Circus lesson "Say no"
The "say no" circus lesson is one of the easier tricks to teach your horse or pony. When teaching circus lessons, you should always start with simple exercises and only teach a new one when you have learned the first trick.
What you need:
- Whip
- Treats
Circus Lesson "Say No" - How to Teach It to a Horse
When training for the "say no" circus lesson, you can take advantage of a horse's natural reflex - the head shaking when a fly sits on or in the ear.
- To practice tricks, you should always choose a place where your horse can stand freely. Round pens, a fenced riding arena or a meadow, an empty riding arena or a paddock are suitable for this - depending on the exercise. So take your horse to a suitable place.
- Now take a crop at hand. First show your horse the whip. Only make slow movements so that the animal does not get frightened.
- Then tickle your horse in the ear with the thin end of the whip.
- Your horse should shake his head out of reflex. For this you reward your animal with a treat and give it thorough praise.
- Practice this process until your horse understands that it should shake itself as soon as the crop is brought towards the ears. This requires a different number of repetitions from horse to horse.
- Once your horse knows when to shake his head, you can expand the exercise by, for example, combining a question with this process. So you could lift the whip and start a question at the same time. "Can you ???" or are you???" or do you have???". Pick a question and practice with it. Here, too, the praise and a treat should continue to be distributed with good cooperation.
- Practice this until you even just asking and without using the device as an incentive to shake your head is enough.
- As soon as this exercise works safely, you can formulate the question. For example, your horse or pony should respond to the question "Have you eaten the carrots?" Shake your head and get a praise and a treat. The last step works the fastest if the beginning of the sentence has always been emphasized from the beginning, so can the end of the sentence can be exchanged as the horse reacts to the beginning of the sentence - your horse can do that "Say no".
- If there are difficulties in between, you can of course tickle your ear with the whip in order to achieve the desired success. But praise and hand out treats should never be forgotten.
Teaching a horse to lie down - this is how the trick succeeds
Whether simply for employment, to build trust or to strengthen the team: ...
These circus lessons are available in addition to the "say no" overview
- An easy lesson to learn is the compliment, in which the horse "kneels" on one capal joint while the other leg remains fully extended forward.
- The bow is also simple. The horse's head must be curled between the front legs. This trick is a good stretch for the horse's topline.
- The Spanish step is a nice circus lesson too. The aim here is that the horse takes single, high and expansive steps with the front legs. First you do this from the ground, later, even when you are sitting in the saddle.
- More difficult lessons are sitting down, lying down upright, lying down completely, or climbing.
Teaching the horse lessons is a nice change from the daily routine ride. Just don't practice every lesson with every horse. The training plan should be adapted to the state of health of each horse. Have lots of fun with it.
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