Too many people are loathe to get hands-on help from qualified trainers, so they resort to clickers and videos and other ways to plow around their shortcomings. I’m not averse to clicker training, not at all, but as many have said if you’re just mucking around at it alone with a clicker, a bag of treats, and not one clue how to read horses, everyone suffers. The horse gets frustrated and aggravated and the human gets stuck because they don’t know what they don’t know. It’s just a different flavor of avoiding real help and education. Watching too many DVDs of Parelli or Clinton or anyone will have the same results. Everyone at some point needs real hands on guidance and real time correction, collaboration, conversation so as to shape in the direction of the desired results.
and no, ground work doesn’t fix the horse who gets excited about heading back to the barn after a trail ride, learning collection, or riding a solid 20m circle.
I’ll add in that in I see so many horses that just do groundwork (clicker training, natural horsemanship, Parelli, etc) that are overweight and out of shape. Not blaming the treats, but when they don’t ride their horses, the chances of them giving an adequate amount of exercise from the ground are slim (not impossible, just slim). Not only are they doing their horses a disservice by not training them to accept/learn more conventional methods as @tabula_rashah mentioned, it’s also not physically healthy either. When I’ve questioned these people in the past the response I’ve gotten is “oh I work Dobbin 5x a week!” …at the walk while shoving food in his face. 🤦🏻
I think this is a gross generalization. There is groundwork with a purpose and whatever these folk consider groundwork. I think it’s very important to make that distinction. I was able to keep a good level of fitness on my guy while still dropping his weight with groundwork for the better half of this year, with edible rewards.
I think the broader issue here is most of these folk A) don’t know what the are doing, B) don’t know why they are doing it, and C) if they have goals, there is no real roadmap progression to get them there.
If what they see online doesn’t exactly translate, they get stuck.
To be clear, I’m not saying that you cannot keep a horse fit with just groundwork, I do it all the time. However, the majority of people that I have seen that just do ground work only do it at the walk and not for a very long. Walking certainly has a ton of benefits and if you are marching forward with purpose, especially up hills and over terrain, fitness can be achieved. But most of these people that I see are just meandering around the round pen or arena and not building any real fitness.
Well, if they don’t post all the miracles they are achieving, how can we be expected to buy their equipment and merch??
Sarcastic, of course. There is one influencer in particular who pops up on my algorithm that does this. Sometimes I think these online “trainers” are better at marketing than training.
When I was rehabbing my mare from a soft tissue injury and we were in the “almost ready to start tack walking but not quite there” phase, one of the things I’d do with her was target with her around the arena at a WT and sometimes C if she offered it and was moving well. I’d have the target low to the ground and would be jogging with her so she would be forward and reach waaay down over her back. It was a really good stretch. We’d also do in hand stretching, backing up, and ground poles with the target. I think it really benefitted her and look forward to doing it again when I get an arena built this spring!
Just a correction - this is positive punishment to start. You want the horse to move over. The horse is not moving over.
The punshiment for the horse not moving over is the push.
So you have positive (added to the horse punishment (push/crop/etc) for NOT moving.
When the horse complies, you take away the pressure - that would be negative reinforcement. Horse moves you take away (subtract=negative) the (hit/push/crop/etc) to REINFORCE movement.
Positive reinforcement would be adding (treat/clicker/good boy or girl) to encourage (reinforce) the behavior.
Negative punishment in this scenario would be maybe taking away (minus/subtract) treat when the horse is NOT moving - hence punishing the not moving behavior.
As far as clicker training goes - it is all just a part of BF Skinner’s Operant Conditioning Theory. You can use a clicker, a voice (such as good boy), a gesture (say slapping the thigh or snapping fingers) or anything else to replace the treats.
Clicker training better than using “good boy/girl” because it “muddies the water”? Well, let me tell you something kid…I would totally click a clicker in my pocket ALL THE TIME if I tried to use one…I don’t actually say “good boy/girl” all that often unless in actual training.
The reality of it is that all training encompasses all 4 quadrants but the goal is to stay in R+ as much as possible. The goal should also be variable reward - as Skinner noted that is the best way to get a behavior to “stick”. If you always reward, the subject will quit the task very quickly after not getting a reward. If you never reward, they have much more of a tendency to just do what they want when they want.
Below a link to an overview of BF Skinner’s theories and work.
I’ve known two pros (one dressage, another an eventer) who surprised me by using clicker training in one instance and NH in the other very effectively–BUT they were also incredible riders and had a clear riding goal in mind and were dealing with difficult horses they had to make “work” for them in at their stage in their careers.
I think people who are skilled riders who are goal-oriented are less apt to go astray than people who aren’t with these types of techniques. For people who have fear issues who need to work on THEMSELVES as well as their horses, dwelling on endless groundwork just becomes an evading technique for the person (and, in fact, can result in the rider, if she only has one horse and minimal riding instruction getting less fit and therefore more timid in the saddle).
The one NH clinic I attended was like being on Mars. Endless yoga balls being thrown at horses and people getting excited about how the horses responded. It was about 95F that day (which the organizers couldn’t help) but there was no mention by these supposedly “sensitive” NH people about how this was affecting the horses (a lot of the “relaxed” behavior was just the horses sweating and miserable, too hot to move). Putting on a saddle pad “correctly” took 20 minutes. It was just so removed from any practical relationship with horses.
What I felt worst about was a little girl at the clinic whose parents had “rescued” her a horse under one of the NH trainer’s guidance. The family had the horse at home, and the kid had obviously had no competent instruction in riding, even though she’d had the horse for some time. She rode with her toes literally pointed down, slumped in the saddle, totally off-balance. But she knew all the “games.” I mean, I’m not saying a kid has to have perfect equitation (God knows I don’t) but just the most basic walk-jog Western instruction or Pony Club stuff would have given her a better foundation.
I remember the point of variable reward from the behaviour courses I did in college, sadly I have seen far to many posts of “why am I not getting the horse to do x” and the most common anwser is “just keep going and use more treats”, not check your timing or break it down differently.
Actually the difference between positive punishment and negative reinforcement is not the nature of the pressure but the intent. Punishment is to stop a behavior and reinforcement is to encourage a behavior.
If I just growl hsssht at my mare when she tries to nip, that’s positive punishment even if very mild. When Suzy Diva leans her full body weight on the bridle and spurs her horse to “get him round,” that’s negative reinforcement (or would be if she relaxed the pressure when he complied).
Poking or slapping or flagging a horse to establish side step is negative reinforcement while screaming and hitting the horse because it’s standing on your foot is positive punishment.
Yes, horses often can’t tell which it is.
True R plus for side step would be you wait until the horse offers it and then reward and hope he gets it:)
That sounds much more like a “liberty”/trick style clinic than natural horsemanship. I’ve watch NH clinicians of all stripes dozens of times over the past couple of decades and have never seen a yoga ball…
It was advertised as a NH clinic, and the instructor said she was Parelli-trained. There were also introduction to the “games” and such. I personally am not of that world so I cannot vouch for the competence or authenticity, but it was absolutely not advertised as a tricks class and there were many, many yoga balls the horses were encouraged to play with.
I also want to say, I’m not saying not all NH is bad! I love Tik Maynard and have attended and loved his clinics, and he uses it so effectively, and also teaches the horse’s owner while he does it. No yoga balls in that. It was because of Tik that I attended the clinic and was completely confused why it was so different than my experience with Tik.
I use clicker training for on the ground things and handling, I find it less useful under saddle but my horse still knows that when I say “yes” he is doing the right thing but I don’t stop to treat.
I’ve been to a local barn that does clicker training boarding only and it’s a smoking hot mess. Horses were horribly behaved and just pushy monsters. Took them 1.5 hours to turn out 7 horses.
Has its place, just like all the other training methods.
Being able to time it right is essential, for sure.
What makes the clicker more powerful than “good boy” is that it is a clear and unambiguous sound, and also that it goes straight to the amygdala - that same part of your brain that can learn with one experience that stoves are hot and don’t touch again.
“Good boy” takes longer to say, longer to process, and also can get lost in other human speech - but it can also work, just like any other consistent noise/feedback response you use with good timing. (“Yes!” is shorter and possibly better if you want to use a word.)
Another useful point about the amygdala response is that this is the part of the brain that creates instant fear from a previous learned stimulus, and that is easier to overcome when you are writing pleasure into the amygdala.
But it’s the timing that is really essential and getting used to handling a clicker is your part of the job. You can get them with little wrist thingys so it’s easy to have one on you, but it can be tricksy to have the clicker primed in your hand without ever accidentally clicking it. A skill just like handling a lunge whip.
Getting the timing wrong occasionally, nbd, it happens. But you MUST get this part under control for yourself to be effective and not detrimental. Let me give an example.
Suppose you are working with a horse who is bad about picking up his feet. The foot is in your hand, and you click as you go to put it down.
You’ve taught the horse that the action is to lift the foot and put it back down, and that the click means he can take the foot away and put it down. Now you’re worse off than when you started.
So then you have to do the remedial work of click and we still have the foot up thanks, and NEVER click when the horse pulls away or even when the foot is down. The click is for the foot up, staying up, without resistance. And maybe multiple clicks while that is true.
The other thing is that clicks are like a slot machine. You give them every time when you’re explaining that the click is “yes, thank you, you did that right” but you not only don’t owe them every time, it’s essential that you don’t give them every time. Again there is a part of the brain that gets extra excited wondering if this is the time you’ll get the reward, and you are stimulating that extra interest in what you are doing. Similarly, you don’t owe a treat for every click.
If you do it right, the animal you’re working with comes to love the game as much as the treats. The click is the same as your instructor saying, “very good.” The treats were just the bridge to get there. You can use the click out riding and give a jackpot bucket when you get done.
Clicks can be used with humans too and they find it especially helpful in gymnastics for things like helping shape an handstand, so the athlete learns what their body feels like when they are perfectly vertical. It’s a good way to shape quickly a specific action. With a rider, for example, if you have a rider who is having trouble with hands too high or hands too low, you can use the click to give precise feedback when the hands are correct. With a person, you have the advantage of negotiating exactly what today’s click will be for in advance, which is convenient.
An early narrative on this topic is “Lads Before the Wind” by Karen Pryor. It’s a memoir about her early years dolphin training, and it’s just a delightful read but also a great way to see a lot of trial and error and also about how this technique can be useful. I read it when I was a child and it has shaped me my whole life - not to deny traditional means of working with horses, but really opened my mind about clarity and about how tasks are learned. For example, that she learned to teach a sequence of events backwards, with the last element as the first thing taught, so your mind always goes home to the end, and the sequence where they taught new trainers by having them shape humans to do an unknown task using only a whistle.
She also taught me that you shape behavior a step at a time, that perfect is the enemy of good, that you reward the try and don’t extinguish it by saying it wasn’t good enough on the first attempt (example: your child finally does some task on their own, for that first attempt you say thank you, not “you didn’t load the dishwasher correctly,” that is, if you want them to do it again.)
It’s neat stuff, really.
Oh, and the last trick, something I learned for my current food-obsessed horse: it can matter what treats you pick. If I give her cookies she can absolutely lose her mind, she’s so excited. The trick I picked up from the Horse Radio Network podcast series with Shawna Karrasch was to try less interesting food. This horse works great for alfalfa pellets - just the right level of excitement.
By contrast, my previous horse worked great for cookies and in fact the first thing I taught her, because she had terrible manners, was not to mug for them - that she only got a treat when she tilted her head away from me. She learned it immediately (like three clicks) and had this special glint in her eye when she would tilt her head away just so, would look at me, and that was her new Cookie? face. Much more mannerly, and I think she enjoyed training me to give her cookies on the cue she gave me. A wonderful mutual training relationship, we had, and I so miss her.
Anyway, if you see me ride you won’t know I play with these nonstandard techniques, but I’ve come to really value how they have broadened me as a horseman and how I think about problem behavior.
Yes to all this! The click is very precise if you have good timing. It’s very easy however to inadvertently train something. Like the person who didn’t realize she had trained her horse to drop his manhood until he was doing it along with every other behavior.
I love when the horse starts playing. My mare has a yoga ball in her runout, and when she’s feeling good she will push it into the stall and start playing noseball with me.
Just to give another example of subtleties of timing with a clicker:
I was working with a horse that was weird about being brushed with a soft brush in a particular spot. Didn’t mind pressure from a hand or other things, it was just the brush. Who knows why, doesn’t matter. So I started using the click while I was brushing.
But I realized I was messing up, that due to the mechanics of my body, I was clicking at the end of the brush stroke, rewarding when the brush came OFF the horse, exactly what I didn’t want to do. I adjusted to make a very specific effort to click in the middle of the stroke, while the pressure was highest.
Same with fly spray. I had a horse that wouldn’t let me fly spray without a halter, which I found inconvenient. Again, so easy to click AFTER the spray. The click needed to be simultaneous with the sprayer, and once I fixed myself, the rest was easy. Once established there’s not a need for clicks or treats. My life is more convenient now, the horse can get flysprayed quickly on a hot summer day, we’re all happier. (Except the flies.)
And this makes me a better rider too. When I’m having a riding problem, I ask myself about the timing of my aids, if I am giving a clear release with my hand or clear stillness of my leg. When am I asking for what? It’s not just the horse that is getting trained.
Thanks to those who answered my question. From the responses I’ve learned the timing issue with the clicker would be problematic for me as my hands are messed up with arthritis. I’d be reinforcing all the wrong things with my delayed responses. I would “know” the appropriate timing but getting that knowledge to the clicker would be inconsistent.
Much more mannerly, and I think she enjoyed training me to give her cookies on the cue she gave me. A wonderful mutual training relationship, we had, and I so miss her.