My Journey Into Clicker Training With Horses (and a Lab Puppy Too)

I was introduced to clicker training in 2000 when my husband and I brought my chocolate Lab puppy, Ula, to train with Thomas Lambert of Canine Connections. It was a totally new concept, and I loved how well it worked, how positive it was, and how aware it made me of what I was doing and how my new student was receiving information about doing what I wanted. She was a perfect first student—easy to train and very smart.

About a year later (2001), I purchased a 3-year-old Paint (guess who—Wet Paint), and he was a handful most of the time, just being a sassy youngster! My mother-in-law, being a horse lover herself, found me a book about clicker training horses—a fascinating concept—written by a dolphin trainer, and so my clicker training journey with horses began.

(around 2007 at Moose Ridge Farm)

I played with this new concept of clicker training with my fiery 3-year-old. For example, my first exercise: waiting and clicking the moment he stood still at the cross-ties for half a second. This encouraged him to stand. Once he quickly figured out how to get those cookies, he stood wiggling his knees! And to this day, at age 20, he stands very still and will wiggle his knees in hopes of a click and a treat!

I taught my miniature horse to drive with a harness in-hand, and then eventually to pull a cart—with clicker training as my most powerful tool! You can see her pulling her cart through Lincolnville Center at the annual Strawberry Festival each July.

(Annie-Sue is so good at her job, thanks to clicker training. The summer camp kids drive her in-hand to practice feel through their rein connection… this photo was taken about 2008.)

In 2005, when I purchased Radu, who was age 5, he too became an interesting test subject. When he was about 9, I brought him to a new indoor arena one winter and taught him to target the arena letters in the spooky corners of the ring to make them less worrisome. I clicked under saddle when he did what I wanted, but I wasn’t that vigilant—nor was I really understanding how amazing this clicker training tool with horses could be, and how important it was to learn proper techniques—until I took two intense training courses (I believe it was around 2010 and again in 2011) with the horse clicker guru Alexandra Kurland. And that’s when the real understanding began.

(2009, when I brought Radu home to Moose Ridge Farm)

After the course, I started my horses over—beginning with target training and implementing Alexandra Kurland’s groundwork exercises with much more awareness. I started to get positive results and began to learn more about my horses’ personalities and training buttons.

When my indoor arena at my farm was completed in 2013, I started to click and reward during the lessons. Wet Paint, Apple, Annie-Sue, and Eugene were very happy to play along when they responded appropriately to their students’ cues. They loved the cookies and completely understood that if they did, for example, the halt transitions perfectly, then they would get a click and a treat. I love it—Apple and Paint nicker when they do a good transition and then look me right in the eye. It made arena work fun and also helped the students feel the moment of the desired movement or transition. I was onto something…

(Arena fun, 2012, with Genie, Pedro, and Apple and their students)

Last fall, 2017, I started preparing my working student for a horse show and wanted to involve her more in the process of when to cue and how to develop a clickerable desired moment. I was also revamping how Radu was going, as he had become heavy and bracing against my hand. I wanted to create a lightness in his frame and let him know exactly what I wanted by my click—and reward him for it. My training methods greatly improved our connection, his balance, and his performance. Bea and Pedro became more of a team.

This is when I developed the Click, Treat, Reward System. Wet Paint already had a very good background and understanding of what the click meant, and his eagerness for treats was very apparent—which made him a perfect clicker training student!

Not only did the clicker training work as a very effective training tool, but it also helped me develop as an instructor. It is amazing how much there is to learn, and I am always humbled and in awe of what I know—and what information I don’t know. I am constantly learning, whether it be dressage movements during lessons from my wonderful trainer, from teaching students, or from riding and making my own discoveries by listening to the horses.

This is just the beginning of more possibilities to come…

(2017—a very beautiful day and a proud moment after two excellent tests with my two favorites—Bea and Pedro at Puckerbrush)