Equine Empowerment: A Guide To Positive Reinforcement Training

The ultimate guide to positive reinforcement training and learning theory for horses! This should be given to everyone who cares for horses (or wants to one day) and could be assigned reading in my animal behavior MsC program. 🐴 What I enjoyed: - Science! Everything is evidence-based - Positive reinforcement and horse-centered approach - Wonderful charts, diagrams, photo examples, and illustrations in color - Interactive worksheets to practice concepts - That preference assessments and activity budgets were included - Practical how to guides with pictures for making horse-sized enrichment - Great stimulus control examples to keep things safe when training new behaviors - The colorful tack room full of fun toys and games (and nothing aversive!) warmed my heart 💜 🎧 Audiobook narration? - Not available that I can find. I would’ve loved an audiobook for this! I had a hard time at first with the small font on the large pages. 🐴 Favorite quotes: I love how this quote covers multiple explanations for what you can do to address undesirable behavior. From “Overview of Using Positive Reinforcement” section: “This is all wonderful for training new behaviors but what about getting rid of behaviors you don’t want? While there are many ways to reduce behaviors, the most ethical options use prevention instead of punishment. We’ll change what’s causing the behavior, prevent it from happening, train for the absence of the behavior, or teach a behavior that’s incompatible. If it’s a behavior that was being reinforced unintentionally, we can allow it to extinguish through a lack of reinforcement. Mixing and matching strategies (depending on the behavior) may be required for the most efficient results.” —— And this one almost moved me to tears! “We are beginning to approach horsemanship in a wonderful new way, with brains over brawn. With knowledge and with kindness we are shaping the new era.”

This book is very well written and easy to follow. Jessica takes what can be a complex topic (well for most of us!) and breaks it down into terms and concepts the average horse owner can digest. The book is chock full of illustrations, examples, and worksheets that help the reader develop the skills for using R+ with their horses. A must have for every horse owner who wants to begin, or continue the R+ journey.

This will be a great book for anyone wanting more information on what positive reinforcement is about and the reasons that using force-free training are beneficial and necessary to ensure our horses are safe and happy. I'm impressed with the use of diagrams, illustrations and photos to clearly demonstrate behaviors and ideas. This is a great read for the experienced horse trainer as well. We can always learn from other people's interpretations of topics we feel we are already familiar with.

I have long awaited for this book to be published. Jessica is a huge inspiration to many horse owners who are seeking a better relationship with their equines. Her book teaches us the science behind R+ training and gives step by step instructions how to shape the behaviors we want more of without causing stress to our beloved equines. This book will teach you about enriching the lives of our equines and giving them a choice in participating in their care and training.

Book has great info in it but arrived damaged.

I’ve just started this book and so far it’s amazing. I love the photos and graphs in the book. I will give an updated review when finished.

I must have for all who care about their horses happiness and having a positive relationship while learning.

Love this book! Anyone already on their journey, or even thinking about embarking into positive reinforcement training should read this book, you won't be disappointed!

A very nice, good quality, easy to understand, informative book!. Worksheets, education, training. Nothing I dislike here at all actually!. Definitely recommend that you buy it!. Will be recommending to friends and colleagues ☺️

Really awsome book! A must have

Beautifully presented arrived fast

A present for a family member.

This book has a lot of strengths, it covers a wide range of topics related to training horses with positive reinforcement, the information is accurate and the advice kind to the horse. It also does some things very well that make it a valuable purchase even if you own other books on clicker training such as unique graphics and activities that encourage you to write in the book. It also does also include some information on using clicker training for riding, and the advice doesn't encourage to tap, squeeze and pull and to click and treat the results (unlike some other books) However, it is extremely difficult to read because it is so badly formatted (eg. huge block of text where ideas are thrown together rather than split into paragraphs as well as small spacing in between lines, text is lined up to the right rather than justified, narrows margins) which make it unsuitable for anyone with learning difficulties. The worksheet are better-formatted but text is sometimes copy/pasted across worksheets, I guess in case you pick it up and don't read things in order, simply doing an introduction for each section would have worked so much better and kept it concise. The problem with that however is that the current format really doesn't encourage you to read the theory but to skip to the worksheets that are more enjoyable to read. The book could easily get 5 stars if it was re-edited/formated. Will definitely order a 2nd edition too if these changes were made.