In this episode, I’ll talk about some common equine body language and what it means. I’ll stick to just general angry, frustrated, and aggressive body language in this episode and try to describe it the best I can without being able to see a picture of the behavior. Hopefully this will help you understand what your horse is telling you so you both can communicate better.

There can be a lot of confusion between the two main types of reinforcements that are commonly used when training horses. I explain the basic concepts and how they affect the horse mentally and physically.

In this episode I’ll be explaining how to teach your horse how to lower his head on the ground using negative reinforcement. There are two main exercises I use to teach this. I then go over some common issues and how to continue with the lesson under saddle.

I am discussing the training of teaching a horse how to lower the head on cue using positive reinforcement.

This episode will discuss ways to teach your horse to stand still using positive reinforcement. Starting in protective contact and then building up the amount of time the horse can stand still. Then change positions, and take the horse out of protective contact. Add a cue to this behavior and start practicing in different locations.

Yielding the hindquarters on the ground will get the horse more maneuverable when tacking up, grooming, and trailer loading. In this episode I will be talking about training this lesson with R-. I do have another episode where I talk about this same exercise using R+. You can also mix the two if you’d like. Teaching the horse yielding the hindquarters on the ground will help him understand what you want once you are ready to teach this same lesson under saddle.

This episode is about training the horse to stand still in default. Default is what I want my horse to do when I haven’t asked him to do anything else. His default position would be to stand still and wait. This lesson is also good for teaching the horse to stand out of your space, prepare for ground tying, and grooming or tacking up without being tied. The R- stands for negative reinforcement, which is using pressure and release, which most horse trainers use. I will be doing another episode on how to do this same lesson using R+ as well.

This is a summary of my training philosophy. I cover training theories, horse care, common problems, and problem solving. With this episode you can get an idea if this podcast is right for you and your horse.

In this episode I am discussing how to train the hindquarter yield on the ground using clicker training. I am splitting each lesson up into how to train the behavior with clicker training and negative reinforcement (natural horsemanship) into their own episodes. Starting on the ground, the horse will learn to move his hindquarters over on cue. Once this is established, you can start transferring it to under saddle work.

Training a horse to touch a target will allow you to train all kinds of behaviors without chasing or putting pressure on the horse. I’m covering what kind of target to use, how to train the targeting behavior, solving common problems, and where to go from here.