As many of you may know from my recent post I have a young green horse and one thing I’d like to teach him is standing still for mounting and not feeling the need to go walking off the second I’m in the saddle. Any training tips to help with this? He will do a good whoah from a walk or trot once we get working but it’s like when I initially get on his back he cannot stand still and if I try to make him stand he’ll back up or paw.
I treat trained my horses, always have mints in my pockets, they know the minute I get on, to stand still and turn their head for a mint. Not everyone believes in treat rewards, but it worked for me. They don’t dream of walking off, they want their treat first.
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^ Ditto! My dressage instructor suggested treats and after struggling with my young guy for a few months, boom - twice and he stands like a rock now.
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I really dislike a horse that won’t stand still while I get on, so I also bribe mine with treats.
Mine are now offended if I ask them to walk away from the mounting block without having had their sugar cube.
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Yeah, the treats. Mine was very quick to learn to wait for a treat.
Not only that, he magically started to line up properly for mounting without having to be repositioned a step back or forward or to the side. Once treats happened after mounting he was like “OH, you mean you wanted me to walk up next to the block with my stirrup aligned to your leg and stand straight without swinging my quarters away… so you can get on and give me a treat. GOT IT.”
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Ok treats it is! So you just hold them still while you mount and then ask them to stand & treat?
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Our problem child gets mounted with his head curved round to the side in a one-rein stop position. This was the advice from his previous owners - if you try and pick up both reins to mount, he gets anxious and may lurch forward or backward. This way he’s a bit easier to interrupt and catch with your seat, and going round in tight circles is less pleasant for them than standing still, so you stack the deck in your favour.
You may need an assistant to hold him while you get on and then you give him the treat from the saddle a few times, or you might be able to do it using a fenceline or corner so he physically can’t walk off.
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I line him up, give him a treat and get on while hes munching. Then another treat once I’m mounted. Works great.
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Not necessarily. I treat-trained my previous horse but not my current horse. Treat training only works with a certain personality.
Your horse should learn to wait for your next direction when you mount. Make the right thing easy (he stands there) and the wrong thing hard (he has to back up, do work, or whatever if he takes steps on hos own if you mount). He will soon learn that the right thing (waiting for you) is the easy thing if you sit lightly and don’t give him inadvertent cues. He shouldn’t behave only because he’s expecting a treat. That concept WILL backfire somewhere in your training because he’ll get ansty if you don’t deliver that treat on his timeline…riding work (for a whole hour per day?) is on your time, not his. He’s not allowed to get crabby if you don’t deliver a treat at his will. He has to learn that working for an hour or so per day is part of life, he has the other 23 hours to do what he wants.
I suggest working to keep him near the mounting bock. DON’T let him walk away until you tell him too. Back him up if he does. Pet him when he’s good. Talk to him. Keep the reward away from food if possible. Soon he’ll learn that life is better when he waits for you and harder if he walks off.
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I take this approach too. I prefer sugar cubes because they melt in the horse’s mouth (good for working w/ a bit) but any treat that isn’t a choking hazard should be fine.
It’s worth exploring if your horse is anxious about mounting - it could be greeness or sometimes, it can be because the getting-on part of mounting causes them discomfort. Sometimes it’s as simple as a saddle fit issue. Sometimes you just got to make sure that what you’re asking isn’t accidentally causing them some sort of discomfort.
I teach all of my horses to stand by the mounting block by first asking them to halt - I use the command “stand” because it is not similar to other voice commands that I use (“halt” can be close enough to a horse’s ears as “walk” so I prefer words that have very little phonetic similarities). This might take some time. I prefer to bring them to the block, say “Stand.” and then walk around them while they stand. If they move forward or try to follow me I say “ah, ah” and re-position them exactly where they were before. You can use a marker if you want, a traffic cone or some other marker, to signify they stand right there. I will walk around, adjust/pull down a stirrup or something, and then give them a sugar cube/praise and walk them on. Rinse/repeat this multiple times in a session before you get on. I like to do this in random parts of the indoor too.
Once they get it, escalate to standing on the block but not getting on. They are still expected to stand. If they move, re-position them back. once they stand, give them a cube and ask them to walk on. Rinse/repeat.
Once they are reliably standing still while you do everything around them but get on, get on. Make sure you are not accidentally nudging the horse with your legs or pulling on the reins - for the really squirrelly/sensitive-sided horses I like to work them in hand first by asking them to move over when I press my palm on their flank. It definitely desensitizes them to pressure on their flank.
Now once you get on, give them a sugar cube and ask them to walk on. The first few times won’t be perfect but try to time it so you give them the treat before they think about walking off, and try to time commanding them to walk off before they start to lean forward and shift gears. A few rinse/repeats of this and you should be able to lengthen the time before the horse gets the treat. I like to give the treat after I adjust stirrups/girth but this takes time and consistency.
The only drawback to this method is that if someone is not aware that you do this, they can be taken aback by the horse’s neck being practically in their lap looking for a treat once they get on. I once didn’t tell my friend about it and she hopped on my guy and thought he was about to rear! He was just trying to see where his treat was but the sensation of a horse lifting his shoulders and pulling his neck up is not dissimilar to a rear…
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You also don’t treat every time after the behaviour has been established. The strongest reinforcement is random.
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I used a John Lyons method on all the horses that I had to teach to stand for mounting. It requires repitition and some patience.
First, stand next to the saddle then step away if the horse is standing, repeat several times until the horse looks bored. I always repeat on both sides.
Next, put the mounting block next to him (or him to the mounting block, depending on the set up). Keep the pressure on until he stands (this means staying next to him) - this will depend on the horse. Some will stand just fine, some get nervous. With the more nervous ones, I count to 1 in my head then take the pressure off (back away and tell him he’s a good boy). I want a 5 count before taking pressure away and when I step off, I want him to turn his head to me and ideally have some lip licking but I will take standing if need be. On the more nervous horses, I sometimes offer a treat when I step away as further reinforcement of good behavior.
Repeat with standing on the mounting block
Repeat with foot in stirrup
Repeat with weight
Repeat with mounting then dismounting
I usually repeat each step 5 good times before moving on to the next and I do each on both sides of the horse.
I have found it has lasting effects and have used it on the most nervous horses. Some do take more than one session but most figure it out in one.
One of the worst cases I had was a horse that would start trotting as soon as weight was in the stirrup, though he would stand like a champ for dismounting. One 20 min session of the above and he stood like a rock for mounting for the rest of the time I knew him (2 years or so before his owners sold him).
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Excellent method.
What you’re doing is teaching the horse to stand quietly, not necessarily stand quietly for mounting. A horse that will stand quietly while you do a ground task is a sibling of the Western riders who teach their horses to ground tie. It’s a skill that pays huge dividends.
As to treats, they can be a “bridge” to get you from one side of a problem to another, but if they become too embedded in the process you’ll have a different training problem down the road.
G.
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I agree and found that John Lyons’ methods were excellent for getting really great horses. I chuckle a bit at a friend of mine that thinks her horse ground ties great…he takes a step here to look at this, step over there to say HI to the horse in the stall… Yeah, in the western world he ground ties like crap - not that my horse is better, I just find the difference interesting.
For the same reasons you mentioned, I don’t like giving treats a lot. I have seen people with belt bags containing treats that they give the horse after a round of jumping or after mounting or etc and it just doesn’t seem appropriate - what do you do if you don’t have treats? Do you have to treat your horse at a show? That being said I DO give treats, just at very specific times.
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Yes, good point that I forgot to mention.
I think the problem that some people find with treats is that they lack the time or the discipline to “treat” correctly - maybe they don’t reward at the exact moment the behavior was exhibited, or maybe their application is inconsistent and the horse does not learn… or maybe they inadvertently teach the horse to mug for treats – but never have I run into a problem “down the road” with a horse that does not want to do something just because I do not have treats in my pocket.
Treating, like any other positive reinforcement, is a platform. I think that there is a lot to be said for showing a horse that working with you is rewarding. For some horses, praise is not rewarding enough. For others, particularly the ones that are guarded or somewhat defensive due to past mishandling, treats can and do make a difference in their willingness initially.
Would you work, and work physically hard, for someone – just for the praise? Or do you do it for the paycheck?
It’s not an unrelated parallel.
I’ve had good luck with teaching OTTBs to ground-tie (and later stand still for mounting) using clicker-training and teaching them to stand still no matter what. They tend to come from the track with a lot of valuable training/experience, but standing still is not one of them.
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Clicker training is very useful for this skill. It’s a variant of the treat-training but with the addition of the conditioning sound of the clicker that makes it a bit easier to indicate more precisely to the horse the exact behavior that you are rewarding.
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I have a two fold approach. First all of my horses do a lot of ground work to learn the commands whoa and stand. They also learn that those are absolute- I make sure to never casually use them aka when I say whoa or stand I mean it. Then also I use the treat method but I probably have a different reason for using this than most. I mount and then tap the left side of the neck meaning “ok you can have your treat now”. Once that tap and turn to get treat is established- I use it on trail to give paste electrolytes from the saddle at water stops (endurance horse) or feed a carrot or two. Being able to electrolyte from the saddle is a huge time saver for me. However, I always make sure to tell people if they ride one of my horses not to pat them on the left side of the neck while riding because they stop and turn their heads so fast it may give you whiplash lol 
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Yes, definitely this! My horse is very sensitive to correction. When I got him he had a habit of swinging his hips away from the mounting block. If I attempted to correct it by making him move forward, circling, etc. he would just get flustered and anxious. I tried rewarding when he stood still, but the second I started getting on he would move and there was literally no other effective action except having another person stand at his other hip. I have never used treats as reinforcement but decided to give it a try. He learned so quickly and I only used them for maybe 5 rides. The behavior hasn’t come back, but every once in a while when I get on he turns his head around like “where’s my treat?”. Now he just gets big pats
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For those that use treats and those that dismiss using treats, remember those are a mere tool.
You can use treats properly or not and there is the difference.
Anyone familiar today with learning theory has studied the different ways to teach and how treats may fit in it just fine.
As some have mentioned, treats are just used when you train, until your horse knows what you want and you phase the treats out.
I still remember how most members in our dog club were looking cross to the odd one that was training with treats and all we could think was how much was wrong with it, while admiring how well her dogs trained for her.
We didn’t understand the system yet, were not seeing what she was doing, just focused on the treats and how anxious her dogs seemed to us.
As the years passed and more and more were catching on to that kind of operant conditioning, clicker training, the more seminars we had and articles and books about it, the more all changed to using treats and today practically all, for most that is taught, use treats at times.
I expect that probably will happen eventually with horses, if of course the situations where treats are appropriate in horse training will be specific to it.
Equus magazine just had an article on this, October 2017, “Training by Reward”, by Janet Jones.
I think that standing by the mounting block is one place where a handy reward training method would help, being more of a static exercise, to teach patience, impatience one reason horses don’t stand quietly there.
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