>From the ClickRyder list: > I'm asking quetions because I think you can get a lot done with a > clicker, it a very big confidence builder especially in dogs. Believe > me I've done it with one of my dogs it worked!! But, the comments are > also in response to clicker isn't the only method of training, and the > other methods can be just as useful, and it does take some brain > power... no disrespect intended and please don't take it that > way...I'm just new to horse training and the horse world - and by > using some of training methods that I'm using on my 16 month, it's > taken some thinking and rethinking to get him to learn what I wanted > him to learn. And I've done some targeting with my horse, and he > knows to touch the end of the riding crop, but that's all i've gotten > so far, b/c frankly I don't know where else to go from there? I'm > open to suggestions.
I come from a quasi dog-clicking background too...but with the dogs, I only used the clicker as a bit of an aid now and again. I never took it very far with the dogs. and several years ago, I used the clicker for fun, to teach my horse a couple of tricks (fetch, and bow). Again though, I stayed pretty much "traditional" in training Cisco. But late last year, after stumbling across the Nevzorov site ( http://www.hauteecole.ru/en/ ), I embarked on a whole new adventure in horse training. Without getting any direct instruction from that website (there are no specific "how to's" yet), I had to figure it out on my own. The first thing that came to mind was the clicker. Cisco is a crossover horse and where I'm have great success with him, it's my new boy Tamarack, that is showing me the real power of clicker training. He had very little experience with any form of traditional training. He was taught to lead, tie, have his feet done, they lunged him a bit and I think they put a saddle on him. But that was it. They just let him be a horse, and they treated him with love and respect. So I bought this beautiful 3 year old, inquisitive, people loving horse (with no baggage) to start from scratch with. He is learning Haute Ecole movements (that suit his age, some movements will have to wait until he's fully matured), he is learning to work in hand, and we are getting far enough along in our liberty work (trusting that he wants to be there with me and he won't leave) that I can soon begin some free shaping of some movements. I use a cordeo (neck rope) or nothing on him at all for nearly everything. He has a halter on if there are any safety issues about (unfriendly horses or inexperienced riders we may interfere with at liberty), but for the most part now, we train and play at liberty. Eventually I will get him used to a bitless bridle, and one day, I'll ride him. But the fun, the excitement and the adventure is in training difficult movements without micro-managing the horse - that is, without anything controlling his head. He is developing a wonderful ramaner, or "pose" (arching the neck, breaking at the poll and engaging his back a shoulder muslces) and he's beginning to include what I call a "half goat" in the standing pose. The "full goat" is actually called "Goat on a Mountain Top". Kind of sounds like a yoga move...but in our last two sessions, he is now beginning to use ramener in movement, and he's strong enough already to have offered a few steps of a basic piaffe in his excitement (something I missed clicking for by the way because I was totally unprepared for it to happen, and I'm still fuming over that!). I can't think of anything that is more thrilling than seeing a horse moving at liberty, holding himself in collection simply because he enjoys how strong and proud it makes him feel, and not because I told him to do it. Training a horse at liberty, without coercion, without force, and with only small amounts of pressure (I use a whip to cue and direct, but never for punishment) is to me, a lot like it must be to train a dolphin. Watch for the slightest sign that the dophin/horse is thinking of doing a behavior you would like to "play with", click, and reward. It is a way to exercise your imagination, and it is a way to capture movements that are perfectly natural for a horse to perform. Since it is the horses' idea to perform them, you aren't really "training"...you are capturing. You use your imagination to set up a situation so a horse is more likely to do a behavior you'd like to see. You don't have to rein them in, control the head, push or pull. You just turn on your imagination, allow them to express themselves and engage you in paly, allow them to be what nature intended them to be and you gleefully follow along with them. It's more of a dance than a training session. It can leave you both smiling and breathless. It is "partnership" far beyond what someone like, say, Parelli describes. It is far more "natural" than any "natural horsemanship" out there. Once you dust off the imagination and get the ball rolling, there's no stopping you. You figure out how to get one thing to happen, and suddenly you find that you can figure out how to get three other things to happen, and it grows exponentially from there. You can probably tell that I approach this emotionally and not scientifically, and there are minds on this list that I couldn't keep up no matter how hard I try. I get lost in discussions of r+'s and p-'s (or is that +r's and -p's?...see? Lost already!). I can't explain to someone why it works, only that it does, so I'll likely never be a good teacher! But the non-traditional path is so fascinating...and that approach can really help a horse who has only ever had bad experiences with traditional approaches. Allow them to experience "training" in a way they've never experienced before, and they look at you differently than they have ever looked at a human before. So I think the "brain power" one needs for clicker training is the imagination we all have inside of us. Something you don't really need if you follow tradition. Tradition is laid out for you. It is spelled out succinctly in more books than I can count. You CAN be imaginative within traditional methods, but it happens for fewer people than for those that use a clicker extensively. It's not a matter of intelligence...just creativity. Karen, Cisco and Tamarack __________________________________ Judy http://icehorses.net http://clickryder.com
