Tulsa--Partner of Sharon
...one can't say that it is clear any clicker training is going on in the photo. But, clicker training has greatly influenced me and I've integrated the principles into my dressage work as best as I could. So, this horse has benefited a lot from my experience with c/t though I'm not "doing" c/t in this picture. Just regular old classical dressage. :-) Actually this picture is pulled from a video of a lesson with the great Karl Mikolka. He's a wonderful teacher and though he is not a clicker trainer I recognized the principles of great training because of my experience with c/t. I hope you like the photo.
Sharon's Website
My dressage clicker friends and I have been videoing like crazy. We had
what we like to call a "clickfest" :-) at, my friend, Sarah's barn. I
thought people (especially the ones interested in applying c/t to dressage)
might get a kick out of a little collage I made of Tulsa learning the
beginnings of piaffe. Of course she was extensively clicked throughout.
Note the treat bucket my friend Sarah is holding.
Sarah was in charge of encourging her to energize her haunches by tapping
her on the croup or hock with an inhand whip, as well as clicking and
treating. I was in charge of keeping her soft and calm while containing the
energy withOUT blocking the movement! A challenge! I should say that I'd
already done quite a lot of clicking her for lifting her legs in response to
a touch of the whip in hand (and just doodling around while tacking up). Of
course I've also done quite a lot under saddle to prepare her for this day
as well. Lots of transitions, turns, reinback, etc (all clicked of course).
Then on clickfest day every effort no matter how crazy was clicked.
Sometimes she offered some goofy ideas but they were all tries so we just
laughed and fed her the treats. I was really pleased how she kept trying!
Tulsa did GREAT and I was very pleased. The great thing about using the
clicker is we spent a fair amount of time, perhaps as much as 30 minutes, on
this exercise and at no time did she become frazzled. The collage frames
are the from the last 15 seconds or so and hopefully people would notice
that while she's still experimenting with a variety of options ;-) her tail
is quiet and the reins are very light. In the end we got perhaps 2 steps of
something approaching piaffe (half steps). I was very satisfied and we
ended on that.
"Here is another set I created of Tulsa's piaffe lesson. In this group I am
just showing how many different kinds of "tries" we clicked. I'd say we were
clicking (and treating!) every 10 seconds or so! My friend Sarah is pretty
generous with the c/t which I think means a LOT to the horse. You can't
click/treat too much. In the end it will pay off."
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