California Riding Magazine • July, 2010

Shawna Karrasch:
On Target Training
Positive reinforcement is
persuasive with horses.

Speaking to Shawna Karrasch the day after her first online tele-seminar on how to get On Target with your horse, the San Diego horsewoman was even more energetic and enthusiastic than normal. She first introduced her form of positive reinforcement training for horses in 1992 and is refocusing on it after a brief hiatus. In that time, the possibilities for sharing her system widely have grown exponentially thanks to the Internet.

During the first of what will be monthly tele-seminars, participants tuned in through the Internet to hear Karrasch explain how positive reinforcement using a clicker, a “target” and a bag of treats can help professionals and amateurs alike build a better bond with their horses. She addressed questions submitted through AskShawna.com on trailer loading, clipping, transitions and jumping, illustrating that horses can be taught to want to perform through her system. She also took questions regarding the method’s application in various situations.

Teaching the horse to associate a behavior with a reward they care about is the basis of Karrasch’s method. The clicker tool is clicked when the horse does what the trainer asks: lowering his head to have his ears clipped, for example. The horse is then asked to touch a target object to reinforce the idea that he has to do something to get a reward. Finally, an edible treat is withdrawn from a waist-mounted bag to reward the horse. These steps represent the beginning phases of training.

“Fading these tools out is the eventual goal,” Karrasch explains.
Karrasch encountered plenty of skeptics when she introduced this system to the horse world 18 years ago. She had been using the techniques for 10 years as an animal trainer at Sea World when she recognized that they would be equally effective with horses. Her first riding instructor, trainer and Grand Prix rider Vinton Karrasch, was quickly sold on the system and helped her market On Target Training to equestrians. Karrasch encountered a lot of skepticism and resistance. “People said, ‘Yeah, that’s cute.’”

In addition to the fact that her system was based on principles well proven at Sea World and other animal training environments, it helped Karrasch tremendously when Olympic gold-bound Beezie and John Madden embraced the idea. Especially when the training helped Beezie’s Grand Prix mount Judgement overcome well known reservations about jumping water obstacles. “That really helped people recognize the merits of this,” Karrasch notes. “We went from people thinking the Maddens were crazy to try it to having several professionals call me for the book and DVDs.”

Fast-forward to 2010 and Karrasch reports that positive reinforcement training is no longer viewed as a weird alternative. “Now you’ve got a lot more people aware of it and it’s more widely accepted,” she observes. Some horse owners have embraced it after seeing it work well with dog training.

Multiple Uses

On Target Training works equally well with green and fully trained horses, although the effects are more dramatic with horses raised with traditional training techniques. “When horses that know one way learn positive reinforcement, they often value it a little more,” she says. It’s a phenomenon she discovered only after working with horses because the animals at Sea World were trained with positive reinforcement from the get-go. “With horses, I got to see the before and after and I really love that,” Karrasch says. “I’ve found that horses get better in other areas that were not the focus of their On Target Training. Because it involves a reward that they value, it shifts their focus from ‘How can I avoid this?’ or ‘I’m suspicious of this’ to focusing on what we want and pleasing us.”

Karrasch offers On Target Training via book, CD and in person. She is particularly excited about her website’s role as a resource for followers in any stage of the training process. The site’s Ask Shawna page allows visitors to ask specific training questions. Helpful hints are packed into her video blog as well as a Q&A section and background information. Her next tele-seminar is slated for Tuesday, July 6 and details can be accessed through the website.

Charismatic and passionate about On Target Training’s ability to advance the horse/human relationship, Karrasch loves sharing the techniques in any medium and particularly in person. She welcomes one-on-one training sessions throughout Southern California and opportunities to present her program to horseowners everywhere. In addition to the Maddens, dressage expert Jane Savoie and natural horseman John Lyons have endorsed On Target Training’s principles. Lyons likes it because “it gives the trainer an opportunity to develop a definitive and consistent way to tell the horse, ‘Yes, that’s it!” Karrasch thrives on enabling horses and riders to have those kind of “ah ha!” moments.

For more information about On Target Training, visit www.shawnakarrasch.com, facebook.com/horsetraining or call 800-638-2090.