Hi Karen, >>>Oooh yeah! I'm not arguing that it works. What worries me more is when the horse not only learns to (in your example) pick up the feet, but suddenly wants to pick up his/her feet anytime you look at them, or when you need to bandage a leg or check a pulse. I think sometimes people get swept up by the quick results, and don't think enough about where it's going.
I would agree with you in principle that this can happen, or if people only use clicker training for every thing they do then I have seen horses rather unwilling to work for other people. Definitely having a plan about what you want to teach is important. For Virginia I think that the clicker could really help her in the riding aspect in terms of stopping the bolting so he is paying much more attention to her on his back and what she wants instead of outside stimuli. When I first saw clicker training, about 15 years ago, I was not impressed. I saw it mostly used on dogs and what I saw was people stopped touching their animals and only used the clicker. The dogs would do anything for the clicker but nothing without it, and it didn't, work when animals were in a high stress situation. However, like everything I see - if I agree or disagree - I always look at things many times and from different ways. With clicker training I have found that I use it for teaching specific things and I haven't found that, with legs for instance, the will just offer to pick up their feet randomly. They might at first but quickly realize not to. But really most methods, if you just use them on their own, may have limitations. Ideally people can look at what is or isn't working and make a choice - but if you use any system that is set in the program it can be limiting (I think you know this well and certainly don't follow any system in a rote way). However it is difficult when people are new to horses because they are looking for 'the' answer and IME it is about finding the balance and finding a way that makes you feel comfortable and happy about working with your horse. Robyn Icelandic Horse Farm Robyn Hood & Phil Pretty Vernon BC Canada www.icefarm.com
