By popular request following my recent injection training post, I’m sharing a video below of a live demonstration showing how I use positive reinforcement to teach a horse to stand cooperatively for injections.

I often perform both IM and IV injections on my own horses without a halter or lead — so yes, this really does work.

In this clip, I’m demonstrating IM only. IV is simply a small variation on the same thoughtful process.

Please forgive the camera angle — it isn’t ideal — but what you can clearly see is a simple and brilliant protocol (credit to Dr. Lore Haug, DVM).

The horse in this video is owned by Dr. Jessica Loyd, DVM.

I reinforce him through three distinct steps:

1️⃣ Hand on neck
(You’ll hear me say both “neck” and “hand” in the video — that was my error. I was definitely nervous in front of the crowd. Choose one cue and stay consistent.)

2️⃣ Pinch the skin

3️⃣ Poke

At first, “poke” is barely a touch — sometimes not even that. Over time, it becomes more realistic, ...

BALANCE isn't just physical nor does it only relate to bio-mechanics or self carriage.

Do you wonder if you are making progress or making a mess with your positive reinforcement horse training or when you are clicker training your horse? It's all about balancing REWARDS, BEHAVIORS and REPETITIONS and knowing how  and when to increase criteria in increments that allow the horse to be successful without creating confusion and over training/tipping the scale too far in one direction or drilling. 

We want to balance REWARDS by making sure the value of the reward matches the difficulty of the request FROM THE HORSE'S VIEWPOINT. This can mean using multiple reward types in the same session or even for the same behavior based on the horse's emotional response.

BEHAVIORS: when we are training, we want to keep in mind the behavior that might be similarly cued or similarly performed in relation to the goal behavior that we are currently shaping . We want to take care to address this similar b...