Category Archives: skills

Leading Position Seven

I’m going to focus on Leading Position 7 next because Leading Positions 1 and 2 require us to be in front of the horse, facing away from him.

Leading Position 7 (LP7) has the handler face to face with the horse, either directly in front or a bit to the right or left of the horse’s head.

Remember that horses have a blind spot right in front of them for about 3 feet or a meter, due to the way their eyes are positioned at the side of the head. You can check this out for yourself by cupping your hands in around and in front of your nose to imitate a horse’s long nose. You will notice that you can no longer see right in front of yourself.

In order to feel safe in front of the horse facing away, we want to know that the horse backs up easily whenever we ask him to do so.

Face to face interactions include:

Greeting (horseman’s handshake).
Teaching the horse to put his nose on a hand-held target often has us standing facing. him, maybe at a bit of an angle.
Recall, e.g., asking the horse to come to us from the paddock.
Recall across unusual surfaces, and in a variety of other situations.
Rope Relaxation: tossing the rope around the horse’s head left to right and right to left.
Asking for back-up.
Protecting our personal space bubble while sharing time and space.
Backing up over a rail and recall over a rail.
Teaching sideways with the mirroring technique which can grow into a ‘square dance’ when it is paired with back-up and recall.
Teaching poll relaxation and flexion.
Tummy crunches

Greeting

When horses approach each other front-on, they usually greet by sniffing noses. If they don’t know each other, a sparring match might follow. If there is a sparring match, typically, one horse will strike out with a front leg. The other horse then retaliates or backs away.

Eventually one will capitulate and move out of range of the other. They may play a chasing game. Or they might both tire of the game and go back to eating or snoozing.

Two horses carefully checking each other out.

So it appears that a face-on approach from the front can be recognized as a greeting or a challenge/confrontation. If the horses belong to the same ‘in-group’, the approach from the front is usually a friendly greeting showing recognition. It resembles the smile and nod we exchange with colleagues at work.

Once we have established a positive relationship with our horse, we can maintain the bond by offering the standard ‘Greeting’ every time we approach. We extend the back of our hand – which stands in for another horse’s nose. We allow the horse to close the last inch of the gap to touch our hand, then we carry on with our business, as would another horse in the herd.

We must let the horse close the final gap between his nose and the back of our hand.

If the horse is not interested in closing the gap to touch our hand, we have powerful feedback. For some reason, at that moment, the horse is not in the mood to greet us. The horse has spoken, but are we listening? We have an opportunity to reflect on why this might be.

We want to develop this into a habit for each time we visit with the horse. To teach the horse, we use the Greet & Go procedure. This seems deceptively simple, but it is extremely powerful to both establish and maintain the connection between the horse and the person.

Generally, horses are not comfortable with having people’s hands all over their faces to ‘say hello’. Horses don’t go around patting each other on the head. Getting people to stop doing this is quite a challenge.

This desire that people have to rub on a horsse’s face is a factor in the biting urge that some horses exhibit around people.

This is sometimes called “The Horseman’s Handshake”. As soon as Boots touched the back of Ada’s hand, Ada walked away. She is using the “Greet and Go” procedure. A greeting like this is the polite way to approach any horse. Once the “Greet and Go” procedure is well established, we can “Greet”, then carry on with what we plan to do with the horse.

Targeting: Teaching the horse to put his nose on a hand-held target often has us standing facing him, maybe at a bit of an angle.

We need to remember that horses have a blind spot right in front of them for about 3 feet or a meter, due to the way their eyes are positioned at the side of the head.

Teaching Back-Up Signals

Straight body with raised fingers tapping the air, plus a voice signal are our cues for backing up while in front of the horse. Here we are working on a straight back-up between two rails.

The following four short video clips show the many ways we can play with Leading Position 7. Be aware that sometimes I use a body extension to help amplify my signal to make it clearer for the horse. Once the horseunderstands what I am asking, the body extension is no longer needed. Eventually we can do most things at liberty with gesture and voice cues.

The body extension is never a ‘punishment’. It merely makes it easier for the horse to understand what behaviour will both remove the signal presssure (negative reinforcement) and earn the click&treat (positive reinforcement). It’s easy to use both methods of reinforcement at the same time. For some tasks, it makes out intention much clearer for the horse. Horses thrive an clarity. I know some people in the clicker training world find this highly problematic, but it doesn’t need to be. It depends on how much finesse, and how many different moves, we want to build into our training program.

Recall

Once the horse knows that a ‘recall’ signal (my rounded open arm position, leaning forward slightly, and voice cue) will result in a treat, we can practice from further and further away. For paddock recall, I use a whistle and reward the coming with an ample treat.

Boots likes to show off her ‘bow’ because she knows it always results in a treat .

Be sure to check out my blog number 13 (see the ‘Blog Contents Quick Links’ at the top of the page) for using thin-slicing to plan a Training Program. Each task or move you want to teach your horse needs careful consideration of how you will make it easy for the horse to understand what you want – you need to design a Training Plan for each task.

I’d love to hear which move you have chosen and how it is going.

Leading Position Three

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There are 8 diffent basic positions we can be in when we want to communicate with our horse. In order to simplify the notes about each one, I’ve given the leading positions numbers 1-8.

1 is in front of the horse walking with ones back to him, the horse walking behind the owner.

2 is walking alongside the ear/eye area, as we migh be if we are asking the horse to turn away from us.

3 is beside the horse’s neck/shoulder area, which is often the most comfortable spot when leading the horse. It’s the one we will start with.

4 is alongside the horse’s ribs if we are teaching him to walk with us confidently having his nose well out in front. It puts us in the position we will be in if/when we ride.

5 is beside his hindquarters as we mighte be when grooming,asking him to lift a hind foot or enter a trailer.

6 is behind the horse, as for long reining.

7 is in front of the horse, facing him if we are asking him to back up away from us or come toward us.

8 is facing the side or back of the horse, as for grooming, saddling, mounting, foot care.

This clip demonstrates the 8 leading positions.

FIRST: Leading Position 3 – Beside the neck/shoulder

When I started working through the 8 Leading Positions, it made sense to start with Leading Position 3 (beside neck or shoulder) because it is the ‘handiest’ position if we are moving along in close communication.

Leading Position 3 (LP3) has the handler beside the horse’s neck or shoulder, facing forward in the same direction as the horse.

I think of LP3 as our ‘baseline’ position when moving between two points.

Walking shoulder-to-shoulder in step with each other.

Much of ground work starts with Leading Position 3. From this position we can easily read the horse and the horse can most easily read our intent.

When we walk with our horse we are always between two points: the point we just left and the point to which we are heading. The two points can be relatively close together or, if we are walking on the road or on a trail, they can be miles apart.

Staying in LP3 we can:

Walk forward together in a straight line.
Walk forward together in a weave pattern.
Walk forward together doing inward turns and counter-turns.
Walk forward together over rails, tarps, and other unusual surfaces.
Walk together through water or curtains or under arches and overhangs.
Walk forward together with the horse in a lane while we walk outside the lane.
Walk forward together, then do 180 degree turns together.
Walk forward together in circles or triangle shapes – handler on the inside
Walk forward together up slopes and down slopes.
Go over a jump together.
Back up shoulder-to-shoulder.
Trot along with a bicycle or mobility scooter.

Figure 63: LP3: An outing with the bike. It gives her an opportunity to do sustained trotting on the grass verge.

Teaching Leading Position 3

It makes sense to teach everything on both sides of the horse right from the beginning so both the horse and the handler become more ambidextrous. Then we won’t have the problem of ‘left neglect’ or ‘right neglect’ in either the horse or the handler.

The term ‘neglect’ simply means that lack of use has resulted in lack of strong nerve pathways developed on that side of the body.

Since both horses and people have a ‘preferred side’, (i.e., we tend to prefer using either our left hand or our right hand) things will feel more awkward on one side for both the horse and the handler. Frequent short practice on the ‘hard’ is ideal.

If both the horse’s weaker side and the handler’s weaker side come together, it will take extra time and effort to get things on that side moving smoothly, since both parties have to form new nerve pathways/habits.

Working with mats as destinations makes it easy to develop the horse’s interest and willingness to walk along with us. See the training plans at Number 9 in my Blog Contents List (at the top of the page).

#29 and #30 HorseGym with Boots illustrate of a variety of approaches to teaching LP3.

The end-of-video comment about ‘notes’ have now been superceded by my book, Walking wiht Horses.

It is a great exercise to play with this task at libery if you have a safe enclosed area. Have fun with it.

Let me know which leading positions you use the most and which might be a new challenge for you.

Using Lanes

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Lanes are incredibly useful for teaching horses about:

*leading without the horse blocking you (i.e. movement work in protected contact)
*trailer loading
*careful foot placement
*building suppleness for turns
*backing up straight
*recall
*sideways (lateral movement)
*backing up toward handler
*confidence with unusual narrow spaces, eg. walking between parked vehicles or narrow tracks
*backing harness horse between shafts
*lateral movement

Leading without Blocking the Handler

We are walking toward a mat where a click&treat will happen. This keeps the horse focussed on moving forward and he knows what will happen on reaching the mat.

Charging direction with this set-up is great for developing supple turns in both directions. Obviously the arrows in the lane should have an arrowhead on either end LOL.

Trailer Loading Prep

Getting the horse used to walking in a narrow space for pre-trailer loading confidence. We’ve set the lane up right next to the trailer and walk through it many times in both directions. Evenutall ask for a halt in the lane, then walk out. Evenutally ask for a halt and then back out.

Here we are stepping over a rail into the lane and out of the lane. Again, building in a confident halt plus forward again. Followed by a halt and backing up over the rail to get the horse used to seeking where to put his hind feet, as he will have to do when backing down a ramp. The next step would be to block off one end of the lane so it becomes a dead end space like the trailer.

Backing up Straight

This includes backing up out of trailer.

Walk into a dead-end lane, click&treat, and pause for dwell time.

Raised rope and signal with outside hand are our cues for backing up out of the space.

We have graduated to the same movement using just ground rails. Once that is solid, we can use just a fence or a line of single rails on the ground to avoid the hind end swinging away from us.

Backing up with the Handler in Front

The white markers make it easier for her to see the entrance to the narrow lane. Sill using halter and rope here.

A raised lane and she understands my raised hand signal for backing up.

Eventually we could back up from in front with great accuracy. This took a while to achieve, doing a little bit most days.

Backing through a series of pool noodles for a Horse Agility task.

Another way to set up a lane.

Backing Prospective Harness Horse Between Shafts; i.e. tight spots

Confidence with unusual narrow spaces

It pays to start wide and narrow the lane gradually.

Long-reining

Walking into the lane and backing out with long-reining.

Careful Placing of Feet

Careful foot placement with long-reining. We can start trotting poles in a lane to make it and easier for the horse to know our intent.

Weaving a series of parallel rails for careful foot placement and supplesness.

Using a lane to teach Back-Up to Target my Hand with her Withers.

Eventually we no longer needed the rails and she is learning to back up with a signal when I am behind her.

Lateral Movement

Once it’s easy with a lane, use just one rail to help the horse keep straight.

Recall

First I teach the ‘wait’ game at the end of the lane. Probably started by using a mat.

My recall body language signal is bending forward slightly and making a circle with my arms.

Would love to hear in the comments what you have taught, are teaching, or intend to teach using lanes.

Multi-Signals or Signal Bundles

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In the photo above, I am using a multi-signal. In terms of environment, I’ve asked Boots to park on the mat. My body orientation is beside her butt, facing backwards. My hand is giving a touch gesture on her hock to ask her to lift her leg. I also say, ‘Lift.’ Because I use this signal bundle or multi-signal consistently, she can link them reliably to foot care.

Behaviors Must be ‘On Signal’

Once we have taught a horse a response, either by free-shaping it or through careful application of approximations to reach a desired ‘finished’ behaviour, it is essential that we put the behaviour ‘on cue’ or ‘on signal’.

Often the last thing we taught our horse is his favorite because it has a recent high level of reinforcement. When I taught Boots to target her hindquarters to my hand, it became her favorite thing. But when she keenly wanted to show it off while I was talking to visitors, it became a bit of a problem.

Let’s look in detail at the topic of signal or cues. It’s imprtant that we are aware of everything that the horse may be observing.

Sometimes we use one type of signal in isolation, but often our signal is a mixture of body orientation, body language and gesture, energy change in our body, and often it has a verbal component. We are in essence using a ‘multi-signal’.

In this photo Bridget is using a signal bundle or multi-signal to ask Smoky to exit the trailer. She is in position behind the trailer, using touch on the tail, a clear ‘back up’ hand signal, and body energy indicating ‘backwards’. I’m in the front of the trailer using a ‘back up’ signal Smoky already understands.

We may think we are giving a clear signal but our energy, orientation and intent may not match what we want the signal to say. The horse will always do what he believes to be the right thing to do at that moment.

Even if we think we are giving one clear signal, the horse is noticing everything that is happening. That is why it is so easy to inadvertently teach horses things we didn’t intend them to learn.

One reason Clicker Training is so powerful is because it allows us to pinpoint exactly what we want the horse to do and teaches us to be more consistent. Horses appreciate this clarity enormously. It removes much of the guesswork for them.

The marker signal (click) tells the horse that what he just did is what we wanted and that he can go into treat-retrieval mode. The treat is offered right after sounding the marker signal.

We must remember that body language is a big deal with horses. It is their first and essential language. It’s what they use with each other. It helps explain why horses who do marvelous groundwork may suddenly become ‘lost’ when their handler mounts up. Suddenly the horse can no longer see all the body language signals that accompany groundwork.

Looking at signals in isolation can make it easier to become more mindful about exactly how we are using:

our environment
our whole body orientation
our gestures
our voice
our hands
any of our body extensions (ropes, reins, lanes, etc.)
our energy
how and where we present the treat after the clicker.

#38 HorseGym with Boots illustrates some of these ideas. You will notice that Boots is so clued in to some of my body orientations that she offers a belly crunch while I face her front on, a front leg lift when I stand shoulder-to-shoulder facing backwards, and a wee back-up when I face her. Now and then I do make a request but mainly I’m asking her to stay parked on the mat and not do anything else. It’s important that I keep my body energy low.

As an exercise, you could work out what you usually ask the horse to when you are in each of these body orientations.

Developing Our Spatial Awareness

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In the photo above, Boots demonstrates how aware of, and responsive to, a horse can become if our body movements are taught and used with total consistency.

During everyday management of our horses, basic care or getting them ready for a walk or ride, we tend to move in and out of their personal space without thinking about it. When we do ground work, we move into and out of various positions as part of the signals we are giving.

Sometimes we forget that horses notice everything. If we can learn to become more conscious of our positions, we can use ‘position’ as part of our communication package.

If we are aware of, and consistent with, our relative body position, the position itself can become the signal if the horse is closely tuned-in to what we are doing. The horse will become more and more mentally connected to our intent. If we are totally consistent, it will seem as if the horse is reading our mind.

We can approach everything we do with one of two mind-sets. We can see horse behaviors we don’t want as dark problems we have to ‘fix’ or overcome. Or we can recognize that a horse always does what he feels is best at that moment. We can enjoy the challenge of creating a relationship with such a sensitive being by gradually building a mutual communication system.

By increasing our spatial awareness, our signals can become much lighter. The horse begins to find staying ‘in tune’ with us much easier because our body language has less ‘static’ or ‘background noise’ in it.

The more we can eliminate meaningless movement (and chatter), the clearer the horse will find our communication.

Expanding our Concept of ‘Leading’

We can expanded our concept of ‘leading’. When we think of someone leading a horse, we usually visualize a person walking beside a horse or in front with the horse closely behind.

We usually see a lead rope as part of the picture. But when we begin to think deeply about ‘leading’ it is easy to see that there is much more involved.

We can enlarge our concept of “leading” to encompass all the ways that we influence where the horse puts his nose or his feet. That is, when we want to make our idea his idea.

We can be on the ground, riding, using headgear, a neck-rope, or have the horse at liberty. We can be using any combination of body language, shifts in our weight, changes in orientation, rope/reins, and voice. With clicker training, we use a marker signal plus a treat to ‘capture’ or reward specific behaviors that we like.

In other words, everything we do when we want to influence the horse comes under the umbrella of ‘leading’.

We might:

Call him out of the paddock.
Ask him to wait while we go through a gate first.
Ask him to offer his head for haltering.
Ask him to back up out of our personal space.
Pick up a foot to clean it or trim it or dress a wound.
Ask him to step on, over and across unusual surfaces.
Ask him to step into and out of a tight spot like a trailer, lane, or water.
Ask him to move away from us as in circle work with a reverse round pen or playing at liberty.
Ride, or drive with long reins.
Ask him to stay tied up or parked.
Guide him through an agility obstacle.

In simplest terms, any time we want the horse to do something specific with his nose or his feet, we are ‘leading’ him. ‘Guiding’ may be a better word. We are orchestrating his movement, or lack of movement if we need him to stand still.

There are eight key leading positions which can be static or dynamic. They may flow into each other as we make a request, the horse complies, and we move or stand quietly together.

Horses value clarity of intent. They generally are happy to comply as long as they can understand what we want and we make our request politely and reward a positive effort.

Doing things with our horse is comparable to being on a sailboat. At every moment the sailor is conscious of the wind, the waves, and the relationship of his sails to how the boat is responding. He makes constant adjustments to keep his boat sailing smoothly.

Every moment we are with our horse, we need a similar consciousness of the immediate environment, the distant environment, how we are asking the horse to do what we want and how the horse is responding to our request.

We have to quickly compute the horse’s large responses, plus the nuances of his body language, so we can gauge his emotional, intellectual and physical comfort at the moment. As we get better at seeing all these things, it becomes easier to know the best way forward to yield the result we want.

Pictorial Summary of Eight Leading Positions

Leading Position 1: The horse is in relaxed mode on a morning walk. I carefully keep a drape (smile) in the lead. This is how horses in a herd follow each other during quiet movement from A to B.

Leading Postion 2: Horse keeps his nose and eye just behind the handler’s shoulder.

Leading Position 3: Anywhere between the ears and the shoulder. A versatile position that we can use as our basic leading position for all kinds of things.

Leading Position 4: Behind the withers, alongside the ribs. This position has the horse moving out in front of us like he will be if we ride . Horses used to following behind can find this difficult at first, so we teach it en route to a stationary target where he knows he will earn and click&treat.

Leading Position 5: Beside the horse’s hindquarters. If the horse knows a touch signal on his butt as a ‘walk on’ signal, we have a way of sending him in front of us into a narrow space like a trailer or a gate. Again, teaching this first with a well-known stationary target makes it easy for the horse to understand our intent.

Leading Position 6: Behind the horse: Long-reining is a superb way to teach the horse all about turning and backing signals applied to his head gear via reins from behind, before adding the complication of a rider.

Leading Position 7: Face to face: I asked Boots to wait so we could do a recall. She is just beginning her recall. We also use face to face when we want the horse to back up away from us.

Leading Position 8: Facing the side of the horse. I’m in relaxed mode while waving the flag over her for a Horse Agility task. She is more interested in what is going on next door. Obviously grooming and foot care, tacking up and mounting also require this position.

Conclusion

An awareness of leading positons allows us to include ‘position’ as one of the key elements of any signal we use to communicate with the horse. By dissecting each leading position we can see the training possibilities it presents.

We often drift from one position into another without realizing that the shift can have a lot of meaning for the horse.

How Clicker Training Influences our Training

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Clicker training teaches both the handler and the horse important things.

The horse learns that the click means ‘Yes’ that’s right. That’s what I’m asking you to do.

Here I used click&treat to show Boots that what I want is for her to halt with her back feet in the square of squashed bottles.

2. The handler learns to look for and click&treat the slightest try in the direction of the desired behavior.

When first teaching about mats, we click&treat the slightest interest in the mat, even looking at it or approaching it or sniffing the edge of it.

Clicker training allows us to shape* behavior by ensuring that the horse can be continually successful. We do this by putting the following points into place.

[Terms with an asterisk (*) are further explained in the GLOSSARY section. The link to this is at the tip of the page.]

We start with an end goal clear in our mind.
We note what the horse is able to offer already.
We work toward our goal through a series of ‘successive approximations’* which in plain English means gradual tiny changes toward our end goal.
Each tiny change becomes the horse’s decision. He then ‘owns’ that change because he understands that he made a good choice because it earned him a click&treat.
Unwanted behavior is ignored or re-directed. If we feel unsafe, we return to having a barrier between us and the horse.
If the horse’s behavior makes us feel unsafe or frustrated, it is essential to go back to the place in our training where both horse and handler feel confident and comfortable. Then work forward again from there. If we feel unsafe or annoyed, the horse will pick up our feeling and also feel unsafe and want to leave (if he is in anxious mode) or take over (if he is in confident mode).
It is important to thin-slice* end goals into the tiniest clickable moves that we can think of. It helps a great deal to create a written ‘Individual Education Program’ (IEP)* for each horse. We make revisions as we go along and learn via the feedback from each interaction with the horse. A written plan allows us to look back and review how well (or not) a particular horse responded to each slice of our Program. Being able to look back gives us more feedback so we can adjust the Individual Education Program (IEP).

As a thin-slicing example, let’s look at Pool Noodle Task we did for Horse Agility

The various ‘slices’ of this task build the horse’s confidence to walk through an overlapping horizontal pool noodle arrangement, so the horse is comfortable pushing through them with his chest. Each slice* could take a minute or a day, week, month of short, fun sessions. How long each ‘slice’ takes depends on many factors.

We know we can move on when the horse tells us, through his body language, that he is OK with each slice. Boots is already familiar with this sort of work because she was taught to pull a cart using positive reinforcement. A horse new to these concepts will probably need multiple short sessions for each slice*.

SLICES: The video that follows illustrates the slices* for this task.

1. Investigate the pool noodle (PN) in her own time with nose and feet.

2. Comfortable with PN rubbed all over her body, both sides.

3. Confidently pushes her chest into the PN, held by the handler, as they walk along together.

4. Confidently walks over the PN on the ground.

5. Confidently walks over the PN between the gap created by the uprights for the eventual task set-up of the pool noodles.

6. Confidently walks through the gap with one PN in place at chest height — in both directions.

7. Confidently walks through two PNs in place (slightly overlapping).

8. Waits when asked, while handler walks through the PN, then follows on request.

9. As 8, at liberty.

10. Add more pairs of PN, one at a time, until we have 5 pairs.

11. Trot through.

Every change we make is relevant to the horse. If we change something, we have changed a parameter*, and need to be aware of how the horse might perceive the change. A parameter is something we keep constant during our interactions with the horse. It becomes a condition or action that the horse can depend on because it stays the same. When we change a parameter, we have to carefully teach the horse what the change means.

Number 8 in the Blog Contents List goes into more detail about parameters.

The parameter here is that when I stand doing nothing, looking nowhere and with my hands crossed across my belly, the horse is required to stand quietly, and hopefully relaxed, waiting for the click – this is DURATION at the halt..

That parameter can be changed/extended to include when I’m in a sitting position.

Confidence with Unusual Surfaces

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The key prerequisite for all the tasks shown in the clips below about UNUSUAL SURFACES is having first mastered smooth ‘walk on’ and ‘halt’ transitions. If we have to first work on this prerequisite, we can do it using target destinations and training ourselves to be really clear when we are requesting ‘walk on’ and when we are requesting ‘halt’. Blog Number 16 in my Blog Contents Quick Links demonstrates. Below is a quick revision.

Walk-on Body Language

These four things are done all together – a ‘multi-signal’.

Breathe in deeply (horses hear this) plus raise your torso and body anergy.
Forward gesture with your outside hand. If you are using a hand-held target to first teach this, as in the video below, the action of moving the target forward into play will soon morph into just an arm signal.
Step off with your ouside foot. It’s easier for the horse to see your outside foot moving forward.
Use your chosen voice signal for ‘walk-on’.

Halt Body Language

These four things are done together – again, a multi-signal.

Drain the energy from your body while you –
Drop your weight down into your butt (as we want the horse to do when he halts)
Breathe out loudly (horses hear this)
Use your ‘halt’ or ‘whoa’ voice signal

The following clip was made to support relaxed foot care, so there is a bit at the very end about backing up to shift the horse’s weight

When ‘walk-on’ and ‘halt’ are solidly in place, we can carry on with unusual surfaces.

Thin-Slicing the 1m Board

Thin-Slicing Walking on Plastic Bottles

More About Unusual Surfaces and Backing Up

Other related blogs: You can find the links easily on my Blog Contents Quick Links page.

No. 9: Mats: Parking or Stationing and Much More
No. 10: ‘Zero Intent’ and ‘Intent’
No. 17: Destination Training
No. 26: Getting a Smooth Halt in Many Situations
No. 33: Willing Response to a Halt Voice Signal
No. 51: Reverse Pens
No. 68: 20 Steps Exercise
No. 101: Precision Leading

Also, all the routines in my book, Companion Horse Training Using Positive Reinforcement, refine the skills of walking with a handler. The book works through a series of activities that require minimal equipment (set of rags and a fence). They are designed to make the horse ‘handy’ and happy following our clear body language including turns and backing up.

Guided Shaping of Voluntary Touch

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Guided shaping is when we set up the environment in a way that encourages the horse to offer a behaviour we would like to develop – in this case putting his nose on an object. We may have the horse on a halter and lead and give him a few ‘pointers’ along the way. The aim is to make it as easy as possible for the horse to figure out what will earn the clcik&treat (i.e., the behaviour we want.)

Here I’ve set up the environment for teaching relaxation in tight spaces – essential as a prerequisite for trailer loading. She is wearing a halter and lead, as we’ll usually have to do when trailer-loading. I’ve asked Boots to walk into the ‘dead end’ space where there is a nose target (white bottle) and given her a ‘wait’ signal. Then I walk behind her, then forward to her front again, before a click&treat. I want to be able to walk to the back and forward again at least three times without her wanting to back out, before I ask her to back out. When we load into most trailers we have to walk to the back (and out of the horse’s view) to shut the tailgate.

Shaping ‘Touch’ with Your Nose’

Targeting many different things to earn a click&treat does a lot to build a horse’s confidence. We usually start as in the fourth photo above, with a handheld target, and teach a ‘touch’ voice signal once the horse understands that putting his nose on an object will earn a click&treat.

Teaching confident touching of the nose to unusual objects and obstacles at our suggestion, is a good way to begin building confidence with new things. The more different positive ‘touch’ experiences the horse has, (built up with a little bit each session) the bolder he becomes.

If the horse is wary about putting his nose on the object you’ve chosen as your first target, It can help to rub fresh grass juices on it, or a wet peppermint, or a slice of apple, in order to increase their curiosity.

Once the horse understand the ‘touch’ voice signal using his nose, we can expland to touching other body parts to a target.

Teaching TOUCH with Other Body Parts

The goal behaviour here is to raise her knee to a target. This is an excellent skill to teach to develop the horse’s ability to shift his weight to achieve confident balance on three legs. It is a game changer when it comes to hoof care, because lack of balance on three legs training like this is the root cause of many horses’ struggle with hoof care.

The task in the photo above was begun by touching the target to the horse’s knee, click&treat. After a while, I held the target a fraction above the knee and the horse quickly learned to lift her leg to make the touch connection: click&treat. Then I could hold the target further up and she quickly learned to raise her leg higher. After a while I added our verbal signal (touch) to the action, and could simply use my hand as the target.

Eye to Hand

Boots targetting my hand with her eye. Very useful if we ever have to treat eye infection or injury. She also learned to target her ear so my hand, for the same reason. Some process as described above: touch eye/ear gently – click&treat. After a while, hold your hand a tiny distance away and wait for the horse to make the contact – click&treat.

Chin to Hand

Targetting her chin to my hand. Same process as above.

Using the process described, we can teach lifting the hind feet to a target (front feet = Number 59 in the Blog Contents Quick Links, and hind feet = Number 74) , moving the shoulder toward our hand (Number 27 in the Blog Contents Quick Links) , moving the hindquarters toward our hand (Number 28 in the Blog Contents Quick Links). Stepping back to touch our hand with his withers or his rump.

Stretching the neck to touch a target.

Neck Bending: I started by asking for just a slight bend to touch the target. Then as she understood the task, I gradually asked for a bit more.

Butt Bingo

Backing the butt to touch a solid upright: We started with safe fences, walls and hedges, then graduated to barrels, big cones, trees and things like this 4×4 post. It’s an important exercise if we want to put our horse in a trailer and close up behind. Here she looks rather proud of herself while she waits for me to deliver the treat after the click. We did one or two repeats of this, often, over a long time. It was a prerequisite for backing between the shafts of a cart, as in the photo below.

If we want to teach backing between shafts in preparation to teaching driving, we can use simulations like this that will come apart if the horse gets startled. I taught backing butt against many safe solid objects before adding the pretend shafts.

Months of preparation, with many stages, which started with just targeting all parts of the cart, allowed hitching up to be a relaxed process.

What will your horse voluntarily touch?

Have you taught ‘voluntary touch’ with any of his body parts other than his nose?

The blog below looks at Seeking the Horse’s Consent Signal, (also often called a Start Buttons or similar), which can fascilitate confident touching of various body parts to our hand.

Seeking the Horse’s Consent Signals

Following the Feel of a Touch Signal

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Application

In the photo above, we are doing a long-reining ‘change direction’ exercise. Because Boots knows how to ‘follow the feel’ of the slightest touch on the halter, we can long-rein a cloverleaf pattern using four rails. I only need to change my hand position slightly to give her the directional signals.

In the photo we’ve started at rail 2, will wallk across rail 4, arc right to walk over rail 1 followed by rail 3 (plus the other two rails lying there); arc right to walk over rail 4 followed by rail 2. Then arc right over rails 3 and 1; then arc right again and we’ve done the last leaf of the pattern and are in front of rail 2 ready to repeat turning to the left this time.

Following the feel of a touch signal is an essential skill the horse needs for leading with a rope and for using reins either riding or long-reining. And it is especially important if we go places where we have to tie up the horse.

Since we have no control of what the future may bring, for ourselves or the horse, it’s a skill we must teach early and to a high standard, so that in a situation of stress, or new ownership, the horse knows this response well.

With Positive Reinforcement

Ideally we teach a horse at liberty with targets, using body language, gesture and voice signals. This is what is shown in the four short video clips that follow.

When the horse shows us that he is ready, we add halter with rope and repeat the exact same exercises. In this way we teach that rope or rein pressure means move toward the pressure, so releasing it. The voice and hand gesture signals are excellent aids if we want to eventually ride bridle-less.

Teaching Soft Rope or Rein Response.

These clips look at teaching soft rope/rein response with the horse standing still. Once he understands this well, we introduce walking toward stationary targets at liberty, adding gesture and voice signals for ‘walk on’ and ‘whoa’, and changes of direction. Then we add the rope. By using our body language and voice signals, the rope basically stays slack most of the time. When we do use it to indicate change of direction, it takes just the hint of a touch.

It’s important to stay with each step of the training until the horse is comfortable with it, and responding ‘correctly’ each time. Be aware that external distractions can take his attention. If that happens, simply wait until his attention turns back to you. Boots, in the clips, was very focussed on what was earning each treat, and hightly experienced with clicker training.

Prerequisites

If you don’t already have your horse loving to target mats with his feet, you start with targeting mats first (Number 9 in the Blog Contents Quick Links).
if you have been using a long-handled target, get the horse hooked on a short, hand-held target.
You may need to first spend time getting the horse comfortable standing in a corner by using your hand-held target. Standing in a corner makes it easier for the horse to understand the option (turning just his head toward you) that you want him to choose.
The Anchor Task: in this case the the anchor task is horse standing beside you with his head forward. It is the key part of this exercise. It has to be solid before you begin asking for the ‘turn head’ request. It must be kept solid throughout the teaching exercises. Later, once you are moving with the horse, it’s no longer needed as much.

Clip 1

Clip 2

Clip 3

Clip 4

Let me know if you have a go at teaching this, and how it is going. You can do it with a horse that already leads well, or with a horse new to training.

Free-Shaping

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Free-shaping means clicking and treating the moment the horse naturally displays a behaviour you want to encourage. The click&treat encourages the horse to repeat the behaviour that earned the treat.

The first free-shaping exercise most handers use is to hold (or set) out a target and wait for the horse to investigate it with his his nose = Click&Treat. Most horses pick this up quite readily. Many equine clicker trainers use it to teach their horse the meaning of the ‘click’ or whatever marker sound they are using. My older mare (with a chequered background before I got her) took nine short sessions over a week before she made the connection between her nose touching the target, the click, and the treat that followed.

Because it is the horse’s choice to do the task, they learn it readly because it was their idea in the first place. It gives them a sense of ‘agency’ – being in control. Like us, horses like to be in control of their lives.

Boots has to her nose on a stationary target. I clicked as her nose touched it and I walked to her to deliver the treat. Once the horse loves to do this for a click and treat, we can put such objects all around our training area and walk or trot between them to earn a click&treat at eachone. Also useful for ‘destinations’ when we begin leaving home. We can use destinations for groundwork and riding.

Using a hand-held target, It’s always wise to start out with ‘protected contact‘, i.e., the horse on the other side of a barrier. Until we begin clicker training, we have no idea how the horse will react to food treats from our hand. This is also the time to try out different treats .

Here I’ve created a barrier in a corner, which is another option if you don’t have a suitable fence handy, but with a new horse – maybe make the person’s space a bit bigger!

Your safety barrier for PROTECTED CONTACT does not necessarily have to be fancy.

If you can use electic fence tape for training, make sure the power is turned off during training time.

In this clip, I’m free-shaping head lowering.

Eventually we added a verbal signal, and a body language signal, so when I bowed, she bowed.

The following clip shows an alternative to hand-feeding while teaching the TARGET = CLICK = TREAT process.

In the next clip, I free-shaped step aerobics.

It’s also a possible way to build confidence with any tight space or a trailer.

In the next clip we are doing the 20 Steps Exercise. Depending on your starting point, it could take a few or many short sessions to get 20 smooth steps with one click&treat at the end. All you need is for the horse to willingly walk one step with you, click&treat, and work forward from that.

The next clip is a very early lesson in free-shaping Boots’ confidence moving along with a bicycle.

The following clip with the bicycle is much later.

The next clip is a demo of tummy crunches.

I learned this from Alex Kurland.

1. I began with the horse behind a low barrier. I stood at neutral (zero intent = Number 10 in the Blog Contents Quick Links) and watched casually (not staring at the horse) with a relaxed stance, watching to click&treat any upward or backward shift of weight.

2. I did this IN THE SAME SPOT for a minute or two once or twice a day, mainly right before afternoon feeding time. And as a ‘last thing’ at the end of a play session. Having usual times in the same place seems to make the horse look forward to having ‘another go’.

3. Once we were getting a purposeful weight shift back because she realized that’s what earned the click&treat, I sat down to bring the horse’s head a bit lower. Previously we had ignored head position as the horse was experimenting with different possibilities. When I sat down, she lowered her head position because the treats were offered lower. This developed over months and months.

4. At some point, the crunches became a part of her personal repertoire because she would offer them if she wanted to initiate an interaction. At this point I added a verbal signal/cue.

5. I’d never do more than about what is on this clip at one time.

6. Eventually I could ask for the crunches standing her shoulder, her butt and behind her, using the verbal signal (zzzip) plus my body language of leaning backwards. We had such a long and strong history of reinforcement that she readily adjusted to my different positions. She happily did it with a rider aboard as well.

Free-Shaping Boots doing a STRETCH:

Once Boots realized that her ‘downward dog’ stretch earned a click&treat every time she did it, she offered it frequently. I initially free-shaped it by noticing that she often stretched like this after getting up from a nap. I managed to ‘capture’ the behavior two days in a row, and she then began to offer it often enough so I could put a verbal cue to it – ‘Stretch’.

What sort of things have you free-shaped?

Part 2 of Relaxed Foot Care – the Hind Feet

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When the horse is comfortable picking up the front feet on request, we can proceed in a similar way with the hind feet. We start as usual with the horse willingly targeting a familiar mat and able to stay parked on it.

Then we make sure the horse is comfortable being rubbed all over with a body extension, paying special attention to the belly and hind legs.

If the horse expresses concern about being touched with a body extension or with having a rope swung lightly around his hind legs, we’ve found a big training hole. It’s essential to go back and build the horse’s confidence about standing still while we do things around him.

Before we proceed with picking up feet, we need the horse calm and relaxed having his legs brushed with a soft brush right down to his feet. We want him to remain calm and relaxed when we rub and massage his legs all the way down.

To develop the idea of lifting a hind leg on signal, we can touch the hock gently with a target such as a pool noodle or a tomato stake with bubble wrap taped around it. Click&treat as we touch the hock. Repeat until we can hold the target a little above the hock and the horse lifts his leg to touch the target because he’s figured out that’s what causes the click&treat. Be careful to click as the leg is coming up, not on its way down.

The hock is a convenient point at which to teach a touch signal for lifting the hind feet. Bridget has asked Boots to target her hock to the body extension which is bubble wrap taped to a tomato stake.

Eventually we just have to point to the hind leg we want lifted.

Once leg lifting is well established, we generally use touch when we want to do foot care, like a farrier or hoof trimmer would expect. We always start with our hand at the withers, and run it across the horse’s back and down to his hock. This gives the horse time to shift his weight so he CAN pick up the leg on that side.

Bridget is running her hand down to the hock. Touching the hock is our signal to ask for a foot lift.

By the time Bridget reaches the hock, Boots has already taken her weight off that leg so she can pick it up and stay balanced.

Lifting feet is all about weight shifts. It needs to be taught carefully and systematically, making sure that the horse understands each slice of the process. By teaching targeting a body extension first, the horse figures out how to shift his weight and balance on three legs without other complications thrown in – like the foot being held, cleaned, trimmed.

Bridget has a willing hind leg lift and the horse looks balanced. Gradually, one second at a time, we built duration of keeping the foot up so we can clean, inspect, rasp, spray it.

Teaching relaxation with a hoof stand is the next set of slices. It can be helpful to have a calm helper to deliver the treats when you click.

Here I’m working on duration having the foot up and forward. For hoof officianados, you might notice how much better Boots’ heel buttresses are compared to earlier pictures.

Teaching the foot to lie backwards on the hoofjack. Note she is not standing squarely in front, which makes it harder for her.

It can be helpful, timewise, to be able to clean all the feet from one side. We draw the far foot, once offered, across behind the near leg.

Checklist

No.	DETAILS	Tick
Prerequisites
1	Handler & horse are clicker-savvy
2	Leads easily, halts promptly & backs up readily
3	Horse can park & be rubbed all over
4	Foot awareness with mats & other exercises
5	Brush legs
6	Rub legs with hands
7	Comfortable ‘foot care’ spot sorted
8	Stand squarely
Major Slices for Building Front Foot Behaviors
1	Lift knee to target an object: click for foot rising
2	Lifts knee to hand
3	Add in consistent voice signal
4	Handler faces tail to ask for knee to target hand
5	Catch & hold foot briefly: click before releasing
6	Hold foot for one second
7	Hold foot for two seconds
8	Gradually hold foot longer, one second at a time
9	Clean foot with stiff brush
10	Clean foot with hoof pick
11	Teach spray bottle confidence
12	Set foot in sling (or on knee)
13	Build duration of foot in sling or on knee
14	Bring foot forward onto a hoof stand or stump
15	Build duration of hoof brought forward
16	Back foot off hoof stand (no click&treat, just praise)
Major Slices for Building Hind Foot Behaviors
1	Confident with body extension rubbed over legs
2	Confident with brush and hands rubbing legs
3	Touch cap of hock with body extension for lift
4	Add voice signal
5	Lift hind foot with pointing
6	Run hand from withers to cap of hock – relaxed
7	Lifts foot with tap on hock & voice signal
8	Hold foot briefly; click; go to head to give treat
9	Hold foot one second; click; go to head to treat
10	Hold foot two seconds; click; go to head to treat
11	Gradually hold foot longer one second at a time
12	Clean hoof with brush
13	Clean hoof with hoof pick
14	Spray hoof
15	Clean both hind feet from one side
16	Rest hind foot in a sling
17	Bring hind foot forward onto a hoof stand
18	Build duration on the hoof stand
19	Teach ‘back’ signal for foot off stand (no click&treat)
Generalizations
1	Familiar mat in new spots
2	Familiar spot without mat
3	New spots without mat
4	Away from home

Number 74 in the Blog Contents Quick Links (at the top of the page) takes you to the blog about ‘Counting with the Hind Feet’, which goes into detail. Here is the video from that blog, which is a quick summary of a year’s work.

Part 1 of Relaxed Foot Care: Front Feet

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In the photo above, Boots noticed that Bridget has the hoofpick and spray bottle in her hand, so she knows it is foot care time, and offers her foot.

‘All behaviors rest on an emotional ediface.’ I don’t know the source of this quote, but it underpins just about everything.

Our aim is to have the horse confidently lift each foot on signal and keep it up for as long as we need it.

Environment:

Work in a space familiar to the horse, where he is usually relaxed; buddies in view but not able to interfere. Horse is not hungry.

Horse at liberty or wearing halter and lead (not tied up). Halter and lead allow us to help him stand square. If the horse can’t stand quietly without being tied, that is a skill to work on first. A familiar mat gives the horse a destination spot for standing quietly. See Number 9 in the Blog Contents Quick Links ( at top of page) if you need to establish confident parking on a mat first.
Ensure the horse is warmed up a bit so it is easier for him to stand on three legs.
Ensure the horse is in a learning frame of mind. If not, encourage activity to use up adrenalin or do relaxing activities he knows well before starting.

It pays to remember that if you are nervous about picking up a horse’s foot, your anxiety pales into insignificance compared with how worried a horse might be if he has not been introduced to foot care with thought to his feelings.

Some horses may have had a bad experience with a particular leg. Be aware that a reluctance to lift a foot, or keep it up, can be due to pain from an old injury, current sore muscles/joints and/or arthritis.

Horses know that if their feet are compromised, they are close to death. It pays to teach ‘picking up feet’ carefully and thoroughly and not leave it to other people. By going through all the steps outlined below, we can also overcome our own natural fear and anxiety about getting hurt.

Our first job is to make sure we can rub and massage the front legs down to the heel with the horse able to stand still in a relaxed manner, totally confident that we are not going to hurt him. With some horses, to keep everything safe and low key, it’s a good idea to use a body extension to rub the legs. We can keep our body erect, stay relaxed, and use a high rate of reinforcement. If we are tense, the horse will be tense.

I’m using a pool noodle to get the horse used to having things rubbed on her legs, the back and front of each leg as well as up and down.

The rate of reinforcement must allow the horse to be continually successful. At first it might be a barely touch of the body extension to a front leg. We start where the horse is, and work forward from that point. See Number 5 in the Blog Contents Quick Links (link at the top of the page) for The Four Stages of Learning.

Use advance and retreat. That means start up high and move down a leg until one of you feels uncomfortable. When you reach either you or the horse’s threshold of comfort, retreat by moving back up to the withers, relax, then advance again. This is called a re-set. You know you have reached a threshold if you feel tension in the horse’s body or you begin to feel anxious or uncomfortable.

Every time we do a re-set, we have a new opportunity to clarify our signal and our intent.

The mindmap below looks at the the tasks involved with front foot hoof care. Note that the first stage, rubbing the length of the leg, is omitted – my mistake.

Stand Square: the prerequisite task of stepping forward and backward, one step at a time, ensures that the horse understands our request to stand squarely. It helps if we routinely ask for square halts in a variety of situations. Each square or almost square halt, on request, earns a click&treat.

Using a mat makes it easier because, as the mat-savvy horse approaches the mat, he knows he will halt with his front feet on the mat. In other words, he has time to mentally and physically prepare himself and often halts squarely to earn his click&treat. Remember, he has four limbs to organize!

When asking the horse to square up, slightly tilt his head away from the front foot you want him to move. Moving his head away frees up the shoulder so he can move the leg.

Knee-Lifts to Touch a Target

Always start by asking the horse to stand squarely. This will help him remain balanced when he lifts a leg.

If we touch a target item gently to the front of the horse’s knee, accompanied by a click&treat, most clicker-savvy horses will quickly learn to raise the knee to touch the target. First, touch it to his knee, click& treat. When that is well established, hold the target a little tiny bit above the knee. He will work out that raising his knee touches the target and earns a click&treat. If he doesn’t, go back to touching the knee gently, click&treat until he makes the connection.

A pool noodle, a plastic bottle attached to a light stick (e.g. bamboo), or a light stick with bubble wrap taped around it, are the sorts of items we can use for knee targets.

#89 HorseGym with Boots demonstrates. Work with just the front feet until you are both totally solid with them. More detail about hind feet will be in the next blog.

Front Feet

If you’ve taught your horse to target his knee to your hand when you stand near him, facing him, he will have already shifted his weight so he can lift his foot, and you can catch hold of his foot while it is in the air.

Some people choose to touch the chestnut as a signal for lifting the foot. If you start with your hand at the withers each time, the horse will most likely soon learn to shift his weight and be already lifting his foot when you reach the chestnut.

It can be handy to teach a concurrent verbal signal such as, ‘Lift’. This is also helpful when we ask the horse to step cleanly over a rail, forwards and backwards.

Before we can gain the horse’s confidence about trusting his foot to our care, we must build up our own confidence. The best way is to do it in short, 3-minute segments, working through a series of thin-sliced questions that might look like the list below for the front feet.

As you play with the slices listed below, you will be collecting feedback on how you feel about each slice, and how your horse feels about each slice. You stay with each slice until the answer to the question is, ‘Yes.’

It could take five minutes to get all ‘yes’ answers with one horse. With another horse, it could take a week or a month of brief 3-minute sessions to get all ‘yes’ answers.

Remember, warmed up muscles will find the strain of standing on three legs and holding up a leg easier.

The rate of reinforcement must allow the horse to be continually successful with what you are asking.

Can I: gently & confidently rub his leg & foot all over with my body extension (stick, pool noodle)? If you can, practice on an experienced horse (or practice on a person) to get the feel for it, if this is new to you.
Will my horse: let me rub his leg and foot with my body extensions? Make sure he is already comfortable with being rubbed over the rest of his body.
Can I: confidently rub his leg & foot with my hand? Start at his withers and rub down only as far as you feel comfortable at that time. Over many tiny sessions, you will get the confidence to rub all the way down.
Will my horse: let me rub his leg and foot with my hand?
Can I: get him to stand so he is balanced before I want to pick up a foot? Have I taught him how to line up squarely to target his front feet to a mat, and/ormove forward and back one step at a time? If not, you want to teach that first.
Will my horse pick up a foot when I ask him to target my hand with his knee … OR slices 7.-9.
Will my horse: take the weight off his right front leg when I run my hand from his withers and down his leg?
Can I: confidently ask him to pick up his foot by touching his chestnut?
Will my horse: pick up his foot when I touch the the chestnut?
Can my horse: keep his balance okay standing on three legs?
Will my horse: let me hold his foot for one second before I release it back to the ground? (Click just before you release, then move to his head to deliver the treat.)
Can I: let my hand and arm holding the foot swing freely with any movement the horse makes with his leg until it stops swinging, at which point I click, gently release the foot and move forward to deliver the treat? (I do this only if I’m feeling safe.) If you feel whole body tension in the horse wanting his foot back, I would release the foot and work on earlier steps. The horse has an emotional block somewhere and we need to winkle it out. (All behaviors rest on an emotional ediface.)
Will my horse: gradually let me hold the foot longer and longer (one second at a time) and stay relaxed until I click&treat?
Will my horse: hold his foot up in a relaxed way for as long as I need it up, waiting for the click&treat?

Boots is targeting her knee to my hand. For the next slice, I would change my body orientation to stand beside her shoulder so when she lifts her foot it is easy for me to ‘catch’ it in my hand.

I build duration of keeping the foot up one second at a time, before I release it gently, followed by a click&treat.

It’s also possible to build duration by reaching back to deliver the treat while holding up the foot. Some people set up a raised tub into which they can toss the treat.

To Make Your Job Much Easier…..

Check out Number 59 in the Blog Contents Quick Links (see top of page), for Counting with the Front Feet. This exercise has the added benefit of developing the horse’s skill of organising his weight to stand on three legs, to a high level.

Reading Ears

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It’s hard for us to understand how much better horses hear than we do. Our sounds or words easily become signals if we use them consistently. Sounds can also become environmental signals the horse adopts according to the routines of his captivity.

house door opening if the horse lives near the handler’s house
person’s car arriving at the paddock (with special feed, treats or anticipated adventures)
rattle of food buckets or pellets in a tin
whistle to recall for a treat or a feed

When we use Clicker Training, we refine this response to sound when we use a click or other unique sound to mark the precise response we want.

Horse ears have ten muscles each, which means they can move their ears almost 180 degrees. The shape of the ear allows horses to capture more sound, and from further away, than our ears. On top of that, horses can pick up sounds at higher and lower frequencies than we can.

The shape and mobility of the two ears allows accurate gauging of the direction of a sound. Sound and vision are obviously linked, but sound serves better when vision is restricted. Due to the horse’s ecosystem role as a prey animal, he is wired to notice any sound, especially sneaky, sudden, or unusual sounds.

Horses have strong emotional responses to sounds. Anxious type horses will find the sounds and tense atmosphere of shows and events over-stimulating and problematic. It helps to gradually habituate them to this sort of environment rather than depend on flooding (overstimulation until the horse ‘shuts down’) to get a horse more able to cope with noisy, unfamiliar surroundings.

Ears, it seems, can give us a large range of signals, ranging from curiosity, acceptance, concentration, irritation, fear, dominance and submission. All we have to do is work out which is which – and when – for each horse in our life!

It seems that horses also pick up vibrations from the ground through their feet or through their whiskers and teeth while grazing. No doubt this relates to the ‘early warning’ horses and other animals can give us about earthquakes and other catastrophes. It might also be why they are waiting at the gate before they can see our car. But that could also be a function of their hearing.

Ear postions might be categorized as:

Alert — forward, scanning in observant or anxious mode.

Alert ears. Probably she is watching for someone to appear with treats to entertain her.

Curious/Interested — forward with head movement up or down to focus the eyes.

Because the lens in the horse’s eye does not adjust like ours, horses have to lower and raise their head to get a good focus on an object – like a person wearing bifocal or trifocal glasses.

Attentive — total focus on what she is doing.

She is extremely focussed on the task. It has her full attention.

Back/Sideways – Tension or Anxious — only the context of the situation and the rest of the horse’s body language can tell us if the ears are back due to anxiety (very stiff), or back/to the side because the horse is strongly focusing on a task, causing natural tension (not as stiff). See also, ‘Working Ears’ below.

Ears are sideways and lower lip is a little bit tight, so Boots is putting a lot of concentration into this task which she is just learning. There is some tension, but the rest of her body language does not, which suggests that she is in focus mode, rather than anxious.

Back/Sideways – Floppy — a chilled out, resting, or casually moseying along horse often has the ears half back in a relaxed state.

Smoky is dozing beside a favorite person. His eyes are partly closed and his lower lip is floppy. His ears would be soft for the ear-bending test described below.

Pinned — truly pinned ears are a very strong signal that all is not well, and other action will follow if things don’t change immediately. Some horses lay their ears almost flat when they are strongly focusing on a complex task. This can be more like a ‘frown’ of concentration and we must be careful not to presume the ears are pinned and take evasive/inhibitory action that will confuse the horse who was just busy thinking his way through a problem.

Truly pinned ears. Boots is giving Smoky a clear message that his presence near the treats is not wanted. Her next move, if there wasn’t a fence between them, would be to lunge at him.

We should always give the horse the benefit of any doubt and read the overall situation and body language rather than just the ears. Truly pinned ears are unmistakable, once seen. They are usually accompanied by a very angry face overall and are often followed by snaky-neck movement toward the cause of annoyance, lunging at the intruder, or wheeling around ready to a kick.

Working Ears: Back or Sideways, – Focused/Thinking — horses often put their ears to the back or side when they are in ‘thinking mode’.

We often see these sorts of ear positions in horses doing their ‘job’ of the moment; e.g., cutting horses, calf-roping horses, dressage horses, horses doing an agility course or a gymnastic routine.

Because they are carrying out a learned pattern in a known environment, their mind is focused on the task at hand and the precise signals coming from their handler. Their ears often resemble the ears of a dog working sheep. Back and full of concentration on the job.

Such ears may resemble that of an irritated or disgruntled horse, but if the horse is doing his ‘job’ and his overall tension and body expression suggest that he is focused, we are probably seeing his personal ‘working’ expression.

Often, as soon as the horse has finished a part of his ‘job’, the ears pop forward before the next obstacle or cow or whatever.

It’s helpful to watch video clips focusing just on the horse’s ears. Usually they are constantly in motion and give us an insight into what may be going on in the horse’s mind. Obviously, we can never be sure, but we can get an idea.

The Ear Test:

The Ear Test: how easily we can bend the tip of the ear is a good indicator of the horse’s overall tension or relaxation.

If we can easily bend the tip of the ear, the horse is generally relaxed. If the ear is too stiff to bend easily, it tells us that the horse has tension in his whole body and lacks confidence or is anxious at the moment.

Each horse’s ear expressions will follow the same general pattern, but at the same time be unique, so we should be careful about generalizing too much between horses.

Ear Expression Summary Chart

More about ears

A. Ear differences between mares and geldings/stallions.

It’s interesting to study the ear differences between mares and geldings or stallions.

I watched YouTube clips of the Pignon brothers Frederic and Jean-Francois. Frederic and his wife, Magali Delgado, were the original stars of Cavalia (2003-2009).

Below is the link if you would like to watch Frederic playing with three of his young stallions. It is interesting to note the way they respond to Frederic’s energy levels. He uses a body extension to help communicate with the horses.

https://youtu.be/w1YO3j-Zh3g (accessed 15.03.24)

In another clip, Jean-Francois Pignon played with a troupe of mares.

https://youtu.be/qncbDfT5KsU (accessed 15.03.24)

I didn’t know they were mares when I first watched, but their behavior was so different from that of Frederic’s stallions, I presumed they were mares. The message was in the ears.

The mares were constantly using their ears to maintain their individual bubbles while performing their routines which often had them very close together.

Mares in a natural herd situation determine much of the social structure of their group. Social order within a group needs a ready language with all sorts of nuances. Mare’s ears have these nuances.

Mares’ job of giving birth and caring for their foals means that they need to cultivate detailed knowledge of their environment when they live in the wild.

Best grazing spots
Safe water
The nature and habits of the local predators
Health of the herd stallion
Bachelor groups in the vicinity
Intrinsic awareness of their present rank in the group of mares

Horses give way to horses above them in rank, and they expect horses lower in rank to give way to them, just like people do in many situations. Mares need to keep track of many things.

Mares have a full complement of hormones and hormonal cycles. In wild herds, their position in the herd is closely linked with survival of themselves and their offspring during the annual hard times of summer drought and winter cold and snow.

We often like to romanticize wild horses, but there is not much romantic about a life lived in the environmental margins of the deserts, plains and mountains where they manage to survive.

Having had mares and geldings, I have found a distinct difference. All other things being equal (which they never are) mares tend to be more independent-minded, geldings more easy-going. That’s a generalization, but it’s not a coincidence that Cavalia uses only geldings and stallions for their shows.

B: Ears and Horse Character Type

The detail about how a specific horse uses his ears will also relate to the innate character type of the horse.

We can never put horses into labelled pigeonholes, but often it is helpful to describe what we see and create categories so we can communicate our descriptions to each other more easily.

One way of categorizing horse character types is to look at their tendency to move their feet. A strong need to move suggests an extroverted character type. Less tendency to move suggest a more introverted character.

Another way of looking at horse character types is to note whether the horse is innately bold and curious or if he tends to stay out of the limelight and easily becomes anxious.

Quite likely, an extroverted bold horse will want to know where the party is and get going with it. He’ll often show forward, inquisitive ears. If the handler is not providing fun, he is inclined to create fun for himself.

An extroverted but anxious type of horse, who tends to weigh up the cost/benefit of every situation, may have ears moving through many expressions.

An introverted bold, imaginative horse is usually most interested in the next blade of available grass. He sees little reason to move if his life is not in danger. He is strongly committed to his own ideas. He will learn things readily enough if we make it worth his while.

Such a horse tends to love food reward reinforcement and easily becomes a Clicker Training star. Once he learns something, he likes to make it his idea. He then tries hard to ‘get it right’. His focus during training may often include ears lying back or sideways as he thinks his way through a puzzle we’ve given him.

An introverted anxious type of horse may have active ears regularly checking out all points of the compass. He may appear externally ‘quiet’ but is heaving with emotions inside. Horses like this are more suddenly ‘explode’ with an inexperienced handler, so it is important to identify them and keep a close eye on where they are in relation to the edge of their comfort zone in a specific context.

These are generalizations but generalizations can help give us an overview. Ears are obviously highly personalized for each horse. In new situations horses behave differently than they do at home, just as we do.

What I want to highlight is that it is easy to simplify how ears should look on a ‘happy horse’ when we really have little idea of what is going on in the horse’s mind and being expressed in his ears.

We should always read ears in the context of the rest of the horse’s body and the specific context of the moment.

A horse in an enclosed space with little stimulation will have different ear expressions than the same horse out and about with a wide view of things going on all around him.

Body Language Awareness

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The main tool we have, to communicate with our horse, is our body language. We instinctively respond to the body language of other people because, like horses, we live in groups. But because people talk so much, we have become less aware of the effect of body language.

Our awareness is still there, but it’s mostly subconscious. We may reflect on how an interaction with a specific person left us feeling good or not so good. Or we may get a ‘gut feeling’ about a person on first meeting. In these situations, we are tuning in to our instinctive understanding of human body language.

All species that live in groups need to be able to ‘read’ each other’s body language because the resources of the environment are finite and need to be used by all members of the group.

To prevent energy wastage by constant bickering or fighting within the group, animals that live together have invariably developed sophisticated body language communication.

With time and consistency, horses can get highly skilled at interpreting our body language.

In human terms, think of posture and intent:

Shoulders back versus slouched/slumped.
Head high and eyes focused versus head bowed/downcast.
Meeting someone’s eye rather than avoiding it.
Standing firm rather than moving away.
Striding purposefully rather than reluctantly.
Chest expanded rather than shrunken/subdued.
Handshake firm rather than limp or aggressive.
Offer handshake rather than wait for the offer.
Approach assertively rather than timidly.
Unsmiling to passer-by versus smiling at passer-by.
Ignore group member versus acknowledging him/her.
Determined versus dubious.
Confidently neutral versus jittery or nervous.

When a teacher and a class of students meet for the first time, the students have the teacher sized up in the first few seconds of visual contact. Horses are the same. As well as visual signs, people (and horses) give off an aura of energy that spells confidence, timidity, or anxiety.

Interestingly, with a few adjustments, the body language we already instinctively know and acknowledge in other people can be transferred to our interactions with other group animals such as dogs and horses. On the other hand, it doesn’t transfer nearly as much to solitary-living animals such as cats and bears.

This is a ‘relaxation’ or ‘no intent’ body language posture. Energy drained out of body, hands crossed over treat pouch, looking nowhere. Boots has learned that this posture means we are having a ‘rest’ and nothing is expected of her at this moment.

Body language postures are similar whether we consider people, dogs or horses. A horse willing to touch our outstretched hand with his nose is willingly ‘shaking hands’. A dog who rolls over and exposes his belly is volunteering a very timid handshake.

This foal is learning to greet a person. We hold our hand near the horse and must be sure to let the horse close the last inch of space to initiate the contact.

Here is a small horse experiment that could be illuminating. It may be interesting to use with your horses or a horse you are thinking of buying.

Stand in a roomy area or paddock where the horse can see you. Stand very quietly with a slumped and despondent posture. Wait. Observe what your horse does (casually, don’t stare at him).
While the horse is minding his own business in a roomy area, make your body language large and assertive (not aggressive), focus on him strongly and walk briskly toward his shoulder in a straight line. What happens?

Some people may, without realizing it at first, slip from assertive to aggressive. As with horses and dogs, human aggression often arises from fear and is a defense mechanism. This is important to remember when we are around horses.

What looks to us like aggressive, intimidating horse behavior is often grounded in fear if the horse is contained with ropes or in a small pen. A horse’s only way of regaining a feeling of safety is to move himself away as far as he needs to go. When we restrict his ability to move away, his remaining options are limited.

Some people (and some horses) are naturally on the timid end of a ‘timid-bold continuum’. A person may want to learn to be confident with their horse, but quickly slips from confidence to nervousness. This creates a problem for the horse when he is relying on the person’s clear communication, and it is suddenly fuzzy and incomprehensible to him.

The strength of the relationship we build with a horse depends on how clearly we can present ourselves to the horse as another being who is confident, trustworthy and fair.

Emotional Neutrality

Our body language is intimately linked with our emotions. The more we can lay aside emotional responses, especially stress-related and negative emotional responses, the more we can be ‘in the moment’ with our horse. The more we are ‘in the moment’, the more open we are to noticing the signals the horse is sending us.

The more we can be open to his signals, the better we can ‘stay with the horse’ and give him time to work out how he can earn his next click&treat.

If we are totally focused on our own agenda, it is hard to also be mindful of the horse’s signals and take them on board so that we can quickly act in the most appropriate way.

The more negative emotion a horse feels from the handler, the harder it is for the horse to focus on what we are asking. He will either withdraw into himself or seek to escape by looking away and moving his feet away as far as a rope or fence allows.

Emotional neutrality relates to the ‘aura of energy’ mentioned earlier. A horse can pick up our pleasure and joy when he does something well. He equally picks up every hint of frustration or annoyance. By the time we recognize we are annoyed or angry, the horse will have withdrawn from accepting our communication at that moment.

It takes a long time to build the trust of a prey animal wired for flight. A moment of aggression can erase a lot of trust. If the horse is contained with rope, reins or small enclosed spaces, he perceives human aggression as a threat to his life.

Horses don’t have a concept of ‘punishment’. In the wild, a horse always has the option to move away from assertive or aggressive behavior by herd mates. We must never forget that they are prey animals and their key defense is flight. We must accept that nothing a horse does is ever a personal affront to us. What a horse does at any one moment is what he feels he needs to do because he is a horse.

Body orientation, Gestures, Touch, Voice, Intent are all things we an refine to make it easier for the horse to understand our requests.

Successive Approximations and Resets

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The photo above shows one of the approximations we use when teaching trailer loading. Navigating a narrow space alongside the trailer, confidently, is a major step along the way to gaining confidence to enter a trailer.

Successive approximations, simply put, mean that we start with what the horse can offer already and gradually direct and reward each tiny move in the direction of the final behavior we want.

In other words, at the beginning of teaching something new, we click&treat for the slightest approximation of what we want as our final result. Each improved approximation is one tiny slice of the overall task.

When the horse feels ready, we encourage him to do a tiny bit more to gain the click&treat. This whole process of rewarding successive approximations is called ‘shaping a behavior’.

Shaping a Behavior: This is our second session of Free-shaping Head-Lowering

Putting a behaviour on signal/cue: In the next clip, you will see me re-setting the task repeatedly as I show Boots that a click&treat will only be forthcoming if I give the signal/cue for this behaviour, which is dropping my head and shoulders forward. We don’t want the horse forever putting his head down.

Putting Head-Lowering on Signal/Cue

A human example of shaping a behavior is teaching a child to write. The child starts with holding a pencil and using it to make random marks on paper. At some point the random marks become conscious curves and straight lines.

When the time is right, we introduce writing letters of the alphabet. Eventually the child can group letters to make words. Words are then arranged into meaningful sentences. Some children go on to write coherent paragraphs, essays, stories and books.

If the child loses confidence with any of the slices of the process, an element of discomfort creeps in, along with typical avoidance behavior. Not enough practice then results in a poorly shaped skill.

When a horse loses confidence in his ability to understand what we want him to do to earn a click&treat, we get typical avoidance behavior. He shuts down, stops trying – moves away if he can. Keeping the learner’s confidence is the essential role of a teacher.

Writing is an interesting human endeavor that starts at two years old and is still being shaped many years later at high school, tertiary education and beyond. There is always room for improvement.

Another way to look at successive approximations is to think of a sculptor starting with a piece of stone. He works in careful stages until the shape in his mind is visible to the rest of us in the shape of the stone.

In the same way, we gradually tease a series of movements (or stillness) out of a horse to yield the task we want. This is a bit harder than shaping stone because horses have minds of their own!

General Key Points

The more quickly you click&treat, and simultaneously stop any signal/cue, when the horse complies, the faster the horse can learn to recognize just what it is you want.
Once the horse understands your intent, refine your signals/cues and be TOTALLY CONSISTENT with them.
If you keep nagging with a signal/cue by repeating it, you will desensitize the horse and make him disregard the signal. Nagging is an easy habit to get into and hard to break. If the horse does not understand the first time you use the signal/cue, back up in your teaching until he does.
The energy you use to communicate with a signal/cue will change with the situation and what you are asking the horse to do.
To teach with the free-shaping, the horse learns without a direct signal/cue from you to initiate an action because you have set up the environment to make the action you want likely to happen. The horse does the action of his own free will. You mark the action with a click and reward it with a treat. Once the horse offers the behavior reliably, add a signal/cue to it. The signal/cue is usually determined by the nature of the task. It will be unique to you and a particular horse. For the haltering task in the video clip at the end of the blog, I started with the horse’s natural curiosity about the hoop, and shaped the haltering procedure from that.
Just when everything is feeling really good is the time to STOP. Avoid at all costs the urge to do it again to see if we can. Change to something relaxing instead.
One of the key skills of horsemanship is to read the horse accurately to be able to decide on the best activity (or rest) for the moment we are in. It is part of the concept of ‘feel’.
When things go awry (which they will), always go back to where both you and the horse feel confident again, and gradually work forward from there.

When we watch a horse and his trainer perform a complex task, it is not always easy to see the steps the handler took to reach the smooth end behavior. Even if we can find out how the horse was trained, that only tells us about what worked for that horse and that handler.

Here are some questions we have to ask ourselves.

What did the horse know already before learning that task?
How experienced is the handler?
What method(s) of reinforcement does the handler use?
How long have the horse and handler worked together?
How long did it take them to reach this point?
What were the tricky bits along the way?
How often did the horse get confused?
How often did the handler have to go back a few steps and work forward again?

Seeing a horse carrying out a task that grabs our fancy is the beginning of our own adventure. It gives us the inspiration to teach our horse something new. The starting point for any Individual Education Program we set up for a horse will be unique to us.

Here is the definition of thin-slicing again.

Thin-slicing is a shorthand way of saying: split the overall task we want the horse to learn into its smallest teachable parts and teach each part in a way that makes it as easy as possible for the horse to understand.

Resetting a Task

When we teach something new, we are experimenting with our signals/cues and the horse is also experimenting to work out what it is we want him to do. It’s not unusual for things to get a bit complicated and messy.

If either you or the horse lose track of what you are doing, pretend it was perfect, relax (but no click&treat), pause. Count to ten and rotate your shoulders. Then go back to the beginning of the task and try again, starting with your visualization of how a good effort will look and feel.

The magic about pretending it went well (when it actually turned into a mess) is that it dissolves the natural frustration we feel when our communication is not getting through. Horses instantly pick up on the changes in our body when we are frustrated or angry, and will want to move away from the negativity, so any teaching/learning moment is lost.

If we can smile, breathe out and relax our body before the reset, we don’t upset the horse or make him anxious. We simply start again.

When someone tries to teach me something new on a computer or cell phone, they invariably go so fast that I have no idea what they did or what I should be doing. I think that is what often happens with horses.

The following two clips demonstrate teaching with successive approximations. Our sessions were never much longer than three minutes.

First Successive Approximations for Learning to Put on a Halter

In the next video clip, be aware that to make it shorter for easier watching, I cut out the bits where I reach into my pocket, after the click, so it is a bit jumpy. Everyone’s progress will be different.

From the Hoop to the Halter

Horse Vision is Different from Human Vision

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Shape of the lens

The lens of a horse eye is not able to change shape as easily as the lens of a human eye. Horse vision more resembles looking through a trifocal lens. A trifocal lens supports distance focus in one part of the lens, mid-distance focus in another part and close-up focus in a third part.

This explains why horses need to do so much positioning of their heads to see clearly. They need to raise their head high for clearer distance vision and drop it down low to get a better view of something closer.

Horses need to lower their head to see things up close clearly. Long hair obstructing the eyes does’t help.

Forcing a horse to keep his nose vertical with the ground restricts his visual field a great deal. It is easy to try this yourself. Stand with your head up and note your field of vision. Then drop your head so your nose points to the ground. Note your field of vision now.

For a prey animal who depends on early detection of danger and a flight response for survival, restricting the field of vision by requiring (or forcing) vertical flexion can cause a lot of mental anxiety and related damaging muscle tension all over the body.

Eyes set in the side of the head

Being set either side of a large head, horse eyes work more independently than human eyes. The positioning of the eyes limits the horse’s binocular vision (being able to focus on something in front with both eyes) to a triangular area in front.

The shape of his nose causes a blind spot that extends about three feet directly in front when his head is straight, so his field of binocular vision is beyond that. So if we are standing directly in front of the horse within three feet, he is not able to see us or any signals we may give. But he can smell us and be aware of our energy level.

As well as his zone of binocular vision straight ahead, the horse can see almost 180 degrees beside and behind with each eye, similar to a person using rear-view mirrors on a car or bike.

Eyes set well into the side of the head allow rear view vision at almost 180 degrees. This peripheral vision is highly tuned to movement. A startle response due to a sudden movement from behind is an adaptation to get a head start on any predator emerging suddenly. In this view, Boots is able to see me on the right side of her body with her left eye.

This side or peripheral vision is not as exact as binocular vision, but it is excellent at picking up motion. That is why horses often jump away sideways first if something moving to the side or behind startles them, then they rapidly sprint away before turning to assess the situation. How far the horse moves depends on the intensity of the adrenalin rush.

When the horse is strongly focused forward using his binocular vision, his mind is busy with that and not linked to his peripheral vision. This helps explain why we need to be careful approaching a horse from the side or the back, as he can be genuinely startled by movement behind, if his full attention was on something in front of him.

It also seems that horses can doze with their eyes open. If you come across a horse looking very relaxed, with low head, floppy bottom lip, relaxed ears and a cocked hip, he may be too asleep to notice a quiet approach even though his eyes are open. It always pays to give a warning ‘nicker’ or say something while approaching the horse.

Light Intensity

With their extremely large eyes, horses have excellent night vision as long as there is some environmental light. I can vouch for this, having once been caught on the far side of a hydro river, when water was unexpectedly released into the river from the dam upstream during a sunset ride. We had to ride in serious darkness on an unknown track to reach the dam and cross over to our home side.

Horse eyes take longer than our eyes to adjust from light to dark or dark to light. It’s important to remember this when we move a horse from a dark building into bright sunlight or from sunlight into a dark arena, stall, truck or trailer. We should allow him to stand with his head in the entrance while his vision adjusts.

Blind Spots

As mentioned, horses have a triangular blind spot that reaches about a meter in front of their nose. That is why they need to lower their head as they approach an object closely to inspect it. You can simulate what it is like, to have a long nose like a horse, by putting your hands in place as in the photo below. Note how it affects your ability to see right in front of your nose.

Colette demonstrates how to place your hands to imitate a horse’s long nose to let you see why horses have a blind spot when they are looking straight ahead. If you spread your fingers wider in this position, the blind spot gets bigger.

They also have a blind spot right behind their tail if their head is straight as well as under their belly when walking across things.

Horses have a blind spot directly behind if their neck is straight.

If we are experimenting to find the best position to give our horses a visual signal, it pays to be aware of their blind spots as well as how their vision differs from ours.

Depth Perception

A horse’s small range of close-up binocular vision makes depth perception for stepping into or onto unusual surfaces tricky. They again need to raise and lower their head to compare the object of interest with things they have seen before.

This comparison of the look of ‘new things’ with things already in the horse’s memory, helps explain why horses are so sensitive to anything which has been changed – anything added or subtracted to what was there the last time they passed by.

Their limited depth perception explains why horses are often reluctant to step into a puddle. The reflected light and the ‘unknown’ surface’ under the water are both problematic. Dangerous footing compromises a horse’s ability to flee if the need arises.

Horses need to lower their head to investigate unsure surfaces visually. Often they also paw to check the stability of what lies underneath.

The horse eye has a ‘visual streak’ in the retina (sensory screen at the back of the eye) which is the area of most accurate vision. As mentioned earlier, horses must move their heads in order to bring the item of interest into the range of this ‘visual streak’ to improve the depth perception and detail of the image.

If the horse’s head is restricted by tight ropes or reins, his ability to see clearly is compromised. Not surprisingly, such restrictions cause tension that affects the whole body.

Horse eyes appear to magnify objects more than our eyes (maybe up to 50%). The acuity (sharpness) of what they see is less than 20/20 human vision but seems to be better than that of dog and cat vision.

Training in Both Eyes

The way horse vision works helps explain why it is so important to teach everything we do on both sides of the horse. A horse that is only handled from the left side will suffer from ‘right eye neglect’. Handling procedures will be ‘strange’ to his mind on the right side because the neglect means no nerve pathways have formed to build his confidence with handling on the right side.

This links to all aspects of training and handling. Like us, horses are naturally either left or right-handed. In other words, like us, their bodies are asymmetrical.

Unless both sides of the horse’s body are coached gymnastically, it is hard for the horse to be straight in his body. Which means a saddle will always be misaligned to some extent. A symmetrical saddle on an asymmetrical horse is a perennial problem for riders and painful for horses.

When teaching a new movement, the less agile side of the body needs at least two or three times more attention than the agile side of the body. Think about how hard it is to brush your teeth with your non-dominant hand.

Environmental visual signals

Horses living within sight of their owner’s house use the lights coming on during a winter morning as a signal that their morning feed is not far away. Part of the year I provided hay in the late evening. The headlamp I wore was a visual signal the horses used to meet me at the shelter.

During groundwork our body language and gestures are visual signals. If we are approaching from behind, the horse is usually able to see us by turning his head.

When my horse’s companion, a large white gelding, went to live elsewhere, her attention was often riveted on a white Charolaise cow in a distant paddock as she tried to figure out whether that was her old paddock mate.

My thoroughbred mare, Gypsy, was super conscious of anything on the distant horizon. A rabbit hunter toting a rifle, so far away that I could barely see him, caught her immediate attention.

Awareness Needed

Horses are genetically wired to pay close attention to anything which looks different to how it looked before, or if something appears that wasn’t there before.

Because their eyes are not the same as ours, it is important to be aware of the following situations.

Depending on the shape of the horse’s belly, there is also a blind spot under his hind legs and under his belly. If we ask a horse to back over a rail, he can’t actually see the rail at the time, but is working from memory or feel. Just because we can see it doesn’t mean the horse can see it.
When we approach the horse from the front, it is best to be a little bit off-centre, so we are not in his front blind spot.
If the horse is focused on something ahead in his area of binocular vision, his mind is not engaged with his peripheral vision. This means that something suddenly moving behind him can result in a startle response, often called ‘spooking’. As mentioned earlier, peripheral vision picks up movement rather than detail, so the horse will move first, then turn and inspect the cause of the spook. How far he moves before turning depends on the amount of adenalin shock he experienced.

If the horse is strongly focussed on distance vision, with a raised head and a concentrated look, his peripheral vision is ‘off’, so sudden movement from behind will cause him to spook. Spooking is a highly effective method for escaping from predators.

If we are doing groundwork behind the horse, we need to move between his right and left peripheral vision and teach him to adjust his head so he learns to confidently keep us in view as we move left and right into and out of his blind spot.

Playing the peek-a-boo game from behind. In this photo Boots can see me standing behind with her left eye.

In this photo I have moved to her right, so she is watching me out of her right eye.

I’ve moved back to the left and she tracks me with her left eye. It’s fun to play this peek-a-boo game when the horse has front feet on a pedestal.

When we begin long-reining, it’s a good idea to play a peek-a-boo game from behind, while the horse is stationed on a mat or pedestal, and make sure he is comfortable turning his head to track your movement.

When horses negotiate a jump, the jump disappears from their vision as they approach it, so they are jumping from their memory of where the jump was. If the horse was paying attention to something else on the approach to the jump, he will run right into it without realizing it is there. You see this sometimes at jumping competitions.

When jumping or stepping over rails, the obstalce disappears from the horse’s vision and they work from memory of where it was.

Riding – Visual Signals Mosty Disappear

When we move from groundwork to riding, the visual signals the horse has learned suddenly disappear. We need to teach the relevant replacement touch and verbal signals we will use during riding from the ground first. In this way, we make it easier for the horse to navigate the change to riding.

Once mounted, we need to carefully re-teach the replacement touch signals by at first pairing them with the voice and visual signals the horse already understands from his groundwork.

If touch and voice signals are clearly taught with groundwork, the switch to riding can simply be part of a systematic progression rather than a major change.

When we mount up, the visual cues and signals we use on the ground suddenly disappear. We have to carefully transfer these to voice and touch signals to make the transition smoother.

Thin-Slicing Explained

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Thin-slicing is a shorthand way of saying: Split the overall task we want the horse to learn into its smallest teachable parts and teach each part in a way that makes it as easy as possible for the horse to understand.

As each tiny part of the task becomes ‘ho-hum’ for the horse, move on to the next part. Gradually all of the parts will come together so the overall task is seamlessly carried out with confidence and willingness.

It means starting with the most fundamental lessons and gradually adding complexity, one click&treat at a time, until we have shaped the whole behavior we want.

As each small part, called a ‘slice’, is mastered, we begin to teach the next slice, either separately or as a continuation of the first slice. If taught separately, once the second slice is learned, we link it to the first one.

Proceeding like this, we gradually chain all the slices together until the horse can do the whole task as a continuous movement with one click&treat at the end.

Some tasks, of course, like haltering, saddling or harnessing, mounting up, worming, vet inspection, grooming and foot care, require the horse to stand still.

When we teach these ‘standing still’ procedures, we begin with a release (click&treat) for relaxation during each tiny slice of the overall process. Gradually, as the horse can relax more, we do a bit more before each release (click&treat).

It’s crucial to remember that ‘standing still’ during an unusual situation is not something a horse in the wild would ever do.

Asking a horse to ‘stand still’ while we do all sorts of things to him, is a big ask.

To teach a flight animal to ‘stand still’ on request means we have to actively teach the horse to be inactive.

In other words, the horse learns to be actively inactive. His instinct will be to move his feet if he feels uncomfortable. Good training will give him the trust and confidence to keep his feet still when we ask.

This concept is explored in teaching the art of standing still, or ‘Parking’. It’s important to promptly move to the front of the horse to deliver treat so he doesn’t form the habit of turning toward you. Perhaps start by standing in front of him rather than to the side as in the video clip.

Example 1: Park & Wait

The key to good training of any kind is to keep the horse being continuously successful in his responses to our requests. If the horse understands our request and is comfortable with it, the chances are good that he will respond willingly.

Example 2: Free-shaping standing on a mat.

Example 3: to teach my horse to walk through a square of ground rails filled with squashed plastic bottles (a Horse Agility obstacle that shows up occasionally), I split the overall task into a series of tiny slices. It’s a great exercise to allow the horse to become more confident with putting his feet onto unusual surfaces like tarps, ramps, trailers, bridges, water, balance beams or mattresses.

Example 4: This clip looks at thin-slicing walking through a water obstacle. We start with things the horse is already familiar with. If walking across rails and tarps are new for your horse, that is where you would start and work with until they are ho-hum.

Example 5: This clip looks at free-shaping ringing a bell.

Thin-slicing and consistency are the holy grails of horse training. By using the mark and reward (click&treat) dynamic, we let the horse know what will earn the treat and therefore increase to probability that he will happily do that action (or inaction) again.

ROPE RELAXATION

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ROPES: It’s hard to overemphasize the importance of educating our horses to be totally comfortable with ropes. Our main enjoyment may be to play with our horse at liberty and teach everything using targeting, voice and gesture signals. But sadly, horses in captivity are totally dependent on people for their well-being. Other people may regularly handle our horse or something may happen so that help from other people is needed. In case of fire, flood, or if you are hurt, or your horse must be moved, he will need a solid foundation of rope confidence. If he is sold, we want him to be comfortable with ropes.

If we take our horse out into public places we need him to be relaxed on a lead rope. If we tie our horse up, we have to get him comfortable with that. Rope Confidence includes ropes moving around him, ropes constricting him and ropes touching all parts of his body. The same is necessary if you want to teach your horse long-reining and maybe driving. Sooner or later we are going to drop a rope or rein and it is better if the horse does not see this as a reason to panic, which can lead to running into or over fences, or danger on a road.

#121 HorseGym with Boots in clip called Stick and Rope Confidence shows a way to begin. https://youtu.be/WIpsT4PPiXo

We don’t have to begin with a rope.

There are several elements to Rope Relaxation. #22 HorseGym with Boots in a clip called Rope Relaxation shows some of the elements mentioned in the list coming up. https://youtu.be/6Y34VlUk0Iw

The last part of this clip shows building confidence with dragging ropes.

We want to gain the horse’s confidence to remain parked while we do the following activities.

Swing a second rope (not attached to the horse) near him.
Gently toss the end of a soft rope all over his body, including around behind, under the belly and around the legs. It should feel like horses standing tail to nose swishing flies off each other with their tails. Start with a second rope not attached to the horse, then graduate to using the end of a long lead rope.
When the rope is attached to the horse, make sure you keep a constant drape in the part attached to his halter while you toss the other end around his body. You want to avoid putting touch pressure on the halter.
Toss a coiled rope (not attached to the horse) in the air across him.
Randomly drop a coil of rope (not attached to the horse) onto the ground in various positions around him.

We also want to continue building his confidence with the rope when we:

drag a second rope while we walk along with the horse on a loose lead as in the second video above.
attach a second rope to the horse’s halter which he drags while we walk with him on a loose lead, including walking curves and corners where the dragging rope may touch the horse’s feet or legs, as in the second video above.
If the horse has reason to move when his rope is attached and dragging, we want him to be calm about it.
And eventually, with careful shaping, we can leave the horse ground-tied in different situations.

I’ve created a reason for Boots to walk forward dragging her rope on her own, so if she is ever in that situation, it is not unfamiliar.

Eventually we can practice ground-tying in different situations. The dropped rope and the gesture/verbal WAIT signals tell her that staying in place will eventually earn her a treat.

Here is the link to the complete ‘Ground Tying‘ BLOG: https://herthamuddyhorse.com/2019/10/31/ground-tying/

The Importance of Pause and Wait

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In the photo above, Bridget and Boots are at ‘pause and wait’ while I explain the next part of their task.

How does our horse know when we want him to stand relaxed beside us or when we want him to do something?

It is essential that we learn to manage our body langue to make it crystal clear to the horse when we are asking him to do something and when are in pause/no intent/ relaxed mode.

Horse sensitivity to the body language and intent of others is much more refined than ours because it is their primary language. In humans this ‘reading of body language’ has been dulled because we talk so much.

But we can stop talking and become aware of what our body language is saying to the horse. Body Language includes our orientation to the horse, our energy level, our breathing rate, our heart rate, our body temperature – these all communicate our level of calmness or agitation to the horse. To that we add the intent we hold in our mind.

Once we have a good awareness of our body language, we can begin to use its different aspects to communicate more clearly with our horse.

No Intent

In the photo above I am standing at ‘pause’. My orientation is not directed at the horse, my energy is down. I’m looking nowhere. My hands are quiet laid across my belly. My shoulders are relaxed. My breathing is slowed down, which also lowers my heart rate. My mind is quiet, not thinking of the next thing to do. This posture shows the horse I have no ‘intent’, allowing her to also relax into the ‘wait’ time.

Intent

In the photo above, my body language expresses clear intent that I would like Boots to step across the barrels. My focus is where I want her to go. I’m indicating ‘walk on’ with my outside arm and I’m stepping along with her.

Emotion Exercise

Find a stick and an inanimate object you can hit hard with the stick.

First, hit the object as hard as you can three times. Channel a time when you were angry or frustrated and put those feelings into thrashing the object. Your breathing, blood pressure and temperature will go up.

Second, kneel down beside the object and caress it lovingly. Channel your soft feelings for your horse or any other living creature. When you feel nicely relaxed, go back to hitting the object violently three times. Then kneel down and caress it lovingly.

Repeat a few times. Be sure to do this where it won’t upset your horse, dog, chooks, children, friends, partners, passer-byes or and other farm animal in the vicinity.

Take note of how your emotions mirror your actions. Keep this awareness. Horses need us to be calm and collected, especially when things go awry. If we are not calm and collected then the horse has no chance of being so.

No Intent

We can express ‘pause’ or ‘no intent’ sitting down.

Intent

My energy is up, I’ve asked her to walk with me and and while I maintain the increased energy and keep moving, she will move with me. When I come to a halt, I first drop my energy, release a long breath out and drop my weight down into my butt. And because I’m human, I also say, “Whoa”.

Strongly Reward the Pause or Wait Time

It makes sense to click&treat when the horse moves in the way we are asking. It makes equal sense to reward when the horse can relax into a pause/wait. We are not doing nothing. We are teaching active inaction. It can be difficult for horses to learn when most of their interactions with people caused movement or pain or restriction.

If you have already taught your horse to enjoy putting his front feet on a mat to earn a click&treat, use the mat to start building duration of the pause/wait.

Eventually we can incorporate ‘parking spots’ and have the horse WAIT while we stand in different positions around him. I am in my ‘no intent’ pose in a position where she can see me in her peripheral vision. It takes time to build up the duration. In each new spot start again with a few seconds and work forward from that.

Use a High Rate of Reinforcement

If the horse can stand still for 1 seconds, click&treat. Pay attention to your own body language. Start with whatever time the horse can offer, adding one second at a time before a prompt click&treat. Make sure the horse is not hungry and not needing to move to release pent-up energy.

Keep sessions short enough to maintain calm (you and the horse). Do some ‘pause and wait’ every time you are with the horse.

This video clip looks at using a mat to build duration. Number 9 in the Blog Contents List (link at the top of the page) has a number of detailed videos about using mats.

This video looks at staying parked while the handler moves further away.

A couple of more recent clips.

Thoughts about Clicker Training Horses

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In the photo above, we are working on building duration staying on the mat while I move around. Note her ear and eye on where I am and what I’m doing.

Creating resources to help people learn more about training horses is tricky for several reasons.

When we start out with horses we learn from the people nearest us. We tend to absorb their ideas and their way of doing things.

This morning my granddaughter, almost five, excitedly brought two library books about horses for us to read together.

They were about children learning to ride and going to shows, featuring standard British riding paraphernalia and methodology.

She has been riding Boots for over a year and shows great interest in how we clean her feet and she makes a good effort at brushing her.

It was an interesting challenge for me to explain that we don’t put things in Boots’ mouth (other than food). I explained that it is easy to teach a horse to change directions with a halter or bitless bridle using clicker training, body language and words.

She is familiar with clicker training because that is all she has seen. We play games where we pretend to be either the horse or the handler.

Her question, of course, was, “Why do these people do it this way?”

All I could say was, “This is the way they were shown how to do it, but there are other ways too.”

When it came to explaining the picture with the horse who had his mouth tied shut with a cross-over noseband, I found myself lost for words. Yet in the distant past I used one of these – what was my rationale at the time? To keep the bit in place?

Thankfully, the other book she brought outlined gymkhana games that I can adapt for her and her sister to play on their next visit.

For many horse owners, especially those involved in horse sports (sport for the rider) the concept of training with positive reinforcement is still something to be discovered.

It is common for people moving toward positive reinforcement at a traditional horse facility to be mocked, told off, ridiculed, and told not to spoil their horse.

My hope is that my work helps open the door to being with horses in a way that respects their intelligence and willingness to take part in the weird things that humans expect of them.

Writing a detailed plan and keeping track of where we are in the plan, tweaking the plan as we get feedback each session from the horse and ourself, is the way forward. Below is one way of keeping a record with a 5-point outline. It can be used with anything we want the horse to master.

At the end of this blog is a video clip on the importance of setting up the learning environment for the horse.

Spiral Learning with Linear Resources

Another difficulty with teaching and learning is that usually materials must be presented in a linear manner, such as in a book, video, or online course.

However, we don’t learn in a linear way. Learning is more a spiral process. We begin and get side-tracked. As we learn more about one aspect of training horses, other things suddenly begin to make sense.

We leave a difficult task or challenge and come back to it later. As we get better and better at reading our horse, what was once a mystery becomes obvious.

We become more aware of our body language and what it might be saying to the horse, so our signals become clearer.

Realization dawns that what we thought was a simple task for the horse actually has a whole series of mini-behaviors the horse must be comfortable with before he can confidently achieve the task we want.

We move forward with our training but learn to recognize when slowing down and consolidating are more important so we can maintain the horse’s confidence and interest.

A book forces the author to present ideas one after the other. But improving handler skills and good training come about by frequent returns to revise key concepts. We learn continuously as we gain feedback from the horse and our own actions.

Each training experience gives the text of a book, or the ideas in a video, enhanced flavor because we return with different insights.

Becoming adept with this new way of communicating is an exciting business, but it takes commitment to learning new information and letting go of information and habits that no longer fit with what we’re now striving to do. It can require a significant rearrangement of a person’s belief system.

Change is always a challenge. It is especially hard if we are trying to change against the stream of what the people around us do with their horses. It takes a fair amount of belief and stick-ability to persevere to the point of proficiency when we hear unpleasant comments from colleagues.

But we can also find kindred spirits. There are equine clicker training tribes on the Internet. Facebook groups allow us to share ideas and give support to people new to clicker training.

The science behind clicker training is straightforward. All people and other animals are motivated to do more of whatever makes them feel good or gains them a reward.

However, gaining skill with the mechanics of clicker training and understanding its layers of possibilities are not simple processes.

Once the handler is proficient and the horse is clicker-savvy*, we can use clicker training to build complex chains* of behavior*. Terms with asterisks (*) are explained in the glossary you can access at the top of this blog page.

When it is truly adopted, the click&treat dynamic infiltrates every corner of the relationship and becomes the backbone of the horse’s Individual Education Programs (IEPs)*.

In other words, clicker training becomes the mainstay of a holistic approach to educating a horse to live in captivity.

Mat Madness

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In the photo above, I’ve asked Boots to put all four feet onto our plywood mat.

With so many new people taking up equine clicker training, I will find some of my favorite blogs from years ago when I started sharing them. The first video clip below demonstrates 22 different tasks we can play using a mat as a focal point. A mat allows us to have a specific conversation with our horse. If we have an exact idea of what we’d like, it is easier to shape the horse toward our goal and reinforce him for each small slice toward the goal behavior. Some further relevant YouTube clips are listed at the end.

Different types of mats are best suited to particular tasks. In this clip we use a plywood board, an old bath mat and pool flotation mat. Rubber door mats are good in that they don’t bunch up like the bath mat does.

The challenge for you is to choose one task and create a training plan to teach the horse as seamlessly as possible. When your first task is mastered, choose another one. Some tasks are much more complex than others. Most of them (but not all) require the horse to know the task before adding the mat into the picture.

Hints: Start with what the horse can already offer. Work in multiple mini-sessions. Three attempts are often ample for one mini-session. Stop when you get a good response or ‘try’. Maybe you can fit several mini-sessions into one longer session when you are doing chores other things with the horse. Work on new tasks one at a time.

Experiment until you and your horse agree on a clear signal for each task. Pay attention to your consistency using the signal. I struggle with staying consistent, but when I achieve it, things suddenly get much better.

Some people life to teach everything at liberty. I like to start most things with halter and lead so I can easily give the horse more clues about what will earn the click&treat, causing less frustration.

List of 22 Tasks: The list below is in the same order as shown on the clip.

1. Horse targets mat as his own idea, at liberty. https://youtu.be/xMaZWt5gK2o

2. Use a gesture to send the horse to a mat.

3. Walk together around the mat before asking the horse to target the mat.

4. Person asks horse to wait, goes to stand on the mat, then returns to the horse.

5. Person asks horse to wait, walks to stand on the mat, then asks horse to recall to the mat.

6. Mat moved to a different venue, encourage horse to target the mat at liberty.

7. Short recall to the mat, handler facing the horse but not standing on the mat.

8. Short back off the mat; handler facing the horse.

9. Back off the mat; handler shoulder-to-shoulder with the horse.

10. Back off the mat; handler behind the horse.

11. Handler on the mat, horse circles to the right and left and halt on the circle.

12. Front feet stay on the mat, yield the hindquarters, from right and left sides.

13. Walk across mat and halt with hind feet on the mat.

14. Yield hindquarters off the mat, from right and left sides.

15. Yield hindquarters onto the mat, from right and left sides.

16. Yield forequarters off the mat, from right and left sides.

17. Yield forequarters onto the mat, from right and left sides.

18. Left front foot onto a mat.

19. Right front foot onto a mat.

20. Right hind foot onto a mat.

21. Left hind foot onto a mat.

22. Handler in front of the horse, ask horse to back both hind feet onto the mat.

These clips may also be helpful or interesting.

#9 HorseGym with Boots, Putting the Mat Target on Cue (on Signal). https://youtu.be/eEGayCdECeQ

#10 HorseGym with Boots, Generalizing Mats. https://youtu.be/wdptBQ0EtK4

#11 HorseGym with Boots, Mat-a-thons. https://youtu.be/Lj9xrwVtRUQ

#15 HorseGym with Boots, Parking with Duration & Distance. https://youtu.be/CYJwu-CyIVE

Recall to Heel

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INTRODUCTION

This is a fun task we often teach our dogs. We call the horse toward us, then ask him to walk past our side, turn 180 degrees behind us and slot into the ‘heel’ position on our opposite side.

In the photo above, Boots has walked toward me, passed my left shoulder and is about to slot herself into position standing beside my right shoulder.

In the photo below, Boots has walked toward me, passed my right shoulder and is about to slot herself into position standing beside my left shoulder.

Boots is about to step into position beside my left shoulder where she will earn her click&treat. To make it easier for her I can move forward a step or two.

AIM

The horse walks to us, then past us, turning behind us to end up standing beside our shoulder.

PREREQUISITES

Horse and handler have developed a good WAIT. Number 65 in my Blog Contents List which you reach via the tab at the top of the home page.
Horse responds readily to handler’s ‘recall’ signal. See Number 90 in my Blog Contents List: Recall and Back Up in Rhythm.
Horse understands ‘walk on’ voice and gesture signals. See Number 16: Smooth ‘Walk On’ and ‘Halt’ Transitions and Number 68 in my Blog Contents List: 20 Steps Exercise. We want this in place so we can ask the horse to walk past us and around, rather than coming to halt in front of us.
Horse has perfected the 180-degree turn. See Number 23 in my Blog Contents List: 180 Degree Turns.
Horse and handler have developed clear WHOA signals in a variety of situations. See Number 33 in my Blog Contents List: Willing Response to a Voice Halt Signal.

VIDEO

#274 HorseGym with Boots: Recall to Heel. https://youtu.be/Giut6wim9KE

MATERIALS AND ENVIRONMENT

A training area where the horse is relaxed and ideally can see his buddies, but they can’t interfere.
Horse is not hungry.
Horse and Handler are clicker savvy.
Horse in a learning frame of mind.
Halter and 12′ (4m) light lead-rope to start with.

NOTES

* Have the horse warmed up before asking for 180-degree turns.
* You can also teach this using a target, but as is often the case, phasing out the target can present its own challenges if the horse’s mind is fixated on following the target. I prefer to teach with gesture, body language and voice signals, helped at first with a lead rope.
* Check that your WAIT is in good shape.
* Check that your RECALL is in good shape.
* Check that your WALK ON gesture and voice signals are in good shape.
* Check that your WHOA is in good shape.
* Check that your 180-degree turns are in good shape and the horse knows your voice signal for turning (I use “Around”).
* Devise a signal for asking the horse to walk on past you rather than halt in front of you. Practice this with another person standing in for the horse so you can get it fluent. I adapt my WALK ON arm/hand gesture that I use for walking on when we are shoulder-to-shoulder and that seems to work okay.
* I use a halter and lead to initially teach things like this. I can use the lead rope to indicate that I want the horse to walk past me and then turn behind me. That means he never gets confused about what will earn his next click&treat. Once the horse realizes that the click&treat happens when he shows up on my other side, the lead rope is no longer necessary.

SLICES

Halter and light lead on the horse.
Ask the horse to WAIT while you walk a few steps away in front of him. Turn, pause, then ask for a RECALL.
Before the horse reaches you, signal with gesture and voice that you’d like him to walk on past you. As he does, step forward so it is easy for him to make a U-turn behind you. Then walk a couple of steps forward to draw him into a nice position alongside your opposite shoulder: click&treat.
Teach it consistently on one side and when that is smooth, teach again from the beginning on the other side.
As the horse gets fluid with this task, you can gradually not step forward as he comes around. But if he gets lost, always resume stepping forward so he is not ‘wrong’.

GENERALIZATIONS

Work at liberty.
Work in new venues.
Work on a slope.
Recall across rails or through a gap/tunnel or over a tarp.
Teach moving into the heel position after a recall without stepping around behind the handler.

Dancing the Do Si Do

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INTRODUCTION

Once the horse and handler have mastered smooth forequarter yields and smooth hindquarter yields, we can build the DO SI DO. It consists of asking for a hindquarter yield first. Then, as the horse’s hind end is moving away, we stand upright and move back slightly so the horse brings his head through, and we end up in his other eye.

It is a way of changing sides by the horse doing the moving. Once that is achieved, we add a yield of the forequarters.

If the horse’s lifestyle keeps him supple, this series of movements is a good stretching and bending exercise. If the horse finds it hard, we have useful feedback to use in our planning.

AIM

The horse is able to execute a smooth 360-degree hindquarter yield followed immediately by a smooth 360-degree forequarter yield.

PREREQUISITES

Horse and handler agree on signals to yield the hindquarters. See Number 83 in my Blog Contents List.
Horse and handler agree on signals to yield the forequarters. See Number 84 in my Blog Contents List.

VIDEOS

#270 HorseGym with Boots: Do Si Do. https://youtu.be/EJ2w_sX_uOk

MATERIALS AND ENVIRONMENT

A training area where the horse is relaxed and ideally can see his buddies, but they can’t interfere.
Horse is not hungry.

NOTES

Use a rate of reinforcement (how often you click&treat) that allows the horse to easily work out exactly what he has to do to earn his next click&treat.
As the horse begins to understand the sequence of movements, gradually move the click point along until eventually there is one at the end of the whole series of movements.
Whenever the horse gets ‘lost’, immediately return to click&treat for what he can do and work forward gradually from that spot.
Do a little bit often, as this is hard work for the horse.
Be aware that when we give signals with the non-dominant side of our body, they may not be as clear and precise as when we use the dominant side of our body. We can improve this once we are aware of it. In the same way, the horse may find yielding in one direction more difficult. If you notice a difference, begin teaching using the direction he finds easier. Later, do a few extra repeats on the difficult side.

SLICES

Ask the horse to yield is hindquarters with body language, energy and a gesture signal (and voice if you like – I use the word “Away”) about a meter out from his side. Move along with him, keeping your relative position and using ‘constant on’ signals (body orientation, arm gesture and energy) until you want him to stop (at which point you stand up straight and stop all signals). Click&treat.
Click&treat each single step away at first, then gradually work toward click&treat for a full 360 turn. How long it all takes to get smooth with this part of the task depends on previous training and how clear our signals are.
At some point, stop following the hindquarters around, stand upright in one spot and move back a bit so that the horse can bring his head through the space in front of you, which puts you on his other side – in his other eye. Click&treat. Spend the time (via many short sessions) to get this part smooth.
Teach 1-3 above from the beginning on the horse’s other side. He may find one direction harder.
When 1-3 above are in good shape, gently build and consolidate your forequarter yield by itself until you have a smooth 360-degree turn on the haunches. Start with click&treat for one good step and build from there.
Repeat 5 above on the horse’s other side. Again, he may find one direction harder.
When all the above are going well, after completing slice 3 (and click&treat on completion of slice 3), ask for the forequarter yield. Just a step or two at first, before a click&treat, but gradually work toward the full turn on the haunches.
Work toward a 360-degree hindquarter yield (turn on the forehand) followed immediately by a 360-degree forequarter yield without a click&treat stop in the middle. We can call it achieved when a full 360-degree yield in both directions is ho-hum.
Work with 8 above starting on the other side of the horse.

GENERALIZATION

Practice in many different places.
Practice on a slope.
Start with forequarter yield and morph into hindquarter yield.
Once we have the simple bow, line dancing in place with the front feet, and the do si do mastered, we can chain the three tasks together.

Placing the Feet using a Single Rail

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INTRODUCTION

In the photo above we are using a line of 5-liter containers as our ‘rail’.

This is another exercise that helps a horse with proprioception – knowing where his feet are, what they are doing, and how much energy is required.

Equally, it is a superb exercise for the handler to refine communication skills. All training with a horse is about building a mutual language. If we are consistent with our body language and energy changes, the horse will use these as his main cues for following our lead. For further refinement we add gesture signals and perhaps voice signals.

Sometimes people think, “Oh, I’ll try that”. They do an exercise once or twice and think that it’s ‘done’. They totally miss the point that exercises like this are little workouts for both handler and horse that need to be done often, always stiving for more refinement of handler communication until it feels like magic with the horse at liberty.

For this exercise there are five different basic tasks, but since we do them in the horse’s left and right eyes, we have ten tasks. Then we consolidate the tasks by doing them in two directions for each eye, giving us a total of 20 tasks.

Once the five basic tasks are mastered, there are eight refinements we can add. Doing these on either side of the horse gives a total of 16 refinements.

This series of tasks also makes a good warm-up or cool-down exercise. And they can be stretching and accuracy exercises if time is short to do other things.

AIMS:

Handler works on using clear, smooth ‘walk on’, ‘halt’, ‘wait’ and ‘back up’ signals using a single rail as a focal point.
Handler uses ‘Intent and Zero Intent’ body language to create short WAIT times between requests.
Horse develops confidence with walking across a rail (or similar).
Horse gains confidence standing with a rail (or similar) under his belly.
Horse practices placing his feet carefully in response to handler signals.

PREREQUISITES:

Horse leads smoothly beside the handler’s shoulder. See Number 68 in my Blog Contents List. The link for my Blog Contents List is at the top of the page.
Handler and horse agree on ‘Intent and Zero Intent’ signals. See Number 10 in my Blog Contents List.
Handler and horse agree on clear ‘walk on’ and ‘halt’ signals. See Number 16 in my Blog Contents List.
Handler is aware of The Rule of Three. See number 46 in my Blog Contents List.
Horse and handler agree on a back-up signal, either with the handler turning to face the horse – See Number 40 in my Blog Contents List, or the handler staying in the shoulder-to-shoulder position – See the first clip in Number 32 in my Blog Contents List.
Handler knows to stay with each small task until it is ho-hum, before asking for a different task.

VIDEOS:

#267 HorseGym with Boots: One Rail Basics. https://youtu.be/wMwBqiaBruI

#268 HorseGym with Boots: One Rail Refinements. https://youtu.be/L1fdlegEHFo

ENVIRONMENT & MATERIALS:

A work area where the horse is relaxed and confident.
Ideally, the horse can see his buddies, but they can’t interfere.
A single rail or several single rails (or similar) laid out a good distance apart.
Halter and lead or liberty. A light, shorter lead is easier to manage.

NOTES:

A little bit of these tasks during one training session is plenty. If it’s all done quietly with no fuss or drilling, the horse will think on it and remember what behaviors earn a click&treat. The Rule of Three can be useful.
Asking a horse to lift a front foot to back across a rail means that he is moving it back against the pressure of his whole body which is not easy. Ignore any touching of the rail at this stage as the horse draws a leg back. Frequent short practices will strengthen the muscles and ligaments so lifting the foot up and back becomes easier for the horse.
To help the horse strengthen, and maintain the strength, to lift his feet easily, we can lay a raised rail or similar in a gateway that the horse uses regularly during his everyday life. I’ve done this with two gates, and it seems to do a good job at helping to maintain suppleness. I leave a small gap for my wheelbarrow to squeeze through.
When confusion arises, it is because we are not clear enough or are going faster than the horse is able to absorb the new learning. Horses working for a food reward are usually super-observant of all our body language as well as carefully taught and executed voice and gesture signals. We must continually strive to ‘speak’ clearly with our body language, orientation and gestures every time we request an action (or inaction). Otherwise, the horse will only ‘hear’ a mumble and be confused, just as a person mumbling to us is frustrating and makes us give up trying to understand.
Once all the tasks are going smoothly, we can mix them up in any order, which teaches us to be crystal clear for the horse and has the horse watch us carefully to pick up the next signal that will lead to a click&treat.
When we use the less dominant side of our body, our body language and gesture signals tend to be less clear until we become super conscious of what we are doing. If you are right-handed and haven’t usually done much on your horse’s right side, there will be a lot of learning going on for both of you.
I find it useful to take written memo cards out with me when first doing a series of moves like this.
In-between moving, build it WAIT time before asking for the next movement. I.e., MOVEMENT – WAIT (x number of seconds) – MOVEMENT.
In the video clips I only show each request once to keep the clip short. When in the teaching (acquisition*) phase, three repeats in a row is usually a good number to work with.
If the horse finds one of the slices difficult, spend as many short sessions as necessary to build his confidence before asking for anything new.

SLICES:

Walk right over the rail, halt a few paces beyond the rail, click&treat. Walk a loop and repeat a couple more times. Or you could have more than one rail laid out in your training area and walk to each rail in turn to get the repeats. I used one rail in the video clips for ease of filming with a set camera.
Halt with the rail under the horse’s belly, click&treat; pause for a WAIT, walk on forward over the rail, walk a loop (or move to next rail) so you can repeat a couple of times.
Halt and WAIT before stepping over the rail, click&treat; pause and WAIT, walk on over the rail and into your loop or on to the next rail.
Halt immediately after all four feet have stepped over the rail, click&treat; pause and WAIT, walk on into your loop or to the next rail.
Halt with the rail under the horse’s belly, click&treat. Pause and WAIT, ask the horse to back his front feet across the rail, click&treat; pause, walk on forward over the rail. Be gentle teaching this. If you have taught a ‘Lift’ voice signal for foot care it can be useful here.
Repeat 1-5 above but this time approach the rail(s) from the opposite direction.
Repeat 1-5 above walking on the horse’s right side.
Repeat 7 above (on his right side) in the opposite direction.

GENERALIZATIONS:

Work in different venues.
Repeat slices 1-5 trotting.
Play at liberty once you’ve built up good communication for each task.
Work on a slope.

Walk all four feet over the rail and halt. Back only the hind feet over the rail; wait; walk forward again.
Walk all four feet over the rail and halt. Ask the hind feet to back over the rail, then the front feet.
Approach the rail but turn in front of the rail to set up the horse to halt/wait with his hind feet at the rail but not over it.
As 3 above, then ask the horse to back all four feet across the rail.
If you’ve taught sidestepping (see Number 29 in by Blog Contents List), ask the horse to step his front feet over the rail at one end and sidestep along the rail. If you are facing the horse’s ribs ask him to sidestep away from you. You can also ask him to sidestep toward you if you’ve taught this previously. You can also build a signal for sidestepping along a rail while you are face-to-face with the horse.
Straddle the rail. See Number 67 in my Blog Contents List.
Ask one front foot to stand across the rail and WAIT. See if you can do it with either foot. Then either ask the horse to lift the foot back over the rail or walk on forward.
Back one hind foot over the rail and wait in that position; walk forward. Work to be able to do this with either hind foot.

Mainly, HAVE FUN developing your communication skills.

Developing Soft Response to Rope/Rein Pressure

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Photo above shows how we started teaching voice signals for turning right and left using a target. When the voice signals were established, I added a light rope touch – creating a multi-signal.

INTRODUCTION:

It’s not uncommon for a horse to have bad feelings or mixed emotions about halters and ropes. My book, WALKING WITH HORSES has a detailed section about developing a horse’s willingness to put his nose into a halter. This is a task that needs thoughtful teaching.

Confidence with halter and lead rope is critical to help horses deal well with life in captivity. Essentially, we want putting a halter and rope on our horse similar to putting on our ‘work clothes’ – an outfit or uniform suitable for the type of work we do. When we work for an organization or with other people, we adjust our behavior to what is appropriate at our job.

In the same way, a horse carefully educated about halters and ropes will recognize that he is wearing his ‘uniform’ and relate it to certain ways of behaving. Mainly, it limits his behavior choices. Ideally it also encourages him to pay careful attention to requests made via messages send along the rope.

We can use the rope to send text messages. But, obviously, we must first carefully teach the horse what the ‘letters’ of our text mean. The lighter the pressure of our ‘texting’, the lighter the horse’s responses can be. In other words, the horse can only be as light in his responses to rope messages as we are light in sending them.

A rope is a way of ‘holding hands’ with our horse, not a tether kept tight to stop the horse escaping our influence. There is nothing so heartbreaking as see a gasping dog at the end of a tight leash or a horse struggling to understand why the tightness of the rope won’t go away, no matter what he does.

The key to lead rope handling is that the rope is always slack except for the brief moments it is sending a message to the horse. The instant the horse complies with our request, the slack is returned to the rope. It is the instant release of rope pressure plus the simultaneous click (and the accompanying treat) that enables the horse to understand which task we are requesting.

AIMS:

To have the horse comfortable standing in a safe corner.
To teach a ‘head straight’ anchor task that precedes our request to turn the head.
Use a target to teach head flexion to right and left; no rope.
Add ‘right’ and ‘left’ voice signals to the task.
Teach soft lateral flexion (turning the head right or left) using gentle touch on the halter via a rope until it feels equally smooth to the right and the left.
Generalize the task to different places and situations.

PREREQUISITES:

Horse is comfortable wearing a halter. (See Number 7 in my Blog Contents List. The link is at the top of the page.)
Horse is comfortable with a lead rope.
Horse and handler are clicker savvy.
Horse understands standing on a mat with duration. (See Number 9 in my Blog Contents List.)
For the early sessions, it’s helpful to have the horse standing with his butt in a safe corner so that backing up and swinging the hind end away are not options. The first slices will therefore involve making sure the horse is comfortable and relaxed standing in a corner.

ENVIRONMENT & MATERIALS:

A work area where the horse is relaxed.
Ideally, the horse can see his buddies, but they can’t interfere.
A safe corner the horse can stand in confidently. A safe corner is one where there is no chance of the horse putting a leg through wire or rails if he steps back or sideways. Hedges, sides of buildings or a corner made with barrels or jump stands plus rails tend to be safest. Even a raised rail or a log behind the horse with a small barrier on the far side of the horse might be enough of a corner.
A familiar mat to ‘station’ or ‘park’ the horse.
A familiar hand-held target.

GENERAL NOTES

When eventually using the touch signal via the rope or rein, be ready to click&treat for even the tiniest turn of the head at first. If we miss the horse’s first attempt to solve a puzzle, he can think his idea was wrong, and it can take a while for him to try it again.
When we lead, long-rein or ride a horse, it does not take much movement of the head to cause the horse to change direction. What we are doing here is not an extreme flexion exercise. It is an exercise to see how softly we can give what will become our ‘please change direction’ signals once the horse is moving.

SLICES:

A: STANDING COMFORTABLY IN A CORNER

Introduce the horse to each corner in small, easy steps. Thin-slice the process to what your horse needs. Use a familiar mat to indicate where you would like his front feet to be. Three kinds of corners are shown in the videos clips.
If the horse readily yields hindquarters and forequarters we can use these to adjust his position (see Numbers 83 and 84 in my Blog Contents List).
Or we can lead him through the corner and back him into it.
If using a rail, we can walk him over the rail and halt with the rail behind him.
Play with as many safe corners as you can find or set up, to generalize the ‘corner task’ to different situations.

B: TEACH AN ANCHOR TASK

Video clips

Clip 1: on right side of horse

Clip 2: on left side of horse

NOTES:

In the same way that music is made up of notes and the pauses between the notes, we must have pauses between asking the horse to repeat the same task. Because the horse is at halt for this challenge, the anchor task creates the pauses between our requests.

We begin teaching the anchor task once the horse is comfortable standing in a corner, on a mat, with reasonable duration.

An anchor task is what we do to ‘set the stage’ for what we will do next. For example, when I play with targeting body parts to my hand with Boots, our anchor task is lifting a front knee to my hand. It tells her what game we are about to play. Another ‘stand quietly waiting’ anchor task might be to always hang a special nose target in the spot you would like the horse to stand (park) while you tack up.

As an anchor task for this behavior, I’ve chosen to rest my nearest hand lightly on Boots’ withers while she keeps her head forward. It is the position my hand would be if I were to lift the reins in preparation to giving a signal while riding. You might prefer a different anchor task.

In our case, this is a bit tricky because I use the same anchor position I use when we do belly crunches while standing beside the horse. The handler’s body orientation is often a large part of an anchor task.

I decided that Boots is far enough along in her training to learn to pause in this anchor position and wait for the next signal to find out whether a crunch or head flexion is the hot topic of the moment. You’ll see that we have a couple of conversations about this.

SLICES:

Stand beside horse’s withers.
Lightly rest your near hand on the withers.
Click&treat when the horse’s head is straight, or he is in the process of moving his head into the ‘straight’ position.
Step forward to deliver the treat so the horse keeps his head straight, then step back into position beside the withers.
Repeat until the horse confidently stays facing forward until you click&treat for 3-4 seconds.

C: LATERAL FLEXION TO A TARGET and D. THE VOICE SIGNAL

Covered in video clips 1 & 2 as above. Clip 2 is on the left side of horse.

Hold the target out of sight behind your back and review the anchor task.
When the horse stands reliably with his head forward in the anchor position, bring the target forward so he has to turn his head a little bit to touch it: click&treat & step forward so the horse straightens his head to receive the treat, putting the target out of sight behind your back.
Step back beside the withers and put your hand back on his withers: click&treat for head forward until that is firmly established again (3-4 seconds). Be patient about establishing (and frequently re-establishing) this step because clever horses will want to skip straight from your anchor (hand on withers) to telling you that they know what to do – turn toward you (as Boots does in Clip Two).
Repeat 2 and 3 above until the horse reliably waits for you to produce the target before turning his head. If he turns without your signal, spend more click&treat on facing forward. Make sure you keep the target out of view behind your back. If bending is harder, spend more click&treat on asking for the bend.

D. ADD VOICE SIGNAL

NOTES:

You will obviously want different voice signals for right and left. Voice signals need to be short, clear, and sound different from other voice signals you use. I use “and Gee” for right. I use “and Left” for left. “Haw” for left sounds too much like “Whoa” which we use a lot. The “and” in front of the key word is a bit of a preparatory signal that lets the horse know a request is coming. My voice emphasis is on the key word.

Some horses do better if you teach something thoroughly on one side, then repeat from the beginning on the other side.
Some horses may cope well with doing a little bit on each side from the beginning.
Some handlers do better when teaching the task thoroughly on one side first.

E. RESPONSE TO ROPE OR REIN SIGNALS

Video Clip 3 introduces the rope:

Stand beside the horse’s ribs just behind the withers, facing forward, rope in the hand closest to the horse. Keep a drape or ‘smile’ in the rope. Ensure that the horse can stay facing forward with relaxed body language for 3-4 seconds in the presence of the rope: (click&treat).
When 1 above is ho-hum, say your voice signal and gently use both hands to ‘milk’ the rope, putting light pressure on the halter, looking for the slightest ‘give’ of the horse’s nose toward you. Release (click&treat). Step forward to deliver the treat in a way that has the horse straighten his head again.
Work with 1 and 2 above until the horse waits for the touch signal on the halter and willingly yields his nose. If he turns before you give the rope signal, spend more click&treat time on keeping the nose forward.
If he begins to turn his head as soon as you move back into position behind his withers, also go back to click&treat for a straight head.
Some horses catch on very quickly. Others may need multiple short sessions.
Teaching a horse with no rope experience is usually easier than teaching a horse who has had rough treatment with ropes. In the second case, you must adjust your training plan to help overcome any anxiety the horse carries from previous handling.

GENERALIZATION

Video Clip 4 includes generalizations:

Once the whole task is smooth and ho-hum on both sides of the horse, move away from the corner but still use a mat. Do the task in a variety of different places.
Once 1 above is good in a variety of places, omit the mat and again work in a variety of places and spaces.
Replace the rope/halter touch signal with a distinctive hand signal that can be used to draw the horse right or left at liberty.
Once the horse understands the halter touch signal via the rope, plus the voice signal, the anchor task can morph into just standing quietly together.
Use the touch and voice signals while in motion to change direction, keeping the pressure on the rope as light as possible.
Building a strong history of response to directional voice signals is most helpful if you are planning to teach long-reining and if you take part in Horse Agility.
These five short clips called Soft Rein Response give further ideas about how we can generalize the task further using reins but without being mounted.

Importance of Putting Behaviors On Signal or On Cue

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In the above photo, if I did not have ‘PICKING UP A CONE’ so it happens only when I give the Cue/Signal for picking it up, it would be hard to use cones as arena markers for other activities.

To become an adept and safe equine clicker trainer, it is essential to learn to put learned behaviors ‘on signal’ or ‘on cue’ as quickly as possible. We want the horse to wait for our signal before offering the behavior.

A horse throwing his learned behaviors at us might feel like fun at first, but it can rapidly get out of hand and become dangerous when the horse choses an inappropriate moment. For example, when I taught Boots to ‘spin’, it was quite startling when she wanted to show it to me and visitors all the time, while standing right beside us!

It pays to think carefully about the possible consequences of specific behaviors before we teach them. It pays to be aware that we can get into trouble, especially if the horse is a confident, imaginative and high-energy type of horse.

The most recent thing you have taught your horse often becomes his favorite move because that behavior has recently been strongly rewarded.

Such horses may perform a learned behavior then ‘demand’ the treat. It’s important to make sure the horse does not develop this option. The treat is always a reward for something you have asked the horse to do. It can’t be demanded.

Reminder, always Click BEFORE you reach your hand toward your treat pouch or pocket. If you don’t, the horse’s attention will be on watching your hand rather than focused on what you want him to learn.

Once you have a strong relationship and your clicker training repertoire is well established, you will have built up a connection that suits you and a particular horse. For example, if I sometimes forget to click&treat a behavior that falls into our list of things I usually/always click&treat, Boots makes sure to remind me with a gentle nudge.

No other training method elicits the enthusiasm and fun that can be had with well-planned and well-executed clicker training. Many horses playing click&treat games never want their sessions to end. Rather than having to worry about ‘ending the session on a good note’, clicker trainers must teach an ‘end of session’ routine to let the horse gently and clearly know that the session is finishing.

Although the ‘marker’ does not have to be the sound of a mechanical clicker, using a distinctive mechanical clicker when first teaching something new has the advantage of greater clarity for the horse. It also helps make the handler extremely observant about where to place the current click point.

Once the horse knows a behavior and your signal for it, it doesn’t seem to matter if a tongue click or a unique, consistent sound/word is used as a bridging signal instead of a mechanical clicker.

Putting every new behavior ‘on signal’ as soon as you can, will gradually reduce the horse’s desire to throw the new move at us as soon as he sees us (much like a child dying to show us his new painting).

Usually, a horse will have one or two favorite behaviors that he pulls out to see if he can get the vending machine to pay attention. Boots’ smile is the one she always tries first. It’s good to develop a few relatively quiet ‘default’ behaviors like this that you can reward when just going to say hello to your horse or generally checking up on him.

Boots using her smile to see if a treat will be forthcoming.

The following two clips are from a while ago. The detailed notes mentioned at the end have now morphed into my books.

Foot Awareness for Improving Proprioception

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Introduction

Proprioception is the awareness of where our body parts are in space, what each is doing, and how much energy the movement is using.

Here is a definition from the Internet:

Proprioception enables us to judge limb movements and positions, force, heaviness, stiffness, and viscosity. It combines with other senses to locate external objects relative to the body and contributes to body image. Proprioception is closely tied to the control of movement.

I’ve collected together an assortment of video clips I’ve made over the years that include ideas we can use to encourage the horse to be aware of where his feet are and what they are doing.

Quite a few of the clips are part of a training series and I’ve chosen just one of the series to illustrate the overall task. By going to my YouTube channel – herthamuddyhorse – you can find my assortment of playlists containing series of numbered clips to show the thin-slicing I used to achieve the final task. Message me if you need help to find a particular series.

Good proprioception relates to all sorts of things, but mainly to overall balance and suppleness.

Horses that grow up in rough hill country develop good proprioception as a necessity for survival. Horses raised in confined areas without needing to move much to find enough food don’t have the opportunity to develop excellent proprioception.

In the same way, athletes become good at their sport by developing the aspects of proprioception that especially relate to that sport. If our lifestyle lacks regular movement, our body suffers the same way as that of a stabled horse.

Video Clips

#88 HorseGym with Boots: Foot Awareness. https://youtu.be/7bEkFk0w_gk

A few tasks that play with improving foot awareness.

#89 HorseGym with Boots: Balance on 3 Legs. https://youtu.be/x1WKppV3N_0

Playlist: Challenges for Clicker Trainers: August 2017 Challenge: Precision with a Single Rail. https://youtu.be/bJzwDq-NvtE

Playlist: Foot Awareness: Thin-slicing the 1m Board. https://youtu.be/pLLqtbQJqMs

#220 HorseGym with Boots: Counting with the Front Feet Clip 1. https://youtu.be/hHpQgsUOINA

#246 HorseGym with Boots: Counting with the Hind Feet. https://youtu.be/rMsRVL_M33w

Playlist: Foot Awareness: Single Obstacle Challenges Hoops 3. https://youtu.be/xc-4yGiWDxk

Playlist: Challenges for Clicker Trainers: September 2017 Challenge: Figure 8. https://youtu.be/QrberCzAO6c

Playlist: Challenges for Clicker Trainers: November 18, Sidestepping Clip 1. https://youtu.be/Joxp9bYzMRc

Playlist: Foot Awareness: S-Bend Final Clip. Click here.

#199 HorseGym with Boots: Unusual Surface with Bottles. https://youtu.be/3LTmUSa0Y1M

#184 HorseGym with Boots: Back Between Rails. https://youtu.be/FGh7_MeFHcQ

#95 HorseGym with Boots: Backing down Slopes. https://youtu.be/M9pEFnDSbwc

Signals versus ‘Cues’ or ‘Stimuli’

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This is an extract from my book, Conversations with Horses: an in-depth look at signals and cues between horses and their handlers. Please see the BOOKS tab above to easily preview any of my books.

Defining a Signal

In the horse world, there are several terms used for the signals we give horses. One is ‘aids’ which is commonly used when riding. The term ‘cue’ seems to have become popular with clicker trainers.

Much more about Clicker Training is available in my book, How to Begin Equine Clicker Training. The term ‘stimulus’ comes from animal behavior laboratories.

I prefer the term ‘signal’ because it suggests that a message is sent and the ‘correct’ or intended message is received by the other party.

If a Morse code sender carefully sends his message, but the person at the other end does not know Morse code well enough to decode the message accurately, then the signal has failed. The garbled message may well lead to troubled times.

In other words, if a signal does not relay the desired message, then whatever we have used as a signal is not acting as a signal. By definition, a signal must communicate the person’s message and be received as such by the other party, in this case, the horse.

If it is not working as intended, the signal needs to be adjusted or changed so the message sent equals the message received.

When we are with the horse, he is busy sending us signals about his emotional, mental and physical well-being. If we can’t pick up these signals accurately, then the horse becomes frustrated and misunderstood and often retreats from willing interaction by trying to leave or ‘shutting down’. He becomes reactive rather than responsive.

Cues and stimuli are constantly bombarding all of us. A signal is something we want to stand out from everything else the horse is noticing and everything else we are noticing. We want the horse to easily separate our signal from all the other many cues that are constantly flowing in.

At the same time as we are communicating our intent with our signals, the horse is trying hard to communicate his intent and his feelings with his body language. The more ‘in tune’ we can get with the signals our horse sends us, the better our two-way communication can become.

In this work, I will use the term ‘signal’ rather than ‘aid’, ‘cue’ or ‘stimulus’. I’ll also refer to all horses as ‘he’ for ease of reading, unless I’m talking about a specific mare or filly.

Like the rest of us, horses thrive on clarity and consistency of communication.

Building a relationship with a horse is like locating a set of keys to unlock a door so the horse’s true nature can come out.

The horse’s total well-being depends on how well we can help him adapt to the peculiar life a horse must live in a human-centered world.

While we are trying to get to know our horse better and understand his emotional, mental and physical boundaries, the horse is doing exactly the same with us.

He is trying to read our intentions so he can be ready to react or respond, according to his perceptions. The more we understand about the signals we are giving the horse, the more we can develop a mutual language.

Boots is reading my body language and gesture signals for stepping onto the balance beam.

The more we realize that much of what we are communicating to the horse is in our unconscious body language, the more we can ‘still’ our body between meaningful signals.

‘No Intent’ body language tell the horse that all we are doing is standing together quietly.

We would like the horse to respond confidently to our requests rather than become anxious, reactive and bracing against the pressure of our signals.

The horse would also prefer to respond rather than become anxious, adrenalized and feeling the need to react by trying to escape, push through pressure or mentally and physically ‘shut down’ – hiding inside himself.

A horse needs a sound foundation of knowledge to enable him to cope with the very strange things people expect of their captive horses.

To do this we need to:

Take the horse through a careful education program
Set up a teaching schedule suited to the individual horse’s background and ability and adapted continually to the feedback the horse gives us
Give him every opportunity to master each small step of a large task, before asking him to string all the parts of a big task together.

This cutting of a whole task into its smallest teachable parts can be referred to as ‘thin-slicing the task’.

My book, How to Create Good Horse Training Plans, looks in detail at thin-slicing and writing Individual Education Programs (IEPs).

For each step of the teaching process, we must make sure we are sending a clear message rather than a confusing mumble. Therefore, a key element for the success of any teaching and learning program is ensuring that our signals are consistent and clear.

Horses are so sensitive that if we alter a signal even a little bit, they often think it means something else. The more things we teach our horse, the more carefully we need to think about the signals we use.

We can give our horse the best deal by becoming more aware about:

The specific types of signals we can use
How we are orientating our body
How we can refine our signals as the horse becomes confident
How to use a ‘signal bundle’ or ‘multi-signal’
When we are ‘nagging’ rather than communicating.

As mentioned earlier, it is the most natural thing in the world to expect the horse to change so it does what we want. However, in reality, it is by changing what we do that yields the results we want.

There will be variations in horse behavior based on each horse’s innate character type, his personal history, his relationship with the handler and the situation of the moment.

Horses will always be horses and will respond in the way that horses respond. Being prey animals, their main concern is safety.

Before we can cause change in the horse, we must become hyper aware of what we are doing while the horse is watching.

Whenever we are in our horse’s view, he is picking up all sorts of signals from us – our posture, our energy level, our intent, what we usually do that time of day, any specific signal we may be giving and so on.

Once we learn to pay close attention to the horse’s body language, we get better at understanding the signals the horse is sending us.

A signal is a direct, purposeful communication between horse and handler. If we’ve carefully taught a signal for backing up, then the horse will back up when we give that signal.

Boots understand the ‘raised fingers’ signal to mean ‘please back up’. I may be using a “Back” voice signal at the same time, which means I’m using a multi-signal to be especially clear.

If the horse raises his head and points his ears with strong concentration, we pick up his signal that something in the environment has his full attention.

The horse’s body language of raised head and ears focused strongly forward tells us that some cue or stimulus in the distance has captured his whole attention.

First, we learn the horse’s language – his signals. Then it is up to us to teach the horse the language he needs to remain safe and comfortable in the human world – our signals.

Since we have taken the horse away from his natural lifestyle and made him our captive, it is up to us to become fluent in Universal Horse Language and learn to use it effectively. To be effective we need:

An understanding of different horse character types.
An understanding of our particular horse’s character type.
Awareness of our body language and the different ways we use signals.
Knowledge about horse senses and sensitivity.
As much knowledge as possible about a particular horse’s background experiences.
To write good training plans which can be turned into individual education programs (IEPS) designed for a specific horse.
Adept use of body language, body extensions, ropes, reins.
Timely application of release reinforcement.
Adept use of reward reinforcement along with release reinforcement.

There is detailed information about using reward reinforce-ment in my book, How to Begin Equine Clicker Training.

The more fluent we are about understanding horse body language and the mechanics of both release (negative) and reward (positive) reinforcement, the better a teacher we can be for our horse.

It is hard for the horse to learn from someone who doesn’t have a good understanding of who and what they are teaching.

Before we head into an overview of the signals we use with horses, followed by a detailed look at each signal type, we need to look in detail at how horses sense and perceive their environment. (The next part of the book delves into this.)

Once we are conscious of the biological differences between horse and human perception, it is easier to allow horses the leeway they need to feel safer in our company.

Counting with the Hind Feet

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This task is an excellent exercise to work on the timing of our ‘click’ and melting into ‘zero intent’ to wait for the horse’s ‘consent signal’ to do a repeat. The task forces us to focus on the timing and consistency of our On/Off gesture signals. It is also an excellent mobilization exercise for the horse.

Boots and I played with this occasionally for over a year, especially when time was short or the weather was rough, but also as a regular ‘end of session’ exercise. We did this after a year of working on confident ‘counting’ with the front feet as in Prerequisite 3 below.

Aim

When I face the back of the horse and point to his hind feet with my inside hand, using an On/Off gesture signal, the horse lifts a hind foot when I point and sets it down when I remove my hand signal.

Prerequisites

Horse and Handler have developed good table manners standing quietly together. ‘Zero Intent’ and ‘Intent’. Click here.
Horse and handler agree on signals the horse gives when he is ready to do something again. Seeking the Horse’s Consent Signals: Click here.
Horse and handler are already confident ‘counting’ with the front feet. Click here.
Triple Treat: #16 HorseGym with Boots. Click here.
Horse is comfortable rubbed all over with a long object (video clip below).

Videos: Counting with Hind Feet

#246 HorseGym with Boots

#243 HorseGym with Boots. The following clip shows the detail of working with ‘zero intent’ and waiting for the horse to give a ‘consent signal’ that tells us he is ready to try again.

Materials and Environment

A venue where the horse is able to relax. Ideally he can see his buddies but they can’t interfere.
Horse is not hungry.
A long-handled target to introduce the idea of lifting a hind foot to touch a target (which we eventually fade out).
A shorter target to accentuate the On/Off gesture signal (also gradually faded out).
A mat at first, to help the horse understand that we want him to stand still.
A safe fence or barrier alongside which we can stand the horse.
A variety of other barriers to use for generalization.
Two raised rails (or similar) to stand between.

Notes

It’s important to stay with each slice of this task until the horse is fully ho-hum with it. In other words, repeat each slice a few time over as many short sessions as it takes for the horse to respond smoothly to your ON/OFF signal. If we take the time it takes to establish each slice, all steps of the overall task will be embedded in the horse’s long-term memory, giving us relaxed responses.
Timing of the click is essential at first. It is the only way the horse can understand what you want him to do (lift his foot). Try hard to click as the foot is coming UP. If you’re unsure about your timing, practice by bouncing a ball and clicking when it leaves the ground. Or practice with a person standing in for the horse. Eventually we can relax the timing and click for the completion of one UP and DOWN movement. In the video clip you will notice that at one point I had to specifically wait to click after the foot returned to earth. Each horse will show his own little foibles.
I don’t mind which foot the horse lifts. I prefer if he uses both. If a horse seems to use the same leg most of the time, make a big deal (triple treat / celebration) when he uses the other one. This is a mobilization exercise, so using both legs is good.
When starting with this task, use the same location, same mat, same targets (until faded out) until the horse is truly confident with what you are asking.
Often, it’s helpful to start on the horse’s left side, but we need to build the pattern standing on his right side as well. Spend a little more time on the side that feels harder. I like to teach each slice on both sides as we go along. An option is to teach all the slices on one side then teach them all again from the beginning on the other side. Or teach several slices on one side and then on the other side.
Any time there is confusion (horse and/or handler), return to where you both feel confident and gradually work forward again. I had a terrible time remembering to use my inside hand for the gesture signal. When I used my outside hand I thoroughly confused my horse because gestures with my outside hand already had two different meanings, as shown on the video clip.
Consistently use the hand closest to the horse (the inside hand) for your signal.
A major part of the signal is the turning of our body to face the horse’s hind feet while we remain at his shoulder. As I turn, I add a voice signal, “Counting Rear”, to help differentiate this task from other things I do facing the back of the horse.
It took us a long time (months) to put all these pieces together, with a short practice most days. I started in a consistent place as mentioned in Note 4.

Slices

Stand the horse alongside a safe barrier in a place that you can use consistently for each session. The barrier stops the horse thinking we want him to move his hind end away. Ask him to park his front feet on a mat.
Set the stage for the exercise by asking the horse to count with his front feet – a major prerequisite for success with this task.
Turn so you are facing his hind end. Holding your long-handled target in the hand nearest the horse (inside hand) gently touch it to his hock; click as you touch and deliver the treat as you move the target out of play behind you.
Repeat 3 above with Click&treat for any movement, even a shift of weight off that foot. When first teaching this, remember to click as the foot lifts UP.
As the horse begins to understand that you click&treat when his foot comes up, hold the target near his hock, not touching it. The movement of your arm will become the horse’s clue.
When 5 above is good, use a shorter target to point to the hind foot. Or shorten the target you have been using – or use the same-looking end on a shorter stick (a different-looking target may confuse an extremely sharp horse). Boots did not find this a problem.
When 6 above feels ho-hum, go to an even shorter target and/or introduce the wiggling of your finger along with the target.
When 7 above feels confident, refine your gesture to just lifting your arm and wiggling your finger. Immediately the horse lifts his foot, click, return your signaling hand to its OFF position lying on your belly, feed the treat with your other hand.
When getting one foot-lift is reliable, and it feels right, ask for a second lift before the click&treat. Huge celebration if you get it. Remember we are using an ON/OFF signal, so put your signal hand into neutral on your belly before asking for the second lift.
Vary between asking for one lift and two lifts. I count out loud as the horse lifts the foot: “One, Two” with a voice emphasis on the number I will click&treat if it is more than one. The horse learns that a soft counting voice means a request for another ‘lift’ is coming up.
When 10 above feels ho-hum, ask for a third lift before the click&treat. Again, a huge celebration.
Over time work up to as many lifts as you want. I usually stick with a maximum of five standing on the left and five standing on the right, but I vary the number requested each time we do it and might occasionally ask for six or seven.
Once you have reliable lifts standing alongside a familiar barrier, generalize to other locations where you can stand the horse with a safe barrier along his far side to maintain the idea that he doesn’t need to move his body.
Once 13 above is relaxed, stand the horse between rails raised to gradually wean away from a high barrier.
The task is ‘finished’ when you can easily count your decided number of lifts on either side of the horse without needing any props.

Generalizations

Play with the exercise in different venues.
Play on a slope.
Incorporate it into your WAIT game or your Four Corners Exercise. Click on the Blog Contents List at the top of the page to access these (Number 65 and Number 71 on the list).
Use it as a mobilization exercise when it’s too hot, cold, windy, wet to do much else.

Fitting Head Gear

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Many people know the structure of the horse’s skull, but some people don’t. It’s possible to unknowingly inflict discomfort and pain, sometimes causing severe physical trauma to the soft tissues and nerves that lasts the horse’s lifetime.

We can see that the solid bone on the front of the horse’s nose does not go all the way down. The bone down from where the molars start is thin and precarious. It is surrounded by cartilage carrying the many nerves from the horse’s lips and whiskers.

These nerves of touch, smell and taste enable the horse to graze safely – both the horse’s physical safety in terms of touch and relaying information about smell and taste.

Even if we prefer to play with our horse(s) at liberty, it is essential for their life in captivity that we take the time and make the effort to ensure that they are comfortable having head gear put on and taken off. And be confident with ropes and leading.

It is traumatic to see a young horse who was haltered and the halter left on until it deformed the growing skull. The pain involved is unthinkable.

There are numerous risks involved with leaving halters on. Breakaway attachments can be an option if leaving a halter on can’t be totally avoided.

The following video takes a quick look at making sure that our head gear fits well with minimum discomfort.

It is hard to overstate the sensitivity of the horse’s mouth and muzzle area. While bits cause mouth trauma (physical, mental and emotional), headgear like knotted rope halters, cross-over nosebands or regular nosebands fitted too low also cause discomfort and pain.

It pays to remember that a horse with his mouth tied shut can’t ‘blow out’ freely, or cough to clear his trachea. Rope halters with knots need to be treated with gentle hands. Side-pull halters or bridles pull the inside of the cheek against the horse’s teeth, so must also be used with gentle hands. We all know what an ulcer inside our mouth feels like.

It is the nature of horses to suffer silently. Perhaps if they squealed like pigs it would be easier for us to refine our way of being with horses.

Teaching Back-Up Signals

This clip demonstrates the 8 leading positions.

FIRST: Leading Position 3 – Beside the neck/shoulder

It is a great exercise to play with this task at libery if you have a safe enclosed area. Have fun with it.

Leading without Blocking the Handler

Trailer Loading Prep

Backing up Straight

Backing up with the Handler in Front

Backing Prospective Harness Horse Between Shafts; i.e. tight spots

Confidence with unusual narrow spaces

Careful Placing of Feet

Lateral Movement

Recall

Behaviors Must be ‘On Signal’

Expanding our Concept of ‘Leading’

Clicker training teaches both the handler and the horse important things.

Walk-on Body Language

Halt Body Language

When ‘walk-on’ and ‘halt’ are solidly in place, we can carry on with unusual surfaces.

Shaping ‘Touch’ with Your Nose’

Teaching TOUCH with Other Body Parts

With Positive Reinforcement

Teaching Soft Rope or Rein Response.

Front Feet

To Make Your Job Much Easier…..

Ear postions might be categorized as:

Ear Expression Summary Chart

More about ears

A. Ear differences between mares and geldings/stallions.

Resetting a Task

Riding – Visual Signals Mosty Disappear

Emotion Exercise

Strongly Reward the Pause or Wait Time

INTRODUCTION

AIM

PREREQUISITES

VIDEO

MATERIALS AND ENVIRONMENT

NOTES

SLICES

GENERALIZATIONS

INTRODUCTION

AIMS:

PREREQUISITES:

VIDEOS:

ENVIRONMENT & MATERIALS:

NOTES:

SLICES:

GENERALIZATIONS:

ONE RAIL REFINEMENTS

INTRODUCTION:

AIMS:

PREREQUISITES:

ENVIRONMENT & MATERIALS:

SLICES:

A: STANDING COMFORTABLY IN A CORNER

B: TEACH AN ANCHOR TASK

NOTES:

C: LATERAL FLEXION TO A TARGET and D. THE VOICE SIGNAL

D. ADD VOICE SIGNAL

NOTES:

E. RESPONSE TO ROPE OR REIN SIGNALS

GENERALIZATION

Introduction

Video Clips

Defining a Signal

Aim

Prerequisites

Videos: Counting with Hind Feet

Materials and Environment

Notes

Slices

Generalizations