Episode 226 Panel Discussion Pt 2: Clicker Puzzles and Labels

This is part two of our celebration of the one year anniversary of my on-line clinics. We’re marking the occasion by getting together with some of the people who are regulars in the clinic coaching sessions. Last week you met Connie Dwyer, Taylor Culbert, Dr Claire St Peter, Amy Stevenson, Muna Clough, Jennifer Koning, Marcy Ingram, and Svenja Sawinski. This group represents a wide range of experience both with clicker training and with horses. But everyone is an expert in their own experience and as you heard last week they have a lot of great training wisdom to share.

We ended last time with Svenja posing a question about the puzzles that clicker training presents when you first begin to explore it. When you’re coming from a traditional training background, the lessons you see clicker trainers working on may not make a lot of sense. Why would you want a horse to touch a target? And how do you get your horse to do what you want? How in the world do you get a horse to go forward without applying pressure? That was one of the questions that Svenja had early on. We begin with this question - When you first got started, what puzzled you about clicker training? Our conversation eventually takes us to a discussion of labels, including how labels that seem to be supporting the horse can actually lead to the wrong training choices.