By Sharon Foley

No matter how deeply you wish to dive into clicker training the first steps are going to be the same. So here is the general outline for getting the ball rolling.

1. Read all you can about clicker training. Clicker training principles are the same across species. Since there is already a lot of material out there about clicker training dogs do not disregard these resources as irrelevent to your situation. Here are some clicker training resources worth checking out.

Web sites

Alexandra Kurland's site

Karen Pryor's site

Clicker Solutions site

Books

Don't Shoot the Dog, by Karen Pryor

Clicker Training for Your Horse, by Alexandra Kurland

Getting to Yes, by Sharon Foley

2. Get a clicker (you can pick one up cheap at most large pet supply stores, like PetSmart) and chop up some treats. Lots of treats. Plan on clicking and treating 50-100 times in a session. You can use the horse's grain ration, or hay pellets, sugar, mints, pieces of apple or carrot. Or anything your really likes. Treats should be very small. Size of carrot treats for instance, should be about the size of a nickel.

Although over time you will incorporate non-food rewards into the reinforcement strategy it is best to START with food rewards. Make sure that your horse loves the rewards you are using.

3. TEACH the Training Game. Start with a VERY simple behavior. Your primary objective with your first training project is not the behavior itself so much as making sure that the horse understands the FUN and EASY connection between his behavior, the click and the reward. That is the "Training Game". So pick something to train that is very easy. The behavior of choice that nearly all clicker trainers around the world start with is "Targeting". Targeting is simply having the animal touch an object with the nose. Here is how to do it.

4. HAVE FUN incorporating clicker training into every interaction with your horse.