Help! My Horse Is Mugging Me!

One of the top reasons people abandon clicker training their equids shortly after they start is that oftentimes, their equids start behaving in unexpected ways that make the person uncomfortable.

When you’ve been told all your life that horses are dangerous and you need to make your equid respect your space, it’s easy to understand why people get nervous when their equids get excited about the food and start crowding them, cutting them off, and frisking them for food.

Below are a few of the things that you can do to prevent your equid from becoming a treat monster so that you can successfully clicker train them without fear.

1. Have free food available during your training sessions.

   When the only food available is the food you’re carrying, your equid may feel a little desperate if they don’t know how to get the food. Trying to work with a hungry animal does not make for productive training. It will be harder for them to focus, and it will end up being more negative reinforcement (relief from hunger) than positive reinforcement (adding an appetitive).
   
   Instead, make sure your equid has had hay before your training session and keep free food available for your equid during training sessions.

2. Start training in protected contact.

   Your equid might have issues around food that you don’t know about, which means that they might throw out some very unexpected behaviors when you first introduce food reinforcers to them. For this reason, it’s best to start training in protected contact.
   
   Protected contact will help your equid focus on what you’re teaching while limiting their behavioral options, like searching for food on your person or crowding you. Because they’re unable to reach you, you’ll have more opportunities to reinforce the behaviors you want, and they’ll learn that the food comes to them.

3. Know the value of the food you’re using.

   The higher the value of the food, the more likely your equid is to mug you. Start clicker training with low-value food to help keep your equid’s excitement to a minimum. The food should be valuable enough to work for but not so valuable that your equid is desperate to get it.
   
   In my experience, most equids are happy enough to work for hay, hay pellets, or similar. Save the high-value foods or treats for when you’re working on more challenging behaviors, like loading into a trailer or accepting an injection.

4. Click before you move your hands.

   Because we’re impatient by nature, we tend to start the food delivery process before we’ve clicked the clicker. Unfortunately, the movement of your hand ends up marking the behavior for the horse, instead of the clicker, which can lead to a lot of confusion for your equid as your behavior is not clear or consistent.
   
   Instead, make sure to keep your hand still until you’ve marked the intended behavior with your clicker, then move your hand to reach for the food. Or, you can preload your hand with food so that you can then deliver the food immediately after the click instead of reaching into your pouch. This can be useful when you need to maintain a high rate of reinforcement, but your hand must be still before you click, either way.

5. Feed where you want your equid to be.

   Your equid might move between the moment you click to the moment you deliver the food, but you’re still going to deliver the food to where your equid was when you clicked and not necessarily where they end up after you click.
   
   You can also use the delivery of the food to move your equid, instead of doing things like pushing them if you feel they’re too close. For example, if your equid is too close for comfort and you want them to back off, you can deliver the food towards their chest so that they have to back up to get it.
   
   Consistently feeding your equid away from your body will help them learn to wait for the food to come to them instead of searching for it on your person or grabbing at your hands.

6. Maintain a high rate of success

   You might have heard that you need to maintain a high rate of reinforcement, but this statement often leads to people stuffing their equid’s face with food without any clear reason why. I prefer to think of it as maintaining a high rate of success. Frustration can lead to mugging behaviors, so breaking down behaviors into manageable steps will help your equid to be successful and avoid feelings of frustration.

7. Have a clear beginning and end of session signal

   For some equids, just the presence of the treat pouch can be the signal that training is about to begin and food reinforcers are available. However, if you’re like me and wear your food pouch all the time, it’s a good idea to come up with another signal that indicates whether or not reinforcement is available so that your equid is not constantly pestering you every time you’re in the same space together.
   
   Many people avoid having food on them all the time like I do and prefer to wear it only during training. Taking it off can be a cue to your equid that training is over and reinforcement is no linger available.

   Either way, it’s a good idea to give your equid a large handful of food on the ground or in a bucket before you make your exit so that they have something to focus on as you leave and your leaving doesn’t become aversive. If your equid is having trouble understanding, establish your end-of-session signal in protected contact first before using it in free contact.