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

[glenatron]

I think positive reinforcement is pretty handy for animals in general and I certainly use rubs and scratchies as a reward with my horse ( but also just when we're sharing some undemanding time- a training regime that suggested one should only use those as training aids would not work for me at all ) but I see it as a nice thing to do, but not core to anything.

Negative reinforcement is how horses communicate among themselves and it's the approach that I use in most training- any time you apply your leg to ask the horse forward, put pressure on the rein to ask for a bend or anything else along those lines that is negative reinforcement after all - and I honestly can't imagine getting close to the results I am getting if I wasn't using it.

I think the source of that "one thing" idea is that you see a really good trainer and you think that the thing they do must work for every horse and it does work for them with every horse and it's not until you've got a reasonably clear understanding of what they are actually doing that you can see how much they adjust their approach to each different horse.