This is a video I found yesterday that I really like. It’s a great example of a trainer setting the animal up for success and then patiently clicking successive approximations to the final goal. Horses are curious by nature and are usually interested in exploring new items in their surrounding. If we can reward even […]
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Did you know that horses could be trained with clicker training? In this section you’ll find lots of information about how positive reinforcement training methods can be used to create horses that are smart, brave, athletic and enthusiastic about training. If you’re skeptical, I recommend starting with this blog post, which summarizes a research study that examined whether clicker training causes horses to bite.
Teaching the Parelli Friendly Game with Clicker Training (video)
I’m no longer a fan of many of the teachings of the Parelli Natural Horsemanship program. However, many of the program’s ground exercises offer a good foundation for the young horse, especially if they are adapted with clicker training to reduce/eliminate the amount of negative reinforcement used during teaching. The Parelli friendly game is essentially […]
Sebastian Meets Mom
Mom and Sebastian make friends over the fence. Sebastian is getting pretty comfortable with me touching him over most of his body with both my hands and a carrot stick. (Read about Sebastian here or watch a few video clips here.) Here’s three of our next tasks to work on: 1. Touching sensitive body parts […]
New Videos of Sebastian
I posted yesterday evening about Sebastian’s history, everything we’ve been working on, and how far we’ve come. (Read about Sebastian.) Here are the short video clips I promised. I’m having problems with youtube and will probably be using vimeo for my videos from here on out, unless anyone has suggestions for other video services.
Introducing Sebastian
I’ve been playing a lot lately with Sebastian, who is a cute and curious three year old red roan quarter horse. Sebastian has changed tremendously from a shy, unconfident youngster to a eager beaver who is interested in people and engaged during training. When I met Sebastian last spring he was a pretty shy guy who didn’t […]
Tootie Targets
Eighteen month old Tootie is super smart, but also a super mugger when it comes to treats. I stopped working with him last Spring because I didn’t really have the skills to keep up with him (or his teeth!). We recently had our first clicker session in months. I kept him behind a barrier so […]