Interview with Shawna Corrin Karrasch - On Target Training

I'm Shauna and what I do is positive reinforcement training, whether it is a competitor, who's at the highest level I've worked with Olympians and show jumping and dressage and other Olympic level or you just like to go out and visit your horse once a week. It's really, for everybody. When we talk about traditional training technically it's called negative reinforcement.

Positive reinforcement on the other hand means we're adding something to the equation, which increases the frequency of behavior. You can expect to learn the foundation, work the pieces that are going to really change your horses, emotional state, it's really going to change the relationship you have with your horses, this is science. The very first thing we're going to teach you is how to teach your horse manners related to being hand-fed every time.

We feed our horses or reinforcing things that the horse thinks are important. Science behind it is already an action, so the more we learn about it, the better we can be as partners for our horses. People think that you can't do this with riding, but it's only for groundwork and that's just not true, this is such an excellent tool.

This is bringing something where, what you're getting is a. Who was invested in the training and the outcome of the training, because we put something in it that the horse values that the horse likes, they become invested in the training and that's a game changer when you're talking competition, that is the game. Will always share stories that will tie the science to something that you can relate to trailer loading or things at the highest performance level.

I don't want to teach you to follow these steps, I want you to think and be able to problem solve your way through all the things that come later. And that starts with helping you to understand the science all. Can be addressed with the positive reinforcement.

If you are interested in creating a better partnership with your horse, if you want to have a happy athlete who enjoys performing and going to shows or anything in between, then this is probably something that is really going to speak to you. We're going to start with a foundation and then we're going to continue to add and add and add. So I'm so excited about sharing it with you.

So thing was to make sure that we made it fun and we made it where it's something they wanted to do and they were excited to find out what the humans are going to do today and so I didn't come in having to undo a lot of stuff because I came in without a horse background, I came in as a positive reinforcement trainer. Now that was about 28 years ago now.

So it's a long time ago and you know, I've learned so much since then but really what I did is I took the positive reinforcement training to the horses, I started first looking into it in probably 1993 and then in 1994, really started working with horses, got a horse to set out and figure out how it was done. So it's a long road to hoe since then. Cause you think about way back then nobody knew anything about positive reinforcement.

You didn't have Facebook groups, you didn't have Facebook, it was one person out there saying this is really important. And I naively thought, oh, the horse people are going to be so excited about positive reinforcement because it's so effective and that's what I thought they would do. That's not quite been what I've experienced but by the tides of change it, you know, it is a groundswell movement that's really taking old people are starting to understand it.

And while I started with the highest level of riders and very talented riders Beezie Madden is really gifted and soft when it comes to applying traditional training and so that's where I started, then I went and started working with everybody, I realize this isn't just for grand Prix jumping, this is for, you know, injections and you're getting started and all the pieces in between.

So really kind of changed the, the topography of that, and really started working with more people who were interested more in their recreational kind of situations.

And then now that it's taken, hold in the horse world, I think the frontier that we really need to conquer now is the show world and figuring out how can we do it with positive reinforcement being first but the horses, wellbeing being above showing and the show, you know, accolades that come with it, so that's where I am and that's kind of a little nutshell of how I got to where I am.

So that's where I first started and they had two young horses, one was six months old and one was a yearling and so while I worked with all the show horses and the different situations, the two young ones were there all the time. So the two young ones, for lack of better word, our Guinea pigs, you know what I mean, they're the ones that learned everything with positive reinforcement who didn't have traditional training.

So minty and George were the two and Minty is the one that was with me for so long and in June had to put him down, he was 28 years old and he had had and we didn't do the MRI and find out but it was pretty clear.

He became a tactic and wibbly, wobbly, and seemed to lose vision in an eye and his quality of life had really changed because while he hadn't been sound for a while, you'd still watch him play like with Henley and he'd go out there and here I come here, I come and it had gotten to the point where he wasn't doing that and it's always that hard decision, you can see that it's their time.

You know, that this quality of life is in the same but it's so hard to say goodbye but he was with me from way, way, way back. So when I first went from John and BCS to go out and do demos many, many, many decades ago, really to go out and do demos and teach people, it was minty and George were the two ones that were there. So minty as I watched.

Come along through all that and he did all his under saddle, even Olympic dressage rider, one time set, I was working with her just before she was going to the Olympics in Sydney and she watched minty just being Minty and she said oh, I'd love to ride this horse. He was a thoroughbred who had learned to collect through positive reinforcement, but you could see it was very different and so he came through all that, ran that whole gamut and, and watched horses come and go all the way up through.

I had an off the track thoroughbred and he's a more recent horse and then my most recent horse now is Henley and Henley is two years old and she's the horse I see that's going to stay in the footprints, you know, that is going to follow in this footprint, so it has big, big choose to fill so I'm really excited about that and when I've been look at Henley side by side, I would think minty, you were her age, she came to me as a yearling and I was thinking to you, you were her age when I started

working with you, you know, and then to see this whole generation in between. So it's a sad thing in a good thing, it's sad in a way that you know he had a wonderful life and he taught so many people so much, but especially me, you know, he really he touched my soul.

Now I don't mean feminine gentle it's it's a firm gentle and he stands proud and I can feel his energy and it's wrapping himself around you now, as you're talking about him and you very much once you so please forgive me if you don't feel this is for you and I'm sorry if I'm going to make you cry.

But he wants you to know that he's with you and he's with your work, he helps with your work but also with the other horses, he helps them understand if they're feeling a little bit unsure to refocus and connect with their own energy, he helps him bring their energy back to themselves and I'm also getting told to say too you I will say this, normally if I get stuff thats personal, obviously we're alive but he wants to reassure you that you did everything that you possibly could and he heard the

words that you spoke as it was his time to leave. I'm sorry I didn't know. I was going to be saying that tonight, but I have to give it as it comes and he says that with love. He's very proud, very proud of himself but also if you and he sees what's ahead of you, that you can't see and he's proud of that. So surprises are coming your way in the most beautiful, beautiful way. So I apologize for making you cry but it's given with a love that it's come.

And so when Henley was born, I had helped her with a horse who kind of found herself in a really confusing situation, she'd become dangerous. It was a horse she had raised and knew what she was like, and she wasn't being like that. So she got herself in a, she didn't get herself, people got her there, but she was in a bad place and I helped her with her horse and then when Henley was born, she said, this one is a lot, like the other horse, who's still here.

Now I'm with Jessie and I get to see the horse all the time and she said she has a personality a lot like that one, which is a lot of personnel. I love a big personality, to be who they are and what they want to do and I don't want to lose that but I also want to teach her to work with me, she is super smart and she keeps me on my toes.

She's delightful and she's funny and she's brave and she is curious to know and we took her and San Tino on a trip to go to something called Equitana and Equitana they had it here in the United States and it was down in Kentucky horse park and we took the two of them. It was only their second time off the farm in a working situation.

The first time she had traveled commercially and him to go to Equitana, it's like, it's a rocket ship and she at first they're just taking it all in by they two, day three particularly, she's starting to think this is just fascinating, you could see it in her face and so she's very smart and very much she's very optimistic, that's what I feel about her. She just looks at the world with goodness, as opposed to looking at the world, their trepidation and suspicion or fear.

I'm excited for where we're going to go and what we have ahead of us too.

You know, she's very thoughtful and sensitive and sweet so as much as she looks at the world and thinks it's all there for her, it's in a thoughtful way, I just love her to pieces, but she is different, she's different than what I've had.

I learned how to create a desire to want to learn and how to raise criteria, I really started to recognize that there was a lot of emotional baggage, you know, that comes with the horses, they come from different places. Marine mammals, as they start, they they're all either born there or they were rescues, like the sea lions, if they were rescued, they couldn't be re-released because they were babies typically and they had no skills, so they had a new home.

All the animals I worked with had been there for so long and they, they just had one continuous trajectory and they had lots of experience with trainers around them, it just was very different. When I started working with horses, they would come in and they wouldn't have different backgrounds. And you would see that being more worried about things or you'd see transformations or what happens when you work with them and then you don't work with them, it was just all very, very different.

And so I've learned so much more about really the emotional component while I took it for granted, I thought everybody thinks about emotions. I then realize a lot of people don't, you know, they haven't been taught to think like that and I think it's the nature of where horses have served us in our lives as they've been more horses and they've been transportation and they've been a lot of things.

I think sometimes people would have had to make decisions that would be hard because you couldn't say but how is Binky, whatever the name might be, they couldn't do that, they needed them to plow the fields and they needed that. So I think There are kind of our pets and we may be showing and doing business things with them, but we can still have amazing relationships with them, even doing those things.

But I think for people stop and slow down to raise awareness of what these sentient of beings are capable of and what kind of relationships we can have and what damaged sometimes we unintentionally can be doing. So I think all of those things have been something that's changed but in me it has raised my awareness about horses and horse people and what needs to be done to help them.

Now my limited understanding of clicker training on target training as you call it. I used with my own mare and I had quite a few hurdles to get over, basically I've lost my nerve to get back on my horse, but there was other things going on with her but that was my side of of the two. And I needed to get over this but I wasn't in, you're always in a financial position to get external help.

So I started to use clicker training and I loved it because like you said, it doesn't just help with things on the ground it helps with when you're riding and my little goal, which I still look back at and I still think it was amazing was just to get to it's to come up to a barrel and stand there. So I could basically just put my leg over leg off, leg over, leg off and then progressed to just maybe sitting on it.

I mean, this went over months, I'm talking months, it shouldn't have done but it did. I also had a friend that helped me with my mind because when you've got a mental block, it doesn't matter how much somebody helps you, if there's a mental block there, you've got to deal with that, which is yourself first and she helped me big time with that but combined with a clicker.

Toots understood what I was asking, it might not have been the correct way if there is a correct way, but she understood what I was trying to relate to her and in the end What she did was she'd walk up to the barrel and she'd look at me and I'd get on her and that's how I got back on my horse and that's what kick training and I still use it. I practice clicker training to get to back up now, to me, it wasn't just a simple, backup is one instruction. The first thing was to slightly relax in neck.

The second one was to take a step back. The third one was to relax the neck and take a setback and then the next lessons were to do that with just a slight touch on a chest and then it progressed such as to hand maneuver. So that was like lots of different steps but then it all rolled into one and she still does that and she moves to the side just from a hand signal and she still remembered.

So for me, it was a friend, cause it was just me and my horse and we played and yeah I just had so much fun with it. You know, the hula hoops that you can buy with like little beads in and they make lots of noise. She had a thing about having a bride lung. Cause I sent her away for some training and with all the good intentions, but it wasn't really right for her.

So I had to get a, over having a bridle on and so I bought this hula hoop, which was like a few and basically used to touch it on her side and okay. And then took shit and then make the noise and she stand and then once she relaxed, I'd go a little bit further and in the end I literally put the hoop overhead.

The first time I did it, I got to overhead it made the noise and you run up the field with this hula hoop, making all this noise and then she stopped, turned around and came back to me and I took it off and I was so proud of her. I was so proud of her. So for me, it made a huge difference to having a horse who wasn't able to be ridden for lots of reasons but having interaction within a place, you know, it was occupying your mind

And I think that happens with horses, a fair share. They do something not knowing. And then the person thinks they're far too big and so then they react big and so it begins as a little bit lack of communication, but one of the things that's huge with the positive reinforcement, whether it's Marine mammals or horses is you're saying, we're going to come to this together.

I'm not going to make you do anything and watching your horse have free choice to be able to do things it's very empowering and it gives people confidence. You know I remember early on, when I first started doing this, there was a young gal and her trainer that were high in the equitation, children's equitation here in the U S, which is on a track for it to be a professional. You know, it's a big, big thing for kids to do and there was a girl and her horse stopped and so she lost her competence.

Well, then the horse could sense her apprehend. And lost his confidence. You have to have them going well, you're not doing it, I'm not doing it. Nobody could help each other in that way, because like you said, you can't just go, just get over it. It's, it's a thing and it's a process and so she began teaching her horse to free jump and shows.

She could see my horse actually can jump that and then it was her trainer suggestion and then her trainer worked with her, she has the horse can go back and forth and then she put the gal on, said, don't do anything, you're just gonna sit there and call the horse over. So now she's jumping on her horse, she knows that the horse can do it, she's not commanding this she's just up there and it was a way for them to find their way back to confidence together and growing past that.

So I think it's really important and I love also that, you know, You experimented with it and you took it to the small steps and thought, well what are all these tiny steps? It's the best way to bring clarity and clarity brings relaxation for the horses oftentimes. So I think it was brilliant that you went that way and that you found your way to something that is so fulfilling for both us and for the horses so I love that.

So she'd go oh that means reward but my rewards were like the tiniest thing, it would be like a grain, he got down to be a green of some things and I'd say to people, you know, she didn't have to do it because would you do it for that and she's a big horse.

So she's doing it because she wants to, if I hadn't done it for a while And then she came to interact, I'd noticed a difference, if because I'm doing it because I want something, I want the food, I'm not really wanting to play but I want the food. She'd have a different a whole demeanor and it would just feel different and no, we're not doing it then because it's the wrong frame of mind.

So if she came and wanted to be with me, then that was okay because she was wanting to play to wanting to interact and I'd find that she'd follow me up the field who still want to play because it was fun. And maybe also she was getting the good vibes from me that warm glow of just getting on the same page and finding a mutual communication in that way.

Yeah, it was an immense help to me and I only did a fraction of what I could have done with that but it was still very, very helpful and fun at the end of the day, just fun.

So really going back and trying to make it more about the fun and the game and there's kinds of strategically, you know, you can do to create more of that, it sounds like you did a great job with it and got right to. That really turned it into being fun and it is not all about the food. It is about the game and the enjoyment of the game, you know, and that's really an important component.

Like, if I've worked on putting the halter on, I don't feel like I have to feed every time I put the halter on, we're going to put the halter on, then we're going to do some thing else and pretty soon they're like, I just love the halter. I have endorphins and dopamine, don't think you owe me. So I think it's kind of it's a systematic approach more than people think it's not just feed them.

There is steps to it, which you were doing, you were raising the criteria, you're doing it, you're raising the criteria you built upon it, you said, okay, well, if you're intense like that right now, then that's okay you can do whatever you want but that's not the frame of mind I want to work with.

And I think all of that is, was very intrinsically understood by you, like you said, you just began to do it and you already kind of had the nuances there that were important part of creating the right attitude and the right demeanor about it and the right relationship.

I also did which I found was fun with traffic cones and I had traffic codes in his circle and what I would do was point to one traffic and she would go up and touch with their nose and then I would be thinking about the third one, not the next one and she'd walk to the next one and she'd be obviously listening to me, tuning in and then I wouldn't do anything. And then she'd go to the next one and then I would go, you know, so it was almost like a guess.

She wouldn't necessarily go to the first one and the second one, the third one, she got that it wasn't always going to be that way and she was just right is it this one? No, it's not that one. Is it this one? And that was fun. And then you do like diagonals. I find it fascinating because also helps me doing what I'm doing now, because you connected on the brainwaves, you connect into that and yeah it helped with that actually.

because you focusing on that and you're almost ignoring what's going on around you and you just focus on the horse and then listening to you. On an energetic level as well, as well as the visual yeah.

I always say there's a silver lining in every cloud because it really does help me to kind of think you kind of shifted just now what happened, that shifted your thinking and it becomes a two way street where they get more refined and thinking and paying attention to what I'm communicating and vice versa. I can kind of go, okay, something is different or something is good or something is tough or, you know, whatever it is. So I think it all goes together.

And so I was talking with Jessie, who I am with now, and she's the breeder of Henley and Santina and lovely horses, and really is a wonderful horseman who had now been embracing positive reinforcement more and more, and has that desire to reach the show world and so I was talking to her and we've always talked and it was just clear that it was time for to bring Henley back to her heard and for us to explore and get out and doing clinic.

So now I'm based in Pennsylvania with Jessie and we are on the road a lot. So taking horses as much as we can and so this week coming up, we're going to actually leave tonight and drive for a few hours, then tomorrow we'll finish the journey down to Georgia and Georgia is in Southern United States, just above Florida. So we're heading down there to work with some rescue.

So this is a private clinic, the first one, because it's somebody who wants to work with her volunteers, or horses, her staff and to get them utilizing the positive reinforcement with the rescues, which is such a huge and powerful tool to help those troubled souls, to find some safety in their world. So then head after that, that couple of days there we'll go to.

North Carolina and do a regular weekend clinic with some people there that are, and it's kind of North Carolina by the try-on area, which is a big horse center, there's a big equestrian center there and then we're still booking and booking and booking things. So we have things coming up we're right now, working on the Northwest, we'll get to the UK back over to Europe, so hopefully maybe later, next, later in the summer kind of get back that way. So we just need to start getting dates.

because there's a lot of interests. It's just organizing the dates and getting out there. My big goal with teaching with clinics is, you know, in the beginning, nobody knew anything. So everything was a brand new clinic, it was brand new people with brand new horses but now you're kind of a mix.

Some people are still new to it and they're figuring it out and embracing it, which I love, because that means it's a new generation of people, some people have been doing it and now they're wanting to refine their skills, you know, they're like, yeah kind of got stuck here and these places and just trying to help people get it right. Because as I said, you can do positive reinforcement wrong, just like any other training.

And I think a lot of times people get excited about the positive re enforcement and then they go forward and they kind of miss some pieces, so I have a horse is too excited or a horse who's too, you know, whatever it might be. So really trying to help people stay out of those potholes along the road that can slow them down or have it go wrong.

So while it's exciting to have so many people doing it, it also means there's a lot of people doing it that haven't really necessarily ironed out some of the pieces.

Sometimes people have seen it have been like, I'm not going to do that or I don't do clicker training because look what it's got this person and it just to me means, okay, we just need a little more clarification and it's such a big push in the beginning and now it's gotten some momentum, but it's ready for the next big push to get it to a broader audience of horse people. So that's what the clinics are about, but really, I want to meet people wherever.

So in one clinic, I might have a brand new person and a person who's doing under saddled stuff and is rather experience, it doesn't matter to me, we're going to deal with all of it, because the new person can see where it can go to. We have more resources and people are further along but I want everyone to go home at the end of the clinic and think I know what to do. I know what steps I'm going to take next.

I want them to have a plan moving forward and it's very exciting to be out there and be helping people and helping horses to embrace it and understand it.

So you're giving them a gift that they can help not just themselves but the horses and especially this confusion as well, it helps. I might not as I said before, necessarily do it the correct way if you read it in a book but my horse was understanding what I was trying to say and it was almost like, ah that's what you want, okay let's try this again.

It's frustration when you think your relaying a message when actually you're giving a whole different story, the horse is like I don't know what you're saying to me.

You know and people might not notice it but to me That's saying something now I've had horses that their noses are always like prehensile little elephant trunks everywhere and I get that but that would not be minty but they're doing things that are trying to tell us, you know, communication and if we can slow down and listen to communication, I almost think like somebody's speaking a foreign language.

Learning new tools can only help us to be better with them and to come together and work together and it's really important to me and I love being able to point out when I work with somebody horse. Giving information and helping us to communicate together and what direction to go and so I love when people get a chance to see that and, and take that away and like you said, they're all individuals, so there is no recipe book, I can't go, this is how you do it.

It could be a little of this, it could be a little that you can, depends on how they are and you try something and sometimes you think that's not right and I'm going to try something else and I think that it's a dance, and I think to slow down and appreciate the dance is really important.

So this is what he's asking me to relate to you to remember that when you're teaching your students, because you can say to them, I know what that pace is like because I did that. Is that correct? because this is how I'm picking up.

He was perfect that, you know, when George was a little precocious so, I mean, I know he had fun but he was more of your slow down and to have their personalities be so different, he was very much, I'm going to slow down and think through it and do it deliberately and do it consistently from here on out when Georgia was the what's that, is very easily distracted. So I could see that that would ring true, very true to me with him. He feels a very, very nice soul, very nice energy, very grounded.

Yeah, but he says, I like to kick my heels to, when I say they say, it's the feeling of what they're giving me and he says, I like to keep my heels too. He feels very solid as well and a nice, nice horse, nice energy and he is very much around you all the time and every time you think of him, he's there. It's because he's there, his energy is there. And he wants to say again, that he's so proud, he's proud of you on a personal level and that's all I'm going to say.

He wants to say he's so, so proud of you on a personal level. Okay and that's all I'm going to say, you can ask me about that afterwards, if you want to. So, and we go and met you cry again. Is there anything else that you'd like to talk about anything coming up? I know you've got some clinics, but anything different. That's coming up in the future.

Well, we're, I'm going to be working on an online course, got really excited about it, but then I thought I needed to slow down and get some pieces or didn't make sure it's solid and so we're starting with some of that, but I'm also writing a book. it's my second book, same publisher. So I'm excited to get down what I learned in the past 20 years since the first book was written, so that's coming up. So I'm sure there'll be lots more things coming up and I'm just open to them.

So if anyone's interested in wanting to learn more or wanting a little instructions and I'll get back to doing that too. But anyway it's been fabulous, I've just had a great time talking with you and hearing about all you've done too, and what you've discovered, but the positive reinforcement, is so powerful and I love that you're getting out there and sharing it with people and that it helped you in your relationship with her.