The coming of the New Year brought a beautiful post to the clickryder list, written by Karen Willmus, mother of four, and a horse trainer in Minnesota. Karen discovered clicker training in 1998, when Sunshine Books and clickertraining.com first published Alexandra Kurland's Clicker Training for Your Horse.
She writes:
Dogs, after all, are house pets, so while our clicker dogs sometimes amaze us it is not too startling when they greet us, hang out with us by choice, and romp with the children. Horses, however, that are glad to see us, and work without restraints, not to mention ponies playing in the sandbox and running (safely!) alongside the children's bicycles—now that's another thought! Consider what horses have endured from their masters for millenia. The change that comes over them when they are clicker trained-the way they hand you their love and trust by the bucketful-it's quite a shock for horse owners. Almost like discovering a new species, or finding yourself in a magic kingdom.
Karen Willmus goes on to describe a recent client:
Here's what I most wanted to share with you. In her New Years' Day post Karen Willmus went on to praise and encourage all the people on the Clickryder list, from beginners to 'oldtimers' with four years experience, like herself.
I monitor a lot of clicker lists. There's the horse list, a cat clicker list, the bird lists, a ton of dog clicker lists, a zoo list, and more. This year I also want to thank all the clicker lists. Thank you, list managers, for being so hard-working and generous. Thank you, everyone who posts to the lists, for your kindness, patience, endless interest and curiosity, your gifts of time and thought, your love for what we are all doing together. Thank you for your flame-free, beneficent good manners to each other. It's not just because of any one source, any one teacher, that this technology is spreading so fast. It's because of you, the list makers and the list participants. You really are changing the world, one click at a time.
Click here to find out how to join a clicker list.
Karen Pryor is the founder and CEO of Karen Pryor Clicker Training and Karen Pryor Academy. She is the author of many books, including Don't Shoot the Dog and Reaching the Animal Mind. Learn more about Karen Pryor or read Karen's Letters online.
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