How to Start Clicker Training Your Horse Part 1: Relaxation and the Marker Signal

[@ashleymillerhorsemanship]

Thank you for providing these videos for us! I really enjoyed them. ❤

[@audreyandremington5265]

This is interesting. I do dog agility and I'm always trying to get my dog really excited but at the same time he has to focus. I never knew that too much excitement could be a problem when clicker training horses!

[@elizaeliza5937]

Same Audrey and Remington. My main experience with positive training comes with working with my dogs and cats, where excitement leads to them enjoying the training and willingly offering behaviors. But I suppose when your working with an animal that is so large that it can literally trample you to mug you for treats, especially when frustration happens, keeping things more calm and relaxed is ideal. :)

[@laurenkifer9145]

Honestly I have this issue with my dog he gets so excited that he loses focus and ends up just dancing around like a nut I think with agility it’s less of an issue because they are moving their feet I imagine it’s fairly similar with horses

[@emimartinic]

What about completely green horses?

[@ConnectionTraining]

What do you mean by completely green? Youngsters? Wild? Unhandled? It works with all of them, but you might have to tailor it a little. For example, start over a fence, feed in a bucket, keep the sessions really short and really low-key and build from there :-)

[@geop.s]

Very important video Obrigada ♥️🇧🇷

[@natalied138]

How long would you spend on this before starting on the next stage of clicker training?

[@elizaeliza5937]

My best guess is when you start to see clam relaxed behavior reliably through out training. But it sounds like you will never truly stop this phase of training, as you want to continue to reinforce your horse staying relaxed and clam. As they say you can always start a session with this training, and then move forward when your horse is nice and relaxed. I would even make some future sessions just this, that way training doesn't always mean something new or difficult is coming. That is coming from my experience with clicker training dogs and cats so take it with a grain of salt. I am no expert.

[@charlottesw03]

Every single video is in front of the super busy road in the background making it really distracting! Maybe next time just angle it slightly differently (I have vertigo and ended up just turning it off - sorry!).

[@ConnectionTraining]

sorry about that, I didn't even notice it! Will do next time :-) Most of my other videos are in quieter places (this rescue centre is in a city), so hopefully you won't have the same problem with all of them!

[@kimfroman2023]

@ConnectionTraining I appreciate the voiceover so we are not hearing wind and traffic.