Free Shaping

One of the most commonly known ways to train horses with positive reinforcement is through "free shaping". Shaping is when you use your click to let your horse know they are getting closer and closer to the goal behavior. Alot like the "you're getting warmer" game many kids play.

We generally start by clicking anything that resembles the goal. We'll take any part or direction or general idea that has any component of the end behavior. Then we steadily increase the criteria, narrowing down what we do and don't click for. Until the horse is left with one very precise behavior. We can picture this like molding clay or chiselling a statue, or a narrowing funnel.

While generally we think of this as just going to the horse clicking and feeding until they're dancing a well choreographed dance its not that easy. We need to pick 1 goal at a time, work on it until its exactly how we like it, then get it on cue to use it when and how we like.

We also don't need to just sit and click, we can use clever antecedent arrangement to help the horse figure out the goal more easily. By setting the scene we can make it really obvious what we want the horse to do. If we walk into an empty arena with only 1 ball, its pretty obvious we want them to engage with the ball. If we have 100 toys all thrown about it can be unclear to the horse. Leaving no objects can inform them we want them to do something with their body, but using things like platforms, poles, mats, or targets we can help them have a good guess.

We can use these tools to get the horse working in the right direction, then use our shaping to fine tune it to something more precise.