Ok so I've been looking into this clicker training malarky and it always says you have to have something you want to teach. Well I've decided I'd like to teach my boy to do the spanish walk!

So now I need help breaking this down into little steps for him to learn

Hope this makes sense, any suggestions gratefully received!

Thanks

Laura

Hi Laura

My advice would be to be very careful teaching spanish walk, expecially if it is the first thing you are teaching with the clicker. Not only is the exercise of Spanish Walk very complex to teach with or without the clicker, your horse needs to be fit enough and working correctly through the back to be able to execute it correctly and also it can go very wrong.

For example, I started teaching my horse Spanish Walk with the clicker when I first started out but inadvertantly taught him to aim for my knee which he got very proficiant at doing! This happened despite having spent hours planning each tiny step of how we would progress.

Why not look into training something a little less complicated at first such as touching an object or fetching an object? These are great things to start with because they are relatively simple to teach and potentially less can go wrong wit the training.

Don't forget, if you are new to clicker training, you will be learning along-side your horse. It is not unusual when first starting out for your horse to get ahead of you in his training and therefore a really good plan is essential

Hope this helps
Marie

Hi Marie,

I have taught him to touch or hold on an object and he will retreive a giant dumbell (brothers a carpenter apprentice)

If i point to his front leg and say up he picks it right up high and holds it until I say ok or point at the other leg but I can't figure out how to do this moving, at the mo he sort of does it on the spot with me on the ground! maybe if I was riding him and was giving walk aids at the same time he'd put the two together but I don't wanna rush him.

just looking for ideas of how other people would teach it so I can add in their steps maybe, kinda thinking allowed here so feel free to comment

HI Laura

I'm also quite a novice at Clicker, I have been using it for about 2 years now and have been on an advanced Alexandra Kurland Clinic here in the UK, and would absolutely love to go and see Company of Horses training their horses, but its difficult to get on a clinic. But I'm definately still a novice and learn something new everytime I use clicker. I have to say I also use other methods and clicker for me was started to help with lateral movements for our dressage tests, I've had a 9 for my free walk on a long rein. However, I do not use it to teach games at all, only touching targets and I use clicker not to play games as such but to teach something that I find hard ridden or in hand to teach in a "human" sense. Its kind of a middle language for both of us.

Catherine B who is the "owner" of this site has in the past given me very good, helpful and non judgemental answers to my many, and often tedious, questions and suggestions. Hopefully she'll post back and give you some friendly advice.

Unfortuately, I truly believe that a horse shouldn't be taught the spanish walk. I know you think it looks great and it does, I've ridden several iberian stallions all who had marvellous spanish walks but I think as a "game" to play it has no purpose in a horses everyday life. I've also come across a horse who had been taught the spanish walk very badly by a novice clicker trainer and had become very very dangerous in hand, offering the walk at any and every interval whilst haltered, coming at you with its front legs. I'm not saying that you are training badly or wrongly, but I personally would need to understand about building behaviour chains and how to extinish unwanted behaviour using clicker before trying to potentially train something quite so dangerous.

Good luck and I hope I haven't offended you.

Jo

no offence caused, i posted on here to get other peoples opinions!

Toby is very fit and normally very gentle. When I first did it he was offering it all the while as you mention but he does that what ever you teach him and soon the initial novelty wears off! Now i've refined the cue to me standing square on with one arm crossed across my body (hard to explain but its something that looks deliberate and shouldn't be confused)other arm pointing and saying 'hup'. Now he won't do it unless I stand like this and is much safer.

any more suggestions please fire away!

Oh dear, another thread I haven't replied to - sorry!

Laura it sounds as though you've done really well in getting the behaviour on cue so that he doesn't do this one spontaneously. As others have said, it can get a bit dangerous!

In terms of getting the forward movement - hmmm, I'm reluctant to say much because I also think that Spanish walk isn't just about training the behavioural components, you have to be really careful to make sure that the horse is sufficiently schooled and has the right muscles in the right place to be able to support such an advanced movement. Likewise other behaviours that are often taught using CT, like piaffe and lateral work. It is possible to train them with CT but they look pretty horrific if the horse doesn't have the musculature to work through properly. That can lead to physical problems so be very careful.

But if your horse is sufficiently schooled then you could combine the walk and the leg-lifting following the normal rules of shaping that are outlined in Karen Pryor's book Don't shoot the dog.

Hi Jo (again!)

I don't know if you realise this but if you wanted to do a workshop with Ben (formerly of Company of Horses) then you don't need to "get on a clinic" as such. You just need to get 10-12 people together plus 3-4 horses and Ben will go to you. I think this would be great for you as we seem to spend so much time debating things - I think a lot would become much clearer to you if you could see this in practice. As far as I know Emma (CoH) isn't teaching at the moment (Emma, please correct me if I'm wrong!) but you also have Marie near you so you do have other options to learn about this stuff practically. Or if you're ever visiting the south-east then drop in!

Catherine