Creating a Calm Focus - Selecting the Right Reinforcer

Want your horse to be calm/good in its own skin and feel rewarded in the training?

Hay Cubes and other Low Value, Large Volume Rewards are highly correlated to your horse's Emotional State during Training. This is one of Compassionate Horse Click’s private course, coaching and community most treasured training tools! 

One lower value reward that can provide longer chewing time and larger volume which lends to more relaxed horses is hay cubes, but...

Many people are concerned about using hay cubes for rewards and haven’t been able to find a comparable alternative that will help their horse stay in a soft emotional state, promote calm focus and still create a dopamine release that will enhance learning. It can be especially challenging to find a reward that does all of this WITHOUT encouraging the horse to hunt around or push down on your hand during feeding.

Before we can help a horse be in an optimal emotional state for learning, we have to have a type of food that is exactly right for the horse and the task at hand. We tend to use a lot of large, low value rewards in our CHC style positive reinforcement training and relationship building activities to promote soft attentive focus.

One option we use a lot is mini hay cubes made of various mixtures of hay usually including a lower value grass hay. If you are concerned about choke, here’s an idea that you might find interesting.

• Try cutting up carrots or apples etc. and putting them in the fridge with mini hay cubes in a sealed container overnight.
• You may be pleasantly surprised to find your carrots much less wet than normal, and more user friendly especially on cold winter days.
• Better yet, your mini hay cubes will soak up the moisture still retaining their shape, so the horse isn’t trying to dig out fine bits from between your fingers if you are feeding by hand. And it prevents them from falling apart in your treat pouch and increases the ease of feeding under saddle.
• This allows you to have a longer session without needing water as often and I like to use the mixture of the carrot/apple and cubes if the horse can handle the carrots and apples without getting overly excited. If the carrots and apples are too much, then I’ll just separate the hay cubes and use them as a stand-alone reward.

Let us know if you have any additional ideas for large volume low value rewards. Or, if you’d like more info on our online courses and coaching that are full solutions that are easy to use with your horse that were learned over many years of +R horse training and coaching experience, email: [email protected]