I had emailed Monty once, and he said that he was for clicker training.

I had never heard of clicker training before. I looked it up and I'm still not sure I understand what it is. Could one of you explain it in its simplest form?

If I used it, I would use rest as a reward over food. Its pretty amazing what some people have achieved with Clicker Training :-) one of my friends showed me some videos on YouTube.

Hi Rudi This is a hard one for me to respond to as I have promised Ronda that I would not mention food rewards on this forum but your comment encourage it. Apologies to Ronda and anyone else who may be offended by what I say here and of course to Monty too. I knew very little about clicker training until I did a little research recently. There was a clinic advertised locally too and it showed an intro video. The trainers used a bum bag for carrots and hand fed the carrot bits as I do but then clicked with a clicker each time a reward was given and sometimes then clicked with not reward to achieve the same response. Bit like Pavlov's training. They certainly had their horses doing amazing things but it was too gimmicky for me. However it does tend to confirm the incredible responses you can get with positive re-enforcement via food rewards. When growing up on a property where our horses ran together in a large field/paddock we would always take a bit of bread with us to catch them. It never failed. When I came back to horses 25 years ago I naturally took bread or a carrot with me to catch my horses which were initially agisted with a big herd of other horses. They soon started coming out of the herd at my approach for their reward and to be caught. I always use carrots to catch my horses and I progressed to using them for positive re-enforcement when I purchased Pie as nothing else worked for her. I started chopping up my carrots in very small pieces and popping these into a bum bag for her as she really needed plenty of positive re-enforcement and the traditional rubbing on the forehead didn't work as she was so fearful of any hands near her. When first handling and then breaking in Tricka I encouraged her trust and learning with small pieces of carrot as positive re-enforcement from a bum bag. The results were amazing as she learnt so quickly and trusted me at all times and became very responsive. As her training progressed I cut back on the rewards and now she rarely gets one except when being caught or it is a new stressful situation for her. for example - the other day she had to pass close by a ditch digger and all sorts of noisy other machinery which she had not been exposed to previously. She was very nervous and fearful but quickly settled once she had been rewarded with a bit of carrot. It was a challenge to break her in as I hadn't broken in a horse before and my facilities were very poor - no round yard etc. As I didn't know about Monty's Equus Uni at the time my manual for breaking in Tricka was Tom Roberts's book 'Horse Control - The Young Horse' written years ago. His principles are very similar to Montys based on the avoidance of punishment and the precepts of "That will profit you" or "That will profit you not". His biggest difference with Monty is that he allows for carrot rewards hence his methods suited me. So my response here Rudi is that I agree with Alexander Kurland. Horses DO NOT bite if given food rewards correctly and giving these rewards can actually be used to stop them biting along with other bad behavioural habits you wish to correct. Food rewards (e.g. chopped up carrots in a bum bag and given by hand) are very effective as positive re-enforcement and in gaining a horses trust and co-operation when used correctly. However it is important to train your horse that you are in control of the rewards and that they DO NOT look for them by themselves and when given that they take them gently otherwise no reward. If they step out of line I give them a bit of a nudge with my closed fist on their nose and no reward. The nudge is not a punch and not harsh just a warning nudge. Same principle as training a dog with food rewards - the dog must not snatch the reward but take it gently from you in its mouth. It is all about correct training. My almost 2 year old grand daughter passed a bit of carrot up to my quarter horse over the fence the other day. Not recommended!! I got I fright when I saw her do it but it was too late to react. Fortuanately my horse just took it out of her wee fingers with his lips so gently and she just burst out laughing. Of course she was told never to do it again and I will be mopre mindful in future. The one horse I DO NOT give carrot rewards to from my hands is their little shetland pony. It is important to judge the personality of the horse somewhat before going down this track and to consider who will be handling it. Finally if using this approach to correct bad behaviour then I recommend fairly intensive rewards initially "that will profit you" and then easing back as the horse is trained. Again apologies to all those who firmly believe that horses should never be fed from the hand or given "ham" as a reward. I hope that we can be open minded in this forum as Monty claims to be.

Thank you for the comments. I always try to find a common sense between the different schools of training. It is true that somehow clicker training does not correspond to all of Monty's principles. On the other hand his general rule that the handler of a tool is much more important than the tool itself corresponds perfectly to clicker training (it is not that easy). I also think that we should not mix the methods in the basic training, in my opinion it would be too confusing for us and the horses. Probably this is the case also for those who use clicker training as a basis, there approach is different and they should go on their way. The common idea will be the communication with horses without causing pain based on trust and motivation.

Gen, have you taken the introductory courses yet? If so, how is it going so far?