Why Clicker Training for a Horse?

Here Lexi is targeting a small buoy.
I taught her not to chew wood while being groomed.

When I first heard of using clicker training for horses, I couldn't imagine it. I've been trained traditionally, in Ireland. The natural aids: seat, hands, legs, voice. The artificial aids: whips, spurs, crops, bits/hackamores (if these all sound cruel to non-horse people, they are not. Whips are not used for whipping -- or shouldn't be -- but for gently directing the horse. A light touch of a dressage whip can ask the horse to move into piaffe or another advanced move and help keep the cadence. It's a touch, barely a tickle, not an attack or an abuse. Ditto with spurs and the other artificial aids).

When I started riding in the U.S., I learned about "natural" horsemanship, a way of working with horses that allegedly taps into their roles as fight-flight animals and our tendency to approach as predators. Simply put, when we apply pressure, horses should move away from it. When they move, we release instantly. The release helps horses realize they're on the right track. The idea is to apply feel, timing and balance to help the horse gently recognize you as a leader (an alpha mare, if you will), and gain the horse's respect and obedience. The old masters of this way of riding were incredible horsemen. Their horses were light and responsive and calm. Horse and human together looked like that mythical beast, the centaur -- half-horse, half-human, fully connected.

When I first got my own horses over here some 25 years ago, I read the books by Tom and Bill Dorrance, watched Ray Hunt in action at a clinic in a local town, and audited two or three Buck Brannaman clinics. I also cliniced with a few local "natural horsemanship" trainers and watched others put on shows at the local fair and other equine events. I realized early on there was a wide variety of ability amongst those who called themselves natural horsemanship trainers, and often people who didn't take on the label were equally effective "horse whisperers." Ultimately, I came to the conclusion that horsemanship was horsemanship, regardless of the equipment and the labels. The masters of "natural horsemanship," Tom and Bill Dorrance, Ray Hunt and Buck Brannaman, had simply found a different way to communicate with horses than the classical dressage riders like Nuno Oliveira. Ultimately the goal and end result was the same: Horses in harmony with their riders; soft, flexible, connected.

When I came back into horses after a decade away, I had lost all sense of confidence in what I knew or how to connect with horses. It's not just that my muscles were unused to the feel of a horse under me. It's that my sense of how to "talk" to horses was fragmented. I learned French as a child, living in Switzerland, but we moved to Ireland when I was eight. A few years later, I could recognize words here and there, and sometimes I could piece together a fragment of meaning, but the sense of fluency and ease I was used to was gone. Same with horses. I knew what the bridle was and knew in theory how to put it on, but everything felt awkward. I had to think through the steps, re-organize myself when the noseband got in the way and ended up in the horse's mouth along with the bit. It's been almost four years since I started riding again, and I still don't have the sense of confidence and ease that used to make riding so easy.

Still, some 40+ horses later -- some ridden only once and some ridden multiple times -- I have a better sense than I did when I first mounted Blitz and began to feel my way back to the language of horses. And now I have a new kind of dialect to add to the traditional language of horse training and the "natural horsemanship" words I learned a couple of decades ago -- clicker training.

I became intrigued with it when I went to a movie with a dog-training friend and she mentioned that she had moved to clicker training for her dogs instead of the traditional way that she had used for so many years. She loved it, and she said her dogs loved it and were always eager to "play" when she began training. More than a year later, I signed up for a few clicker training lessons with my friend's clicker trainer, Susan Signor of Dog Dilemma. My dog Muffin loved the lessons, and I loved playing with her at home. Right about that time, Lexi came into my life. When Susan heard I had a horse, she told me she would help me use clicker training to train my horse, if I was interested.

I was. But I was also dumbfounded. I couldn't imagine how to incorporate clicker training into horse training. It seemed anathema to everything I knew about horses. There is a well-established controversy in the horse world about feeding treats to horses. Some people do. Some don't. Some are adamantly opposed. I always have, although in small doses, and have never had a problem with horses learning to bite as a result, but I know others have concerns that horses can become aggressive with treats. The idea of using food rewards to train riding didn't fit with what I knew and went against what many wise horse people counseled. I also had no idea how it would work logistically from the saddle. But still, I was open, especially given how joyful my dog and my daughter's dog were when we did our clicker training sessions.

And so I embarked on our clicker/target training adventure. I don't want to drag out this essay, so I'll just say that incorporating clicker training does not mean throwing out the traditional "yield to pressure" training that helps horses learn. Once I figured that out, clicker training became conceivable in ways it hadn't been before. I still use most, or all, of the methods of training I did before, but have added the clicker and the target to help speed up Lexi's understanding of what I'm looking for. It's also just fun, because it teaches her to start making choices about behavior, thinking for herself, playing. And I'm not very good at play, for various reasons, so it's helping me, too. But more about that later.

In gratitude for new ways.