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FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS Most of the material for this section comes from the_click_that_teaches email discussion group. the_click_that_teaches email discussion group is a yahoogroups list which was formed January 15, 2006. The list functions as a study group for people using the new riding book. When you purchase the riding book through this web site, you will receive an email inviting you to join the list. If you have purchased the book through some other source, drop me an email at kurlanda@crisny.org, and I will send you an invitation to join the list. If your interest in clicker training is more general, I would encourage you to join the clickryder list. I realize not all everyone has time to keep up with yet another email list, so I will be posting "keeper" posts from the_click_that_teaches list. The posts will be organized by topic. As you are working through the book, you will easily be able to find relevant discussions listed here. Please note: these discussions are based on material from the book. We will be using shorthand abbreviations and referring to lessons in the book without describing them in full. If you are not familiar with the material, some of this may seem a bit mysterious. Please read these posts with the understanding that they are not intended as the primary teaching resource for these lessons. For that I would refer you to the riding book and other The Click That Teaches books and videos. Alexandra Kurland
Topics Listed: Welcome to the List Welcome to the List: Scroll down for this post Let's Get Started: Scroll down for this post More Support for Record Keeping: Scroll down for this post The "Why Would You Leave Me?" Exercise
************************************************************************************** Welcome to the List Alexandra Kurland January 15, 2006
I was just reading through the first batch of email introductions people have sent in. Wow! We have quite a group! When I published my first book, "Clicker Training for your Horse" I thought of it as a "space beacon". It was like the messages NASA sends out into space. "We're here. Is anyone else out there?" The book was my way of saying: "I'm here. Is anyone else out there?" It turns out there are quite a number of clicker trainers out there, and now we're here, on this list where we can talk with one another. What fun! Most of you are also on the Clickryder list. That list has served well as a meeting place for clicker trainers, and I still view it as the primary list for clicker training. It plays such an important role, especially in the support it gives to new clicker trainers. So why another list? Well, to be blunt I want to be able to talk about three-flip-three, hip-shoulder-shoulder and all the other exercises in the book without first having to explain what they are. Having written the book once, I don't want to have to write it again. I think we will all find that this is a very liberating list. We can assume that people have a basic understanding of clicker training and are actively using it. This is not a list for beginners. Clickryder is the starting point for that. If you're still just working through That's not to scare anyone away, or make you feel unwelcome. If you are new, by all means hang around. You'll catch up fast. But for the most part, it is safe to say that if you've made it to this list, you're a committed clicker trainer. None of us will need to be You can also assume that people have a basic understanding of the lessons being discussed. You can refer to "The Why would you leave me game?" without first having to define it. I think that is going to free up the conversation considerably. We have people on this list who are brand new to the exercises in the book, and people who have used them for years. That creates a very stimulating mix. The books gives us a structure for the conversation. Who knows, we may be creating a work book for beginners out of the conversations we have here. Primarily we're going to be looking the three phases of riding. Phase one is making sure that the horse you are sitting on is safe. Phase two is developing your horse's balance. That's the core of the riding book. Good balance gives you a horse that looks beautiful, All of you know me pretty well. You've read the books and through them you've met my horses. Some of you here on the list are old friends. And for those of you who I haven't yet met at clinics, thank you for sending in your introductions. It's a treat for me to learn a little about the people who are using the books. Enough for now, except to say once again, welcome everyone. Alexandra Kurland ********************************************************************************* Let's get Started! Another Welcome to everybody joining the list over the weekend. What a great group!!!! Okay. Let's get started. I was thinking about this first post all day yesterday, scripting out what I was going to say, beginning with: where do we begin? I have no idea where everyone is with their riding, and in a group of this size, I imagine we're all over the map. So we could begin at the beginning of the riding book and work systematically through it. I thought about starting there. But then I was thinking about the lesson day I had Saturday with five members of our local clicker contingent. Julie Varley brought Jessica, her father's horse. This was my first training session with Jessica. She's a sixteen year old driving horse who belonged to a mutual friend of ours. Jessica is teaching Julie about driving, and Julie is teaching Jessica about riding. We started the day off with her in the "why would you leave me?" game, and turned up a couple of important details that were worth addressing. It was one of those lessons where an outsider, someone who knows nothing about clicker training, might be thinking: "Is that all? Is that all you're going to do with that horse?" One of the things we focused on was Jessica's expression. She was doing a lovely job. She was beautifully positioned, correctly bent, but she had such a grumpy look on her face. What was that about? So we shifted the emphasis of the lesson to "happy faces". Were the ears an artifact? Jessica is a good-natured horse. Julie isn't afraid of her, so the ears wouldn't have been instant red-flags saying "I'm about to bite! Watch out!" And horses often concentrate in these lessons, so the ears end up directed back. They're being clicked and reinforced for other criteria, and the ears back gets reinforced along with everything else, and the next thing you know you have a horse that looks like it's going to eat you! That's one scenario. Another is Jessica hasn't fully sorted out the dance steps of lateral flexions and she feels crowded. Lateral work is by definition invasive of the horse's space. That's one of the reasons it is such a powerful training tool. We are stepping into the horse, asking the horse to stay attached to us, but to yield out of our path. Jessica came with some body issues. Julie has been teaching her how to soften and bend. It may be that her general stiffness makes it harder for her to find the flow of the exercise so she feels crowded. The pinned ears are her way of saying she needs space. That's important information. If that's the case, that's something that needs to be listened to and addressed. Here we would be looking not just at the horse, but at the mechanical skills of the handler. Lots of questions to look at there, and lots of places where the lesson can be chunked down. So that's another scenario. A third might be that there is a physical problem that makes this lesson hard and uncomfortable for Jessica. The grumpy face is her way of saying she's in trouble, something is hurting. If that's the case, we definitely need to look at what is going on. That doesn't mean we back away from the exercise. It may be the perfect lesson to help release the tightness in her body. But it does mean we insert a great many more steps into the process. We back way up to find the place where she can work in comfort, and we pull out our "Sherlock Holmes hat" to track down the root cause of the discomfort. But first we need to find out if the ears are just an artifact that got shaped in by accident. And the "why would you leave me?" game is a great place to explore that question. So we worked on "happy ears" and began to attach it to "why would you leave me?": a little detail, but oh, such an important a question. After Jessica we worked three more horses in the "Why would you leave me?" exercise. These horses were all at different places in their training. Dolores and Cadberry used the lesson and made some interesting discoveries. Becky Jarvis and Mac used it. That was most interesting. Mac trailered in for the day. He's generally a very laid back, easy going horse, but he started the lesson clearly agitated, trumpeting to the resident horses, who were trumpeting back. Becky took him right to the circle of cones we had set out and started in on the exercise. And Mac settled. I just love the power of these tools. It was only after the lesson that we realized why Mac had been so upset. The arena we were working in was set up with stalls down either side of it. Mac had been in a stall on the side with the general boarders. The resident clicker-trained horses belonging to Sandy who now manages the facility (yes, there is a boarding barn managed by a clicker trainer!!! Shall we all move!!) were on the opposite side. These horses had, until a couple of months ago, lived at the same barn Mac. They were turned out in adjoining paddocks. So of course he was excited. He knew his friends were somewhere close! It took the humans a while to figure this out and remember that this was even more of a reunion for Mac than it was for us. It certainly explained his very uncharacteristic agitation. Becky isn't used to having to deal with an upset horse, so for a moment she felt quite rattled. When you just have one or two horses that you work with regularly, it's easy to forget the formation of your training. I remember working with a client who had reached a stage with his horse where everything was uniformly wonderful, that is until he took his horse to a show. He was nervous which made his horse nervous, and things started to fall apart. He needed head lowering and he needed it fast. I teach head lowering on a regular basis. The details of the lesson remain fresh for me, but it had probably been a couple of years since my client had had to use the "demand cue" aspect of head lowering. If he wanted his horse's head down, he raised his hand, and like magic, his horse's head was down. Except now the magic wasn't working, and he had forgotten not only how he had shaped the behavior, but even that he had shaped it. There were no steps to go back to. These key lessons are so important. And they are important to keep fresh because like Becky, you never know when you are going to need them. That is why it is so useful to go to clinics and watch "stair steps" of horses. The horses who are just starting out in a lesson remind you of where you have been. And the horses who are further along tell you where you are going. And it is also why it is so important to keep training journals, which is what I really wanted to write about in this first post. Training Journals So that's Nikita. Saturday Sandy was showing us her latest project, Spanish walk. She's been working on it all fall and Nikita now has a very impressive Spanish walk. On Saturday she was eager to show it off. Now I never know what to expect when someone says they've been working on Spanish walk. Sometimes you get "Spanish gesture". That's a good beginning. The horse knows how to lift one leg, or perhaps even has started to alternate legs, but hasn't yet figured out the walking part. Sometimes you get "Spanish trick". That's how I refer to it when the horse has been made to lift its front legs without any regard to balance. I get asked a lot how you teach Spanish walk, and my answer is always the same, teach your horse the underlying balance which is the core of all the books and videos, and Spanish walk will be available to you. Nikita proved that point. She had a great Spanish walk. The gesture of her front legs will get higher over time, but all the important elements were there. It was a true walk, with the roundness of the topline preserved - so very difficult. So, of course, the questions poured out of us - how did you teach that? It looked like pure magic. Where did it come from? Sandy had to think for a moment. How had she taught it? It began in part with a lesson we did together last summer where we were capturing a slight hover of her front foot when Nikita walked. It was just a slight extra lift of her foot that popped out occasionally when Nikita was very engaged. As Sandy rode her, I clicked that momentary hover of her foot. That was the lesson. Again it was one of those instances where someone who wasn't familiar with clicker training would be saying: "Is that it? Was that your lesson? You didn't even canter!" Well, yes that was the lesson. When you understand shaping, you know the powerful changes those little things can create. You can take that fleeting, barely noticeable extra lift of a front foot, and turn it into something truly wonderful, like Spanish walk. It doesn't happen overnight; It may takes months for the more polished behavior to emerge, but emerge it will, and, when it does, it truly does look like magic. Sandy took that simple gesture and turned it into something quite beautiful. As I said to her, I've seen lots of Spanish walk. Some can only be described as "Spanish trick", and some I've seen has been truly beautiful. With one very notable exception, the very best Spanish walk I have seen, and the very best Spanish trot, have all come from clicker-trained horses. The shaping process creates the purest form of what, done well, is a very beautiful movement. So how did she shape it. If she had kept a journal, she could have gone back and pulled out the critical steps: what worked the best?; what were the breakthroughs for Nikita?; when did she connect the dots and begin to produce a behavior that was recognizable to us as Spanish walk? I have stacks of training journals. When I was writing the books, I fell out of the habit of keeping track of my training sessions. It was one of the many things that had to give way to get the books done, but I have recently picked up the habit again. And I am very glad I did. I've been doing some really fun liberty work with Robin. (Ilse, I saw on clickryder that you are interested in equine freesytle. I had to smile at that, because that's what I've been working on with Robin, and I am loving what we're doing together. It is so different from traditional liberty work, and so much prettier. We'll have some fun things to share at the Calgary clinic.) I started with this current project with Robin just after Thanksgiving. Like Nikita's Spanish walk, it started out as a simple behavior, follow my target hand, and has now grown into an elaborate dance. I am so glad I kept notes because I didn't have a set course I was heading out on. Robin was leading this dance, and, as always, he has shown me another huge layer of training that is new territory for me. Without the journal I would not be as aware as I am of the key steps in the process. That's important for a lot of reasons. It's not just that it makes it easier to answer the question: how did you shape that? I need to remember those details for Robin - What was I thinking when I got this piece? How did I shape it? Robin remembers, and it matters to him that I do as well so I can be consistent. Journals help us remember where we have been. They let us see progress in training. They help us unravel the puzzles our horses present. When Becky brings Mac back to the lesson day arena it will matter to him that she remembers that his friends live there. She'll be better prepared next time with a plan so Mac can visit with his friends in a way that satisfies his emotional needs without triggering any training problems. And it will be important to Julie to keep track of Jessica's progress as they focus on "happy faces". A journal will help her answer the questions raised during Saturday's lesson. Are the pinned ears a training artifact or the sign of a physical problem? And down the road when Jessica is doing something that looks like pure magic and someone asks Julie "how did you train that?", she'll be able to look back in her journal and say: "oh, I just taught her to put her ears forward!" "Homework" The journaling process has also influenced the way I teach. I know that you can focus on a very small behavior, something that can seem trivial, such as a horse putting its ears forward. If you understand the process and follow through with it, you can turn that tiny behavior into the "pot of gold at the end of the rainbow". Always, each time. Trust the process, it works. That's what the horses teach us, and it is what the journals help to confirm. So I'd like us all to keep a journal of some sort. Now this does not mean we are going to be sharing them here on this list. You can all breathe a great sigh of relief about that! For one thing, if we all shared our daily journal entries, this list would collapse under its own weight. We'd all be so busy reading each others notes, no one would have any time to train! Journals usually aren't great literature. They aren't meant for reading. They are notes, memory joggers. But they do follow some rules. My rule way back at the beginning when I first started keeping track of training - and this was ages before I knew anything about clicker training - was that I couldn't do anything with my horses that I couldn't explain that night in the journal. I had to have a training reason for every action I took. That may not sound that significant, but it really is. It means that the entire time I was with my horses, there was the "journalist" sitting on my shoulder, watching and experiencing everything I did. I knew I couldn't just get frustrated and whack my horse for no reason, because that night I would have to explain the training logic behind that action. It's a great discipline, especially when you work by yourself. I do all of my formal writing on a computer, but the training journal is still hand written. It is sitting to the right of my work space. Before I turn on the computer in the morning, I record the training sessions of the previous night. Some of you may prefer to keep your training logs on your computer. And the really computer savvy amongst us, may even want to set up training blogs, I will leave that up to each of you, but I would very much encourage everyone to keep a journal of some sort. I'm going to finish up with a couple of comments on list management. As you can see from this post, I very much believe in the shaping process. This list will grow and evolve and be shaped by our desires for it. We get to shape the kind of experience it becomes by our participation in it. I intend to be as active as I can be in it, but I know realistically when my travel season gets rolling, I'll be limited in my computer time. Keeping up with all the posts on an active list is a huge challenge especially when I am away at clinics. I also know that as much I would like to, I can't individually coach everyone participating on this list. Instead of responding to individual posts as they come in, what I tend to do is read several days worth of posts, and then I'll write what generally turns out to be a long post that addresses a number of the questions raised. I expect that will be my pattern once we get this list rolling. I won't be posting every day, but will write in as time permits. That means that I don't want you to feel as though I am ignoring you if I don't answer your questions directly. And if someone asks a question about something that you've worked through with your own horse, by all means jump in and share. The best people to answer a question are the ones who have direct experience with the issues raised and have worked through the process with their own horses. So have fun. And keep journals! Alexandra Kurland ******************************************* More Support for Record Keeping Alexandra Kurland I am also really loving the discussions of the journals. Sarah Benelli raised some interesting points about the value of journals. Her post is worth repeating here. I was going to trim it down to a tidy length for inclusion in a post, but found I really wanted to emphasize all of her points, so I've included most of it here. Not a good precedent to set for the list, but it is a post that is worth repeating I have found this to be a useful tool, if only because The hind-end lameness episode got me thinking: I also have to admit that, as a child of the computer I use the database program Filemaker at work all the
So Sarah's post definitely confirms the value of keeping a journal. And it also raised the question of what makes a good journal. Several people asked questions about that. Barb voiced her frustration over her stacks of journals. She has lots of words on the page, but she wasn't sure she had captured the most important elements of Brittany's training. If people would like to post their journals in the files section, that would be a great idea, especially if you have a particularly interesting horse you are tracking. Sarah, I think you are right, a computer journal, one with a search and find feature would be an wonderful asset. I know there are software programmers on this list. If a good journal program doesn't exist, it should. As we talk about this process, perhaps we will identify those things that a good journal program should include. That would be a great tool not just for clicker trainers, but for all horse owners In the meantime here's a perfect example of the value of journals. Last Saturday Robin was not his usual self. He was grumpy, grabby, not at all the enthusiastic horse I'm accustomed to. But I'd been teaching all day. I was tired. He could have been reacting to my mood. That's what I attributed his grumpiness to. Sunday he was dead lame. Now because I keep a journal, I know I found a stone wedged in his foot the week before, so it's not a big surprise that he's brewed an abscess. And the lameness also explains his grumpy mood the night before. That's important information. I need to remember that and perhaps look a little deeper the next time he's out of sorts. Now because I keep a journal, I'm also having great fun with this interruption in his normal work. While I am soaking his foot, I am teaching him color discrimination. Such fun. And the journal is tracking his progress. Without the journal the color discrimination would not be nearly as interesting. And yes, I did miss some really interesting pieces of data, because when I originally dabbled in this, it wasn't of primary interest. But that's okay. For my purposes, what I have recorded is enough. Down the road, if I want to do a formal study of color discrimination, I'll know better how to set up my data collection. So a couple of general comments about journals. I'm not sure that it matters initially what form they take. The important thing is that you get in the habit of keeping a journal. Over time you will see what information you missed that you wish you had included. The journals will give you clues to your training. They may even tell you in a quite surprising way why you encounter certain recurring issues with your horse. For example, do you write in one long paragraph, or do you divide your writing up into smaller segments. In other words are you a lumper or a splitter? If you write in one long, never-ending, never-pause-for-breath style, perhaps that is also how you train, and just perhaps your horse finds it a bit overwhelming. If you find your thoughts scattered all over the place, if you jump from one comment to another without ever really finishing a sentence, perhaps that is also how you organize a training session. Something to think about. Years ago I taught a science lab. I found that the students who could write up a lab description had no problem with the work itself. The students who lacked writing skills, also struggled with lab work. They couldn't work their way progressively through a series of steps. I saw a very strong correlation between their ability to sort out a process and work systematically, and their writing skills. I was not a popular instructor because I insisted on complete sentences in their lab reports! No easy grades from me! (I'm not sure I should include that in this post. I don't want people to become self-conscious about their writing! But I do want people to give some thought to how they go about their horse time. Is it scattered and unfocused? Are you a reactive trainer? Or are you at the other extreme, so detailed oriented that you never see the forest for the trees? Your journal amy tell you all that and more.) So journals are important. The writing process reveals more than just what went on in a training session. It may also reveal why we run into certain patterns of difficulties. And the journals also reveal our patterns of thought. What are we focusing on? As you thumb through your journal what does the first line tend to be? "I had a super session." "Another great night." "Another great night." "Another GREAT night. I detect a trend." That's what I found when I opened my journal at random. This is a place where you get to practice clicker training. That means that this is a place where you get to see what you focus on. Are you using your journal to grump about the boarder who left her stuff out all over the place? Are you spending your time describing all the things your horse did wrong? Or are you focusing on your training successes? Those training successes may be how you responded to your horse. Maybe he was grabbing at the lead rope. In the past you might have smacked him for that, but now you view it as communication, information. You used your training session to figure out why he felt the need to grab at the lead rope. Your journal is helping you come up with a plan for dealing with the situation. That's thinking like a clicker trainer. And that's what the journal allows you to practice. There is much more to be said about this, but I will save it for another day. Alexandra Kurland
********************************************************************************** General clicker Training Questions: * Stopping after the click: * Improving Gaits: Please bookmark this page. **** Stopping after the click. How do you get your horse to keep going? Question: "Anyway, I'm confused about stopping every time you click the clicker. That isn't making sense because if that were the case the horse would never do anything but stop with the clicker. How does it differentiate between, "click"-yes that's the slow trot I'm looking for and "click"-stop?" Answer: The click is a "yes answer" cue. It says to the horse that whatever he was doing in the instant that he heard the click is something that was worth doing because you are now going to give him a goody. He stops performing in order to get his goody. Think about how dolphins are trained and this may make more sense to you. A dolphin is swimming around in its tank. The trainer wants it to jump through a hoop, so he watches the dolphin's movements. When he sees it turn toward the hoop, he blows a high frequency whistle, and throws a fish in the water. The dolphin is going to stop swimming toward the hoop to go look for the fish. Why? Because it has learned that every time it hears the whistle, his trainer tosses him a fish. But now the dolphin has broken off the very behavior the trainer wanted. So, you could say this is a bad thing because the trainer interrupted the very behavior he was trying to get. The reason it's not bad is because the dolphin is a clicker-wise animal. He knows two important things: one, when he hears the whistle, he gets a fish; and two, only certain behaviors, but not others will turn his trainer into a vending machine. So the dolphin goes back to the area in which he heard the whistle. He's exploring, trying to figure out what he did to get reinforced. He turns towards the hoop again, and again he hears the whistle. The bridging signal doesn't mean "face the inside of the tank", or "swim to the right", or anything else specific like that. It simply means "Yes, that's what I wanted." The horse is not differentiating between "click that's the slow trot" and "click - stop". And yes, each time the horse hears the click, he should stop. That's what we want, because that lets us reinforce him for the good behavior. Suppose your horse blasts forward into his usual fast trot, but then has a moment where the trot steadies and slows down. You click, and he stops. He stops BECAUSE the click marks the end of a unit of behavior. If he's going to collect his "paycheck", it has to. So, now you pick up the trot again. The horse rushes off, but he's a clicker-wise animal. He knows he was just reinforced for something. He just doesn't know what. His trot steadies again, just for an instant, but that's all you need to "click" and say "yes- that's what I wanted". The horse stops, collects his paycheck, and then starts up again. But now he's feeling more relaxed. Instead of racing around, scaring both of you, the last time he trotted he went just a short way and then he got to stop and eat. Eating is relaxing, so the next time he picks up a trot, he's much calmer. Click! you mark that right away and give him a jackpot of a special goody. He's a lot calmer now which makes it easier for him to figure out what you want. So now when you ask for a trot he's much more deliberate about it. He's starting to figure out that trotting off slowly turns you into a vending machine. Once he's going into the trot calmly, you can begin to withhold the click and ask for a little more and then a little more. If you're confused over this, it may because you are mixing up cues with the bridging signal. A cue is a trigger for a specific behavior. Ask a puppy to "sit". That's the cue. The puppy sits. That's the behavior. You "Click". That says to the puppy, "Yes, that's the behavior I wanted." Toss the puppy some kibble. That's the "paycheck". For horses it's the same thing. At no time does the click act as a cue that says: "pick up a slow trot" versus, for example "stop and back up" It means only one thing: "yes, that's what I wanted." If you want the horse to pick up a trot, you will have specific riding signals that ask for that. If you want the horse to stop and back up, you will have different riding signals that ask for that. In both cases, when the horse responds in a way that you want to highlight, you'll click him. That says "yes I liked that", and he will stop to collect his paycheck. So you will have two kinds of stops. One is a "riding" stop, which you actively ask for, just as you actively ask for any other change of gait. And you will have your "clicker" stop which horse does on his own after he hears his bridging signal. If this is still confusing for you, go play the training game. There's a description of it in my book, "Clicker Training For Your Horse". The training game lets you experience Alexandra Kurland Improving Gaits: How do you use the clicker to improve the overall quality of your horse’s gaits? Question: "I want to work on my horse’s canter. Right now he gets so excited I have a hard time getting him to settle down. How will the clicker help me with this?” Answer: This is the type of situation where the clicker really shines as a training tool. The click ends behavior. When your horse picks up the canter, you'll let him know that's exactly what you wanted by clicking him after just one or two strides. He'll slam on the brakes. You'll go up over his ears because you weren't expecting such a prompt response, but that's all right! Next time you'll be better prepared. Stopping never sounds like a good deal to most riders. We've all been taught to keep our horses going, but it really is exactly what you want. Look at all the advantages the clicker gives you: First, you were able to tell your horse that cantering was a good thing and exactly what you wanted. You were able to indicate that to the horse while the canter was still good. By clicking him and having him come out of the canter, you created another opportunity to work on canter departs. Once the departs are consistent, you'll be able to delay your click to build duration in the gait. You'll do this with your horse staying relaxed because you aren't asking for long stretches of canter. He's learning how to have a burst of adrenaline, and then how to calm back down. Think about a competition horse waiting at the starting line, and you'll understand what a good thing this is. Those are all the GOOD things that are happening. Now think about all the bad things that DIDN'T happen. A green horse canter can be a wild ride. The horse doesn't understand how to balance in the canter with a rider up. He may start out ok, but then he'll begin to rush. The rider pulls back, the horse twists onto his inside shoulder, and suddenly feels out of balance. Instead of feeling relaxed and confident, he starts to panic. The rider feels him rushing faster, so she pulls him up in the corner. What has this horse learned about cantering compared to the clicker-trained horse? The clicker-trained horse was back at the halt getting a treat before the canter could deteriorate. He learned that cantering is fun and leads to good things. The second horse is learning that cantering with a rider up can be a frightening experience and ends by having your mouth pulled on. Even if you're an experienced rider who knows how to help a green horse find his way in the canter, you still have to be able to bring them down out of it. Suppose you get a good canter depart and your horse maintains his balance well down the long side of the arena. You'd like to reward him by letting him walk, so you ask for a down transition. Your horse is thinking forward in the canter. He doesn't really know how to downshift back to the walk yet, so instead of dropping softly out of the canter, he stiffens his jaw against your hand. From his point of view, instead of being rewarded for a good canter, he's actually being punished for it. He was going beautifully, and what happened? He had his mouth pulled on. Even though you are back at the walk giving your horse a nice long rein and a chance to relax, you've really missed your opportunity to reinforce that good canter directly. Clicker-trained horses get very good at figuring out and repeating the behavior that just earned them a click. It is a phenomenal tool for developing consistency and quality in the gaits. But before you start work in the canter, tune up the clicker with simpler exercises. Begin with basics in the walk so your horse has a chance to understand how the clicker works under saddle. The more experience he has, the better he'll be at figuring out the subtle differences you're after in the more complex work. Alexandra Kurland |
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