Move Your Horse with Your Pinky, Teaching Your Horse to Square Up

Posted: May 05, 2010 |Comments: 0 |

When you lead your horse and stop him, try squaring him up. This means his two front feet are directly across from each other and his two back feet are directly across from each other. Squaring up a horse isn't as easy as it may sound. You keep moving them around until you get a foot where you want it, but once you do they move another foot. Then, they're still not squared up.

Remember the horse has no idea what you actually want at this stage. As you keep moving his feet he will continue to willingly move them but in the beginning like any other skill it may not be pretty and will need practice and repetition. Like any training, after a while he'll get good at it because you've done it enough and he'll know what you want. But to speed up the process of moving the correct foot when asked there is a little trick that assists the horse to learn and makes it easier to move the correct foot when asked. As you're holding the lead rope just below where it clips to the halter, point your pinky at the foot you want him to move.

So here's the picture, you're standing on the right side of the horse up by his head with your left hand holding the lead rope just below the halter. You point to his left front foot because you need him to move it back a little to be square. The way you point while holding the lead rope puts a certain kind of pressure on the halter and helps him learn what to do. When you point to the other front foot, the pressure is applied differently on his face from the halter.

When he learns that the pressure to that particular spot on his face is applied, that cues him to move that foot. This is a great way to maintain consistency in this aspect of training your horse for halter, because if you ask for square up differently each time your horse will be confused and will never know what you want.

Knowing how to square up is an investment in respect between you and your horse. In other words, anytime you get a horse to move it builds respect for you in his mind. Another benefit is that you are actually moving around your horse a lot and getting into different positions to check feet and so on. All this movement and messing around gets your horse used to you moving around and so he'll eventually relax as you walk around him. You definitely want that when a farrier or vet visits as they tend to move around a horse a fair bit.

So ultimately teaching your horse to square up and get used to movement around him translates into a better and safer relationship with your horse for you and everyone else. http://everythingbutthehorse.net

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