On positive reinforcement and clicker training

[glenatron]

One of the most endless and repetative discussions that turns up from time to time among Natural Horsemanship types is the conversation about Positive Reinforcement, which is an entirely reward-based way of training animals used very effectively by a lot of animal trainers. I think it's a great way of training animals in general, but not a

Comments

[dancing_crow]

I see completely what you mean. I was using it for some ground work with the mares I work with because I needed a new way to come at the problem.

Kaboose was worried about lumpy but harmless objects, classic horse behaviour but it was making me crazy at how diffuse it was. I would click and reward her for approaching something scary and putting her nose on it. It decreased some of her fears, and now she is much braver about marching up to the (horrifying) mailboxes and garbage cans we meet out on the road.

Penny Would Not Stand, for mounting mostly but for other things either. So she got a lot of clicking for simply standing while I jumped up and down at the mounting block and climbed on and off her. Not that I couldn't have done it without the clicker, but it made it easier.

Ruby needed reassurance for hosing off, fly spray, etc. and the clicker gave me a very simple way to encourage her to hold still when verbal and physical soothing were not working so well.

On the other hand, I find myself in complete agreement about being unable to use it in a coordinated way from their backs, especially to work on dressage issues that are consuming me at the moment.

I think of it as a tool, and a handy one for helping them get past spooky issues. And apparently I don't use it beyond that. huh.

[glenatron]

That's how I see it too- it's a tool you can use for some discrete jobs and it works fine for that. I have other tools to do the same job, but they're no better or worse really, they just fit in with everything else I do.

The people who bother me are the ones who tell me that to use anything other than Positive Reinforcement is basically the same as cruelty and how you can solve any problem through pure +R training. I think they are wrong and that they are -at best- unlikely to ever be able to get much done with their horses. You can't manage life forever so that a horse is never afraid, not if that horse is ever going to have a job to do, but that approach basically can't work in that environment. I heard of a clicker training demo where they got some nice work but the demonstrator nearly got herself flattened at the end because her horse was scared by the applause and they had nothing in place to handle that.

It all gets a bit One True Way for me.