Look Away

"Look Away" - Beginning clicker training with your horse.

Where can I do it?

You stand with your horse tied up or with him on the opposite side of a rail or fence. You are just out of his reach.

What do I need?

A "clicker", a bag full of treats, a rope halter and lead, a willing horse.

How do I start?

Stand just out of your horse's reach and wait for them to look at something away from you as soon as he does, click and give him a treat. As soon as the horse looks away from you,even slightly, click, and hand it a treat.
The horse will then focus on you and the treat, wanting to get more treats, just stay out of reach and wait for the horse to look away from you again. As soon as they do, click and give them a treat. It is imprtant to click while the horses head is moving away from you... the timing of the click is the most important thing because this is the exact behaviour you are rewarding.

What now?

Repeat this process MANY MANY MANY times so that this is firmly established in your horses mind. This is teaching your horse three things:

1) That the clicking sound is always followed immediately by a treat.

2) That the clicking sound occurs when he performs a certain movement.

3) That they can CAUSE the treat to appear by repeating what he was doing when he
heard the click.

How often?

Best results will be achieved by doing short but frequent training sessions. For this initial lesson it woud be good if you could do 5-10 minute sessions 2 or 3 times in a day. Most horses catch on to the idea within the first or second session but some may take a little longer, just have patience and be persistant.

How long before he understands?

Your horse might figure it out quickly and so you are desperate to move on to the next phase..... BUT ..... it is really important that you do not move on until your is ABSOLUTELY, DEFINITELY, offering the behavior consistently.. (you might notice that I am exaggerating here to make a point...)

It takes about 80 "behavior, click, treat" repititions for the horse to be really solid in a behavior. You might think your horse is ready to move on but it is still worth doing more repititions of that confirmed behavior before you do.

The reason why is because when horses learn a new skill a neural pathway is built in their brain. The pathway is the connection the horse remembers between the behavior and the outcome. So in our case we want the horse to remember that moving its head away had a positive outcome because it resulted in a click and food. The new nueral pathway is at first very small, like making a walking track through the grass, the more the track is used the more defined the pathway becomes. If the track is not used frequently enough at first the grass will just grow back in its original position, but if it is used a lot at first it will get worn all the way down to the dirt and it will take much, much longer to grow back.


We all want to progress quickly but whenever you think about wanting to move on ask your self if it is because the horse is ready or because you are impatient. The answer here is obvious.

"Click and treat a desired behaviour, get it
consistently....and then build on it"


How do I move on?

Once your horse is consistently offering the right response you can begin to alter the requirements for a click, this means the behavior can be gradually moulded, over a period of steps into the end task you want to achieve.

The key is to break it down into small enough steps that the horse continues to be succesfull.

For example your horse goes from looking away a little bit at first and that earns him a click. When he is doing this you can wait until his head looks away a bit further to earn a click. Then when he is turning his head all the way around you might increase how long he has to hold it there before you click.

These are all individual steps and you need to change the requirement for a click in small enough steps that he can still be rewarded frequently. This means he will stay enthusiastic about it all and keep trying to earn that click.

If the standards for a click went from, looking away a littlle bit to looking way away and holding it there, you would not be able to click him very often (if at all) and he would lose interest because he couldn't seem to get the treats anymore.

So if you can break any task up into very small baby steps pretty soon you will be walking easily to your goal.


Another thing about shaping is that there are MANY different ways to achieve the same result depending on how creative you can get. For example if you want your horse to put it's head down in response to a visual cue of waving your hand downwards (the end result of many steps) you could use any of the folloiwing or a combination: get the horse to target an object, use pressure on the poll, wait for the horse to move down on his own, put something below him to catch his interest....etc etc etc...get creative!

Looking away is an important starting point for pushy horses, especially mouthy, colty, "bite-you" type horses. If your horse respects your space and is not at all inclined to get mouthy you could go straight on to targeting. If you are at all unsure how your horse will react then definitely teach them to look away first.

When your horse is putting its head right around to this side and waiting there for the click, then start getting the horse to wait for the food to come to their mouth rather than their mouth coming to the food. Do this by offering the treat quickly after you click when their head is still to the side. If the horse tries to bring its mouth to the food take your hand back away and the instant they put their head back to the side waiting for the click, take the treat to their mouth.

Get this really consistant before you move on. Some horses get the idea of the behavior/click/treat game really fast and before you know it your horse mouth turns into a giant crocodile when it hears the click. By getting the horse to wait with it's head to the side for the treat to come to it's mouth it acts as a mental barrier, and they get very gentle about taking the treats knowing that if they go towards the treat...it goes away until they go away!

So my horse now looks away and I click then he waits for me to bring the treat to his mouth.

Great you are ready to progress to the next step and teach your horse to "touch".

Continue to the next article - "Teach to Touch"

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