Chewie’s Diary Week 22: Training locations

Selecting the right training location can make training so much easier!

In a not-so-good training location, progress is much slower and the horse may spend considerable time engaging in unwanted behaviors. 

With Chewie, I’ve been paying a lot of attention to where we do our training sessions. Recently, we have been doing a lot of our clicker training sessions in a large run that is attached to her pasture. 

Here is why we are both loving this training location:

It’s a familiar place. Chewie is calm and comfortable here, since this area is part of her pasture. Also, I don’t have to take her anywhere, which saves us time. 

It’s easy for Chewie to engage with me. Chewie is enthusiastic about both treats (hay pellets) and scratches. She stays near me and is always ready for more training. 

Chewie is relaxed. She takes treats gently and stands calmly next to me while she eats. She doesn’t snatch the treats or move away when she gets a treat. 

This location gives us options. I am often able to leave the back gate open, which gives Chewie the opportunity to stay with me and do training or to go back to the pasture, if she wants. However, I can also close the gate if her horse-y friends are too interested in what we are doing.

There are minimal distractions. We still have some managable distractions. But, if Chewie needs a moment to look at something, it is easy for her to focus back on our training session, once the person or vehicle passes. 

We also often do training in the main part of the pasture. And, long term, we’ll expand to other parts of the property. 

But, for now, I think this location is nearly perfect. And, it is helping us to make fast training progress on some of the new behaviors Chewie has been learning. 

P.S. You can see some photos of Chewie learning about fly spray in this training location in my blog post from Week 22: Fly Spray.