I can’t ride due the virus and I want to teach my horse some new fun tricks.
Have you done it? What should I know? The good, the bad, the ugly? What can I teach him?
You should look up some of the excellent resources online first. Find out what “loading the clicker” means and definitely teach “the grownups are talking” first which means back up and look away to get a treat.
After that your repertoire is only limited by what you can “capture” and shape.
I have taught my horse to lie down, play fetch, spin around, smile, play nose soccer and go stand on a bo, etc.
Successful clicker trainers have a very good sense of timing and are able to get on the wave length of the horse to be able to know when something is success being learned.
Unsuccessful trainers have poor timing, confuse the horse, or reward unwanted behaviour.
It apparently isn’t that easy for many people.
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I taught my mare to smile, bow and stand for shots without being held, as well as standing still to have her scratches treated. She’s very food motivated and enjoys the training.
Keep sessions short - I like no more than 10 minutes. Make sure your timing is really good so that you are rewarding what you want to reward. DO NOT let your horse reach towards you for the treat. Make sure he waits patiently at arms-length. Break the training into steps and teach one step at a time. Like for bowing, I taught her first to reach between her front legs on cue first and then bend one leg to go down on one knee. Use a very specific cue that no one will accidentally replicate. Her cue to bow is me tapping her twice between her front legs. Don’t let the horse use the trick as a way to beg - only reward if you ask for it first.
I wouldn’t start this at all with a horse that can be rude about treats or has any issues with respecting personal space. It can be done successfully with such horses, of course, but it’s a lot of extra hassle and work and I wouldn’t want to deal with it as someone new to clicker training.
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good advice above - know someone who does only clicker training with horses, all negative reinforcement is bad etc his horses view him as a walking treat dispenser and one is rapidly becoming dangerous. I also know someone who used it to fix a specific problem on the ground very successfully.
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You can train a pushy horse to back off and wait for treats. You can also train a horse to know that clicker only happens when you intitiate it.
That said, don’t teach anything that would inconvenience or put you in danger if the horse started to randomly offer it. Use common sense. Decide what your priorities are.
I can’t write a whole instruction book on clicker training on here but like I said there is alot of good resources out there includjng for animals other than horses.
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I used it very successfully with a horse who came to me completely terrified of vets, needles and anything medical. I had every vet visit him with a carrot, and clicked. I used a syringe on his neck (no needle) every day and clicked. I used a stethoscope and clicked. Basically, anything I could think of that was medical, we did with the clicker.
Fast forward two years and he nickered every time he saw a vet truck and stood in the cross-ties for shots with no sedation.
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I started 9 months ago and it definitely CAN be more tricky than you would think. Lucking I have several horses to work with and that helps. If you have just one horse, you may find it very much easier, or MUCH more difficult. A sufficiently ‘over eager’ impatient horse can get pissed off quickly. Even if you follow the rules to start (protected contact) you cannot FORCE they horse to be happy with the situation. They may get pissed that you do not shoot treats at them with a machine gun. Which is the speed of reinforcement that some horses feel strongly is suitable… For shy, nervous or hard working horses, the R+ can work pretty easily and wonderfully (again, following the rules, protected contact to start, establish a base repertoire before attempting to teach other things, etc). Be prepared that you will screw up in the beginning, and just accept that “errorless learning” will not occur out of the gate. If you are willing to recognize and address your errors, and every evolving skill set, then it can be a really wonderful tool. BUT THE REAL TOOL IS YOUR BRAIN. The clicker and cookies are only as effective as the BRAIN (and attention) that directs them.
I feel one of the horses I have was poorly trick trained. He gets terribly stressed when he thinks the cue has been given. His elbow on either side and his sternum where the girth goes cause him to panic about going into a bow. This has been very hard to extinguish and reteach the belly lift cue for stretches. It is getting better, but his go to is a bow rather than lifting his belly. Touching the elbow can also cause him to want to bow, which is difficult when he is being clipped and I’m trying to clip in this area…same for trying to clip his sternum area on the chest. Again it is getting better, but it’s been 3 years.
Be sure what you want to teach won’t interfere with anything else you may want to do AND the “tricks” should not cause the horse to be stressed.
Buy Alexandra Kirkland’s books, to get an understanding of what clicker training is, and how to shape the behaviors you want.
You are limited only by your imagination and your timing, once your horse understands.
CT is an amazing tool. I’ve done it with horses and dogs, and find it’s very good for teaching horses tricks and ‘speak their language’ - where dogs seem a bit more in-tune to wanting to please you. I did it with my current gelding to keep his mind busy when he was on layup for an injury. CT made things easy for him, and it made things ‘click’ into place. Everyone loves handling him and says how polite he is on the ground - CT solidified some manners I had already installed.
I stopped for a few years, but just picked it up again last week - my current objective is to teach him to self-position for mounting. He already stands for mounting and does not move until you ask him to (also from CT), but, I noticed last week, when I was using an unusual item for a mounting block (the back of a flatbed), that it sure would be nice to point at whatever I wanted to mount from and have him position himself.
A story I’ve told here before about CT - be careful what you teach, because it teaches horses to start problem solving for themselves! :lol: I stopped using CT because, at the time, I had taught my horse to pick up an object on command (brush and/or a little wooden pig). He then started trying to pick up anything he could, and giving it to me (“is this what you want?? no? what about this??”) - including trying to pick up his saddle pad, or saddle :eek:
P.S, these make great treats for CT because they are small but highly rewarding:
Manna Pro Goat Treats (yes, they are for goats, but safe for horses and they love them)
Other favorites include Mini-Wheats, and broken up Fig Newtons.
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Any training methodology can be done terribly and create poor results. Unfortunately clicker training, I think, tends to attract people who do it poorly for various reasons and in various ways.
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I def. recommend Alexandra Kurland’s book, the second one, “Clicker Training for your Horse with Step by Step Instructions with photos”… ( I may be off a word or two on the title). FWIW totally disagree with Toblersmom.
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“Poorly” is in the eye of the beholder, and what one trainer thinks is poor training may be exactly what another trainer wants.
IOW, “traditional” training does not have to be the standard by which all other training is judged.
I do however, feel that it’s irresponsible and unfair to teach a horse anything that may set him up for punishment if he’s passed on to a new owner–whether that behavior is taught with positive or negative reinforcement. And because I think more people understand negative R than positive R, that puts the onus on positive R trainers to think carefully about whether the behaviors they’re teaching are going to be in their horses’ best interests long term.
I have no plans to rehome any of my clicker trained horses, and am very careful about who I let handle them so feel that I can teach them whatever I please. But IMO, a horse’s future is something that should be factored in when deciding what to teach a horse who may not be with a clicker trainer for life.
That said, teaching a horse practical behaviors using CT and then putting them on cues that are similar to the ones used with negative R helps.
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Horses have an important nerve that runs behind their elbows, and with the wrong kind of pressure it can make them fall down. My own horse once collapsed after being (gently) girthed. You know your horse best of course, but your story makes me wonder whether he is anticipating being unable to stand, since he is so worried.
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Years ago I had a horse who would not pick up his feet easily for picking. I decided I would teach him using clicker training methods. Well, it worked really, really well. The problem was, every time I walked by him after that he would pick up his feet one at a time looking for a treat. 
Silly boy.
I’m not sure how some have seemed to interpret my comment as being anti-clicker training. Far from it. I was responding to somebody who had said she had seen a horse where clicker training was being used and was becoming dangerously pushy about food. I was trying to indicate that the problem wasn’t CT, it was poorly applied CT. CT tends to appeal to people because on the surface it looks really easy and you get to give the animal lots of treats, FUN! But many people who are initially attracted to it don’t pay near enough attention to the details. They don’t teach good treat manners, they mis-time the bridge sound, they don’t have a good step-wise plan of forming the behavior. They don’t do what needs to be done to put a behavior to a cue so offering of the behavior spontaneously diminishes (if that’s appropriate). They don’t apply any other kind of training efforts at all as they go about day-to-day handling of a domestic animal that they’re handling all the time. Most of them just fail and give up, but some of them keep at it and wind up with barging, mugging monsters. “Traditional” training (whatever that specifically means) can certainly have failures from any number of directions and in any number of ways. “Natural Horsemanship” can have all sorts of failures.
All training methods have people who very successfully apply them, too, of course. The principles of CT are applied widely in zoo animal management on everything from crocodiles to giraffes to poison dart frogs. Done correctly, it can be a fabulous means of training and reinforcing all sorts of behaviors in horses, dogs, and other domestic animals. People who say that they tried it (or knew someone else who tried it) and it didn’t work, or the animal got rude about food, or there were some other undesirable outcome? Probably the training was done poorly in some way.
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I think CT is pretty cool and I’ve been playing around with it. The actual CT community is not one I really enjoy engaging with as the ones I’ve found online are very CT 100% or it’s animal abuse. That black and white thinking drives me bananas. It is a great tool in my toolbox but not my only tool. If a horse is trying to bite or run me over, I’m going to keep myself safe, even if it isn’t R+.
Personally, I’ve used it to stand for tacking, picking up feet, stretching, etc. Mine enjoys food enough to work but the second her stress threshold passes a 3/10, food is meaningless. You can literally insert her favorite treat into her mouth and she cheeks it until she’s calmed down.
I prefer TRT for working through more complex challenges and teaching a horse how to self regulate. I’m sure people have found good success using CT for more complex issues but my success has been limited to more discrete tasks (move this, pick up that, stay here).
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my science project one year when i was a kid was to clicker train my horse. I had a frog stuffed animal and taught him to fetch it and then i got a slightly deflated basketball and a kiddie hoop at taught him to “shoot” the basketball by picking it up in his teeth and flinging it at the hoop. Sometimes he scored lol!
I experienced zero unwanted behaviors or side effects from these silly activities, YMMV.
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I agree that my totally food motivated mare needs to be totally relaxed and comfortable before she will play clicker. When I introduced her to my new trailer I tried playing fetch up the ramp. She would play up to the point it required actually entering the trailer and then she wouldn’t go any further in to fetch. She wasn’t even that worried, it was just the point that there might be the least anxiety and it was no longer a game.
After that I decided it was probably counter productive to mess around on the ramp with a horse that was usually a good loader. So the next trip we just did very mild pressure walk on up, no questions, no choice, hay bag waiting for you. She now self loads nicely in that trailer.
So I want a bunch of basic ground manners on my horses and I want them to know that they need to listen to me in moments of stress, because clicker training flies right out the window at that point.
On the other hand if my horse wants to initiate clicker play which is almost always 
I know she is happy and relaxed.
One of my favorite tricks was teaching my horse to pick up dropped things while under saddle 
although he hasn’t tried to hand me my saddle yet! Lol
I also taught him to close gates behind himself by just pushing them closed with his nose, love that he closes gates instead of opening them!
I really enjoyed the Karen Pryor books about clicker training but they aren’t all horse specific. I will say with most horses it’s best not to teach them something that you wouldn’t want them to spontaneously offer (like rearing) but I have no problem teaching them a coping mechanism so to speak. Like teaching a stressed and worried horse to hold a jolly ball in their mouth during stall cleaning, or using rubber mats and target training to separate pasture horses at feeding time. If my horses use tricks to beg for treats I think that’s pretty darn clever of them .
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That’s the part I love about CT (they offer to participate, and can even get quite enthusiastic about participating). So I did have to learn to click for relaxing the leg so I could pick it up, instead of teaching them to pick up the hoof and put it on the hoof stand themselves, but no surprise that the better I get at learning how to teach them, the better they get at doing what I want them to do.
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