Whole Horse Training

Training by positive reinforcement has become increasingly popular in recent years and is known to most as “clicker training”. Clicker training is slang for the scientific term operant conditioning and it is magic with horses. I had heard about clicker training, but it never really interested me. One of my biggest hesitations was the use of treats in the process. I also believed the method was mainly for teaching tricks when it was applied to horses. I didn’t think I needed to teach tricks, so I dismissed the clicker method as very nice but of no use to me. However, I had some friends doing agility work with their dogs and before I knew it, I was in the midst of a three-day clicker training seminar with both of my dogs and several horses. I can’t say I’ve ever had time better spent.

Take Granite for another example. Granite is a 16-year-old Appendix Quarter Horse who has been terrified of fly spray since I’ve known him. All anyone ever had to do to set him into a rearing, totally mindless fit was pick up a spray bottle of any kind and walk in his direction. Even wiping fly repellent on him after spraying it onto a rag has been a chore. Over the past ten years, we have tried every approach known to us. We spent endless hours “getting him used to” the sprayer. He never got used to it. We puzzled over it. Was it the smell? It didn’t seem to be because for the sake of expense we would practice with water in the bottles. Was it the sound? We invested in a silent sprayer that emitted a fine mist. He remained unimpressed. I got to where I could get the fly spray on him by cornering him and blocking him against a wall while I shot three or four squirts at him before he reared. Often enough, he simply didn’t get any fly spray because it wasn’t worth the effort. His eyes went wide, he shook, he’d begin to dance and, finally, rear and, more than once, he broke a halter or rope. He seemed legitimately terrified. Imagine my surprise when this turned out not to be the case.

About a week after our seminar with Corally, I brought Granite up from the field and the flies were bad. I looked at him and thought about Corally’s telling us that you can’t see emotions. You can only see behavior. I knew I had to start viewing behavior as behavior and stop attaching a bunch of emotional baggage to it. I looked at Granite, standing in the aisle covered with flies and decided to give it a try. Okay, so when he sees the spray bottle he begins to move and get wide eyed. That’s behavior. Forget the “he’s scared” part. So, the question is, what do I want him to do? I want him to stand still while I pick up the bottle. Granite was in our seminar so he’s already conditioned to expect a treat when he hears the clicker. I walk toward the bottle and he’s just standing there so I click-andtreat. His curiosity is peaked and he watches as I pick up the bottle, click-and-treat, after putting it back down. So, in about two minutes I’m seeing a change. It takes maybe eight sessions over a three-day time span before he is standing while I spray him with fly spray. There are still some rough edges, all of which are due to my inexperience with this training method but Granite is getting fly spray when he needs it and without the Shakespearean production it has been for the last ten years. Bottom line: Granite was never afraid of spray bottles or fly spray. He had somehow become conditioned to act in what we interpreted as a fearful manner whenever someone came at him with a spray bottle and the whole thing was behavior based, not emotionally charged as we had believed for so long.

Now I was supercharged with enthusiasm for this clicker thing. What else could I do with it? I do a lot of rehab work with horses and while stretches can be therapeutic for them, it’s not for me. My back can’t take it. What if I could get them to do some of these things for themselves? In short order, I had horses placing their foot on a block and lowering their heads to receive their treat at ground level, swinging back and forth between road cones placed to maximize a neck stretch, high or low, or, by repositioning the cones, creating a withers rock. We are all having a good time and annoying behaviors are dropping like flies in my string of horses. Fred leads like a dream. Pilot stands still while the saddle is being put on. Jack doesn’t take it personally when he’s asked to back up. Wings will walk through water and Big Red finally understands lateral work and doesn’t jig on trail rides when he turns back toward the barn. Ellie comes out of the trailer without coming unglued. Snapple accepts paste wormer without a fight. Need I go on?

I’m hoping that by this point you want to get started, so I’m prepared to outline the basics of the first steps. From here you can move on to using these basics in real life training situations and practical applications. You can use clicker training to get any behavior you can imagine. You can also employ it for rainy or big snow weather days or to keep up a relationship with your horses when you are unable to ride due to injury or illness.

To go deeper into this, you will need to understand a few more terms and more about shaping behavior. I highly recommend you go to a seminar and read books. Karen Pryor’s Don’t Shoot the Dog and Alexandra Kurland’s Clicker Training for Your Horse are two that helped me a lot, but it was the seminar given by Corally Burmaster, www.clickertrain.com, that provided me with hands on experience and really spurred me into action.

Operant Conditioning: A training method based on positive reinforcement that has become increasingly popular in recent years and is known as "Clicker Training". It is based on understanding the way a being interacts with and learns from his environment, known as operant conditioning. Simply put, any action that has a positive consequence will tend to be repeated while those actions that have negative consequences will be avoided. (Trainers can take advantage of this by providing positive reinforcement following an action that they would like the animal to repeat.)

Modeling: Manipulating the horse’s body into a desired position. (Example: Using pressure to teach a horse to tuck his chin and back off rein contact.)

Negative Reinforcer: A negative reinforcer is any stimulus in the environment that a horse will change its behavior to avoid or escape. (Example: When a horse moves away from the pressure we have applied to his side, we remove that pressure as his reinforcement. In this instance, that pressure can be lightened to becoming an “aide,” a cue as to what we want him to do.)

Targeting: By teaching your horse to target, focusing on something and following it, you can guide him through performing desired behaviors. (Example: When the horse is being led and he stops when you stop, turns when you turn, he is targeting your body.)

Shaping: To shape a behavior, you reinforce closer and closer approximations of the finished behavior. (Example: If you want the horse to come to you, you first reinforce his just looking at you, then shifting his weight in your direction, then moving one foot toward you, etc.)

Capturing a Behavior: To capture a behavior, you simply reinforce a behavior you like when it is offered even though you have not asked for it. (Example: You watch your horse as he stands tied and notice that he puts his head down and you reinforce him for doing that.)

Luring: Using a target (an actual one or simply food in your hand) or your body language to get the horse to do something so you can reinforce it. Luring is used for behaviors that are too complicated to capture but simple enough not to need shaping. Luring should only be done a few times and then the subject should be given a chance to do the behavior on his own to avoid his dependence on the lure. If he doesn’t offer the behavior on his own, DON’T go back to luring in that training session. To do that would teach him to simply wait for you to put the target or food back in front of his nose! (Example: Getting the horse to lower his head by showing him a carrot and having him follow it as you lower it.)

Primary Reinforcer: The actual reward the horse is working for; usually food. The subject doesn’t need to learn the value of a primary reinforcer; it has an intrinsic value.

A Conditioned, or Secondary Reinforcer: A secondary reinforcer has no intrinsic value. Its value must be learned by pairing it with something the animal already Considers reinforcing, such as food. The sound of a clicker becomes a conditioned reinforcer when paired with food. It acts as a “bridge” in time between the exact moment the animal does the behavior and when you can get the primary reinforcer to him.

IMPORTANT FIRST STEPS

PHASE ONE, MAKING THE CONNECTION

STEP ONE: Click and Treat. Simply click the clicker and deliver a treat in a series of short sessions. A minute or two of this at a time is enough for now. Do this until the horse expects a treat every time he hears the clicker. Click in a variety of places, indoors, outdoors, in the grooming area, in the arena, in his pen, and at unexpected times to make sure this connection has been made. You want to see a clear indication from the horse that when he hears the click, he expects the treat. Don’t be fooled by coincidental responses.

STEP TWO: Link the signal to a particular behavior. Touching the end of a crop or a tennis ball on the end of a stick with his muzzle will work. I like to use the tennis ball because it is unique to our training session and easy to see. Now the horse must touch the tennis ball with his muzzle in order to get you to click and receive a treat following the click. Right here, right now, you must be absolutely clear about what you want him to do. What part of your device do you want him touch and with what part of his body to do want him to touch it. He’s going to try a number of different approaches because all he really cares about is getting that treat out of your pocket and into his mouth.

So there you stand with tennis ball presented. Most horses are curious enough to eventually touch the ball. (If things are going very slowly and it seems you might turn to stone before he touches the ball, then click and treat for any inclination toward noticing the ball, or maybe for touching the stick. You can shape his behavior into touching the ball with his muzzle later, see Step Four, but at this point, since patience is a virtue, I recommend you wait it out.) Timing is critical. The click must occur the instant his muzzle touches the ball. You might do a lot of waiting with horses, much more so than with dogs.

Again, do this until you are certain the horse has made the connection. Sometimes it seems as though they have but the association really isn’t there. To make certain, have him touch the ball in variety of locations and in different positions, up, down, close in, out to the side.

Get your horse to follow the ball on the stick. This is called targeting and can be very useful. Think about some application here, might you want him to follow a target into a trailer, or through a narrow space? To do this, begin by having him touch the ball as before, then hold it a tiny bit farther away. Just far enough so he has to move to touch it. Be mindful or you will “lose” him. There is nothing to be gained by moving too far away and having him get discouraged or fail to respond. Distance will come with time. In short order you will be able to hold the ball out 30 feet away and he will come to touch it. Do this until you are absolutely certain he feels he can make you perform by clicking and treating him when he touches the ball. Your biggest clue to success here is that this is really fun for both you and your horse!

STEP THREE: Strengthen the behavior. So far you have been employing a fixed schedule of reinforcement. The horse gets a click and treat for each correct behavior. Now, in order to strengthen the behavior, you will want to switch to an intermittent schedule of reinforcement. The horse has to work harder for the same reinforcement. Ask for two correct behaviors before you click and treat, then three, then one, then three, then four, then one, etc. When you begin to make him work harder, use your best treats. The same old peppermint chunk every time becomes boring. Mix it up and have something in your bag that is really desirable and can be given for a stellar performance. Occasionally, surprise the horse with a “jackpot”, a reward that is more generous than the usual treat.

This is where you get picky and clean up the act a little bit. Thus far you’ve been happy with any touch, but there are a variety of factors in the touching process that can be perfected. You can now required perfection of one, or all of these, but you can only do one at a time. You can first require that the horse touch deliberately instead of just brushing by the ball on his way to a treat. To do this, watch closely and if he just brushes by, no click, no treat. This will puzzle him and he will begin offering variations on his behavior. As soon as he touches the ball firmly, like you want him to do, click and treat. After you establish this you might go for how quickly he moves to touch the ball. Present it and count to yourself to establish your time limit. If he touches it within your limit, click and treat. If not, remove the ball and when you present it again he should be quicker to respond.

When you add criteria, it is important to remember that you need to back off on the other requirements and focus only on the one element you are teaching. After the connection is established, you can raise the bar on the rest of the elements of the behavior to perfect it.

STEP FOUR: Now add a cue. Once you are absolutely certain your horse is going to touch that ball wherever it appears, you may add a verbal cue. I say, “Touch.” The verbal cue is a stimulus that becomes linked with the behavior and eventually causes that behavior. The verbal cue must be presented consistently just before you know the behavior is about to occur. When you do this, you must remember to back up on the difficulty level of touching the ball. You want to start adding the cue in a situation where your horse cannot fail. Go back to presenting the ball in an easy, piece-of-cake place so he will go straight for it. The behavior needs to be strongly in place before the cue is added. The cue must predict the behavior. Your goal is to have the horse look around for that ball when he hears you say, “Touch.”

SUMMARY OF STEPS

STEP ONE: Pair the Click and the Treat.
STEP TWO: Use the click to mark a particular behavior and reinforce with a treat.
STEP THREE: Strengthen the behavior.
STEP FOUR: Now add a cue.

Enjoy!

A NOTE ABOUT FOOD AS A REWARD

Many people object to hand feeding horses because they feel it encourages the horse to nip or maul them for treats. Here are some things to keep in mind if you want to clicker train your horse using food as a reward.