing on voice cue (easy for when your horse is allowed to graze or when he did dive into grass to snack) 3) graze on cue.

I felt like a failure when it came to leading over grass

I was teaching horse people to train their horses and I was already training horses with positive reinforcement successfully for over a decade. Yet, when I took Kyra out of the pasture, she pulled me towards grass.

This was super annoying, because everything I did was not helping. Yes, pulling the lead rope and lifting her head, made it impossible to graze. But… Kyra didn’t learn anything. At least that’s how it felt.

My Horse did Learn!

Kyra learned to wait until I blinked and then dove into the grass. She knew exactly when I was thinking about something else and not paying attention to her. Even for a second, and then she dove right into the grass. She pushed me aside to get to it. She ignored my pulling on her lead rope.

Grass diving

The most annoying part was, of course, that she just came from the pasture! Hours of grazing, and now she pulled me to a snack? It was most embarrassing! I was a horse trainer! I felt like a failure because I was doing the same thing over and over without getting a different result. That was silly!

Use the ‘Carpet of Motivation’

Then I came across a blog post called ‘The Carpet of Motivation’. It explained how we, horse owners, can use the grass as motivation to stop grass diving!

I started using positive reinforcement to teach Kyra to lift her head away from the grass. Then I reinforced the desired behaviour with something she valued very much! Wow, it worked! Grass Training was born! That was over a decade ago. Since so many horse owners lose the ‘fight’ over grass with their horse, I created a course (HippoLogic Grass Training) to help other horse owners feel like a pro, leading their horse over grass. A child can do it1

Feeling like a pro

I can’t tell you how good it feels without feeling like a failure when it comes to walking your horse over grass without diving into it and pushing/pulling you wherever he wants to snack!

Even when Kyra got laminitis the year after I started training her with clicker training to ignore grass, she remembered! She was on a restrictive diet and still did not pull me towards grass! This is the Power of Positive Reinforcement! The behaviour is IN the horse! The horse understands and decides to offer the desired behaviour!

• It feels great walking over grass with slack in the lead rope

• It’s wonderful to get your horse’s attention away from the grass with just a voice cue

• Get your mini horses from the pasture after just 20 minutes because it would be too much for them. Just calling their names, and no halters necessary.

• Working with your horse at liberty without your horse finding that one bit of green that grows in the arena. Or, in Kyra’s case, ignore all of the yummie blackberry leaves just outside of the arena and come back to me. At liberty!

Watch 0:45- 1:00 in this video:

Have a wonderful weekend! If you want this for your horse and yourself. I have an online course. In August, I will offer personal guidance with this course. If you want feedback on your training videos and answers to your questions, let me know that you’re interested.

Happy Horse Training - you are the trainer!

Sandra Poppema, BSc
Equine behaviourist and founder of HippoLogic

http://clickertraining.ca

Grass Training course: https://clickertraining.ca/courses/grass-training/