Clicker Training For Your Horse: Clicking the First Rides

You can also begin to incorporate the clicker into your horse's regular training. Indy, a six year old half arabian gelding came to me in June for training. He was a kind, beautifully-mannered horse. His owner/breeder had never had time to saddle-break him, so at six he had a lot of catching up to do. During the worst of the summer heat when the temperature was creeping towards 100 and neither of us wanted to work hard, I introduced him to the clicker. He was slow to catch on. It took three sessions before he finally got the connection between touching the cone and getting grain. After that there was no stopping him. He became an enthusiastic over-achiever. He needed only minutes to shift from touching one cone to touching a whole circle of cones. (Figs. 7a, 7b).