Brilliant! So Who Uses Clickers Already!

[KarenP]

Hi all, I'm Karen and very new to this brilliant forum - why didn't I think of looking for a group like this before!!!!

I've just been reading your posts about using your hand as a target object and I can see all points of view here.  I'm going on the next novice workshop at the end of the month and I'm really excited about it as I have no previous experience of CT at all.

I have 'Gizmo' a 6yo Cob X ?, gelding on loan, and like all, he's incredibly intelligent and has a few issues I'm hoping CT might help me clear up.  I started CT with him last week by using a 'cluck' sound with my mouth, as my clicker hasn't arrived yet! then treating with a carrot stick.  Out of naivety I did use my hand as a target, and it has worked in that he understands 'Gizmo touch' gets a sound and a yummy carrot. However, the trouble is now that wherever my right hand goes (which is the vending machine), so does his head as he now thinks my hand permenantly has food in it!!

He's not good at picking up his feet and tends to lash out forward when asked to pick up so I've been using CT to establish a calm way of picking up feet.  However, having used my hand as a target, now when I go to touch his shoulder and ask 'Gizmo lift' his nose goes with my hand and gets in the way so I can't get to his shoulder.

Does anyone have any ideas as to how I can now break him out of assuming my hand always has food in it, or a better way I can establish a connection with starting him picking up his feet calmly??

Thanks
Karen

[Numbat]

Hi Karen, and welcome! One nice thing about CT is that while it's easy to get something you didn't want, it's also pretty easy to backtrack and get rid of it again - usually, anyway! You just click what you want and never click what you don't want, and so long as you are still clicking what you do want, the horse gets busy with that instead and  - hopefully - drops the unwanted behaviour as unrewarding.

It's not really clear from your post, but it sounds as if you have actually been using the same hand as a target and to feed the horse, i.e "luring" the horse with your hand with food in? If you did want to use your hand as a target, it would be better to have your hand held a certain way that means it's being a target - out to the side with your thumb and finger up, say, or as a fist - and when the horse touched it, only then would you click and use your other hand, to get the treat out and give it to the horse.

If you'd rather drop the hand-as-target idea for a while, just don't click that anymore, and start targeting with something else instead. After a little while, your horse should stop looking for your hand. You can even start clicking him for having his head out in front of his chest where it belongs, or turned away from you, or down -anyplace where he can't simultaneously be nuzzling your hand!

As for generally looking to find food in your hand, that also will pass quite soon if you are consistent. Click, THEN take out treat, THEN offer treat with hand extended to wherever you want your horse's nose to be, i.e. not next to your body but out in his own space. If it all gets too grabby, step away and take a little break.

[Numbat]

I forgot to say, it sounds as if Gizmo is still learning how it all works. I'd suggest just working on targeting from behind a barrier a little longer, until you've got him really clear on how it works and he's not busy looking for treats any more.

[KarenP]

Thank you Numbat, I'll give it a go.  I keep the rewards in a bum bag on my waist so I think I'll move it round my back and try giving the rewards with the opposite hand I've point with and see how that goes.  I've ordered a copy of Alexandra Kurland's book on clicker training which is coming this week so I think I'll hold off until I've had a read through and it's only a couple of weeks til Becky's clinic so again I think I'll wait until then so as not to confuse him too much - easily done!!

Thanks
Karen
 

[Dana]

Another clicker person here.     Clicker training has worked wonders with my Arab gelding.  I have used it to work on issues such as not standing when mounting, picking up feet, trailer loading, .... the list goes on.   And, we learn some tricks, too.  I recommend Alexandra Kurland's book.

Here's my boy "performing" his favorite trick.  He learned this in about five minutes with clicker training.

[Numbat]

Good for showing off those feet    

[Camacoona]

Cant believe I havn't really read this thread before.

I too love CT :lol:

I started it about 8 months ago with my cob Ketchup.  I had wanted to teach her to piaffe in hand, and so bought the M Hinirch book, but couldnt for the life of me get ketchup to do anything other than barge!!

My friend bought me a clicker set and lent me her A Kurland book and so we started.  Ketchup now paiffes expressively, has started Spanish Walk, and a bit of passage all with the clicker.  I terms of ridden success, the clicker has really collected her canter up, and I can now really feel her hindleg taking the weight in the canter.

All in all I would not be without my clicker, and am hoping to start work using the clicker with my homebred 6 year old this winter.

[nona]

Have been meaning to post on this thread for weeks but the 'enemy' (time) has been making it difficult.  I wanted to say first of all how delighted I am that this section of the Web Site has been added.

I started clicker training with my cob Osian about 3 years ago after reading an article by Shawna Karrasch (spelling?) in Horse and Rider.  As an 'oldie', relatively new to horse ownership one of the many things I liked about it was I could do it without years of equine experience.   I find it helps to keep me calm and patient!

Osian loves it.  We have used it for standing still whilst being mounted.  Backing away from the stable door when I want to go in.  Halting whilst being ridden.  Has helped a lot with loading though I have just started to go back to the basics as he is loth to load away from home.  In the stable on winter nights we play a bit with a target, and he will now be sent to it and stand there until 'released'.

My partner's horse Sacho was much more cynical about the whole thing at first.  He was afraid of the clicker and of the target.  But slowly he has become an enthusiast.  A major achievement has been with hose pipes.  When we first bought him 6 years ago and he was still in livery, he would not go within 15' of the hose pipe.  If there was water coming out if it then it was more like 30'.  Now we can wash his legs and this summer we started to be able to wash him with a hose.    Surprise, surprise he loves it!

I have also clicker trained both my young Weimaraners and it has been a great success.  I feel it has contriuted to them being quite calm dogs, not normally a quality attributed to this breed.

Am hoping to get to one of the clicker courses with Becky next year as I am keen to develop the clicker with my riding.

All in all one of the most effective tools/training approaches/philosophies I have come accross.   So big fan!

Nona

[christuris]

Here's my boy "performing" his favorite trick. He learned this in about five minutes with clicker training.

I love this photo!  I think that platform work is excellent for horses -- Allen Pogue here in the States (Texas) taught my one week old Lusitano all kinds of things, including the platform, which he still has and uses daily (at over two years old!).  Comet, my 8 year old Saddlebred makes a beeline for his after every ride -- it does wonders for their backs.  When my farrier first worked on my newly acquired weanling at 4 and a half months, he told me he was the best balanced foal he had ever had the pleasure of working under!  And he attributed that to the platform work.

But back to clicker:  I've been using it ever since I had the good fortune to attend a clinic with Alexandra Kurland here in Colorado back in 2001, I think it was, with Comet and GR.  Comet was a fruitcake, had no attention span and was a total bully.  Clicker set him straight!

Achievements, in addition to all the regular training ideas...he was able to pick up my glove off the arena floor when I dropped it on a freezing day and I was dressed in a VERY tight snowsuit and didn't believe I could get back on if I got off.  I'd never asked him from the saddle before and blow me if he didn't pick it up and turn around and "hand" it to me!

He does a beautiful "pose" a la Alexandra Kurland and rocks back on his haunches -- a great exercise.  

He'll also back away from me when I stand in front of him and ask with body language, thus allowing me to get into the stall without him crowding me.

When he first went under saddle, he used to be terribly spooky around the property.  One day he made me rather anxious and I clicked (I keep telling myself I clicked because I was rewarding him for not running away!) and guess what?  He stopped dead in his tracks!  I've used it on other occasions when he was getting a little antsy or a bit too forward under saddle, sort of an emergency stop.  Since I used it that way so seldom, he never got the idea he was being rewarded for being antsy, so it never got to be a problem...

Xino, my Lusitano, had an exercise ball in his corral over the first winter I had him, and he never showed any interest in it, and in fact seemed a little afraid of it.  When the ice melted I got the brainwave of pushing it around and clicking and rewarding him the more interest he showed in it.  Soon he was barrelling around with it all over the place, and I have lots of fun photos of him on my smugmug site (I think I used one as my avatar here).

He's been trained with clicker all along, including during his training.  His round pen work is rewarded with clicker when he does as I ask, like lowering his head, or whatever, and he'll stop dead in the middle of an energetic trot, getting some very nice transitions at the same time.

These are just a few of the many ways I use clicker.  If you can think it, you can click it!

Alexandra's videos are very helpful if you can get hold of them.  I'm getting her newest book and the fifth video any day now, and I find them all invaluable-- I can't recommend them more highly.  Has she ever been back to the UK, Heather?

Christina
Indian Hills, Colorado
http://alphabetranch.smugmug.com/gallery/315229/3/14936763

[Vrijheidsdressuur]

Hi all,

I'm new to this forum as an active member, but I've been reading along for quite some time as I don't ride that often as my current horses are... shetland ponies. :DBut then I saw this clickertraining forum and thought that now's a good time to join!

Blacky and Sjors are my vitcims, and they have learned approximately everything with the clicker, Blacky all his tricks, driving and long reining, and Sjors everything from basic handling, lungeing, tricktraining and long reining to single and two-pony driving. Tricks we've mastered with the clicker are for example retrieving, Spanish walk (we're working on the Spanish trot), the bow, standing on the pedestal, kneel, prayer, sit, lie down, lie dead etc. Currently we're working on the Spanish trot and circus dressage in which I lunge the ponies simultanously. Sometime the latter still proves to be quite a struggle, but today Blacky and Sjors behaved like angels and decided that they coul walk and trot as a pair next to each other, behind each other, weave and go in opposite directions, so I can say that the clicker has made my day again. As usual.

I think clickertraining  is a very inspiring method as you learn to look at your horse in a different way as you're forced to not see the things that he doesn't do right, but the tiny things he does good. Because they're the ones you have to click and treat.