Pixie Learns Back up

Pixie has known back up under-saddle for a long time, but now she is able to back up with a cue so small that most people don't know that I am asking her to back :) It has taken us a long time to get this far in our riding partnership and we are still not  done growing as partners. For the last few months I have been working on getting her to back from the ground with me standing behind her asking her to target my hand. She is perfecting that and now we are transferring it to our riding. I ride her bare back to allow my cues to be felt easily. This is big for us because I do not punish the wrong answer, I simply ignore it. I will even reward her with a "good girl" if she is offering me something even if its not quite right. We started this back up with out any fear based training, now I will pick up the reins for steering purposes as we are not to bridle-less riding yet and I have to make sure I am not being unfair in my requests.  It is my goal to someday ride her without a halter, and we will get there, but it is a slow process for us. We have already come so far I could not be more proud of her. We very rarely ride in a saddle or bridle. Usually we are bareback with halter and lead rope. Yes, even on trail rides! I personally find arenas boring, so we are outside every chance we get :)

 Besides our riding work, our liberty work on the ground is growing by leaps and bounds too.  We have mastered our basics at complete liberty and our more advanced cues we are using a neck rope only. No halter required for ground work at all! ( No stick and string required either) I have decided I use a variety of methods, and while I have taken some great things from the "natural horsemanship" style, I hesitate to call my style of training by that name. Natural horsemanship training is nothing more than Negative Reinforcement training with sometimes positive punishment methods thrown in. I really rely on Positive Reinforcement/ Negative punishment training once safety is no longer an issue. The truth is we always go back to what we know and understand best and for me that is clicker training (which is always Positive Reinforcement). In my dream world I would become a clicker trainer instructor for people and their horses. I just don't feel the horse world is ready for that change overall. While there are a few big name trainers(which I love and follow) who clicker train, it just isn't the norm in the horse world, because people most times want faster results. And the sad reality is positive punishment training will almost always yield faster results because you have a animal that is scared to try anything new. Also with positive punishment training you will always need the equipment to control because horses are smart and they learn really fast that without the equipment you do not hold the power. I do not want a relationship that is only there when I have equipment, I want the trust all the time. In my humble opinion it makes for a safer horse when you don't rely on equipment to control, but instead have a trust in each other and clear communication.