Can somebody please explain clicker training?

[Brummyrat]

As title! I have had my baby Section D two weeks, he's not actually 3 until next month and quite weak but adorable and has settled in brilliantly. I don't want to overload him with new things but I really want to be able to pick his feet up because he'll need a foot trim soon and I don't want to give my farrier a battle. Three feet are ok to pick up although he's not great at balancing and I don't hold them up for longer than two or three seconds, the fourth isn't so good. Unfortunately its his near hind and we usually end up in a pushing/bargeing match. So far, when he's picked them up I make a massive fuss of him and he is getting ever so slightly better but Ive seen previous posts and loads have suggested clicker training but being a numpty Im not sure what it entails, all I can see is it involves endless treats! Can someone enlighten me please?

 

[Brummyrat]

To add... I can brush and put hoof moisture gubbins on all fours so he's not exactly sensitive, just unbalanced and a bit confused :-(

 

[bluedanube]

Lots of info on internet and loads of videos on youtube, enjoy

 

[satinbaze]

Check out Karen Pryor she is the clicker guru that brought clicker training to the forefront in dog training. The basic principle is operant conditioning. Plenty on the Internet.

 

[DD265]

In a nutshell horse produces desired behaviour owner clicks. In the majority of cases a single click is associated with a reward but it is possible to reduce the reward to click ratio - personally I don't as I think I'd make a right mess of it.

I'd recommend Alexandra Kurland's books as being quite easy to follow, that is assuming you learn well from books - I tend to do better if somebody shows me. Generally it's important to break things down into very small steps - so you probably wouldn't get anywhere if you waited for him to pick that hind foot up completely before clicking the first time.

One of the first things you teach (second, normally) is anti-mugging, i.e. keeping the horse out of your space. I never actually needed to teach my boy this it just happened, but I did accidentally teach him to paw the ground, then stop and look at me expectantly, when I was trying to teach him to stop pawing! Because I clicked once he stopped, he associated pawing then stopping with the click.

Usually you start by teaching the horse to touch a target which in itself is a great cue - I ask my lad to touch things that he's unsure about and it encourages him to be more confident with things that he might normally back away from.

As for picking up the foot, I'd start on a decent leg whilst you both get used to CT. Hard to break it down without seeing how he reacts but I'd probably start clicking for a shift in weight when asked, and build up to withholding the click so that the shifts get bigger. Mostly it takes feel and timing - not always the easiest things to get right!

 

[Queenbee]

I would absolutely suggest you research on internet. There is so much on there. If you have kindle app. Download (not expensive) clicker training the young colt. It's an easy read and covers all you need to know. She also has a YouTube channel. First thing to do, is teach targeting, and at the same time your horse will learn anti mugging... Very quickly it will realise that mugging for food gets no food. Waiting patiently/ or producing the desired behaviour gets rewarded. They are incredibly quick to learn with clicker training, and the best approach is no more than 5 min sessions (it's hard brain work!) for a few times a day.

 

[Dry Rot]

I've never really understood clicker training -- probably because I've never tried it -- and I've just assumed the click replaces a verbal "Good boy!" (or girl!).

I can understand that a click removes all emotion and variation, as a whistle does, which verbal praise does not but I think I'd still prefer to use my voice. I'm probably wrong though!

Training for lifting feet is best done with two people. One lifts the foot at the same moment as the other shoves a carrot in the horse's mouth. But gentle repetition seems to work best for me.

 

[Highlands]

I used clicker training 15 years ago. You have to condition the click to be reward. A click freezes the moment so that you can reward what you want to see. Defo anti mugging but also target training and asking the horse to touch. You will struggle with feet to be able to pick, click and reward. Suggest two people !

 

[Kaylum]

Anti mugging is actually called teaching manners. They turn their heads away from you and wait. The horse rescue near me teaches through clicker training. They learn to trust humans again, I have done a day course there it's very interesting.

 

[Gwyntbryn]

I first used clicker training on an unhandled six year old mare and have since taught unbalanced colt to have his feet lifted and held, and also several newly weaned unhandled foals to have head collars on. As has been said teach targeting first if he is already handled. The clicker is used so that you reward the required behaviour rather than the one immediately after it which tends to happen otherwise as the horses reactions are so quick. So if teaching a foal to have head collar on when it first touches the head collar through curiosity you can immediately click, rather than saying something or just giving it a bit of carrot which generally turns out to be rewarding it for moving away from the "target". You then work up to to actual required behaviour. I've always done this on my own so it is possible. Once they associate the treat with the click the click becomes the reward because they know the treat is following. So lift the foot, click and then give the reward.

I will add that in my experience most problems with youngsters being funny with one foot are down to balance, so he has to be completely confident that you are support him and will not let him fall. He also has to learn to shift his weight onto his opposing leg which takes time. At first he will tend to lean on you so try to reward when he supports himself.

 

[catkin]

clicker training is all about the timing or you will confuse yourself and the horse. please do read up on it and practice your responses before starting to train. the books mentioned above are very good. If possible get someone who really knows what they are doing to teach you - it's a powerful tool and must be used right, just as any other training system.

With regard to the foot-picking, might be worth double checking that you are giving him enough time to balance himself before he picks his foot up - sounds like he's understanding what's needed but like lots of young horses hasn't quite worked out the best way to do it. Make sure that he's standing square and balanced when you ask - he may want to shuffle his legs about a bit inbetween feet, thats fairly normal, he's just readjusting his balance.

 

[spookypony]

Alexandra Kurland, the internationally-recognised guru of applying operant conditioning with positive reinforcement using a marker signal to horses, has recently released an online course on the topic. It's not cheap, but I suspect it will be really worthwhile. I went to a 3-day clinic with her, and it was amazing.

A few things:
The marker signal does not have to be a "clicker", the little plastic thingy with the metal tongue that many dog trainers use. Most people I know use a sharp tongue click instead. This saves having to have a clicker in your hand.

The reason for the marker signal is that it allows you to pinpoint the precise moment in time that you want the reward to be associated with. While a pat and "good boy", for example, can be more accurately applied than rooting around in a pocket for a carrot, a short sharp hands-free click is far more precise. This means that you can break desired behaviours down into incremental components. In the "picking up foot" example, you might start with rewarding a tiny weight shift, then hold off until you get a bigger weight shift, then hold off until the hoof comes off the ground, then go for height, then go for length of holding it up.

The first thing to be established is the connection between the marker signal and the treat. This doesn't need to be food, or always the same thing; it is the expectation that something desirable to the animal is coming. In the case of a feral shetland, Kurland suggested moving away from the shetland as an initial reward (which to me implies a certain blurriness between positive reinforcement (as in rewarding) and negative reinforcement (removing an undesirable pressure); that would be an interesting thing to ask about). At this stage, you simply do the marker signal and give the treat, until the horse has figured out that signal is always followed by treat. My pony took about 30 seconds to comprehend this bit; my mare, a lot longer!

The second thing is anti-mugging, which Kurland refers to as "grown-ups are talking". The horse learns that it gets the click (and treat) only if it stands quietly, initially looking a bit away from you. That's also the first step of learning that if it offers a certain behaviour after a cue, it will get rewarded.

She spoke of 6 basic exercises that end up forming the foundation for everything from polite in-hand behaviour, cool party tricks, to advanced dressage. There's a whole pile of stuff about how you link things together, transfer of cues, etc., and for the more advanced explanations, it's probably best just to read her books or to work with someone who can teach it.

Sometimes people confuse clicker training with various schools of "natural" horsemanship. Most of those, from what I can tell, seem to have as a central tenet the adaptation of the handler's body language to mimic that of horses. While in cicker training, there is a certain emphasis on body language (as, indeed, there is in so-called "traditional" horsemanship), it's in fact based on the theory of learning. You're "teaching the horse how to learn". From the horse's point of view, you're giving a certain amount of control of the situation to the horse: it learns that offering certain behaviours, after certain cues, will operate the "reward vending machine". Generally, unwanted behaviours are simply ignored (if this is safe or feasible), and the horse eventually stops offering them.

I've found this technique brilliant for working with my pony, who has a very worried character and can easily panic if pressured. Clicker training is stress-free for him, as there is no pressure. The limitation with him seems to be reached if he really, really doesn't want to do something, more than he wants the reward (such as loading, which still requires pressure). I suspect that this failure lies in my own ineptitude, however, rather than in the system itself: probably more increments, more consistency, and more patience are required. I'm turning to a more experienced clicker-training person for help with that.

In the "foot-lifting" example, you can easily do this by yourself, once the concept of clicker-training is established. As long as you click precisely when you get what you wanted, you have a good window of time in which to straighten up and offer the treat. That's the whole point of having a marker signal.

 

[DJ]

Some really good advice. I started with Alexandra Kurland, 'The click that teaches' and went from there. The timing of the click is absolutely crucial, as you will find. Also shaping plans and bridging really helped my to understand how we start from A and end up at D (the desired behavior) breaking it down in to tiny steps that help 'shape' the behavior make it easier for the horse, and keeps you brain very active too ... good luck

 

[canteron]

Alexander Kurland, Karen Pryon and Ben Hart and great resource, but I absolutely love the Hannah Dawson videos. They tell you exactly where to start, the little things you horse may try and how to manage them.

If you look on You Tube there are some Hannah Dawson clips which give you an idea of how she works, but if you decide to do Clicker Training, I would really recommend joining her club - even if you do it for one month you will have enough ideas/information to last a lifetime!

http://www.hannahdawsonequine.co.uk

 

[kez81]

I fully recommend clicker training. My youngster was untouched, uncut three year old colt when I got him and I used Leslie pavlich , Ben hart and Hannah Dawson as my points of reference for clicker training. Two years later I have a rising five year old who is a dream to handle, has absolute trust in me and has taken everything in his stride. The positive reinforcement he gets from the click is so instant and for him it made everything simple. Great fun too and we are now trick training in hand and putting the click to good use in his dressage training.

 

[fburton]

I've never really understood clicker training -- probably because I've never tried it -- and I've just assumed the click replaces a verbal "Good boy!" (or girl!).

Initially, the click means nothing to the horse - it is just a sound. However, by associating it with a reward given after the click, it quickly comes to mean "Yes! A reward is coming.". It's a signal that provides a 'bridge' to the reward - something given to the horse that he/she likes. Because of the pleasant associations the sound also takes on the quality of a reward, in much the same way as "Good boy!" can do. So you are right in that it is a replacement for verbal praise, but not that it removes emotion. It's the precise nature of the signal - both unvarying (and hence instantly recognized by the horse) and capable of being given at an exact and appropriate instant in time - that gives the clicker its power.

Training for lifting feet is best done with two people. One lifts the foot at the same moment as the other shoves a carrot in the horse's mouth. But gentle repetition seems to work best for me.

Clicker is good for training feet lifting if there's only one person doing it, because the "Yes!" signal can be given by the person at the foot. If I was using clicker or more general rewards to train a horse to lift a foot, I would teach the horse to lift the foot himself (which I would then hold) on some cue (like touching the back of the foot, or running my hand down the leg, or a verbal request, or some combination of these). Then it is the horse's voluntary action that is rewarded, rather than just acceptance of having a foot lifted by the handler.

 

[fburton]

Agree that Ben Hart has one of the clearest presentations on this subject - his book The Art and Science of Clicker Training for Horses is very good. (Available on Kindle too now, I've just noticed.)

 

[Brightbay]

All great suggestions above

I have two to add - one is a bit more on Hannah Dawson who has set up an online "training" approach in collaboration with Shawna Karrasch called "Connection Training". I really like this because I always found that most of the original trainers were US based, and the issues and expectations about how horses were managed and how this interacted with training didn't quite work in a UK setting, so when Hannah started out it was a breath of fresh air - she understands perfectly what it's like to keep a horse and train in a UK setting. Just google Connection Training for Hannah's stuff.

Having said that, my absolute favourite trainer at the moment is Peggy Hogan - she is US based, but she is so practical, down to earth, funny and human that I can't not enjoy every single video She trains in a different way to many of the others, without using any pressure and has an adorable bunch of minis who feature in her demo videos. She has downloadable stuff at a very good price, and for people who buy and download, you can then join her online groups for lots more input. Her stuff can be found under "The Best Whisper is a Click".

In terms of foot handling, horses do learn very fast, and once foot handling has become both well trained (through them being reinforced for doing the right thing) and pleasant (through the associations built through lots of rewards), it is very easy to phase out the food rewards. There is a knack to this, though, and that's why - as with all horse training - it's often better not to go it alone and to have expert help, either in person or online.

Jenni Nellist (Wales based) also has a nice intro downloadable book on Amazon if books are your thing - I do prefer "watch and learn" a lot of the time myself - Alex Kurland's books can be very detailed reads for someone starting off.

ETA - there are also advantages in using different "marker" sounds - I do sometimes click, but I save it for things that need a lot of precision. Equally, sometimes I think it's actually counter productive to be too precise and a fuzzier marker is better. A lot of the time I use "good boy" which is sometimes paired with a food reward (or even a break to graze) and sometimes paired with a scratch at itchy times of the year.

 

[fburton]

Having said that, my absolute favourite trainer at the moment is Peggy Hogan - she is US based, but she is so practical, down to earth, funny and human that I can't not enjoy every single video She trains in a different way to many of the others, without using any pressure and has an adorable bunch of minis who feature in her demo videos. She has downloadable stuff at a very good price, and for people who buy and download, you can then join her online groups for lots more input. Her stuff can be found under "The Best Whisper is a Click".

Very nice! I hadn't seen her videos before, so thanks for the pointer!

 

[amandap]

ETA - there are also advantages in using different "marker" sounds - I do sometimes click, but I save it for things that need a lot of precision. Equally, sometimes I think it's actually counter productive to be too precise and a fuzzier marker is better. A lot of the time I use "good boy" which is sometimes paired with a food reward (or even a break to graze) and sometimes paired with a scratch at itchy times of the year.

I never thought I would read a clicker trainer mention liking a "fuzzy" marker! Love it!

 

[Brightbay]

I never thought I would read a clicker trainer mention liking a "fuzzy" marker! Love it!

It's an evolving technology I did start off very precise and clicky, but that can be a bad match with a perfectionist personality and eventually my horse suggested I just chill and give him the parsnip. At that point, lots of little training niggles just disappeared I was trying too hard. It's just a case, like all horse training, of finding the method that matches the personality of both horse and human...

 

[dollyanna]

I wanted to clicker train mine from the start (both 5 months when I got them) but the 2 things I started with were nipping and back feet handling with my boy. His balance is atrocious, and he used to kick badly with his back feet, front feet he just fell over. The clicker allowed me to reward just a shift in balance to begin with, and build up to picking up feet etc, but totally eliminated any frustration or upset from him. I use it all the time with both of mine, it really opens up a channel of communication and mine both "ask" when they need to work with it when out and about, if I'm not already doing so.
Alexandra Kurland's course is great but if you want a slightly cheaper course with more personal feedback, I would highly highly recommend Amanda Martin at S.M.A.A.R.T horses, she does an 8 week starter course which is internet based but includes an nline chat every week, personalised homework and feedback based on videos you take. I had clicker trained for years with my deaf dog but was struggling to transfer it to hearing ponies, and she helped me loads and is still at the end of a fb message when I hit a block.

 

[canteron]

How lovely there are so many 'clicker' trainers out there and it is becoming mainstream. Even if you don't use it forever, it teaches you so much about timing and its a joy to train horses always looking for what the horse is doing right - rather than the traditional method of looking for what the horse is doing wrong.

Much quick and calmer for the trainer!

 

[Brummyrat]

Thank you so so much for all your responses, Ive read through each one and am so encouraged that you have found great results, I am definitely going to look at the literature and videos recommended. I had a good day today after reading through a few replies. I sort of understood the method but wasn't sure if I need to buy a gadget to click having never used one. Encouraged by the first few responses, when he'd had his post graze rest today I asked a friend to stand at his head and I got him standing squarely and we tried it, amazing! He picked up all four on command and didn't shift sideways at all! A little later I walked into his stable carrying a brand new lightweight rug, folded up, and he HATED it. But 10 minutes of me being quiet and praising any effort to come forward and be brave, whilst clicking and rewarding, he was wearing it and munching his net! I might actually like this new pony after today (still grieving for my old boy, you know how it is). So thank you all xxx

 

[Alyth]

I have never been able to get my head around clicker training as it seems to wait for the horse to offer the desired action....I like to ask for the action and then reward when the horse gives it to me!! The removal of the ask cue being the reward....and food, imo, is not the reward the horse appreciates, unlike the human who does appreciate rewards!!

 

[canteron]

I have never been able to get my head around clicker training as it seems to wait for the horse to offer the desired action....I like to ask for the action and then reward when the horse gives it to me!! The removal of the ask cue being the reward....and food, imo, is not the reward the horse appreciates, unlike the human who does appreciate rewards!!

Does your horse speak English?

Horses will try out different answers to your question clicker just let's you quickly know when they find the right thing.

For example, I am teaching travers to my horse (the precursor to half pass) which an unnatural therefore slightly disturbing movement to most horses. By using clicker I can let the horse know as soon as his response is the one I am looking for from that particular set of aids and it makes the training very clear and easy for us both. I can then work on refining the movement and develop it into a smooth half pass.

If you approach it with an open mind you may surprise yourself.

 

[fburton]

and food, imo, is not the reward the horse appreciates

Curious to know why you think horses don't appreciate food rewards?

 

[Urban Horse]

Curious to know why you think horses don't appreciate food rewards?

I really don't now the answer to that question fburton. The horse world is a strange place when it comes to working with food rewards.

 

[amandap]

I've learned that it all depends on the human when using food rewards. Treating willy nilly with no rules in place (training not to mug) may well produce a bitey horse and very quickly. Food reward is very powerful.

 

[Urban Horse]

I have never been able to get my head around clicker training as it seems to wait for the horse to offer the desired action....I like to ask for the action and then reward when the horse gives it to me!! The removal of the ask cue being the reward....and food, imo, is not the reward the horse appreciates, unlike the human who does appreciate rewards!!

The removal of the cue when the horse performs the correct response, is not a reward... it is simply the removal of a 'sensation' to which the horse has responded. The giving of a food reward is largely accepted in nearly all spheres of animal training as giving the best results, but there is still resistance to it when working with horses... Why this should be I really don't know, but it would seem foolish in the extreme to discount a proven method without a good reason.

You can still use the application of a cue and mark the correct response with a clicker... the clicker is merely a very accurate indication to the horse that its response is correct, and that a reward will shortly be given. However, due to it's power it must be remembered that it will train bad, or unwanted, behaviour into a horse as quickly as it will train good behaviour (obviously the good and bad behaviour are from our point of view, not the horse's) so it's always important to remember that the onus is on the human half of the team to make sure that the click is given at exactly the right time.

It did seem at one time that some clicker trainers fought shy of mixing cues (-R) and clicker, but it now seems to have become acceptable.