Comments on: Teach Your Horse a Useful Trick

By: Jain & Trigger

Jain & Trigger — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 09:45:27 +0000

Hi Sunrise, yes if little kids are going to be riding your mini then I wouldn’t teach him to rear – just to be safe. I always teach my horses that unless they are asked to do a trick they don’t get a reward and this discourages them doing unwanted tricks. But a kid may give them a trick cue by mistake and your horse will think he is being asked to do the trick. I also find that when I first start teaching a horse tricks he will sometimes try to do several unasked tricks when he/she sees me in the hope that they will get a reward. It’s usually funny but in this situation it could be dangerous.

You can use the same method to teach a trick as you can to teach loads of other useful things, like standing square and staying. I had a huge 16.2hh thoroughbred that would chase a ball and bring it back to me. He loved this game! Some horses aren’t good fetchers, just like some dogs. Trigger, my current trick horse is very relaxed and a bit lazy and he thinks fetch is a bit too much like hard work. However he is brilliant at bowing, lying down and staying… all tricks that don’t take much energy

By: Sunrise

Sunrise — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 13:05:06 +0000

This sounds awesome looking forward to the ebook!
i’d like to teach my mini lots of things like rear on command. but i worry that if i teach him something like that then he might just go and do it when some little kid is on his back and totally freak it out! do i have to worry about that?
I really want to teach him to stand (square) and STAY. then come when called like a dog and play with my dog with a ball or tug toy. they play as it is but its more like chaseys
cool found you on face book

By: Judy Gwaltney

Judy Gwaltney — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 03:03:50 +0000

I love this site! I’d love to have the ebook. I would like to teach my two horses to do things together. They already do some things, like circle while the other one is on a pedestal, etc., the little mustang mare picks up things, honks the bicycle horn, opens gates, they both push a big ball, but I’d like to teach them to “play ball” together, maybe one lead the other, etc., maybe hug and kiss each other…..? They are very bonded and it’s hard to work with one only as the other feels left out…especially the big 21 year old TWH…He learns more slowly, but you can count on him once he’s got it.

By: Holz

Holz — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 20:20:51 +0000

I have been playing around with a litle section A mare that we have and she has learnt to: Bow
rear
lie down
play dead

and she was declared a nutter that need getting rid of so yeah you can do tricks with anything