Contemporary Horsemanship Podcast

Clicker training requires a marker signal. This marker is usually a click from a handheld clicker or a tongue click. The marker signal tells the horse that what he is doing right now is what you wanted and he will be getting reinforcement soon. The signal creates a bridge between the behavior and reinforcement. It can be very hard to feed at the exact right moment when the behavior you want is happening and that is where the marker signal comes into play. I’ll talk about how to pick out a good marker signal for your horse and how to start clicker training with a fearful horse.

My mustang Atlas recently injured his eye which required me to put two different medications in it four times a day. I used clicker training to get him to cooperate during this process. I discuss how I did this with him at liberty and what I learned from this experience.

Training horses with positive reinforcement is different than training using traditional training methods. There is a lot more attention to detail, planning, and arranging the environment. These are all little but important things that will make you more successful in your training. I’ll talk about these small things that I didn’t realize were so important when I started training with R+.

I see people releasing a pressure cue before they are getting the behavior they want happen often and in many different forms. For example, picking up on the reins and asking the horse to stop. The horse ignores the cue and keeps going. The rider thinks he’s done something wrong or let’s go of the pressure on the reins for another reason. The horse has inadvertently been given a release of pressure which tells him that this was the correct answer. The horse then continues to ignore rein cues to stop. This miscommunication can grow quickly in to a frustrated and confused horse and rider. I explain why this happens, how to spot a miscommunication and what to do to make your cues more clear to the horse.

I wanted to do a revised version of my old episode on leading. I am always learning and adding new stuff to my training program and getting rid of old techniques or beliefs as I grow. I have definitely found what I consider to be the best way to teach a horse to lead and that is with a target. I’ll also talk about how to fix some common leading issues and why they happen in the first place.

There can be a lot of confusion about cues for both people and horses. Sometimes horses don’t respond to the cues we give them, sometimes horses do a behavior without a cue, and when the context changes (when you are in a new or different environment) the behavior can seem to fall apart. I’m covering what a cue is, how to train one, issues with cueing and what stimulus control is.

We can easily get wrapped up in why we want to show our horses. We can often forget how horse shows and other events feel like to the horse. Horse shows are filled with scary things that can cause a horse to be very stressed. I’ll talk about some important things that we should take into consideration and prep for while taking a horse somewhere new.

Shaping is done when using both negative and positive reinforcement. It is more often associated with positive reinforcement though. Shaping is when you reinforce small steps toward the behavior that you ultimately want. By reinforcing behavior that is close to what you want, the horse keeps trying and will be less frustrated.

I want people to have realistic expectations with horses. Everyone loses when a horse is promised to be bombproof and will never spook. I’m going to talk about why I think this is so dangerous and give some tips on what to really expect from a horse, bombproof or not.

We all get burn out and just need a break sometimes. There is a culture in the horse world that you must work with or ride your horse all the time, no matter how you or your horse feels. But instead of working just to get something done, there are lots of other things we can do while still getting a mental and physical break from working with horses. I’ll cover some of those options and why they are beneficial.