In a Whisper or In a Shout? Training under Time Constraints
Recently I watched a documentary film called In A Whisper. It’s a DVD of a colt starting challenge that was held in Fort Worth in 2002. The three trainers in the competition, Craig Cameron, Pat Parelli and Josh Lyons, each had 2 1/2 hours to start a two year old colt. The horses had very little handling prior to the event, and by the end of the evening, the trainers were riding the colts at a walk, trot and lope, taking them through a small obstacle course, and even roping from their backs. Impressive? Yes, very. It takes a very skilled and talented horse person to be able to take a horse through basic ground work exercises and then get the horse use to the saddle

Shimmer Practices Trailer Loading (video)
This is Shimmer’s second day practicing walking into the trailer. Trailer loading can be very frightening to a horse and many people have lots of trouble and training problems trying to get their horse to load into a trailer. With clicker training, trailer loading is a piece of cake! To read more about teaching Shimmer to lead and trailer load, check out this post.

Shimmer Learns to Trailer Load
A trailer is a small, dark, metal box on wheels. For a prey animal like a horse, walking into the mouth of this monster sounds like a pretty scary idea! Shimmer, our little buckskin filly has found a foster home. So, it was high time for her to learn to walk into a trailer! She had been in a trailer several times previously, but it had involved being herded into the trailer with a group of other horses. This is quite different from having to walk on a lead rope quietly up the ramp and into the trailer all by herself. However, with a lot of patience and a bit of clicker training, she mastered trailer loading in no time at all. Shimmer has been at the rescue’s main pr

Lessons from Teaching Your Dog To Skateboard DVD
In the ORCA meeting several weeks ago, we watched Bill Ryan’s DVD Teaching Your Dog To Skateboard. You can see a preview video clip of this DVD here. It’s a short, but well done DVD that explains one method for teaching your dog to ride on a skateboard. The approach is well though out. Bill Ryan sets up the environment from the beginning so that the dogs have a very high chance of being successful. This is a defining characteristic of good training–the trainer has a well defined plan from the start and understands how to manipulate the environment to help the animal succeed. The

Doolittle works on leading using clicker training (video)
Teaching a horse to lead traditionally required a lot of pulling, yanking and force. The traditional process to teach a young horse or colt to lead also usually results in frustration and stress for both the horse and the trainer. It’s very much a trial and error process for the horse, until he learns that when you put pressure on the lead, he’s suppose to move forward with you. Many articles will recommend that the handler wears gloves to prevent rope burn if the foal or horse is stubborn, pushy or hard to handle. Clicker training is a fast, safe and effective way to train a horse to lead. I plan to write more about the process later, but basically, what I do is put