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I’m a Horse Trainer Who Promotes Kindness. Equestrians Hate Me For It.
It’s hard to understand why people who love horses continuously choose to hurt them.
I can remember the exact moment everything changed. I was working with a young mustang who had little experience being handled by humans. I had been struggling to teach her to wear a halter on her head. I picked up a clicker and filled a bag with alfalfa pellets, and started using clicker training to teach her how to cooperatively put the halter on. Within minutes she was offering her nose and patiently allowing me to fasten the strap.
From that day on, I was converted. I could not believe how much easier clicker training made everything. I taught that horse to do everything with it — stand patiently, offer her feet when asked, lead without the need for a rope, walk/trot/canter/halt on a verbal cue — everything from tricks to husbandry behaviors could be taught with the horse voluntarily participating. Instead of doing it because she had to, she could do these behaviors because she wanted to.
Traditional horse training relies on applying pressure until the horse does what you’re asking, and then releasing the pressure at the precise moment the horse gives in. The science behind this learning process is called negative reinforcement, the…
