Thanks for the comment.

Almost all horse trainers (besides clicker trainers) rely heavily on negative reinforcement. Or, as the horse world usually calls, it, pressure and the release of pressure. Many of the better horse trainers are highly skilled with negative reinforcement, and understand exactly when to apply and remove subtle amounts of pressure. They are able to train very high quality performance and fluent behavior this way.

Not so good horse trainers often also use punishment techniques or even flooding. Or, use negative reinforcement but use it poorly, either by spending too much time pushing the horse past thresholds or using escalating pressure to get what they want.

No one has probably ever answered your question before because most horse trainers don’t understand the formal definitions of positive reinforcement, neg. reinforcement, punishment, and so on. Most also think training horses with food is foolish and silly. The horse world still has a lot of catching up to do. Many traditionally trained horses are very shut down—they do what they’re told but not a whole lot else.

Clicker trained horses are eager and bright eyed and learn so fast. I have so much fun since I’ve started clicker training horses!

Horse clicker trainers still rely to some extent on negative reinforcement, at least more so than the dog world. Mostly this is because many practical cues are derived from small amounts of pressure (rein pressure to turn, squeezing to go forward, directing a horse on a lead rope, and so on).

Many clicker trainers automatically think negative reinforcement = bad. Which is not necessarily true. There’s a big difference between negative reinforcement that is used as a threat or that is fear inducing, both which lead to escape and avoidance behaviors, and negative reinforcement that is used as information. Katie Bartlett has a very nice article about clicker training and negative reinforcement: http://www.equineclickertraining.com/training/negative_reinforcement.html

Hope that answers some of your questions. Let me know if you have any more!

cheers,

Mary

Gloves can sometimes be useful to protect hands. Maybe I wasn’t clear enough in the article. Traditional training often advocates gloves because the trainer must hold back the headstrong horse or correct the pushy or stubborn horse.

With clicker training, I try and set my horses up for success from the beginning. By progressing slowly and making sure they understand each step, I can actually skip the stage of training that requires excessive pulling on the rope. So, I actually have little or no need for gloves when teaching a horse to lead.

I’d be interested to hear more about your horses that have reacted badly to clicker training. In my experience, some horses are afraid of the sharp sound of the clicker, especially at the beginning. However, I’ve yet to find a horse who didn’t love the switch to training with positive reinforcement!

Thanks so much for commenting on the blog!

cheers,

Mary

I have quite a few young ones right now, I’m hoping to get quite a bit of their training on film.

Mary

I’ve really been enjoying your blog. The videos are a really nice touch as well. I’ve been so happy and relieved to learn that people like you are training horses with positive training. I don’t really have any experience with horses, but have long admired them and have always been curious about how they’re trained. I’ve actually tried to engage some seasoned riders/horse trainers about this, hoping to talk a little shop and compare training notes. My number one question has been whether horses are trained using positive reinforcement. For some reason, no one’s ever answered the question before, which left me wondering if punishment & neg. reinforcement were the primary methods used.

Long comment, I know, but I just want to thank you for sharing your work with the world, and for getting the word out there about the effectiveness and benefits of positive training for horses and other species!

Take care,
Lisa