Bridging Signals

Positive Reinforcement Training

Positive reinforcers add a wanted or pleasant stimulus to increase or maintain the frequency of a behavior. For example, you ask a horse to pick its foot up and he/she does, he/she gets a treat. You’ve added a stimuli.

How is it done?

Positive Reinforcement— R+

By using a bridging signal, most commonly a click, to mark wanted behavior. The horse than learns to associate the click with a positive stimuli, in my training a small handful of grass hay pellets. I use R+ to teach behaviors such as, handling feet, backing up, saddling, and stops. These are a few examples, your imagination is the limit for R+ training your horse.

Bridging Signal

When your horse has learned that a bridge signal/click is always followed by a reward (food, affection etc) they start to associate the behavior they were displaying at the time with the sound of the click/food.

The Signal is a means of communication and it needs to be specific and unique and something the trainer can produce with precise timing. The signal needs to be something your horse can perceive. The signal itself is not rewarding or punishing in itself, its neutral.

The Bridge, when paired with a signal; uses repetition with the expectation of a reward (here is the conditioning part!) given at the exact moment the desired behavior is occurring, marks the behavior you want.

The bridge signal is used to time the gap between the moment of the behavior and delivering the reward, so the horse knows

It’s very important that you mark the behavior you want while the horse is exhibiting that behavior, not before and not after. Say you want your horse to hold its foot up for a few seconds while you hold it. You would click when you are holding it and they are relaxed, not when they first lift it or when they put it down.