It can be very confusing and frustrating when you start clicker training your horse, and they seemingly lose interest and walk away. Often this leads people to believe that the horse doesn’t like the food or simply isn’t motivated by food. Horses must be motivated by food, however, or they would starve.

Instead, what often happens is that there is not enough reinforcement for the horse to hold their interest. Either they haven’t made the association yet of behavior = click = treat, or the trainer is asking for too much behavior at once.

Clicker Training with Targeting

The former often happens when people start clicker training with targeting. After presenting the target a few times, the novelty has worn off. If the horse has not yet made the association between the behavior, the click, and the reinforcement, they have no reason to continue touching the target. Of course, this means that they’re no longer getting any food either, so they lose interest and walk away.

The latter often happens when training a stand behavior. The horse may be trying to figure out how to get the food, doing everything but standing still. When the horse does somehow find the right position and the trainer clicks and reinforces, instead of clicking again before the horse has a chance to move, the trainer waits, and the horse goes back to searching for the right answer, which means that a long time passes before they get more food. The rate of reinforcement is very low, and the horse may get frustrated or lose interest.

Fear of Doing Something Wrong

Many domestic horses struggle at the beginning of clicker training simply because after years of being micromanaged, with punishment occurring all too frequently for any move not asked for, these horses don’t know that they can or should offer behavior. For fear of doing something wrong, they don’t do anything at all, giving the impression that they are not motivated by food.

Dealing with Distractions

High-distraction environments can also make it seem like your horse doesn’t like the food. If the horse is away from their friends, they may refuse to eat because they’re more worried about where their friends are than they are about food. If the horse is uncomfortable where you’re trying to train them, they may refuse the food because self-preservation is more important than eating at that moment.

Hand Feeding

Believe it or not, some horses have a real aversion at first to eating from a person’s hand. This doesn’t happen very often and usually doesn’t last very long, but if you suspect this could be an issue for your horse, try wearing a glove or feeding from a small handheld dish.

Of course, there are times when the issue really is the food, but more often than not, refusing food is probably one of the other problems listed above.

The following is a video of a horse that is seemingly unmotivated by food. You’ll see how both changing the food and changing the behavior changes the horse’s motivation.