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hen you start clicker training, take your time. Don’t be in a rush, enjoy the journey.

There’s so much to learn AND to enjoy and if you rush, you’ll miss that enjoyment and that learning.

If you rush, you’ll also skip the opportunity to really refine what you are doing. R+ training is an art, as well as a science, don’t let anyone tell you it isn’t.

It isn’t manipulative or coercive, it’s organic and beautiful, if you allow it to be and allow yourself to see and feel it.

It isn’t slow and it doesn’t take longer. Behaviour can change in less than a second. If you rush you will miss it and miss the opportunity to recognise and change it, if you want.

R+ training is also an opportunity for personal growth, to become a better person, as well as a better trainer. With R+ training comes empathy and compassion, if you allow it.

You can also develop your focus, observation and learn how to be in the moment. That’s probably one of the most important lessons that I see a lot of people need to learn, how to be in the moment. You cannot connect with another, if you are stuck in your head, in your shopping lists, arguments with your partner, ‘to do’ lists, in your anxiety, in your bias, in your pressure to perform.

Release yourself from it for a short period of time, give yourself that grace and your animal friend as well. Give them that respect, that courtesy and watch them respond in like. They will open up to you, if you are open to them.

If you are taking a lot of video of your training, reduce or stop that for a while. Don’t put that extra pressure on yourself, that extra pair of eyes on the delicate silken thread of communication and trust you are trying to build between you and your animal friend. Let it be just between yourselves for a while, just the two of you, together as one, in heart and mind, just for a brief moment in time.

Try to avoid perfectionism. As in art, there is no perfect, there is only expression. We say about our animal friends, behaviour is never “wrong” or “right”, it just is, give yourself that same forgiveness and compassion as well. You risk never starting or continuing, if you want it to be perfect. Perhaps aim for fun instead. It can be fun to be goofy, to drop things or trip, to mis-time things and to make mistakes, it’s all fun for both of you, if there’s food and no pressure.

Starting R+ training slowly and mindfully and being more compassionate to yourself and your learner, is more rewarding and pleasurable than rushing or trying to be perfect and all knowing.

I find that when I train a new equine, I focus on feeding *out there* and work on delivering the food with my out-stretched arm, away from my body and my food pouch. This is to prevent a horse trying to sniff, nudge or forage on you or try to help themselves to the food. This is part of how we teach a horse to behave in a way we like, how to behave “politely” around food.

If we are having problems with a horse that’s too close, is pushing us, nudging us, sniffing us or is riveting on what our hand is doing, ‘feeding for position’, ie. feeding ‘out there’ is how we combat this.

I also love it when I train a ‘naïve’ horse and I can see how swiftly behaviour changes and they follow the flow and placement (position) of reinforcement (food). They see a glowing red dot, which is where the food is given most often and they put their head where they ‘see’ it, in order to get the food. Even a horse who is not clicker savvy, can learn to change their behaviour in order to continue to receive positive reinforcement. It’s so exciting and I love it and I have to admit that as much as I love my horses and donkeys, there is something super exciting about communicating via R+ with an equine for the first time.

There is also the phenomena that learning and behaviour doesn’t end after the click with clicker savvy equines. Animals are still learning and behaving after the click. They’re continually learning and behaving!

Time doesn’t stand still between the click and the food.

That means the food acquisition stage not only reinforces the marked behaviour, but it reinforces all behaviours after the click, up to and including the actual acquisition of the reinforcer (food). That might mean that after the click, which also functions as a cue, not just a marker signal, the horse learns where to be, to get the food. This could also mean the horse learns to perform a behaviour in order to acquire the food. They may have to do something, walk somewhere, perform another behaviour, or just keep their head and neck straight, facing forward, not curved towards us, in our space.

Behaviour never stops.

I love this photo of Mercedes and me. It was the first clicker training session we filmed. I can see Mercedes’ body language, she was not sure what was going on and I was naively confident it would all go well.

It was a bright new clicker training world back then.

I’m very lightly touching her shoulder to reassure her, but we are training with food and she’s pretty keen to figure out how to get the food, so it seems like she doesn’t mind, but I don’t know and I don’t assume. Even back then I was very generous with the food and she always enjoyed her clicker training.

People make jokes about mares all the time, but I don’t ‘mare shame’. I don’t, as I can empathise with her, because we have both had similar experiences. Our bodily autonomy disrespected, our boundaries crossed and ignored, our choice and our power taken away, our personal dignity trampled. We’ve been touched in ways we didn’t like, made to do things we didn’t want to do and our protests were ignored, sometimes even punished, we often had no agency at all.

Worse, people have shamed us for protesting, for expressing when we didn’t want something done to us, we didn’t want to do something, we didn’t want to be touched, when we felt violated, when we *were* violated.

Because of this, I am very much triggered and my skin crawls when I hear people talking about “consent training”. I don’t want to be trained to give consent and I can’t imagine Mercedes does either. Basically, that is the definition of grooming and I don’t want to do that to anyone. By trying to “train consent”, it feels to me that people are actually promoting the idea that consent is something we teach or make happen and that’s not consent imo.

If I need an injection that will improve my health or prevent illness, I can look at the pros and cons and make a decision, Mercedes can’t. That means I don’t train her “consent”, because no way is she going to agree to having a needle. But I can train and condition in a way that it is the most positive and least aversive experience possible for her. I can watch her body language extremely closely and adjust my training and conditioning appropriately to make it the best experience possible for her. I don’t need her “permission” to do things to her that benefit her wellbeing, as a good caretaker and trainer. Things that involve her health are not optional, but I do prepare her in a way that it’s as pleasant and pleasurable as it can be and it can be surprisingly pleasurable for her sometimes.

We can clicker train behaviours and we can condition emotional responses. These are not conscious decisions they make, based on an animal’s personal beliefs, these are ways they interact with their environment, an environment *we* create.

I like to use my understanding of learning and behaviour, to describe what I do.

I avoid making up stories or constructs about the training and conditioning I do.

I avoid trying to mind read or assume horses are like people in how we make decisions.

Negative Reinforcement (pressure and release) training works, no one is denying that.

But we have to be honest with ourselves and put ourselves in our horse’s hooves.

If someone squeezes our arm to make us move out of their way and if that squeezing (and proximity) causes us to move and they promptly stop squeezing AND we are likely to move away in the future, that’s Negative Reinforcement. Most importantly, it’s not like putting a coat on when it’s cold or drinking water when we are thirsty or choosing to go dancing with a loved one. This is someone else making a decision for us, about where we should be standing, by using some kind of physical, emotional and mental “pressure” (unease/discomfort).

Imagine that same person does all kinds of things like that to you, after a while they don’t even have to touch you, they simply reach for you and you move away. You really don’t want them squeezing your arm every time. You might also get a little twitchy and hyper vigilant when they are around. This is so you are ready to do something, before they have to touch you or pressure you or make you do something you probably didn’t want to do or like to do. We call that avoidance behaviour.

Now imagine the arm squeezer (plus various other methods of discomfort to make you do various other behaviours) keeps you in an enclosed area, away from family and friends, dictates when you leave the paddock, when and what you eat, who your friends are if you have any, what else? When you need medical treatment, if they are even aware you need it, because they think posters about equine stress and pain are just dumb. Their horse does it all the time, so it can’t be stress or fear or pain! Or worse, they tell everyone it’s good and great when they get a calming, appeasement or stress behaviour, because the horse is “communicating” and then they promptly ignore what the horse is saying and halter them and get on with their pressure and relief training!

Imagine a world where we said to children, we’re not going to force your beautiful pony with kicks and crops like those other people!! We are going to train them in a way that you BOTH have fun, by using Positive Reinforcement training, with clicker training, by training with food and scratches!

Imagine if we said to children, you’ll have more fun on the ground and get to know your pony better that way and build a friendship. You’ll build a real relationship, where your pony will truly love you back.

Imagine if we taught them how to have fun and laugh with their pony and the pony was laughing and having fun too.

Imagine children who learnt empathy for all creatures, not just how to use them and make them do what the child and adults want.

Imagine a generation of children growing into adults, who could ‘talk’ to their animals, by understanding how all creatures learn and that they feel emotions too.

Imagine children who didn’t have to cry in frustration or in pain, from falling off or being bucked off unwilling or scared ponies. Imagine a miserable and scared child, not having fun and not wanting to do things with their pony and being told to push through the fear and pain?

Instead, imagine children learning via Positive Reinforcement (clicker) training, how to build important life skills as humans, such as empathy, observation, problem solving, analysis, hand eye coordination, thinking on their feet, emotional regulation, developing reciprocal relationships and positive interactions with others.

With all that learning, we could set them up for life with amazing skills that build their confidence, self esteem and physical and mental wellbeing and their emotional maturity and regulation. As well as learning how to interact with others in a positive way, where both parties can ‘win’.

Imagine us being the adult heaping Positive Reinforcement on our children! Saying “well done!”, “you were awesome!”, “you worked that out so well!”, “you’ve made your pony so happy and well trained!” and “I’m so proud of you!”. WE adults enjoy the benefits as well, because it makes us feel good too!

Where do we get so lost, that we insist children hit and kick their pony for their own pleasure, who then grow into adults who do the same?

Worse, the child turned adult, who mostly doesn’t enjoy what they are doing with their horse, feels mounting pressures from the equestrian world and discontent with what they’re doing. Therefore they force the horse more and more, who feels the same.

When we clicker train, there’s lots of different ways that we can convert what we are doing on the ground, to ridden behaviours. I thought this video was a great example of true liberty work. No whips directing her shoulders or body, no need for extensions of my arm, no body pressure and no “do it or else!” cues. We’re having a conversation and we’re both a bit rusty at the start.

In the old days before clicker training, I used to do a lot of riding with Mercedes where she moved around based on where I was looking and where I turned my head, shoulders, hips and that influenced my weight distribution in the saddle, rather than using pressure rein cues. If I looked around and moved my shoulders, my hips followed and there was a subtle shift in the saddle from my seat and legs. Mercedes would turn and circle on these cues.

In this video, you can see the same cues on the ground, all trained with Positive Reinforcement and without any aversive pressure, whips or other tools. I am usually much more subtle than this, but we haven’t done it in a while. I’m ensuring she is successful and the most important fact is that these are appetitive cues. The consequence of her performing the behaviour means food is coming and if she doesn’t get it quite right, food still comes and I work on refining my cue.

When we transfer behaviours and their cues from the ground to under saddle, there’s always a bit of a transition stage, where we might need to use a target stick or exaggerate rein cues a little, or have a helper on the ground, until the horse ‘gets it’. But from there, we can refine the cues to whatever we want and for Mercedes, she remembers the feel of my head, shoulders and hips moving to indicate the direction and I can transfer big obvious cues for things like turns, such as an opening rein and transfer the cues back to what my body is doing. But this time they’re appetitive cues, because she gets food when she does the behaviour after the cue.

Watch the video and imagine me doing what I’m doing on the ground next to Mercedes, and lift me up and put me on her back and that’s what I do under saddle and Mercedes does the same turns and flexing and bending. She’s super smart and because of all the clicker training we’ve done, the old body cues no longer cause her any worry. Much like the mounting block video I took, all the old unhappiness from past training has disappeared and been replaced by all the enjoyment of the clicker training with food.

There’s also a lovely synchronicity in how our heads, shoulders, hips and feet match up.

Something else to notice as well and why taking video is so important. I saw things in my video that I kind of noticed at the time, but seeing Mercedes behaviour now, I am continually blown away with how clever and subtle she is!

Let me critique myself!

I can see some poor feeding technique, where I’m feeding out of balance (with the wrong hand), feeding too close to my body and there’s a few misfires because we simply haven’t done a lot of this type of training lately. I blame my back problems on poor feeding technique and the rest is simply lack of practice and doing lots of other training that’s been very different to what we are doing here. Oh, and it started raining!

What I like in this video, is that at one point early on, I noticed Mercedes wasn’t standing very straight and I glance at her feet. It was like she read my mind, although I know it was that mere glance I gave her feet, that prompted her to step across and straighten up slightly. It’s something we’ve worked on in the past and it was very cool that she pulled that out of her repertoire with very little thought or prompting on my part.

Then another time when I switched sides, I realised there was some latency, she was slow to respond and not sure what to do. We got stuck at one point and if we get stuck, I’ll give her a handful of food to keep her feeling successful and to prevent frustration and see if she can figure it out. What happened was she offered a small movement of the head and even though I didn’t click for it, I fed her and that was enough to tell her she was on the right track and she took a step to her left and we got moving again. I’m sure I only fed her to keep her ‘in the game’, but watching the video, it seems like I confirmed her idea that we were supposed to be turning left. It’s always good to practice equally on both sides and I’d say I’d been favouring one side too much, based on her response.

To recap, horses are all about their environment and where their body is in their environment. That means that they will see and feel subtle cues. Simply our shoulders turning and our body following either next to them or on top of them is going to elicit a response. We can use our body to communicate and it doesn’t have to be a threat, if the consequence of behaving is food, pure and simple.