Clicker
Training
Is
good behavior a click away?
Step aside Monte Roberts, Pat
Perrellie, John Lyons, and other “natural” horsemen; there is a new training
fad on the scene – clicker training.
G.B. Jones-Santagate, a
licensed Equine Behavioral Specialist in MA (USA), calls it the “Positive
reinforcement training sweeping the horse world.”
I tend to be extremely skeptical of
fads. I have stated before that in
my experience the best trainers will use a combination of many methods, adjusted
to the particular horse they are working with.
Most of the “new” training methods have been used by good trainers
for many years.
What annoys me most about these fads
is the incessant ringing of the cash register.
When searching for “clicker training + horses” eight of the top ten
matches were websites designed to sell the fad.
G.B. Jones-Santagate offers a six week online training course. At
On-Target-Training.com Shawna
and Vinton Karrasch offer a variety of training kits.
Their deluxe kit sells for $145.00. Click
Ryder offers everything from t-shirts, to buttons to instructional material
on clicker training. Their products
are offered in German, Italian, Dutch, Spanish and Icelandic, reaffirming
the world-wide scope of this fad. Click
Ryder links to Alexandra Kurland’s
web site which also offers clinics, videos and books.
However, these are all good sites even though they are online
infomercials. I encourage you to
visit them because they contain a lot of general information for free, and are
very well done. While I still heard
the ringing of the cash register, I also started hearing a lot of things I liked
about clicker training.
Another reservation I had about
clicker training is that it uses treats as rewards.
If you read my article “Sweets
and Treats” you know I am an advocate for limiting the use of treats. I
was encouraged to learn that the click becomes a “bridge” between the
behavior and the treat. The reward
actually becomes the sound of the clicker, not the treat.
The treat is used to reinforce the “bridge” as needed.
I was pleasantly surprised with
the results of clicker training on a nervous mare at our barn.
She was the alpha mare in the pasture, her ground manners were pushy, and
she was very nervous and distracted under saddle. If
any mare had the potential to become aggressive or all consumed with the treats
it was her. I worked with her after
her first three sessions of clicker training with another trainer and found her
to be less pushy, and much calmer. It
certainly seems to work with this mare.
My skepticism waned, but I
still had my reservations about using it on my own horse. Clickers are against
the rules in competition. You can
not even use them in the practice areas at dressage shows.
So I worry about being dependent on a tool that I can’t use when I need
it the most. I also wonder how in
the world I could coordinate the clicker and the treat pouch with a longe line,
longe whip, or two driving reins (Greta was only two years old at the time and
not being ridden yet).
I gained more respect for
clicker training when I found the folks on the KBR (Kicking
Back Ranch) web ring and what they had to say about it.
These folks work with relocating and training wild mustangs.
They deal with the raw, flight or fight instincts of the horse.
We should all remember and respect the fact that these instincts are a
part of even our docile horses, and handle them accordingly.
The folks at KBR have a philosophy much like mine when it comes to
different training methods. You take
the best of many techniques and use them according to the horse and situation
you are working with. They have had
a lot of success using clickers and consider it to be a worthwhile tool.
Scroll down to their "Training Section" for some very good
information.
Clicker training is like mental
exercise for your horse. While the
method can be used to teach many different commands and behaviors, what I find
most useful about it is the ability to keep the horse’s attention on the
handler’s commands. The theory is
that if you can focus your horse’s attention where you direct it the horse is
less likely to spook and panic. Horses
are most dangerous when they are in a panicked flight mode.
They can hurt themselves and their handlers.
Horses that work with clickers are said to be more inquisitive about new
objects and surroundings rather than being scared by them.
It is a resistance free training method that uses positive reinforcement.
If you are working with a horse that is very nervous or easily
distracted, or you are working with a young horse (like Greta), I think clicker
training is a very useful tool.
Greta and I attended a clinic
that included some clicker training. I
found it possible to substitute a clicking sound with my tongue for the clicker.
That way I didn’t have to hold the clicker, and figured I could still
use the method in the practice arena before competing.
My decision to try clicker training with Greta came after working with
her one day when there seemed to be more than the usual amount of monsters
lurking behind trees waiting to jump out and get her.
I am not ready to go so far as to say this training method can teach
these animals to actually think, but any tool that can help redirect attention
and keep the horse out of panic mode would be a great tool to have. Unfortunately,
after about a month of trying to use this method I did find her to be more
aggressive and not markedly improved in her flightiness.
I was also very inconvenienced by needing my pouch full of treats
ready and interrupting my work to give them to her.
So is good behavior a click away? Of
course not. All training takes time,
consistency, and skill to instill. However,
I do believe clicker training may be very useful for some horses.
A horseman’s “bag of tricks” can never have too many tools in it
and when you learn about a new training method you learn more about the horse in
general which is always the ultimate goal.
Stable Eyes
