JOY FULL Horses: Ten Things You Should Know About Cues: Number 9.) You Can’t Not Cue: Part 3 of 12
Labels
In the previous section I introduced you to Poco, an extremely ear-shy horse. I ended that section by saying: “Poco wasn’t going to be helped by following old recipes, but by coming up with solutions that were tailored to his needs. To do that we had to look more broadly at all that clicker training means.”
I put my first JOYFULL horses post up on January 2, 2016. This far into the book may seem like an odd time to be asking such a basic question: what is clicker training? But this question refers to so much more than just the surface definition of clicker training.
The term clicker training was coined by Karen Pryor. In it’s simplest form it refers to applied operant condition in which a marker signal is paired with positive reinforcement. In other words, if you like what your animal is doing, you click and reinforce him.
For years at clinics I’ve had people say to me you really need to call your work something other than clicker training. What you do is so much more than clicker training.
I always throw this right back to them. What would you call it?
I get lots of suggestions but nothing so far has stuck. So many of the words that describe my work have been used, abused, and over-used. Or they are too specific to a narrow area of horse training.
Harmony, balance, partnership have all been used so many times by so many different approaches to training they have lost any meaning. You can have two diametrically opposed training systems both talking about partnership. They’ll end up with very different looking horses and each group will be convinced they have “true partnership” and the others don’t. Sigh. Labels can leave behind a huge and very controversial mine field to navigate.
When I first came across clicker training, it had no associations attached to it. It was just a label, a way of referencing a particular approach to training. I had not seen other clicker-trained horses because there weren’t any around. I hadn’t yet experimented with it, so I brought no strong biases to the term – good or bad. It was simply a label, a convenient way to reference a system of training in which a marker signal was paired with positive reinforcement.
For me the term “clicker training” is still a convenient way to refer to a system of training that uses a marker signal, but it has grown to have many more associations for me and for others. If someone has seen clicker training applied badly, just the mention of the name may send them over the edge into a long diatribe against it.
I’ve seen plenty of clumsy, not well-thought-out clicker training sessions over the years, but that doesn’t make me want to run from the label. It makes me want to find better ways to teach the work.
What Clicker Training Means To Me
I’ve experienced so much joy both in my own horses and in sharing the work with others that I don’t want to walk away from the label. Instead I want to make it clearer what clicker training can be. I don’t know what clicker training has come to mean to others, but to me, when I think of clicker-trained horses, I see happy, well mannered, beautifully balanced horses who are a joy to be around.
My clicker-trained horses make me smile. I hope how I handle them gives my horses the equine equivalent of those happy feelings. That’s what I want to share with others.
In 1993 when I started experimenting with clicker training, I didn’t head out to the barn thinking – “I’m going to write a book about this.” I just wanted to find a way to keep Peregrine entertained while he was on stall rest.
There weren’t other people clicker training horses who I could turn to as role models or who could provide how-to instructions. That meant I got to invent my own version of clicker training.
Defining Clicker Training
If you were to ask me to define clicker training, I would begin with Karen Pryor’s definition: clicker training is applied operant conditioning in which a marker signal is paired with positive reinforcement.
That gives us an operational definition, but clicker training is so much more than that. I see it as a huge umbrella under which I can fit many different approaches to horse training. For example, I studied for a time with Linda Tellington-Jones, the founder of TTEAM, so I fit her training under the umbrella. I also put the work I learned from John Lyons under this same umbrella even though Lyons himself is not a clicker trainer. These two training methods represent fundamentally different philosophies of horse training, but I was able to draw good things from both and adapt what I learned to fit under my clicker umbrella.
When I think of clicker training, I see a complete and very structured approach to training that results in well-mannered, happy horses. I think of beautifully-balanced horses who are both having fun and are fun to be around.
That’s what I see. But if all you’ve seen of clicker training is someone using it to teach simple tricks, you may see the fun – but not the balance. Or maybe you’ve just seen someone who was fumbling around the edges of clicker training. Your picture of clicker training may be a frustrated horse who is acting aggressively towards the handler.
Creating Stepping Stones
The more people who encounter clicker training the more different images of what it is there will be. Clicker training will evolve and morph into something else. That’s the nature of all creative work. It is never static. Clicker training, which seemed so revolutionary, so very much on the leading edge of training when I first encountered it, will become mainstream. It will be the stepping stone to the next leading-edge idea.
We can’t yet know what that idea will be, not until it has had time to evolve.
This is the nature of the creative process. Humans thrive on creativity. This is part of play. You are exploring two separate ideas and suddenly you see how you can put them together to create a completely original combination. Both ideas by themselves were great. Combined they are transforming.
So let’s look underneath the clicker training umbrella and see what’s really there. Let’s also ask the question: are you a clicker trainer, or are you someone who just uses a clicker? And what is the difference that that question is seeking to answer?
(And yes, I will get back to Poco and his ear-shy problem.)
Coming next: Are You A Clicker Trainer or a User of Clicker Training?
Remember, if you are new to the JOY Full Horse blog, click on the JOY Full Horses tab at the top of this page to find the full table of contents and links to each of the articles I have published so far.
I hope you will want to share these articles by sending links to this blog to your friends. But please remember this is copyrighted material. All rights are reserved. Please do not copy any of the “JOY Full Horses” articles without first getting written permission from Alexandra Kurland, via theclickercenter.com
Also note: these articles are not intended as an instruction guide for introducing your horse to clicker training. If you are new to clicker training and you are looking for how-to instructions, you will find what you need at my web sites:
The Clicker Center Blog 