Clicker Training Community

Posted at May 1, 2009 // Clicker Training

Today I stumbled across a yahoo group for clicker training horses. And as if I don’t have enough e-mail already – I joined the group. I was surprised to see that this group is over 10 years old and currently has 3,098 members. Wow! Thats a lot of clicker trainers.

Gotta love a good pony roll. Chincoteague Minnow

Upon skimming some of the most recent messages I have found that this group may end up being a great wealth of untapped knowledge. People are posting videos of training their horses, asking questions and finding answers, and even discussing new techniques.

There are zillions of messages I could comb through, but one in particular caught my eye today.

I’m not sure when to click when riding. I’ve realized I started a habit
of doing it like this. Theres all kinds of little bits and pieces I
want to reinforce but what I’ve been doing is little behavior chains.
For example: Go forward, soften to the bit, move your shoulder away,
follow the rein, step your hips over to stop. Click! Each piece is being
rewarded by the release of pressure and the click comes at the end.
Each piece has been reinforced with the clicker individually in earlier
sessions. I’m wondering if I should avoid clicking for the completion
of each behavior chain. It seems she will start to think the thing I
really want her to do is stop if I always click at the end. Maybe not,
I don’t know??

I spent a good year clicker training Minnow to keep moving when I vaulted off.

As I mentioned before I don’t proclaim to be any sort of expert on clicker training – I consider myself a hobbyist and I do it for the pure enjoyment and to make learning a better experience for me and my horses. That being said – as I’ve admitted before – I really haven’t read any clicker training books. I’m not really a “book” learner, I would much rather learn from life experiences, the occasional article/video online, or watching demos. So when I read this question it hit home because I have been contemplating the same thing lately – when is the right time to click when riding? Now I could of gone out and bought every book off the shelf to find the answer, but personally I think its better to find what works for me and my horses. I’ve been experimenting with it myself on Boomer (Chesapeake Boomerang) and I think I’ve discovered that its different for every horse/rider combo and every task at hand. I think for Boomer it was important in the beginning to click and reward him for small simple things, like moving away from my leg pressure even the slightest, but now as he is understanding the concept better he’s not going to get rewarded until he leg yields completely to the rail like I wanted. And as we continue his training I may be racing him through a set of poles and as I ask him to yield to my leg pressure by each pole – he won’t get rewarded until he completes the entire pattern being completely responsive to my leg pressure.

Minnow moving away from leg pressure as we round the bucket.

Who knows if I’m doing it the “correct way” – but is there really a correct way? I mean isn’t training an animal about creating a language that you and that animal can understand? So what if I do it the total opposite of the way its meant to be done – if I can get to the end result that I wanted in a positive way then I think its a success. Thats what I think is so great about clicker training. There doesn’t seem to be a “this is the way its supposed to be done” method in my opinion, its about utilizing a simple “click” to take the place of a “your right” and how you get to the end result is completely up to the trainer – there is no one right way.

-KD
www.ponypaintings.com

P.S. you may notice that I accompany all of my posts with videos and/or photos – this is for all you visual learners like me out there. I don’t think I could read anything unless it had a picture 🙂 enjoy!