"Clicker Training for your Horse" is packed with fifteen years of teaching and riding experience. It's a comprehensive course on training, problem solving, riding, and, oh yes, that funny new stuff, clicker training.
The book covers:
* background information on clicker training and operant conditioning
* a step-by-step guide on introducing your horse to the clicker
* goal setting and how to develop a lesson plan
* basic handling and problem solving
* overcoming fear issues
* a large section on foals
* ground manners for the older horse
* dressage for the clicker horse
* a guide to handling aggressive horses
* riding with the clicker
* trailer loading
* the training game and much more
"Clicker Training for your Horse" is the clearest outline of training's
common-sense guidelines I have ever encountered. It is *VERY* clear,
and applicable to any type of training. - Panda Meeker
My advice: read the book! I've kept horses for 17 years now, and after
reading this book my spontaneous reaction was that it is the best book
on training that I've ever read - and I've read a lot.
- Kina Molitor, Sweden
Author's note: Clicker Training for Your Horse was first published in 1998. It was the first reference on clicker training in the horse world. My goal with the training is to help people become self directed learners, to be able to become their own trainers and problem solvers. Clicker Training for your Horse introduces you to clicker training. I begin the book with some background information and explain how to get started with the clicker. Then I share a series of stories to illustrate basic training principles and to show you how to solve real world problems.
The overall training goal is to develop safe, well mannered horses who are a joy to be around. And it is also to ride - but it is riding with a difference. Years ago I had one of those life changing experiences. I sat on a truly well-trained, beautifully balanced horse. I had never experienced anything like it. I could have ridden for a life time and never imagined that horses could feel like this. My goal in riding is to recapture that experience in my own horses and to share it with others. That's an important goal because this style of riding does more than create feels-like-heaven horses. It helps them to stay sound through decades of riding use.
Through clicker training we develop amazing relationships with our horses. They become family. So it's all the more important that we help them stay comfortable and sound as we ask them to work for us.
Clicker Training for your Horse has been joined by two other books, plus a smaller, Getting Started booklet. I'm often asked which book to start with. I'd love to say: get them all, but I understand about limited budgets and time, so here's my general answer:
The books were all designed to compliment one another. Clicker Training for your Horse and The Click That Teaches: A Step-By-Step Guide in Pictures are both starter books, but they cover the material in different ways. Clicker Training for your Horse shares more stories. It shows you how clicker training can be used to complex real world situations. And it helps you learn how to think like a clicker trainer. That's an important key to the book. I want to develop riders who can be their own problem solvers.
The Step By Step Guide in Pictures begins at the same starting point: introducing you to clicker training and showing you how to get started, but it presents the material in a series of short lessons. You'll work your way through the foundation lessons, followed by a series of practical applications for the clicker and then on to the common goal of riding.
Whichever book you choose to begin with, you will be off to a great start. When you have worked through the lessons in these foundation books, you'll be ready for the third book in the series: The Click That Teaches: Riding with the Clicker.
Have Fun!
Alexandra Kurland
2011
