Be Generous!
It never hurts to be generous.
Many trainers feel like they have to hold on to their food and dole it out very carefully, giving only as much food as necessary to maintain the behavior. But this often creates anxiety, frustration, insecurity, or confusion. There is no prize for using the least amount of food at the end of the session possible. There is no benefit for being stingy Show your horse some love!
Have clear criteria, good timing with your click, feed generously, and set your horse up for success at a rate that feel comfortable and engaging for them. Some horses have slow training speeds, like my donkeys, I click and treat, they stop and chew, and think and process, then they do the behavior better next time. While other horses have very fast training speeds, where when you click and treat you need to be immediately giving them another cue, don't give them any time to come up with their own ideas, keep them on task, and keep duration low and speed pumped up! This would be our Zephyr He trains at a million miles an hour. He does best with behaviors we can have a very high rate of reinforcement for early in the session, then when he melts into the rhythm of it all, we can settle into more distance, duration, distraction, or difficulty problem solving.
When we are training our horses, they may understand the behavioral goal and may even be able to hold it together and DO the behavior for a long duration, distance, or with a lot of distractions. But that doesn't mean they're emotionally all the way on board with it. They may be doing as much as they can manage to hold it together to get the job done to get to the R+ (or avoid punishment), but not be totally loving the behavior. So even when you've successfully taught a behavior, don't immediately start pushing for a lot of distance, duration, distraction, spend time conditioning it and solidifying it. This means, BE GENEROUS. Teach a behavior until they get it, then practice it with a high rate of reinforcement until they LOVE it! Once they love it the behavior will be resilient to everything that may combat it in real life.
When a behavior is learned, the emotions they feel are encapsulated into the behavior. So, if they are learning a behavior while very frustrated, the frustration becomes encompassed within it. If they're enjoying themselves, feeling successful, smart and competent, those feelings will be wrapped into it. So, when you cue a behavior it will elicit the emotions that it was trained with. Because that's classical conditioning Positively trained behaviors that have been reinforced generously and practiced a lot with a high rate of reinforcement, will elicit those feelings of competence, joy, and success.