Tricks to teach my horse:)

[SnicklefritzG]

[QUOTE=beowulf;7840703]
So long as you are smart with what you teach, it should not be a problem. Obviously don’t teach a horse to rear in the barn… etc. Really, it should not be a problem.

I clicker trained my gelding during layup to do a whole bunch of things – best of which is coming when I whistle… It is great too because you would never think he knows a single trick the way he acts – but once you pull out the clicker he is ALL business. He ground-ties ANYWHERE, ties to anything (tree? no problem… rock? who cares? SUPER useful), comes when whistled even while free, will pull a lead rope/slackened lunge line out between his legs, picks up a leg based on which cue, stand attention while I fuss on his back/fix stirrups, and my personal favorite, STOPS when I dismount. All ‘tricks’ that are not, in reality, tricks for show – but great to have in your repertoire. We are currently polishing off the stopping when I emergency dismount too.

Like SnicklefritzG said there are various useful tricks to teach your horse - after all, is not riding a series of ‘tricks’ in engagement?

Clicker training is a great way to isolate behaviors and reward them, and is also a good way to make sure these behaviors are never offered unless you ask for them.

SnicklefritzG, I like the whip idea, how did you teach your guy that? The furthest I got with any sort of oral trick was teaching my guy to pick up his stall ‘buddy’, a wooden pig. I’m thinking it would be neat to teach him to pick up my jacket… I always drop them when I am riding![/QUOTE]

Regarding the above, some of the guys in my office think that’s what dressage is… where you “go into the ring and do tricks”. Well I guess they might be right in a way.

I’ll send you a PM with the instructions for how to teach your horse to pick up stuff. Once they learn it with a toy that has a handle, it is easy to then progress to other objects.

[lorilu]

I have a young horse who is a bit ADD - and teaching him a trick (spanish walk/working on march in hand) has really helped him get focused on the trainer/rider before the actual riding part of the training session…

[lorilu]

not really tricks, but here is a garrocha horse who seems to not need a rider! http://lusitanoportal.com/articles/garrocha-horse/

[Bluey]

[QUOTE=lorilu;7841040]
not really tricks, but here is a garrocha horse who seems to not need a rider! http://lusitanoportal.com/articles/garrocha-horse/[/QUOTE]

He really does, does he.

A good half a century ago, traditional dressage used to frown on the spanish walk, considering it a disuniting and so not appropriate movement to teach a proper dressage horse.
Don’t know if they still consider that so today.

[californianinkansas]

[QUOTE=Bluey;7840728]
When we had a horse that was rank, the kind that was scared of humans, that would almost go over a fence when you approach him, that had been roped to be caught every morning before going on to work cattle, we taught it static tricks.

When you walked in such horse’s pen, you asked for a trick like smile or pick up a foot and the horse would forget to be scared, had to think what we were asking and knew a treat was coming, so they would stand there doing their trick and so we could approach them and, once there, they were ok with the new, nice human.[/QUOTE]

Brilliant! Karen Pryor would be proud. This is classic operant conditioning in action. He can’t do the “bad” behavior at the same time he’s doing the “good” behavior.

[californianinkansas]

My gelding will pick up an object off the ground and toss it in my general direction on cue. I’m having a lot of trouble teaching him to drop the object in my hands or near my hands.

Clicker training has proven to be extremely beneficial with the Plastic Grocery Bag of Death. He knows that spooking at the PGBoD will not cause the magic clicker to go off, but picking up the PGBoD will cause the magic clicker to go off and “pay” him.

My goal over the winter is to teach/click him the Arabian halter stance (no halter in the arena). The halter stance is, suprisingly to me at least, actually a behavior chain.

Vee hates standing still worse than anything else, so it’s slow going. He -like me- has the attention span of a gnat, so I only work on a behavior for no more than five repetitions, move on to something else, then come back to that behavior if needed.

This is all that I’ve taught him so far:
Tolerate fly spray
Spook in place
Overcome head shy and ear shyness
Tolerate the clippers

 Calmly pick up hooves
 Back up
 Stop
 Walk, trot, canter on cue
 Calm gait transitions (we're still working on this one)
 Bow
 Hug
 Stay (ground tie)
 Turn on the forehand
 Side pass
 Come when called 
 Touch object (targeting)
 Find and throw his Jolly ball
 Pick up and throw object
 Ring a bell
 Push a gate shut
 Show trot (like for a halter class) beside me in the correct position without a halter or lead
 Lower his head 
 Walk on a tarp