Going Gaited is Going Positive

Going Gaited is a new online magazine for gaited horses. What’s neat about Going Gaited is that they support positive training and clicker training!

Cheryl Ward will be writing a monthly column for the magazine on positive training and what she calls training with attraction. Here’s a quote from this month’s column:

Although I do use the sound of the click to tell my horses ‘right answer’ my emphasis in not on the click, it’s on what happens before the click. It’s on the ‘how’ I was getting the horse to do the behavior. Was I using pressure, or was I using attraction? I’ve seen horses get really confused when the handler uses excessive pressure to get the behavior, and then clicked. In this case the click becomes associated with something that didn’t feel good.

You can find the whole article here: http://www.goinggaited.com/IFeelGood.html

If you’ve never heard of Cheryl, you might want to check out her awesome blog. In her blog she shares her thoughts about positive training as well as stories from training her own four horses. She’s also got great videos of her very talented horses painting pictures!