Learn how to communicate with your horse with this fun 'targeting' exercise.

How many times have you heard someone say ‘oh if only my horse could talk’! We might not be able to train your horse to say words but that doesn’t mean we can’t develop a language. So how do we do this? Well it starts with this fun simple ‘targeting’ exercise.

In this lesson we will teach Raffles how to 'target' a disk while safely behind the stable door. This exercise underpins our entire approach: to communicate clearly and effectively with your horse. Some people get a bit twitchy about using food as a reward as they are worried it might encourage bolshy behaviour. But this exercise trains the exact opposite! You will see that by only rewarding the behaviour that you want, your horse will quickly learn to eliminate unwanted behaviour. So your horse becomes respectful of your space, easy to handle and safe to manage.

Build in a 'reset button' to teach your horse to stay calm in any situation!

In the previous video Raffles learned to put his head down and touch a target on the ground. Next comes the clever part - we ‘overlay’ a hand signal so he learns when we point downwards, he puts head down. This is our cue to help him to 'reset' and stay calm.

This lesson is a real life demonstration of how brilliantly this works in practice. When a horse is frightened they are in ‘flight mode’ – blood rushes to the muscles, the back contracts, pupils are dilated and the head is raised. When a horse is calm it’s the opposite. They are in parasympathetic state - the back is un-contracted, eyes are soft and the head is down. By training them to put their head down we are helping them to stay in control. Instead of running away they have another option - put their head down, relax and learn better horse ‘self-management’.

You and your horse will learn to read 'hand signals' ready for lunge work.

In the first part of this lesson we use the target to teach Raffles the hand signal or 'cue' for lunge work. As we progress we then use the target to ‘lure’ him around a circle - just a few steps at first, then we slowly up the criteria as we progress to full circles. By reading our clear body language, clever Raffles is beginning to understand how to lunge.

By now you should be starting to see this program is more than a training system - it is a language. The 'TSK' sound is way of saying ‘Yes! that is what I want’. When you then add a combination of body language and hand signals or ‘cues’ we can communicate clearly with our horse, and give them instant accurate feedback. BTW… the reason we use this TSK sound is because it is short and sharp and importantly it is non emotional - it’s actually really hard to make it sound happy... or sad, so the sound you make is always consistent to your horse.

Learn to control your body language and energy to communicate aids.

Horses ‘think in pictures’. In this lesson we lose the target, but the picture stays the same, with our arm pointing out 'like we’re directing traffic' in the direction we want Raffles to move in. Horses are acutely aware of other animals' body language, including us humans!

When we stand tall like a solider and take a breath in - we bring our energy up. If we relax, go all slouchy and exhale - we bring our energy down. Horses pick up on this and you will already instinctively adjust your energy around your horse without even realising it! As we progress we will switch our energy 'on and off' as an additional 'cue'. To go forward, we stand tall, breathe in - energy up. To stop we make ourselves smaller, exhale - energy down. At this point we will look for the inside hind leg to step under as the horse turns in and stops. This is a ‘hind quarter yield’ which you will see we'll be using a lot in this program.