Clicker training is a method of positive reinforcement training, perhaps better known in the canine world, but equally applicable to horses. In this training article exclusive to H&H subscribers, clicker expert Lucy Chester outlines two straightforward exercises to introduce you and your horse to this technique

Clicker training for horses relies on the concept of positive reinforcement. This method involves giving the horse something it enjoys – typically a treat or a scratch – after it performs a specific action, increasing the chances that the desired behaviour will be repeated.

Clicker training requires great timing, and a few important bits of kit. It’s best to have a professional help set you on the right path, as – according to expert Lucy Chester – it’s “one of the hardest training methods to do well at the beginning”.

Lucy suggests two clicker training groundwork exercises for beginners.

How to clicker train a horse – the basics

1. Teaching a horse the meaning of the clicker

You will need:

• Empty bowl
• Clicker
• Dampened chaff or low-value reinforcers, such as haycobs, pressed hay or meadow grass
• Alternative feed source (such as haynet within reach) so you are not the only source of food

Set-up

Pick a quiet place where the horse is relaxed.

Either work behind protected contact – a barrier such as a fence or a stable door – or tie your horse up with a haynet, if they are happy to be tied. Try to stay a short distance away so they cannot reach you to snuffle your pockets.

Shaping plan

• Click and put a handful of chaff or a few hay pellets into the bucket.
• Before the horse finishes the food, click and add more. This teaches them that the click comes before the food.
• Repeat until their eating rate slows down. They will make the connection between the click and the reward very quickly (classical conditioning).
• After about 10 repetitions, give an extra big handful to the food, then retreat and allow the horse to finish eating. This will prevent you from moving into the negative punishment training quadrant (by taking the food away).

Once the horse understands that the click is followed by the arrival of a low-value food reward in the bucket, you can move on to the next task.

2. Teaching a horse to touch a cone

You will need:

Everything listed above, plus a cone or other marker.

Set-up

As above

Shaping plan

Hold a cone (or other marker) up for your horse to touch with their nose. Horses are naturally curious so usually will but if they don’t, you can put it on the floor or even reward them for looking at it to begin with. Then click and put a few haycobs in the bucket. Using a yellow or blue cone (or other marker) will help as horses have dichromatic vision; they see clearly shades of yellow and blue.

Repeat three to five times, then add a handful of food into the bowl and step away to give the horse a break. It’s important with positive reinforcement not to use negative punishment accidentally by taking food away from the horse.

When the horse understands to touch the cone, you can add the voice cue “touch”, then only reward (click, then feed) when you have given the horse the cue (stimulus control).

Try to avoid frustration, be clear with your asks and include breaks when you put food in the bowl, then retreat. Make sure you do this when you finish training too.

Lucy adds: “These are my two foundation exercises before teaching horses how to take food from my hand, first with the barrier, then without.

“You can avoid negative punishment and frustration by always leaving the horse with food before you leave.

“Once the horse understands what the clicker means and how to be calm around food, the sky is the limit!”

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Clicker training for horses is based on positive reinforcement. It is adding something the horse likes (usually food or scratches) after a behaviour, which makes that behaviour more likely to happen again.

The desired behaviour is marked with a click, also known as a “bridge signal”, which bridges the gap between click and reward. This means the horse knows reinforcement will follow hearing the click. Timing and correct use of food is crucial to success, and to avoid unwanted behaviours.

Lucy Chester, of Lucy Chester Horsemanship, says all horses can benefit, from days-old foals learning the very basics to adults learning advanced liberty and ridden work.

Setting horses up for clicker training success

There are several things you can do to help get your clicker training off on the right foot.

“Making sure the horse has a full stomach before training is important,” Lucy says. “I always make sure that mine has had a haynet and a bit of hard feed.”

Lucy’s second recommendation is to use appropriate reinforcement – not all treats have the desired effect.

“I generally recommend something of very low value to horses like Thunderbrook’s HayCobs or Simple Systems’ HayCare,” she advises. “Pressed hay or meadow grass, or even chaff, which has a longer chew time, will lower arousal around food.

“You want something that doesn’t smell strongly as horses have a good sense of smell and as foraging animals, they will try to find it. This makes training harder and can result in undesirable behaviours such as ‘mugging’.”

The time of day is another key factor.

“If your horse is desperate to go out in the field, it might not be the best time to be training,” she says. “I made the mistake once of trying to train my horse during his nap time. He always has a sleep about 11 o’clock, and that was never going to work.

“Mosquitoes and midges are more likely to be around in the evenings and the horse could get annoyed by them, which would have an impact on training,” Lucy advises. “It’s about knowing your horse and experimenting to find out what suits each one best.”

Another aspect to consider to get the most out of your training session is your working environment.

“If someone has just started trimming the hedge by the arena, it’s probably not an ideal time to start,” Lucy cautions. “A lot of people are in livery yards that are really busy, so it’s much better to try to do it when it’s quiet. Then you can focus 100% on the horse.

“Horses love positive reinforcement training and if you’re busy talking to someone else, the horse is going to be nudging you for the food, because you’re not focused on them, and it’s not fair. I find people are really interested in what I’m doing, which is great, but it means you’re distracted from your horse and the training. So if people are interested, ask them to talk to you about it afterwards.”

Likewise, if there is another horse in the arena, because you are using food, there can be an issue with resource guarding, so Lucy prefers to train on her own.

How to learn the correct techniques

Don’t expect to be able to nail clicker training by yourself, straight off. Lucy says that of all the ways she has tried training horses, clicker training has been the “hardest to do well – in the beginning”.

“It’s important at least to start with a professional to guide you; timing of clicking and rewarding is key, and all these things will have an impact on the success of training,” she says.

“Food is highly motivating to horses, and once you’ve got a solid foundation, everything else becomes easy.”

How to avoid mistakes in clicker training for horses

Lucy outlines how to use the treats correctly.

“People think horses can get pushy or bargy because of the food but as well as using appropriate treats, as above, it all comes down to timing,” she says. “If the horse comes to sniff your pocket and you just give them a treat, you’re reinforcing that coming to your pocket gets the treat.

“It’s very easy to make simple mistakes like that, or to click at a moment where they’re coming back towards your hand or towards your pocket. I tend to use a bowl of chaff or something with a longer chew time, and I reward constantly for being in a certain position. So you’re training them where you want them to be when you deliver the reinforcement.

“You put food in the bowl. They eat it. You click and then you put more food in the bowl before they finish eating. You’re teaching them that after the click, food comes, and they don’t need to stress about it. Then you can do the same thing standing next to them, because they’ve already understood that you bring the food to them, they don’t come to you for the food.”

But even when you’re doing everything right, some horses can still be snatchy.

“For me, this highlights that everything isn’t OK,” warns Lucy. “If a horse is in pain, their ‘stress jar’ is fairly full so it doesn’t take much to tip them over.”

Changing times for horse training

Lucy has noticed a shift in attitudes towards horse behaviour, but believes there is still some way to go.

“I think things are changing but I saw recently, for example, someone had posted on a behaviour page a horse showing pretty extreme discomfort; tail swishing, head tossing, ears pinned back,” she says. “Probably 60% of people said pain, talk to the vet, but 40% said, ‘You need a better trainer, sell the horse, it’s being naughty’. I thought, ‘Poor horse, why aren’t you listening?’”

Lucy lists research papers to back up the system with science.

“If people are sceptical, there are numerous studies to back up the effectiveness of positive reinforcement as a way to train horses,” she explains, listing Larssen & Roth, 2022, Sankey et al, 2010, Carroll, Sykes & Mills, 2022.

“And there are many trainers like me who are proof it works, for all horses from two-week-old foals to stallions and everything in between,” she concludes.

Are you keen to try clicker training for horses yourself? Check out Lucy’s starter exercises below.

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We have previously discussed the first two levels of learning theory, which is the laws that govern how all animals learn. These were level one, association and sensitisation; and level two, classical conditioning – predicting what will happen next. The third level is operant conditioning, which can be used to great effect in training desired behaviour.

When we use classical conditioning to train our horses, our primary aim is to change the animal’s emotional response to a stimulus, so that consequently their behaviour changes.

In contrast when we train using level three, or operant conditioning, our aim is to change their behaviour and, if done well, consequently their emotional state will change.

What is operant conditioning?

Operant conditioning – the third level of learning – can be summarised as rewards and consequences. This is how horses learn what to do (and not do) to make life enjoyable.

The terminology is initially confusing (see diagram, below), but essentially the words positive and negative mean addition or subtraction of something – as in the mathematical rather than emotional sense.

Reinforcement means making a behaviour more likely, while punishment means they are less likely to offer that behaviour again in the future.

Positive reinforcement

The most common form of positive reinforcement we see would be clicker training. Because horses have a short short-term memory, the click is used to tell the horse the exact timing of the behaviour you want – perfect timing is very important in training.

The click is always followed by a reward; this might be food, but could also be a nice scratch. The horse will then offer the same behaviour again to get more of what they like – food or scratches. Over time we can train more complex behaviours.

Positive reinforcement training is an excellent way to retrain horses that are fearful because they make positive associations with learning to be brave. But it is also a great tool for teaching pretty much anything, from getting better steps in piaffe to moving in the desired frame on the lunge.

Negative reinforcement

Better known as pressure and release, this is the foundation of most of our ridden training. Negative (removal of pressure) reinforcement rewards the correct response so the horse wants to offer that behaviour again.

If we apply gentle pressure to both reins, the horse should slow down and by releasing the pressure on the rein the horse knows that slowing down was the correct response. To put it another way, slowing down makes the mildly uncomfortable rein pressure go away.

Key aspects of negative reinforcement are the timing of the release and carefully shaping the desired behaviour.

How can we use it?

Rein-back is a movement that many riders struggle to train. Pulling on the reins can result in a horse hollowing its back, and so people often teach rein-back with leg cues. But this is confusing for horses; instead, keep things simple – rein pressure elicits backwards movement/deceleration, and leg cues elicit moving forwards.

On the ground apply light backwards pressure to the reins. As soon as the horse starts to take a single step back, release the pressure and give a scratch. Once this reaction is established, you can transfer the technique to the saddle.

When riding, apply light backwards pressure on the rein from halt. Most horses will recognise this pressure and take a step back. The crucial thing is to release the rein pressure as soon as a foreleg starts to move backwards. If they don’t move back from light pressure, have a friend assist from the ground by applying light pressure to the horse’s chest.

After a few repetitions the horse should have learnt that they need to step back to make the rein pressure stop. So they should step back immediately and lightly from light rein pressure.

You know it is trained well if the head and neck position does not alter. If it does, this means that the release of pressure has been associated with changes in head and neck position rather than just leg movements. Work on your timing of release more carefully to train rein-back rather than raising of the head.

Only once the horse steps back immediately from light pressure, without altering the head and neck posture, should you start to ask for more than one step.

Now you can classically condition the response by starting with a postural cue (legs back) before cueing backwards with a light rein aid. When you come to ask in a test your rein-back will look harmonious.

No more nagging

If we squeeze with the leg, a trained horse knows to move from halt to walk to release the leg pressure. But if we then fall into the trap of nagging with the leg to keep the horse moving forwards, we are training the horse to ignore that level of leg pressure – they don’t know how to make the leg pressure stop, so instead habituate to it.

It would be better to allow a lazy horse to slow, then use a leg cue to ask for trot, release as soon as they trot (so they can remove the leg cue) and after a few steps bring them back to a walk. This walk will normally be more forward-going.

If they slow again, push for a few strides of trot again. You will find after several repetitions the horse remains more forward in the walk without a nagging leg.

What not to do in operant conditioning

Punishment means achieving the reduction of or cessation in behaviour over time through the addition (positive) of something aversive or removal (negative) of something nice.

Punishment really has no place in training as it is often associated with fear, pain or both. Furthermore, one of the main problems with punishment is that it is telling a horse what not to do; a better way to solve problems is to train the response you do want instead.

For example, if a horse is rearing does this happen because the rider is trying to hold the horse slower than they want to go or in reaction to the rider’s leg? If the former, retrain them to slow from light rein pressure, then maintain self-carriage; if the latter, retrain them to go forwards from a light leg cue.

If, however, the rearing happens unpredictably or they do not respond to retraining, then it is almost inevitably due to pain and you should seek veterinary advice.

In none of these scenarios would punishment be appropriate.

Keep calm and clicker train

Does clicker training lead to mugging (grabbing treats)? What if the horse becomes too excited?

We always start training horses to “look away” for a click and food. Then, once established, “click for calm” so they learn to be calm and relaxed when training with food. This is important because as a species, horses are predisposed to become frustrated (often confused with excitement) when food is used in training.

To train to look away for food, start with a bum bag with a low-value food in it – chaff or fibre pencils work well. Avoid high-value foods like carrots or treats as these can easily result in frustration.

Stand on the other side of a stable door and give your horse a small bit of food – they will usually start to nuzzle you for more. Stand still and do nothing until your horse stops nuzzling and moves their muzzle slightly away – as the muzzle starts to move away click and then reinforce by giving the food. If you think you might get bitten, stand just out of reach.

After a few repetitions your horse will learn to move their muzzle away from you to get a click (which is always followed by food). Slowly build up to clicking when their head and neck are still and in a straight line from their body, and then when you see any evidence of relaxation – dropping the head slightly or softening of the eye, for example.

In a few sessions you will have a horse who automatically chooses to stand calmly when they see you have food.

You can see an example of starting to train “look away for food”, as well as other aspects of operant conditioning, on the YouTube Don’t break your vet series – simply search the site for “Don’t break your vet”.

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To be an effective horse trainer and rider, we must endeavour to understand how horses learn, and to work within that framework. In the first part of this series on the theory of horses’ learning processes, we examined the first level – non-associative learning. After this comes classical conditioning and operant conditioning. In this article, we will look at classical conditioning for horses, the second level of learning.

What is classical conditioning for horses?

Most people are familiar with the story of Pavlov’s dogs. Pavlov was a Russian scientist who rang a bell and then fed the dogs in his experiment. It did not take long before the dogs would start to salivate and wag their tails when they heard the bell, even though no food was present.

Classical conditioning is all about predicting what will happen next because the order of events is always the same. Classical conditioning results in an emotional state being triggered by a previously neutral stimulus – once trained, Pavlov’s dogs became excited when they heard the bell because it predicted food.

Another key aspect to understand is that the neutral stimulus (in that case, the bell) has to be presented before the innate reinforcer (the food). If the bell was rung after the food, or even at the same time as food was presented, the effect would not be the same.

We can use classical conditioning as part of good training, but we should also be aware of where it causes us problems.

How can we use it?

One way is always to give a postural cue immediately before an aid from the leg or hand, such as slowing your rising in trot before asking for a downwards transition. You will be surprised how quickly your horse learns to respond to the postural cue alone – getting you top marks for harmony.

We can also use this phenomenon to introduce horses to novel stimuli. If you have a young horse you can stand them near to other horses who are being shod and associate this with something nice like a mineral lick or getting stuck into their favourite scratchy spots.

You have to stand far enough away that they can remain calm and enjoy the experience, but if you always present something nice when farriers start working then the arrival of a farrier will have the same effect as Pavlov’s bell – and you will have a happy, relaxed horse who will less likely to be concerned about their first set of shoes.

When does it cause us problems?

Perhaps you have a horse who lacks confidence to jump a filler. If the horse is put under pressure every time they approach a filler (by leg, voice or whip) they will start to associate the sight of a filler with increased pressure from the rider.

As a human we have the cognitive capacity to understand that if they jump it they won’t be put under pressure. But horses can’t rationalise thoughts like these. So instead, they see the filler, which triggers negative emotions like fear and anxiety and so they, understandably, want to avoid it.

Instead, it is better to help the horse form positive associations with fillers so they become more confident. This might start with walking towards one, stopping before they get too close and become fearful, letting them stand and then giving them a scratch, then repeating this several times. Now approaching the filler predicts a reduction in pressure and the possibility for a positive experience (the scratch).

Once they are confident try walking then trotting between two fillers with a wide gap that you gradually make smaller – remember to keep it easy, the aim is that the sight of the filler elicits positive emotions and not negative ones.

You could even jump over several other fences before trotting between the fillers and then bring the horse back to walk on a long rein for a minute on the other side. Approaching the filler now predicts a break in training and the horse will be actively wanting to take you to it. At this point the gap is probably that small that they are jumping the filler.

To counteract the risk that the horse will learn to stop after a filler, once you have them confident to jump it and they are drawing you to it, pop the filler and then ask for a circle in canter before coming back to walk. Build up to where they jump it and look for the next question.

If you have trained this well it will become their favourite jump!

Case study for classical conditioning: overcoming clipper fear

A teenage cob mare was the perfect horse for her owner, apart from her aversion to clippers. Even when sedated she became dangerous to clip. In this scenario the clippers elicited a fear response that overrode the sedation.

We started by turning on some human beard clippers, giving her a handful of chaff and turning them off again. The noise was below the threshold that elicited a fear response and the sound soon began to predict food. Gradually the beard clippers were brought closer and then rubbed on her body, turning them on was still always followed by food.

The same process was repeated with small and eventually large clippers. Anyone watching would have found the process boring as she remained calm throughout – a sign of good training. Now she stands with no sedation to be clipped all over.

We’ve now covered non-associative learning and classical conditioning as two important levels in the theory of how horses learn. The next and final part of this series will address operant conditioning – or, in layman’s term, rewards and consequences.

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How horses learn is integral to how we work with them. It is stating the obvious to say that we need to understand the processes through which horses learn to be able to train them effectively. Yet, multiple studies have shown that an understanding of the basic “nuts and bolts” of how horses learn is lacking in many professional and amateur equestrians alike.

Learning theory describes the processes through which horses learn, and is split into different levels of complexity. The first three levels are the most important for horse training:

• non-associative learning
• classical conditioning
• operant conditioning.

You may be familiar with other words around this area of learning theory, such as desensitisation, sensitisation, imprinting, habituation, overshadowing and more. In this series, we’re going to look at each of these levels of learning theory, one by one, beginning with non-associative learning.

How horses learn: non-associative learning

When a horse encounters a stimulus repeatedly, they either habituate – that is, get used to it – or become sensitised, which is when they become more likely to react to it. What people often don’t realise is that which one occurs depends on the horse’s perception of the potential for it to cause them harm, not whether the threat is real or not.

This might sound silly – surely a horse will get used to things that don’t hurt it? But consider how many people fear spiders, and how many of them have actually been harmed by one? Realistically spiders are no threat to us – at least, not in the UK – yet they still elicit a fear response in many people. The sight of a spider triggers a reaction in the amygdala – the fear centre in the brain – and this memory of fear is then stored for next time.

So the next time your horse is scared of something you think they shouldn’t be, don’t get frustrated. Instead focus on training them to be confident and you will find they get braver over time. In future articles we will address how to do this.

A complex balance of habituation and sensitisation

Both sensitisation and habituation are important when training horses. Consider that we expect horses to habituate to contact via the bit, or a rider’s leg against their sides. Yet at the same time we expect them to be sensitive to an aid and respond immediately – the only difference is the amount of pressure and the direction in which it is applied.

This knowledge should motivate riders always to work on having an independent seat, to allow a clear differentiation between light and consistent contact versus an aid. In contrast the more novice rider may sometimes be using the hand or leg as an aid, and other times the same amount of pressure is applied because they lost their balance – no wonder some horses become confused.

Similarly, we expect showjumpers to habituate to all the sensory information they might be exposed to at an international show, including “spooky” fences, yet at the same time remain reactive enough to become sensitised if they touch a pole.

Our job is to help the horse assess and balance those demands. Again, understanding training in more depth is important to navigate this complexity.

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Have you ever stopped and thought about how you reward your horse for good behaviour – and in what way that can influence how horses learn and behave in the future?

“Operant conditioning is how horses learn to operate within their environment and it’s really important to how we train horses,” says Dr Gemma Pearson, a qualified equine veterinary behaviourist who is director of equine behaviour for The Horse Trust.

The first aspect of operant conditioning is positive reinforcement.

“This is positive in the mathematical sense – the addition of something to reinforce behaviour, so that behaviour is repeated over time,” says Gemma. “This is the basis of clicker training, but you don’t have to use a clicker.

“What’s important is that you use an innatory reinforcer [something the horse naturally enjoys]. Horses don’t particularly enjoy being patted – they associate it with a break, perhaps, but it’s not something that matters to them – and they don’t enjoy being told that they’re good. We haven’t bred horses to want to please us in the same way as we have dogs.

“So for positive reinforcement we can use food, we can use scratches, we can use stroking the horse. And we can use that to train behaviours that we want, both in hand and under saddle.”

The other side of the coin in operant conditioning is negative reinforcement.

Gemma explains: “Negative doesn’t mean it’s a bad thing – you have to think about it in the mathematical sense. Maybe we should call it removal reinforcement instead,” says Gemma.

“This is the bread and butter of horse training. Negative or removal means subtraction of a cue when the horse offers the correct response. If you want to teach a young horse to go forward you might use a light leg cue and as soon as the horse goes to step forward, you release the pressure. Therefore the horse learns that stepping forward was the behaviour he needed to perform to make the pressure of the leg go away.

“This gives the horse control of their environment – we talk about them being able to operate in their environment because whenever they have any pressure put on them, they know what behaviour they have to perform to make the pressure go away again.

“We may use the legs to ask the horse to go forward, we may use the reins for slowing and stopping and we may also use the reins in a different fashion to get the horse to turn. If we give them a cue, as soon as the horse offers the correct response, we release that cue.”

Gemma stresses that “you get the behaviour you reinforce, not the behaviour you want” and that sometimes it’s easy to accidentally reinforce the wrong behaviour.

For example, think about a horse that’s difficult to worm. You put the wormer towards the horse’s lips and the horse throws its head up – that removes the pressure of the wormer from the horse’s lips, which accidentally reinforces that behaviour.

“Horses have no concept of winning and losing; they have no agenda, they don’t think they’re the boss or anything like that, but you get the behaviour you reinforce, not the one you want,” says Gemma.

The simple way to improve this is to put the wormer on the horse’s cheek and remove it before the horse moves its head away. Then over time, you gradually put the wormer closer to the horse’s lips.

Gemma explains: “Now the horse is starting to think, ‘Gosh this is different. Previously every time my owner put the wormer to my lips, I had to throw my head in the air to make the wormer go away, now I put my head down and relax and the wormer goes away.’ And because they keep their head still and relax, you can then easily insert the wormer into their mouth and they’re happier to have this done.

“We could accelerate this learning by using positive reinforcement, so we remove the syringe of the wormer but also give a click and give the horse a little bit of food for standing still and relaxed.”

The final aspect of operant conditioning is punishment, which can be positive or addition punishment where you add something, such as hitting the horse, or negative punishment where you remove something, such as taking away food.

“I think in this day and age, there isn’t really any need for punishment in horse training – we know that horses are not innately bad, we’ve often just accidentally reinforced the wrong behaviours or there’s another motivator involved, such as pain,” says Gemma. “Rather than trying to stop the behaviour we don’t want, which leads us down the route of punishment, we should think about trying to reinforce the behaviour that we do want instead.”

You can listen to Gemma talking about rewards, consequences and how horses learn on episode 126 of The Horse & Hound Podcast. She also recommends the British Equine Veterinary Association’s video on worry-free worming.

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Clicker training is popular in the dog training world, but many people use clicker training for horses, too. It’s a method of positive reinforcement training, which means a reward is offered in response to a desired behaviour. The theory is that by rewarding the behaviours you want to see, your horse is more likely to reproduce these behaviours again in the future.

What is a clicker?

A clicker is a small mechanical device that makes a sharp noise when pressed. It’s used as a marker to communicate the exact moment of good behaviour. You could use other distinctive sounds, such as saying “yes” or “good,” a whistle or a cluck of your tongue, but using a clicker is more clear cut and contains no emotion, so it’s more consistent and your horse is more likely to respond.

How does clicker training work?

Using a clicker is a way of marking a moment. There’s nothing special about the noise, except that it’s not something your horse is likely to hear elsewhere. By always following up the click with a reward, your horse will learn that the click indicates a reward is on the way. The clicker communicates the exact moment your horse does what you want, so the timing of the click is essential and every click must be followed by a reward.

Horses learn at different speeds. Some will make the connection quickly, while others will require a number of sessions.

How to introduce clicker training to your horse

You’ll need a clicker with a wrist strap (like this one), some horse treats, and a bag that you can put them in that keeps your hands free – a small bum bag (like this) is ideal.

To begin with, it’s important that you teach your horse how to behave during training. He must learn not to nudge or sniff the bag for treats. Instead, use the following steps to teach your horse to be polite, look straight ahead and wait for the treats to come to him. This process will help your horse understand that the clicker is part of training, rather than just being associated with food.

• Stand to the side of your horse in a position that allows you to easily move out of the way if necessary.
• Take a treat from the bag and hold it in your hand. If your horse tries to take the treat, ignore him and ensure that he does not receive the treat.
• When your horse give up and looks away, click the clicker and instantly give them a treat.
• Repeat this exercise from each side.

Keep the sessions short – no longer than 10 mins at a time – and feed your horse away from the bag so that he can’t steal treats.

How to use teach your horse with clicker training

Once your horse understands the basics, you can introduce the clicker to your normal training routine. Think carefully about what you want to teach your horse and break down the training step by step.

A good action to begin with is teaching your horse to touch an object, such as a cone, with his nose.

To do this, first click and reward your horse when makes a movement towards the target, however small it is. Follow this up by clicking and rewarding every step of the behaviour, so that every movement towards the target earns a click and a treat. Continue in this way until your horse touches his nose on the target and fully understands the command. Once he fully understands what you’re asking of him, you can add a vocal cue.

Once your horse starts to offer the behaviour more frequently, wait until the touch is more dramatic – for example, when your horse come from a few feet away to touch the target instead of a few inches. You can increase the difficulty by looking for “duration”, which is when your horse touches the target and keeps his nose there for a few seconds.

Once a behaviour has been learnt on command and is performed consistently, the clicker and treat can be phased out. You can apply this method to any action or behaviour you’d like to teach your horse to produce on command.

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