I am also playing with clicker training recently and am encouraged by the results. I started to help Sunny learn to 'come' to me in the field. While he is fine letting me walk up to him and sometimes decides to come-to-me it is not reliable. Additionally, he perceives any pressure (such as hide-the-hiney game/disengage HQ) as reason to leave, rather than to turn-and-face me. I could address this by more on-line and liberty play, but I think it will be fun to a different approach and am optimistic that the positive reinforcement will be more effective in this situation. It is only day 2 of targeting my hand and 'come', but I am encouraged by the progress already! (he already has been exposed to the clicker since I am experimenting with communicating with horses about blanket choices using symbols, see http://www.horsechannel.com/horse-news/2016/09/horses-learn-to-communicate-blanket-preferences-with-symbols.aspx )
Today I starting using the clicker under saddle and clicked for our canter transitions under saddle (which we have just started and they tend to be trot as fast as you can before finally breaking into a canter). I only did 1 transition each direction as we were focusing on other things, and to the right he almost had a walk-canter transition! (Yay!) but I am very interested in seeing if the clicker-treat improves his eagerness for and understanding of the transitions...
Also, I have thought about clicking when he drinks on the trail... would it be an amazing method to teach better drinking or would I have a monster that wants to stop at every puddle... We will find out!
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