What is Clicker Training?

Clicker Training is a method of training animals that uses a "clicking" sound which is reinforced by a food reward. The clicker acts as a "yes" signal to tell the animal precisely when it has done something that has earned it a treat.

Horses do not get pushy or demanding about the food because they learn that they have to perform a behavior to get the click and the treat. Food is a powerful motivator, clicker training allows us to harness this motivation and direct it into the task we want the horse to do. As a result the horse becomes enthusiastic about training sessions and learns faster than ever before.
Can you imagine how much easier and more fun training will be when your horse REALLY WANTS TO DO what you ask it to do. This means that you don't have to change your current training system but you can rapidly improve your results by incorporating the clicker.

Where did it come from?
Clicker Training was originally developed when people began training dolphins. They realised that conventional methods of animal training did not work on an animal that could just swim away.
For example, you could not put a rope on a dolphin and make it jump out of the water. So they had to find a way to get the dolphins to WANT TO perform.

The dolphin trainers experimented with using a whistle to mark good behavior. They discovered that when they blew a whistle and then threw in a fish the dolphins would began to associate the whistle sound with getting some food. So they started only blowing the whistle and throwing in a fish when then dolphin swam near a floating hoop.
Then they tried only blowing the whistle and throwing in a fish when the dolphin accidentally swam into or through the floating hoop.

The dolphins were excited about getting all this fish and they were soon swimming through the hoop on purpose as soon as the trainers put it in the water. Gradually the trainers changed what the dolphin had to do to earn a fish. So that the dolphin had to do progressively more and more each time.

The hoop was then raised out of the water in stages, when the dolphin had been through the hoop successfully several times in a row .They would raise the height a small amount.
This was the start of a new era in communication with animals.
This technique of using a marker signal and associating it with food rewards was then applied to other animals including tigers, lions, elephants, iguanas, cats, horses, dogs, and llama's.
The results were astounding.

Trainers all over the world were finding that their animals were now enthusiastic about learning and were learning faster than ever before. Zoo animal handlers were no longer needed to tranquilize animals as often as they had. Trainers of domestic animals like dog's and horses were able to incorporate clicker training into their existing training system's and were amazed at how much faster their animals now learned, and how much more effort they would put into performing a behavior.