Articles

Debra Olson Daniels has written a series of articles that have appeared in Horse Conscious, an online resource for horse lovers interested in gentle training.

Why I Teach Horses With Clicker Training (scroll to bottom of newsletter)

First, let me tell you about how and why I started to study this training system based in science of some 40+ years. In the year 2000, a seven year old Tennessee Walking Horse named Magic came into my life. He was a handful. I was his 5th home by age seven and I could see why. Not only was he terrified of everything, he would protect himself against the world. None of this was pretty to watch [...]
Read full article »

Equine Pilates

How we work with our horses is important. We want them relaxed when we work with them. We do not want to work with them with tension in their bodies. Tension over the long haul creates lameness issues. It is natural for horses to counter balance to turn and stop, raise their heads up and hollow their backs to see the landscape better[...]
Read full article »

The Opposite of Reinforcement is No Reinforcement

Most of us are cross over trainers. If we have been with horses for any length of time we have used correction based training. Yes, we would give a pet, a good girl or good boy, a secondary reinforcer, but we still would correct unwanted behaviors through various means. If we look at [...]
Read full article »

Appreciating our Horses

Magic and I love to play together. For with clicker training the horse learns to love his work and to take ownership of the behaviors. This is how we can get horses to work at liberty in collection or any other seemingly amazing movement. They have been taught in small steps, rewarded [...]
Read full article »