Teaching a horse to lead traditionally required a lot of pulling, yanking and force. The traditional process to teach a young horse or colt to lead also usually results in frustration and stress for both the horse and the trainer. It’s very much a trial and error process for the horse, until he learns that when you put pressure on the lead, he’s suppose to move forward with you. Many articles will recommend that the handler wears gloves to prevent rope burn if the foal or horse is stubborn, pushy or hard to handle.
Clicker training is a fast, safe and effective way to train a horse to lead. I plan to write more about the process later, but basically, what I do is put tiny bits of pressure on the rope, teaching the horse to move backwards, forwards and to each side. When he gives the slightest try, I click and give him a treat, rewarding his good efforts. When the trainer is calm, patient and provides sufficient motivation, most horses are eager and fast learners.
Here’s a video of Doolittle, a young paint yearling, working on learning how to lead and learning how to follow pressure. This short video clip is from our 5th training session for leading. We’re already comfortable enough that we’ve moved out of the pasture and in to the yard. Each of the previous leading sessions was about 5-10 minutes long. He’s already leading better than many older horses and does a great job of respecting my space. Best of all, there was no yanking, jerking or pulling involved!
Nice! – I’ve been using clicker with one of my horses for scary object training with great success.
Hi 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
Hi Lisa,
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
good tip on the gloves, no one likes ropa burn. and ive been using the clicker for years now, some horses react badly to it but for the majority i love it!
Hi Tom,
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
Good job! Nice article; nice video!
Thanks IceRyder! Glad you enjoyed the video.
I have quite a few young ones right now, I’m hoping to get quite a bit of their training on film.
Mary
great job. I wish Boomerang was this behaved while leading – we have a lot to work on. Actually he is this well behaved haltered…adding a saddle and bridle brings on a whole new attitude with him. Hopefully the clicker training will improve his tendency to bite me.