shaping plan & training log
A shaping plan helps you see your training situation overall. Having a specific goal helps you know when you’re successful, and also gives you a way to measure progress and make changes that keep you aligned with what you want to do.
Making a shaping plan and being aware of your goal, prerequisites for you, prerequisites for your horse, variables, constraints, setbacks, and the individual steps you'll need will help you decide where to go with your training in the moment.
The more creative you can be about your training, the more likely it is you will progress somewhat quickly. It’s up to you to arrange the environment for success, and to notice when your horse is doing the right thing so you can use that as an opportunity to click/feed. Not only will your observational skills and your feel for your horse develop, but you’ll start to see your horse’s patterns in more detail, and you’ll find ways you can change one small thing and get a different result.
Click here to download the Google Sheets document for the Shaping Plan & Training Log.
10/26/2023 UPDATE: here is a hoof care version. It's a work in progress! It still has the images from the sample haltering plan, but I'm hoping to get some footage soon for a larger hoof handling project. I am also looking to overhaul the entire format to make it easier to learn from and use. Suggestions are welcome!
There is a sample plan for teaching a horse to wear a halter, developed for a client with a newly-blind pony named Princess Buttercup (PB). She had already worn a halter all her life, but I wanted to start with something simple that she already knew in order to introduce the concept of positive reinforcement training with a behavior she didn't also have to learn at the same time. It's helpful to see all the steps that go into something as simple as haltering, even for a horse that already knows how to do it.
You can start with that behavior to get the feel of breaking things down to very small pieces, or you can erase that information and put in your own.
In the Shaping Plan tab, you'll find the outline to help you define the overall plan for training the behavior you want.
In the Training Log Tab, you'll define each tiny step or movement involved in teaching the behavior from the very beginning to the finished behavior. You can add rows under each heading for more steps. There is no rule about when something is "done," but you can generally check it off when you're able to perform that step 3-5 times in succession without too much behavior you don't want. It doesn't have to be perfect, but it should be pretty reliable.
If you have a very complex behavior, like taking your horse for a walk around the property, you will need to break it down into each component behavior, such as haltering, going through a gate, leaving friends behind, etc. You can copy the Training Log tab for each component behavior you need to teach.
If you have questions, or you get stuck, you can click here to contact me to set up a virtual lesson and we can walk through it together. Short sessions are $35 for approximately thirty minutes, and include review and commentary/discussion on a video you have pre-recorded and sent prior to the session (not more than five minutes). They work well for very focused lessons and/or tasks, where you just want a second pair of eyes.