Silverdawn Farm

01/04/2026

This video is the second video in my foundational skills series.

The goal with this series is to demonstrate what I believe these skills should look like. The first video was about back up so that you have a way to create space between you and your horse. The next skill I think is important for daily life is being able to lead your horse from one place to another.

Throughout my years of teaching, I have noticed that students often remember parts of exercises that they learn in lessons but not all of the pieces, so we often have to work on the same exercise for a while before the horse and student are proficient enough to move on without both feeling lost when we get to more complex skills.

My hope for this series is that it can serve as a reminder in between lessons of what you are working towards, for my students, and students of other trainers who are using similar methods of training.

If you are interested in how I teach these skills, feel free to join my Patreon at patreon.com/Silverdawnfarm at the $10 level. For each one of the foundational videos on YouTube I release, I will also release a tutorial video on how I teach the skill on my Patreon.

Feel free to reach out if you have any videos that you would like to see made for you or your students, and I will help if I can!

https://youtu.be/L4Rw2RnTU7M

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This video is the second video in my foundational skills series.The goal with this series is to demonstrate what I believe these skills should look like. The...

01/01/2026

Happy New Year from the whole Silverdawn Farm family.

2025 definitely had its ups and downs. I could not be more grateful to all of my wonderful friends and clients who cheered me on through the highs and supported me through the lows.

I am looking forward to 2026. We will hopefully have some really fun opportunities coming up. We will continue to offer Dressage and Liberty clinics with Juliette Cimetiere and Dressage clinics with Paula Kierkegaard. We are also excited to be hosting Kathleen Beckham in the spring and hopefully summer. I will also be continuing my own education into behavior, and hopefully be hosting some of my own clinics when the weather gets a little warmer.

I hope all of you will continue learning with me and join us for some of our educational opportunities.

What are you all looking forward to this year with your horses?

Photo credit Roy Stansell

12/30/2025

A little less than two weeks ago, we had our second clinic with Paula Kierkegaard. It was so much fun to see the improvements from everyone. I feel like, for me, the big take home from this clinic was that if you want your horse to trust your hand, it can’t disappear when they need it.

Photos credit Roy Stansell.

P.S. Please don't judge my clip job. It was mine and Loki's first time clipping. He was great! The YouTube tutorial I watched made it look so easy, it was not.

12/25/2025

Happy Holidays to all of our friends and family! We appreciate all of you and hope that you have a joyful holiday season!

12/21/2025

Trial & Error Learning

As I mentioned a few weeks ago in my post about errorless learning, there is a time and place to use trial and error learning.

Any time that we use trial and error as our training technique, it is important to remember that we are flirting with frustration.

Errorless learning may be the cleanest way to teach, but it takes a lot of skill and timing to be able to use it effectively. Some owners and handlers do not have the skills to facilitate errorless learning. While they are trying to develop their eye and timing, it is necessary that the horse develops their patience for us making mistakes. This is where trial and error learning really shines. In order to do trial and error learning well, you need to help your horse manage their stress. We can do this by teaching them to search for an answer when they are not receiving reinforcement. It is also important to not punish the horse when they try behaviors, even when those behaviors are not the wanted behaviors.

This is much easier for the human to understand in negative reinforcement, as we simply apply just enough pressure to get the horse to start trying behaviors, wait for them to offer the wanted behavior, and remove the pressure. The hardest part for people, I feel, is to recognize confusion or frustration and not add pressure. What they should do instead is stop, reset, and try something easier that they can later build into the wanted behavior, while avoiding getting more repetitions of confusion or frustration.

It can get very complicated for people to understand in positive reinforcement, as we cannot withhold food (negative punishment). This means that we need to start from a place where the horse can feel very successful and slowly build their tolerance for needing to search for an answer. Depending on the behavior we are looking for, there are many different ways to do this, and I am not going to get into all of them here. We also need to be very careful to avoid coercion if we are doing something that has the potential to be scary.

To recap, errorless learning is ideal for creating very reliable, consistent behaviors. Trial and error learning is ideal for creating a horse who is okay accepting us not being clear 100% of the time. Both have a time and a place. At the end of the day, remember most unwanted behaviors stem from fear, frustration, or pain, so whatever method we choose should try to avoid those.

As always, feel free to reach out with questions, and remember to enjoy your time with your equine partners.

Photo credit Bert Palmer

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11/23/2025

Rehearsing Behaviors

Practicing a behavior is a form of learning it. Operant conditioning is so simple in a vacuum, but life is rarely that simple. One of my general rules of thumb is that we do not punish emotions. What I mean by that is all behavior happens for a reason. If your horse gets frustrated or scared, they are likely to strike, bite, kick, buck, or bolt. I do not see this as misbehavior, I see it as communication that tells me I need to change something. In the moment, I will do what is necessary to stop the horse from hurting me or themselves.

Afterwards, though, I will change something to try and either slow down or approach the issue in a different way.

This is where the concept of pressure and release (negative reinforcement) gets complex. Even if they don’t get reinforced for behaviors driven by emotions like fear or frustration, or, more importantly, even if they get punished for it, they are still increasing the likelihood that the behavior will happen again. In the case of punishment, it may not happen in those exact circumstances, but it will likely happen again if those emotions become present in another situation.

This is because those behaviors serve a purpose for the horse. Every time they practice them, they are strengthening those neural pathways and getting better at doing that behavior.

What’s worse is, if the behavior works even once, it is extremely difficult to get it to stop happening. I see this a lot in trainers who are very heavy handed. The horses often appear to do well while they are working with the trainer, but then when they go home and get scared and act according to those emotions with their owner, if the owner is not competent enough to respond like the trainer and backs down, the behaviors become more and more prevalent until the owner can barely handle the horse.

The best way to avoid these behaviors is to train in a way that the horse does not feel the need to exhibit them. This is not always easy, and sometimes it makes training slower, but in the end, you get a calmer, safer, more reliable horse. If your horse has already learned these behaviors or feels defensive because they have been punished for them, then oftentimes you need to allow them to be expressed when they come up and then train in a way that helps them no longer feel the need to express them.

If you think you may be dealing with this, I highly recommend reaching out for help. Remember, anything that the horse is practicing, they are getting better at. As always, feel free to reach out with questions or comments, and have fun with your horses!

Photo Credit Roy Stansell

11/12/2025

Errorless Learning

“Errors are not a function of learning or vice versa, nor are they blamed on the learner. Errors are a function of poor analysis of behavior, a poorly designed shaping program, moving too fast from step to step in the program, and the lack of the prerequisite behavior necessary for success in the program.”
— B.F. Skinner, The Technology of Teaching, published in 1968

Errorless learning is a positive reinforcement concept that concentrates the most on the antecedent portion of training. It is predicated on the concept that errors are not necessary for learning to take place. In fact, errors or mistakes often cause confusion and frustration in the learner, which often gets in the way of the learning process, especially when errors are met with punishment, either negative or positive.

A lot of trainers in the horse world may still work very much off of the trial and error method, which I want to be clear, I still use, and it does have its uses in a lot of training scenarios. What it is not good at is teaching reliable, consistent behaviors. Even if the horse is not getting reinforced for an unwanted behavior, they are still practicing it, thus strengthening the neural pathways that lead to that behavior. I will talk more about this next week.

What is the alternative to trial and error, you may ask? The key lies in knowing your learner. In errorless learning, the idea is that you set the horse up so well that they guess the correct answer on the first try, either through prompting with other known behaviors or through setting up the situation so well that the most likely thing for the horse to do is to offer the wanted behavior.

One example of when I used errorless learning was when I wanted to teach my horse Loki to get in the trailer. I started by teaching him to step on a tarp because I knew that if he saw a tarp, for whatever reason, he really wanted to go and step on it, since he would often do this when left to his own devices in the vicinity of a tarp. So I just strengthened that behavior by marking and rewarding for it.

Then I generalized that to a plywood board under the tarp, then slowly moved the tarp off of the board, slowly built walls and a roof around the board until eventually I placed the board in our horse trailer. During this entire process, Loki never did not go and stand on the board, and once he was easily going to the board in the trailer, I took the board out, and if the doors to the trailer were open, he would just go in. At no point in this process did he ever not do the wanted behavior. I was able to raise criteria at every session, and he easily learned the wanted behavior without me ever having to withhold reinforcement or correct him for making a mistake.

This may be a positive reinforcement concept; however, there are ideas in errorless learning that can be useful in negative reinforcement.

The first of these that I find useful is the creativity to set up a horse to be successful. A lot of good trainers will describe this as making your idea his idea. For example, if I want to teach my horse to go forward in a straight line, I will likely ask him to do that when he is facing in a direction that he already wants to go, such as going towards a gate or closer to his friend.

In the early stages of training, don’t ask for things you are not reasonably sure the horse not only can do but is ready to do. For instance, if my horse has never been in an arena before and I want to work on getting their attention on me, I am probably going to choose to work with them in their stall or pasture where they are comfortable and there are not a lot of distractions, and have an established way to request their attention before moving them to the arena.

If you need to do something for your horse’s health, for example, your horse needs to see a farrier or has an accident and needs to see a vet, and you have not had time to train them for that experience, do not be afraid to ask for drugs to make it easier for the horse. Then work very hard to prepare the horse for the next time.

There is so much more to errorless learning. Hopefully, you find this brief overview helpful. If you want to learn more, I have attached a link to a really good starting place that cites many more sources, or comment below if you want me to do more posts on errorless learning.

As always, feel free to reach out with questions or comments, and remember to enjoy your time with your equine partners.

https://www.behaviorworks.org/files/articles/Errorless%20Learning.pdf

Photo credit Bert Palmer

10/23/2025

Successive Approximation

The next training methodology I want to talk about is successive approximation. This is often used in conjunction with shaping, which is why I talked about shaping first.

Successive approximation is a process in which we reinforce small steps that eventually lead us to our larger goal. This may feel like how training always works, and to a certain extent, yes, the things we teach them do build on each other. In general, though, the larger the behavior change (approximation), the more pressure we need to put on the horse. Whether it is physical or mental pressure, we are generally going to put more stress on the horse by asking for larger approximations of the behavior we are looking for, unless we are using something like errorless learning, which I will talk about in a few weeks.

I am going to demonstrate this by talking about tying. I chose tying because it is a behavior that I feel most horses have already learned before they were bought. There are many ways to teach a horse to tie, but I am going to talk about two very extreme examples to demonstrate what I mean.

In the first example, let’s talk about the videos I’m sure most of us have seen: a person takes a horse, usually a young one, ties them to an object that they are going to have a hard time breaking, and lets them sit back, pull, and fight the object until they eventually learn that it isn’t going to break. So they give up and stop pulling back. This is a way to teach a horse to tie; it is usually effective, and if the horse doesn’t break away, they will often learn to tie in one session. The drawbacks to this are that there’s a risk the horse will permanently damage their neck and/or withers, the horse learns that they are helpless in this situation, and the horse is very stressed throughout the process, and may associate that stress with being around people.

In the second example, we’ll look at a more successive approach, where we ask for smaller approximations of the behavior. In this approach, we may first teach a horse to be curious about us and build a draw in a small area, like a round pen. Then we’ll teach the horse to come forward off of poll pressure by applying a draw first and adding the smallest bit of poll pressure. We may solidify the give to poll pressure by asking the horse to lower their head by putting light pressure on the poll. You may then teach them that when they reach the end of the lead rope, they should turn softly and face you. At the same time, we may also teach the horse how to stand for longer periods of time. Teaching them about things coming in and out of their blind spot behind them is another step.

When you start the tying process, you first use a blocker tie or a double wrap on a post and show them that even though their head is restrained, they are still able to move their feet. We may then practice hard tying when all of these other things check out.

The advantage of successive approximation is that the horse hopefully understands each step of the process well enough that the next step makes some sense before we approach it. The horse is not very stressed during any point in the process and, depending on how we approach it, may even enjoy some (if not all) of it. The horse is an active participant in their learning throughout the whole process.

The disadvantage is that it takes time. The horse usually needs multiple sessions with each approximation of each prerequisite behavior in order to fully understand the basics and be successful with the final behavior.

My experience is that while successive approximation takes time, horses are usually more relaxed, confident, and willing when taught this way but it does not fit well into the 30/60/90 day model that most of us use to start our horses.

Trainers who take training horses for 30, 60, or 90 days often need to skip approximations in order to keep most owners happy. This is why I’ve moved more toward helping people start their own horses. This usually takes even longer because the student is often not starting from a place of having all the skills necessary to start a horse, so the pair is learning together.

Honestly, this is an issue I don't really have a solution for at the moment. Sending your horse to a trainer for six months to a year is usually cost-prohibitive. It takes time for you to learn skills just as much as it takes time for the horse to learn skills if you’re going to choose to do it yourself.

Here’s the best advice I can give if you are training your horse at any stage (even if you think they’re “broke”): if your horse is struggling, see if you can find an easier approximation where the horse can be successful and build from there. This is the best way I know to keep you and your horse safe.

As always, feel free to reach out with questions! Have a great week, and enjoy your equine partners.

Photo credit Bert Palmer

10/21/2025

We had such a wonderful time working with Paula Kirkegaard in our clinic earlier this month. She is a wealth of knowledge mixed with a really fun sense of humor.

I am still working on absorbing all of the information, but here are some of the big takeaways I got from this clinic.

Riding well takes finesse, balance between ideas, and experimentation.

No two horses are alike, play with what is necessary for your horse.

Always be looking for the yeses.

If your horse loses contact, why? What can you change to turn that into a yes?

Thank you Juliette Cimetiere for connecting us with her, and for bringing Zamando. It was fun watching you ride!

Thank you Roy Stansell for the beautiful photos!

10/10/2025

Shaping

Shaping is a training method that probably focuses the most on the Behavior–Consequence portion of the ABCs. There are many forms of shaping. The purest form is to simply wait for a behavior to happen and then reinforce it. This is called capturing. Sometimes we capture whole behaviors, but often this means looking for something we can develop into a wanted behavior. We rarely wait until a horse randomly offers the full behavior we’re looking for, unless we have a way to guarantee that the horse will offer it.

There are other forms of shaping, such as exploratory shaping. In this type of shaping, we go into a training session without a plan and simply ask the horse to offer behaviors. We might use environmental cues as prompts or adjust the way we deliver reinforcement. Then we can begin capturing a behavior that we could build into something more later. This form of shaping often takes a lot of creativity and quick thinking on the part of the handler, but it can be incredibly fun and empowering for both horse and handler when done well.

Shaping is a skill that a handler develops over time, ideally with help from someone experienced in positive reinforcement (clicker training). If you’d like to learn more about shaping, you’re welcome to follow Lilly’s journey on my Patreon at patreon.com/silverdawnfarm and watch me build my skills with her. For excellent instruction, check out clickertraininghorses.com or equispeak.com — Peggy and Monty are both fantastic.

While shaping is a method that can only be used with positive reinforcement (clicker training), I believe there are lessons we can take from shaping to improve our negative reinforcement training if that’s the method you choose to use.

The first shaping lesson that I find helpful when using negative reinforcement is that the horse must understand they have control over when the pressure is released. There are many aspects to this: the handler’s timing with the release, the amount of pressure used, and the way the pressure is applied. For me, one of the easiest ways to start is to choose a behavior I know the horse will be successful at. This is especially true for horses who think pressure is just something that happens to them or for horses that are new to training. The behavior should be very black and white, they’re either doing it or they’re not. I try to use as little pressure as possible and release it immediately when they do what I’m asking. Then I leave them alone for a while before asking again. Once the horse learns the first behavior, I may repeat this process with several simple behaviors until the horse begins making voluntary attempts, without holding tension in their body, each time pressure is applied. Another lesson I’ve learned from shaping is that not all attempts receive the same level of reinforcement. I only use this with horses who already understand that pressure is a request for behavior and that the right behavior earns a release. I might give “mini releases,” where the pressure softens but isn’t completely removed, for lower effort tries. I might also give shorter releases for attempts that are “just okay.” But well executed new behaviors always earn a full release of pressure, or I may quit riding altogether.

Lastly, a lesson I’ve taken from shaping is to be generous with reinforcement. I won’t go into too much detail here since next week’s post will be about that topic, but especially when teaching a new behavior, the horse needs to feel successful.

Reward anything that could potentially turn into the desired behavior, you can get more specific as they improve.
As we better understand our horses and refine our skills, we can, of course, add more antecedents to make it more likely that the horse will offer the behavior we’re looking for, or build clearer ways to ask that guide the horse toward the correct response. If we choose to use shaping, we can also combine it with other methods, which I’ll be discussing in the coming weeks.

As always, feel free to reach out with questions or comments, and enjoy your time with your horses.

09/26/2025

About the Show Ballet Northwest celebrates its 55th anniversary with this groundbreaking one-time only performance featuring special guests from Masterworks Choral Ensemble, Olympia Youth Chorus, and Student Orchestras of Greater Olympia. The program features nine world […]

09/25/2025

Hello everyone,

I know I have been absent for a few months. For those of you who don't know, I also dance, so I was finishing out the dance season. Then we immediately started hay season after that, and right after, I went to a few clinics and took a few online classes. I was just getting ready to find my stride again, and then Luna passed away.

At this point, I think I am feeling ready to try posting again. I have reduced some of my other obligations this year to try to focus more on my Facebook, Patreon, and YouTube channel, but I'm hoping that you all will continue to be patient with me as I navigate a lot of the photos and videos of Luna that will still be appearing on my media. I miss her, and sometimes they can still be hard, but I do not want to pretend that she never existed, she deserves better.
I appreciate all of you and your continued support.

I'll be back very soon.

Photo credit Roy Stansell