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what is equine clicker training?
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Do you wish you could communicate better with your horse? Do you wish you could have fun with your horse? Or just lie around with him? All these things are possible with a clicker trained horse. With clicker training, you can teach your horse all the skills he needs and have fun at the same time. With clicker training, your horse learns faster because he is actively trying to learn what you are trying to teach him. You are truly working together toward a common goal. To learn more about clicker training and this site, please read the articles on the sidebar menu and also go to about this site. November 2008
Welcome to the site. For more information on what I have recently changed, be sure to visit the What's New Page to learn about new members and features.
Clicker Expo 2009 will be held in Austin, Texas and Providence, Rhode Island. For more information, go to www.clickertraining.com.
Groton Clinic Report: October 2008 The last Groton clinic for the year was held on a beautiful October weekend. In addition to the regular group. we were lucky to have Hilary and Charlotte visiting from the UK and they added some new perspective and enthusiasm to the group. Charlotte wrote up some wonderful notes for this clinic, so I am going to share them instead of a regular clinic report, but I do want to include a few tidbits from my perspective. Every clinic seems to end up with a focus and at this one we spent a lot of time on micro-riding, HSS (hip, shoulder, shoulder) and the power of resets. We started off with some micro-riding so that everyone had a chance to experience it. Some of the attendees had heard about micro-riding, but not actually gotten a chance to do it with a partner. Saturday morning we reviewed the grounding circuit and got the new people up to speed. Those people familiar with micro-riding were experimenting the rest of the circuits and then looking at the interaction between the rider and the monitor and comparing this to the rider/horse relationship. There were some nice images about how information is passed back and forth initially as big requests and responses and how, over time, these become finer and more detailed and there is a steady flow of information instead of packets of information separated by gaps. Over the course of the weekend, the micro-riding brought up some interesting points. When we added the crown and diaphragm circuits, Alex talked about how you should be able to move through quickly enough that you don't belabor each step. The idea is to feel the energy flow. Once you are past the initial learning stages, going too slow can allow the energy to get blocked and you don't build the connectedness that you want. The grounding circuit makes the rider feel more connected to the ground and provides a firm foundation so that when the rider goes to the crown and diaphragm circuit, the rider can stretch up and add energy without becoming unbalanced or crooked. If you linger too long on the grounding circuit, you don't feel how you can channel the energy into other places. to read more, click here.
Training Tip: I teach my horses to back from a hand cue on the front of their nose. It is helpful for my mare who bumps me with her nose when she is nervous and is an easy way to nicely ask my gelding to get out of my space if I am working on something and don't mind his company, but he is being a little too helpful. According to Bettina Drummond, backing a horse by lowering his head and pushing (nicely) on the bridge of his nose is a good way to release the back.
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