Hello, it’s the New Year; a fresh new slate. As I told you in the previous blog, I would talk about Punky’s experience with clicker training. After we had gotten Punky, my mom started doing clicker training with Punky. For those of you who don’t know what clicker training is, it is when you train a horse using a tool that emits a clicking sound, and you click it whenever the horse or pony does a proper action that you want them to do.  You then give them a treat because they did the action that you asked. You can probably figure out that this soon led to some problems. After a while, Punky started tapping “targets” without being directed to do so. He was expecting a reward each time he tapped a “target”. After each tap of the “target”, he looked back at my mom expecting a treat. So, he would trot, trot, trot until we got to a trotting pole and he would stop and go tap, tap, tap with his hoof, when I really wanted him to go trot, trot, trot. My first attempt at a jump was also with the same fate. He stopped and tapped the jump. He looked back at my mom, or whomever was closest to him, expecting a click and then a treat.  Also, all of the cones were crushed in our ring because Punky tried to tap each one every time he came near one. My mom eventually stopped the program because of instances like this.  Punky was deeply saddened by the end of the project. He had already gotten a ton of treats because of it. Punky, being Punky , loved the treats and did not want them to stop. See you next newsletter. Maybe we will talk about our first event a few years back!

Back to top