Whispering Horse - Clicker Training Equines

23/10/2026

Horses, donkeys and mules have a very strong sense of place.

We can utilise this in our training in a beneficial and positive way.

When we train them, part of the learning and conditioning that is happening is that we are building value in a particular place. Similarly, a certain place can be a predictor of bad outcomes or become a “poisoned cue”.

We can harness this type of learning to our advantage for challenging training such as cooperative care.

I’ve been working my way through the horses and donkeys and getting all their dentals and vaccinations done.

I harness this sense of place and the positive emotional associations that are attached with certain places.

For example, when doing more challenging tasks such as clipping their necks for the injections or practicing poking things under their tongue for the Dorm Gel, I do that in their regular training area, which has a huge R+ history AND positive emotional associations. It’s always easier to do challenging things there because I’ve built that value over the years.

Call it “trust” if you will.

Then we walk down to the tie up area at the other end of the property, where the vet will do their dentals. I spend a lot of time there doing fun easy things to build that positive emotional association with that place. This is especially important as they get their dentals done there every year and I don’t want the first or last thing they remember is that. I want them to remember all the yummy food and fun times they had at that place.

I don’t do anything challenging there, just easy stuff, lots of food, some brushing for food and just standing around eating extra special hay in a hay net, maybe a few obstacles.

If everything they do at their regular training area and at the tie ups is easy and fun, I continue to build that R+ history and that positive emotional association with myself as well!

First I did this with the horses, then the mini donkeys and the 2 big donkeys are next for their vet visit. So we will be spending the next week haltering and walking them up to the tie up area to munch hay and do fun things, a bit of poking in the neck, a bit more neck clipping, some tickling of their tongue, some walking around with me walking backwards such as we do for the portable crush and some obstacles.

I also bring all 4 donkeys up to the tie ups, so they support and keep each other company and there is no worry from any of the donkeys about separation. This is a good idea to do with horses and donkeys.

I’m setting myself and them up for success by harnessing the power of both Operant and Classical Counter Conditioning and their ability to attach positive emotions to places, situations, contexts and myself of course (and my husband).

That means that even on the actual day, if I’m a bit nervy and shaky, they will not even notice because there has been so much positive history, so much “trust” built in the “trust account” in that location, that it doesn’t matter to them.

They just remember all the good times!

It's also useful to do a few more similar sessions afterwards. But it's not essential if you do this prior fun easy training before the actual vet visit. It's a matter of outweighing that one day with all the fun, easy positive days in that location.

The great thing is that it also doesn’t have to put the training or our relationship back at all.

Both the horses and mini donkeys were just as happy to see me the next day, as they are any other day. That is the real test! Was it an overall positive experience for them and if it wasn’t, did it affect how they feel about me and what we do together?

Because I put the time in, it made no difference to how they felt and how they responded to me. I have one super fearful mini donkey and he was probably even happier to see me after, which was so wonderful to see! Obviously he really enjoyed all the food, fun and walkies we did together!

So remember, do lots of easy fun things before something more challenging and most importantly, do it in the place it’s going to happen wherever possible.

Some photos of the mini donkeys dental day.

23/10/2026

Does your horse truly understand the click?

The clicker's sound is known as a bridging stimulus, it literally creates a bridge between the time the click is used to mark the desired behaviour and when the food (primary reinforcement) is delivered.

The bridging stimulus or marker signal is a sound that tells the animal “yes” that’s exactly what I want and what I want more of in the future AND food is coming.

When we repeatedly pair the sound of the click with food (primary reinforcer) it develops meaning and value to the animal. We've built an association between the two stimuli. It means food is coming, it’s a promise. But it needs to be regularly and consistently paired with a primary reinforcer, or it will lose its value.

When we start clicker training, if we are consistent, have good timing and consistently pair the click / bridging stimulus with food, the animal learns that it predicts food AND listens for it carefully and remembers what they did when it happened.

But if we click randomly for all kinds of things or we are also busy doing other things or reaching for the food before we've clicked, it might still predict food, but it loses all precision when we want to use it for shaping specific behaviours.

This is why the click is so powerful. It can be a precision instrument, a secondary reinforcer, a cue and it can also be used as a really solid “whoa” in horses.

We can also use all kinds of things as the "click", we don't necessarily need a clicker in clicker training. We can use anything that has been consistently paired with food and that the learner understands is a predictor that food is coming.

Does Mercedes understand the click?

22/10/2026

I'm re-sharing this post as I've had word from Tegan Joke who is the person running Good Karma Sanctuary at the pyramids, that there has not been practical aid provided for the horses, donkeys and camels suffering there.

Please put pressure on the organisers and sponsors to do something permanent and lasting for the equines suffering just past the wall of their glamorous event.

If you can donate yourself as well, that would be hugely appreciated as well.

22/10/2026

Who has heard the expression “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again”?

This is described as Trial and Error learning - this is how Negative Reinforcement works. It’s not fun.

The horse experiences an aversive stimulus over and over and keeps trying and trying to work out what makes it go away, they're searching for the relief.

But even in R+ training if reinforcement is low enough and very little prompts or arranging of the environment occurs to give the horse clues, you can tip into aversive territory and become similar to Trial and Error learning.

If you’re holding out for bigger or better behaviour or because you think it’s good for a horse to ‘figure it out’, what we call “lumping”, you can cause frustration when the horse experiences Extinction, as reinforcement decreases or stops. Extinction is defined as the non reinforcement of a previously reinforced behaviour and it's very unpleasant for the learner.

Training with an ‘Errorless Mindset’ is a great antidote to avoiding lumping, Trial and Error Learning or Extinction.

It doesn't mean expecting perfection, because none of us are perfect! It means “thin slicing” our shaping program, reinforcing small successive approximations, making mindful use of our environment, antecedent arrangements and any prior training history or cues and using things that will naturally prompt a behaviour. It also means taking responsibility for "errors" in learning.

“Unfortunately, trial and error approaches typically result in low rates of reinforcement that generate unwanted fallout. Learners practice errors making correct responding less likely, and they become frustrated, setting the occasion for aggressive behavior and giving up. This fallout led researchers and practitioners to ask, are errors really necessary for learning to occur? Errorless learning is a term used to describe a teaching approach that limits incorrect responses through careful arrangement of the teaching conditions.“

(Susan Friedman Ph.D.)

"Tsk, No, Eh-eh: Clearing the Path to Reinforcement with an Errorless Learning Mindset"
Susan G. Friedman, Ph. D.
Professor Emeritus, Department of Psychology
Utah State University
Behavior Works, LLC
A paper presented at the ABMA Conference, 2016.

You can read the paper in the comments.

21/10/2026

If the horse isn't motivated = it's the training program!

21/10/2026

I hear lots of myths around horses and horse training. Things that people believe and will use in defence of certain types of training approaches and to denigrate R+ training.

These are all WRONG :

"A horse will feel pressure just being around us."

"We can't avoid pressure altogether"

"Even R+ trainers use pressure/R-"

"The horse feels pressure to get the treat"

"The release is the reward."

First of all, "pressure" is a very subjective word, so let's define it, let's operationalise it! In this context, we are talking about the unpleasant pressure of pressure/release training aka Negative Reinforcement. It can be physical, emotional or psychological pressure, in order to perform, so in this context, we are talking about an aversive stimulus, an unpleasant experience the horse is experiencing that creates behaviour: escape and avoidance behaviour.

The word "aversive" (unpleasant) and "pressure" in the context of creating behaviour, are synonymous.

The definition of Negative Reinforcement (R-) is that we remove something in the hopes of reinforcing behaviour. If the removal of a stimulus causes the behaviour to increase in frequency or strength in the future, then we can say that the behaviour has been negatively reinforced. A horse learns from the consequences of their behaviour. In future, an aversive (unpleasant) stimulus being applied in a certain way, will be removed when they perform a particular behaviour. In time, the application of the aversive becomes predictable and the horse comes to learn the predictor (cue) of the aversive application ie. the horse learns the aversive cue, so that they can avoid it in the future.

This is how pressure and release training creates behaviour change. "Pressure" (aversive stimulus) is applied and when the target behaviour is performed, the "pressure" is removed in order to reinforce the behaviour. It doesn’t matter how soft, hard, subtle or harsh WE think the "pressure" was, it’s the right amount however gentle or harsh, for that particular horse, in order to trigger a reaction of escape and avoidance behaviour. It has to be unpleasant enough to cause a reaction, or it simply won’t reinforce behaviour, it won’t ‘work’.

What is happening is Trial and Error Learning, which I have posted information about previously, whereby the horse must guess and perform any number of behaviours in the learning stages, in order to escape the "pressure" and therefore find the ‘correct’ behaviour.

The ‘correct’ behaviour is determined by the human. As I said earlier, in future they can try to successfully avoid the aversive stimulus ("pressure"), by learning the aversive cue/predictor, IF the trainer is consistent enough and accurate enough in their application of the aversive stimulus and their timing of the removal.

This happens EVERY TIME a horse learns something new via Negative Reinforcement (pressure/release) training.

It's loads and loads of little micro-aggressions just to learn a simple behaviour.

One last and important thing is understanding Classical Conditioning, which is the pairing of stimulus - the horse learns that when A happens, it predicts that B also happens. In practical terms for the horse, this means when my human comes to train me (A) that I am going to experience aversive stimuli (B). In this scenario, the horse DOES find the human's presence unpleasant because they have been repeatedly paired with something unpleasant

But that is not the case with all training approaches.

All training is a “study of one”. This means that every horse has their own unique set of experiences based on their past and the present, their nature versus their nurture, their ability to cope with various stimuli, their health and the quality of their life in general. This means they all react differently, but that is not saying that they do not all learn the same. Some take longer, need a stronger aversive stimulus, may push into, rather than yield to “pressure”, some need more information and some may need more repetitions.

Now to the happy part!!

When we train with Positive Reinforcement (clicker) training, using food, we use our knowledge of how to create behaviour change, without having to cause aversive "pressure" to our horse.
We get the double bonus of our horses pairing a pleasant and enjoyable stimulus with ourselves, our training and our environment. We ourselves becomes predictors of good things and good feelings.

This enjoyment builds on itself and learning can become enjoyable in its own right as well.

We also get discretionary effort, if the training is of a high standard, where the horse will offer even more than what we were expecting.

There are so many bonuses to training with positive reinforcement and none of the fallout you get from training with aversive "pressure" (negative reinforcement)! ❤

21/10/2026

This is horrific.

While millions are spent on a luxury event in view of the Pyramids, with people and horses flying in for the event, sipping ch*****ne and watching performance horses that have been jetted in from all around the world . . . . . just beyond the wall, horses, donkeys and camels are suffering, being worked to death and discarded by the side of the road when they die.

But the complete opposite ends of the spectrum of the horses' lives is just mind blowing and that someone thought it was a great venue for a horse event such as this!!

If you'd like to help, I've put a link in the comments for donations or go here:

Tegan Joke Vanderpost
(Good Karma Equine Sanctuary)

GoFundMe link:

Hello, I am Melanie from Pferdehilfe Cairo e.V.. Our project… Pferdehilfe KairoeV needs your support for Food for the rescues - Futter für die Pferde in Kairo