Whispering Horse - Clicker Training Equines

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Clicker Training Horses & Donkeys
Positive Reinforcement Training
Specialising in Systematic Desensitisation, Counter Conditioning & Cooperative Care
"Pressure" FREE Training
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When we start out with Positive Reinforcement (clicker) training, we need to be generous. It is a super common issue fo...
29/06/2025

When we start out with Positive Reinforcement (clicker) training, we need to be generous. It is a super common issue for beginner clicker trainers, and we need to be giving more food before sessions, during sessions in the breaks and most especially when we are doing Desensitisation and Counter Conditioning. I know it can feel weird at the start and people are constantly worrying about how much food they are using, but it makes all the difference to the success of your training and the enjoyment for you and your equine.

Obviously we are not using "treats", cookies, candy, apples, carrots or cheerios! We are using low sugar & starch (10% combined or lower if you can get it) species appropriate fibre. Dampen it if it's too dry, or break it up if it's too big, but don't do it in front of them and make them wait while you do it. Be organised and be prepared before you get in front of your horse.

What I also want to encourage is to give food when you have to do something and make the horse wait. I also want you to give distraction food when you are setting up. Drop food in a bucket or on a mat when you need to go get something or set the other horses up somewhere. Drop food, don't just walk away or worse, make them wait.

Think of every handful as saying "thank you" for being here, for waiting, for following, for my mistakes, for being a beautiful horse, donkey or mule. Thanks, because I'm learning too.

What we need to remember is that generosity at the start is how we can build solid R+ trained behaviours AND happy frustration free horses. Only then can we start to build duration and join behaviours together. Then we can start to reduce the amount of food we use, as the positive reinforcement history AND positive emotional associations made, carries the horse along.

Remember, it’s only horse food and they are trickle feeders, it’s appropriate for them, it’s not gold plated or anything!

If you start out with very little food for the horse, you have nowhere to go except even less food. You'll get less behaviour, you'll get less behavioural momentum, less enthusiasm, they’ll start getting annoyed or walk away and you probably won't enjoy any Discretionary Effort, which is when they offer behaviour above and beyond what we expected.

For practical advice, basically I have a lot of buckets, bowls and mats lying around! I also use small squares of fake turf as well. The great thing about mats and turf is that they're like little snuffle mats for horses! They get to forage around, it's relaxing and a natural behaviour AND it gives you time to do what you have to do while keeping your horse happy and frustration free.

Using this approach will create a more relaxed horse over time and one who understands that if you drop some food somewhere, they’ll go to it and they’ll also forage around to see if there’s any more and they’re not rushing or pressuring you. It makes you both more relaxed and enjoy the training more.

For some equines, you may have to remove these items when you are finished. They may play or chew on them, which may not be safe. Or if you have not put behaviours on Cue and Stimulus Control, there could be some frustration when they offer behaviours and interact with these objects and you are no longer there to reinforce (feed) them. This is also why I don't leave cones lying around and I tend not to use stationary targets such as target sticks in cones or targets hung from fences or gates. A horse continually touching and not getting reinforced, gets frustrated and can experience an Extinction burst and the behaviour can potentially go into Extinction. It's just not fun for the horse.

I’ve created a couple of visuals to illustrate what I’m talking about when clicker training. ☺️

When horses learn to lead traditionally, they actually learn how to follow.Sometimes as clicker trainers, we carry acros...
28/06/2025

When horses learn to lead traditionally, they actually learn how to follow.

Sometimes as clicker trainers, we carry across muscle memory and bad habits and I feel it’s good to always question what we are doing and why and if we were the horse, how would we feel about it?

If instead of walking first and they follow, we ask our horse a question, by setting up the environment and context in a way that our question seems reasonably obvious, we can capture movement and eventually leading type behaviour. Fence lines, barriers and reverse round pens are fantastic for shaping and capturing movement and then eventually putting it on cue.

Perhaps at first they may have a guess and move in some way, but this gives us the opportunity to click and reinforce their willingly offered behaviour and start to shape it in the direction we want. What can then develop is communication about what they can offer and what we like and will reinforce. Soon there is a flow of communication running back and forth between horse and human, it becomes a true dialogue.

Positive Reinforcement training has a basic principle, that we get behaviour without any pressure (aversive stimuli). We then add something (food), in order to reinforce behaviour, in the hopes it is repeated and strengthened in the future.

How we train things is important. How we shape or capture behaviour, our cues, but also, how we act and behave around our horses in general as well.

All the animals I train are my training partners and I treat them the way I wish to be treated. This means that I train in a way that everyone feels comfortable and safe and I treat them with the same respect I wish for myself.

For example, when I teach leading, I don't walk off and expect my horse or donkey to follow and click and feed them for doing so. That's annoying and kind of disrespectful and not really training/shaping, it's more like luring.

Luring is ok to kick start behaviour and then get on cue. But we really want to fade it out quickly and not make it part of the final behaviour.

That means that when I'm leading, I have trained my equines to walk and have it on a cue I can give them. When I want to walk with them, I cue the behaviour, they walk and I match up with their footsteps so we are walking companionably together. I'm not constantly walking absently ahead while they follow (potentially grumpily).

It's similar to when I walk with my partner. I don't take kindly to staring at his back, when we are supposed to be walking somewhere together. I think that applies to my horses and donkeys as well.

I put together this video for a Karen Pryor Academy challenge, but I think it perfectly illustrates what I'm talking about. My animals always either respond to a cue or offer to walk based on the context, environment or prior reinforcement history, and I gladly match up my steps.

It doesn't make my equines the boss, or too assertive or in control. It means I empower them to make a choice and they accept the challenge and willingly offer behaviour. They are not chasing food and looking at my back. They are offering behaviour in full understanding of the consequences of their behaviour. We are a team.

Think about it for a minute, what’s more fun, chasing the human/food or getting a R+ trained cue and walking together as one?

You can watch the video here:

https://youtu.be/SEytJaw8eW4?si=d80Qk9_uCNtJYhPW

We love to touch horses, stroke their face, pat their neck, touch them all over. We have hands, isn’t that what they’re...
28/06/2025

We love to touch horses, stroke their face, pat their neck, touch them all over.

We have hands, isn’t that what they’re for?!

But how do our animals feel about it?

Do we care?

As usual, Eileen Anderson has written a brilliant blog discussing why dogs and of course horses too, may not and often don't want to be petted and touched.

Also remember that we can change how they feel about it, for things like husbandry, medical care, vet visits, etc. Sometimes they have to be touched and held, but we can still make it a positive experience, via training.

She also covers the "consent test" for dogs and what to look for as far as behaviour and body language.

Pretty much nearly everything can equally be applied to equines. They have surprisingly similar body language and any animal that is looking away, flinching or leaning away from our hand or us, is really trying to tell us something!

There's also links in her blogs to further reading and videos, if you find this really interesting and again, most of it applies to equines as well as a lot of other species, including humans. We all have personal space bubbles and this is something we should be mindful of with our horses.

I hope you enjoy the blog and that it gives you ideas of what to look for and what to do, if you're not sure about petting and touching.

Eileen's blog here:-

https://eileenanddogs.com/blog/2012/08/29/does-your-dog-really-want-to-be-petted/

Are errors really necessary for learning to occur?Who has heard the expression “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try ...
28/06/2025

Are errors really necessary for learning to occur?

Who has heard the expression “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again”?

This is described as trial and error learning - this is how Negative Reinforcement works. If reinforcement is low enough (there is not enough “releases” or they are poorly timed) and very little prompts or arranging of the environment occurs to give the horse clues, it can be a very unpleasant learning experience.

Typically horse people like to hold out for bigger or better behaviour or because they think it’s good for them to “figure it out”, which causes frustration and potentially tips into Punishment for the horse.

“ Unfortunately, trial and error approaches typically result in low rates of reinforcement that generate unwanted fallout. Learners practice errors making correct responding less likely, and they become frustrated, setting the occasion for aggressive behavior and giving up. This fallout led researchers and practitioners to ask, are errors really necessary for learning to occur? Errorless learning is a term used to describe a teaching approach that limits incorrect responses through careful arrangement of the teaching conditions. “
(Susan Friedman Ph.D.)

You can read the full paper here:-

https://www.behaviorworks.org/files/articles/Errorless%20Learning.pdf?fbclid=IwAR1hHlvQL0fhQV_gs8Qsca24zORm_aG86PqbAxou4A9zDwkamSk0A0dlDiM

You say training with food makes horses rude and pushy????? 🤔
27/06/2025

You say training with food makes horses rude and pushy????? 🤔

27/06/2025

I was immensely saddened to hear about Mikayla.

I was also disappointed to hear Victoria herself has been through this.

I too have experienced cyber bullying and many hateful comments, messages and emails.

Don’t think it’s just a small group of haters. I have had lots of untrue gossip circulated about me on social media in the “R+ community”, including hate from peers and colleagues as Victoria has also experienced.

Before you click send, think for a moment about the person you are talking about, or sending it to at the other end.

Think about why we do what we do, to help animals!

That makes us super sensitive and empathetic and even more susceptible to unkindness.

RIP Mikayla 💔

Are you familiar with the term Negative Reinforcement (R-) also known as "pressure and release" training.Is it “good” or...
27/06/2025

Are you familiar with the term Negative Reinforcement (R-) also known as "pressure and release" training.

Is it “good” or “bad”? The terms "negative" and "positive" can be misleading, or can they?

The animal decides what's unpleasant or even scary, not us, and their behaviour tells us.

If you tell yourself you are using R- “gently” or “lightly” or “non-escalating” because it seems that way, that’s because your horse is smart and has figured out the predictors and aversive cues and acts to *avoid* the aversive onset. But they had to feel that discomfort at least once, if not more, to learn the predictors and aversive cues.

There’s also an emotion behind those behaviours and it’s not a good one AND it becomes associated with the person who caused it. We call that “Pavlov on our shoulder”.

It's not rewarding to feel relief, to feel "phew! glad that's gone away now!" It doesn't feel good and they work to avoid it, not gain it.







Red flags in your horse training. The “look away” or “showing neck”.That’s an equine that’s stressed and wants you to ba...
27/06/2025

Red flags in your horse training.

The “look away” or “showing neck”.

That’s an equine that’s stressed and wants you to back off.

Note it’s in combination with the dry lick and chew in the photo, another response to stress or fear.

The tide is very slowly starting to turn as people learn more about what is an appropriate lifestyle for the equine. I'...
26/06/2025

The tide is very slowly starting to turn as people learn more about what is an appropriate lifestyle for the equine. I'm trying to spread the word about the Five Domains and enrichment ideas are becoming more mainstream.

The equestrian world is slow to change, but it is changing.

When we think about it, if we went to the zoo and saw elephants in a small sand pit, circling a tree stump in the middle, I think most people would not find that acceptable anymore. Yet we still do it to horses and we get away with it, because there's no regulatory bodies, no ethics committees and often little public scrutiny or pressure to change. I saw an article the other day about making stable sizes in competition venues large enough for horses to sleep in, they weren’t before??!!!

There's an odd ethos in the equestrian world to "mind your own business", but what happens is that the equine is the victim in all this, in order to preserve a human's feelings.

This is an interesting and detailed read about equine enrichment.

"The horse’s internal need to express appetitive behaviour and consummatory foraging behaviour is evident. Providing the horse with sufficient foraging opportunities and enrichment should not be underestimated, as the consequences of lack of foraging opportunity can include frustration, health complications such as gastric ulceration, and the development of stereotypical behaviour, all of which can ultimately compromise welfare."

(Louise Nicholls)

Click the link to read the full article here:

https://journal.iaabcfoundation.org/the-need-to-forage/?fbclid=IwY2xjawLKCPVleHRuA2FlbQIxMABicmlkETF1WmdxZUJrWWh4ZmMySVdxAR6VPqgMzQwjIqvu3RmcWjiRyM98fno6Tjuu0hPUsIyEGhprOi9kdQTuSQRZIg_aem_gf-kDi5gteIqS1zJxWIFrQ

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