You've started to clicker train!  Hurray!  

You may be discovering how easy it is to teach your horse new behaviors.  It’s so easy in fact that now he’s throwing those behaviors at you!  If you don’t click, he goes through his whole rolodex of behaviors you’ve reinforced, including some of that popped out of “oh oops” moments.  Clicker training is supposed to be fun, but you’re not laughing.  
Clicker training involves much more than simply reinforcing a behavior when it happens.  Clicker training includes bringing this behaviors under stimulus control.  Stimulus control stabilizes behavior and creates good manners. This video lesson will explain what that means.

Stimulus control means you’re going to be learning about cues.  In clicker training we distinguish between commands and cues.  Commands have a do-it-or-else threat backing them up.  If the horse doesn’t respond to a light signal, the intensity of the signal escalates.  Respond or this will hurt is the threat that sits behind commands.  Command-based training is the norm in the horse world.  If you doubt this, take a trip to your local tack store and look at all the whips, spurs, leverage bits, and lunging rigs that you can buy.

Cues are different.  Cues act like green lights. They tell the horse which behavior will earn him reinforcement at this particular moment. When a behavior is fully on cue, you are saying to your horse that you want the behavior when you ask for it and ONLY when you ask for it.

“Lesson 4: Stimulus Control" will show you how to teach cues, and how to use them to create a mannerly, focused, happy horse. When you hear the word “respect", think stimulus control instead.

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Respect can have many different meanings and origins. In clicker training respect grows out of stimulus control. It is a the result of good training.

When you teach a new behavior with the clicker, you’ll find your horse goes through two distinct phases. In the first phase you’re simply getting behavior to happen. At this point your horse doesn’t understand anything about cues.  He simply knows that every time he offers a particular behavior, click, you give him a treat.

From his point of view it’s a wonderful game. It’s almost as though he has YOU on cue! His behavior is a trigger that gets you to reach into your pocket and hand him goodies. Is it any wonder that horses love the clicker game?
This phase is a lot of fun. You get to see how eager and smart your horse is. But it can also feel very out of control. All you want to do is groom your horse, and he’s trying every behavior he can think of to get you to play the “clicker game". At this point you need to move on to “Phase Two" of clicker training and put the behaviors on cue.  More than that you need to bring the behavior under stimulus control.

In this lesson you’ll find out what that means and how you go about doing it.

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This lesson was originally a two hour video that was divided into three parts.

 

Part 1: Stimulus Control covers:

 

•     What are cues?

•     How do you teach them?

•     How do you use cues to develop great manners in your horse?

 

Part 2: Riding with the Clicker

 

•     Communication through the reins

•     Chunking your riding lessons down into small steps to teach cues

•     A riding lesson on single-rein basics and the clicker

 

Part 3: Communication through Cues

 

•     Environmental Cues

•     Cues: developing a two-way conversation with your horse.

 

The video features four horses:

•  Robin, a seven year old Cleveland Bay cross. With Robin I take you through a basic lesson in stimulus control, how you teach it, and what you can do with it.

• Peregrine, my seventeen year old thoroughbred.  Peregrine takes us through a master class on riding with the clicker.

• Nikita, a twelve year old quarter horse mare. Nikita is having her first lesson under saddle using the clicker. She shows you how to get your own horse to go from stiff to soft through a clear progression of steps.

• And lastly, Panda an eighteen month old miniature horse in training to be a guide for the blind. Panda demonstrates the use of environmental cues. And she also shows how cues can develop into a two-way communication system between you and your horse.

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This DVD was first produced in 2002

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It was updated and turned into an on-line course in 2024.  I have added some background stories and additional content related to cues.

Lesson 4 ties together the lessons covered in the first three video lessons. It provides a superb summary and overview of clicker training, and it shows you how to use the clicker under saddle. 

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$45

Gives you access to the course for 1 year.