HorseTraining Ground - Walk Away

Horse Training Ground Tip: Walk Away

When asking a horse to do something, simply walking away from him is one of the most important tools at your disposal.

How can this be? Horses respond to pressure-whether its pressure from a rope or a rein, or from something he perceives to be a threat. By walking away from him you remove the pressure. You can use the simple act of turning and walking away to communicate to your horse that he did something you asked. This truly rewards the horse-taking the pressure of a horse releases that built in sense of apprehension and fear a horse has. Giving him a treat when he does something you want does not accomplish this.

Another Important Horse Training Ground Tip

You can not accomplish teaching a horse to think and control his emotions by giving her treats. We are all emotional, but horses are way more emotional than people are. A horse is built to run first and ask questions later-all emotion (fear) and no thought. By taking the pressure off when a horse feels threatened-but before he goes to escape-you teach a horse to stop and think. The horse will begin to control his emotions instead of feeling fear and escaping.

There are two steps you want to incorporate into any horse training ground that involves desensitization:

* Always be ready to back off when the horse feels threatened.
* Change the horses line of thinking. When the horse moves away from you, take control back by first asking him to look at you and second making his feet moves if he fails to give you his full attention.

I’ve written before about the importance of gaining and keeping the attention of your horse. This means having the horse look at you with both eyes described in my blog post Horse Training Ground - Getting Attention. While I describe an exercise using the lead rope to get your horse started with this behavior, you want to use kissing or clicking as a signal to have your horse look at you at all times-even without the lead rope. One way you can work on this is in the round pen without the lead rope or halter on your horse. Kiss to him to get his attention. When he looks at you, wait a second then walk away. You can also praise verbally, but the key idea is walking away to take the pressure off.

The example of touching a head shy horse is a great one that can be used over and over to illustrate these concepts. Here are some key ideas I incorporated after recently reading a book by John Lyons:

* If a horse pulls his head away from you when you try to pet him or touch his ear, he is telling you he is afraid you might hurt him.
* Don’t chase his head and force him to let you touch it.
* Start fast and slow down.

Let’s focus on that last point. If a horse is afraid of letting someone touch his ear, you aren’t going to have the most success desensitizing him by grabbing hold of his ear and holding it for 30 seconds. Instead, start gradually with quick touches. The first time he lets you touch the ear without pulling away, rub your hand over it quickly (taking a total of 1 second say). Then remove the pressure by walking away. Approach him again, and then touch more slowly-say 2 seconds.

By building on small steps like this, you teach the horse to relax and think. When you touch him he gets wound up for a second because he feels threatened, but you take the stimulus away before he decides to escape. Escaping doesn’t always mean galloping off to the hills-if he pulls his head away he is thinking escape. What we want is to teach him to feel his fear go up and then take the threatening stimulus away and let him feel the adrenaline drop back down again so he learns to relax.

Now when a horse does think move away or escape, we want to change his thought pattern. Here is how you do it. Suppose that a horse isn’t comfortable with you approaching him in the round pen. So if you’re 10 feet away and he is standing still, but you walk toward his withers, he walks away from you.

Timing is everything-you need to watch closely and figure out exactly when he is going to move off. Ideally, you want to gradually close the gap. So if he starts to move off at 8 feet of distance, walk up to him to 9 feet. Kiss to him to get him to look at you, then turn and walk away. This is just like touching his ear for just a second. Next time, approach to 8 feet and 7 inches and repeat.

Now suppose you approach but you see his muscles shifting so that he is about to turn away. Or what is another sign he is thinking escape? He simply turns his head away from you. What should you do then? You want to change his thought pattern. The first step is to ask him to look at you. So if you approach your horse and he turns away, kiss to ask him to look at you with both eyes. If he doesn’t comply, then re-establish control by making his feet move. Lyons advises giving the horse 2 seconds to look at you when you’ve asked for it. So if the horse turns away but won’t look back toward you when you kiss for 2 seconds, use your rope, whip, or carrot stick to send him out.

This approach goes with one of the best horse training tips: Eric Bravo’s “steal a thought” idea. Eric says that when the horse starts to move off steal the thought and make it your own by sending the horse out when he is thinking of moving off. This helps establish you as the leader. What I like about Lyon’s approach is adding the extra step of asking the horse for his attention first, so that you are getting him to think and communicate with you instead of just relying on his emotions. Read more about Eric Bravo expert training at Gentle Horse Training. He has a set Of 7 Horse Training Videos That Teach You How To Train Horses Yourself Using Natural Horsemanship Techniques.

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