# Fun with my Horse



## trahana (Dec 28, 2015)

For those who don't know me, I love training my horse to do just about anything. 
Temari, my horse, had a traumatic experience when she was young from her previous owner causing her to hate saddles and saddle pads. She was three or four years old when I got her from a not so local horse rescue. She is nine going on ten now, and has long since put her trust in me. 

Temari is trained to do tricks like bow, do hip stretches, park, and come when called, and of course can be ridden both english and western. She is also trained in cadaver dogging, or seeking out dead stuff. I kinda taught that one on a dare. My sister didn't think horses could, so I proved her wrong Lol. 

My most recent thing is training her to pull me on a skate board, which is super fun when she trots. Its like California's version of skijoring. 

https://youtu.be/9BZP6cqz5aw


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## ryry2012 (Mar 31, 2015)

Awww...if you are in Los Angeles, I would love to visit you to show my son the tricks ;-)


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## ThatFishThough (Jan 15, 2016)

Ooh, you should come out to North Dakota and teach my horse some of this... he can barely stay collected at the trot.


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## trahana (Dec 28, 2015)

ryry2012 said:


> Awww...if you are in Los Angeles, I would love to visit you to show my son the tricks :wink:


To bad I live in the monterey bay area, its right below san Fransisco.



ThatFishThough said:


> Ooh, you should come out to North Dakota and teach my horse some of this... he can barely stay collected at the trot.


Its so much work to train collection and extension. It takes a lot of muscle control for them, and brain work 'cuase they are horses and don't understand until we teach them what is what. 

Temari has some collection, but she is more of a western jog sort of horse then a collected trot horse. She does have a nice extended trot though, she can out trot most horses.


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## ThatFishThough (Jan 15, 2016)

Haha, I meant western-style. He can't keep his head down. It's like "C'mon, I know you have 180* vision. You don't have to physically turn your head to look at every blade of grass that moves!" I'll have to send you some pictures/videos sometime, but I won't hijack this thread.

I love her coat color. Any idea what breed she is? How tall is she?


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## aefeather (Dec 19, 2017)

Nice, that is awesome! I too own a horse I trained myself in California. My instagram is @palominoFeather. Love your mare's coat color! Neat to see other betta AND horse lovers out there.


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## trahana (Dec 28, 2015)

ThatFishThough said:


> Haha, I meant western-style. He can't keep his head down. It's like "C'mon, I know you have 180* vision. You don't have to physically turn your head to look at every blade of grass that moves!" I'll have to send you some pictures/videos sometime, but I won't hijack this thread.
> 
> I love her coat color. Any idea what breed she is? How tall is she?


Is he young? Temari used to have her head up ALL the time, and literally zigzagged everywhere. They might have 180* vision, but they can't tell how far away an object is or really focus unless they look straight at it. And of course their body follows their head hence the zigzagging. I didn't really train Temari away from it, I just taught her a few word cues so I could ask her to pay attention when needed. 'Focus up' and 'Eyes Forward' are the commands I use, I just squeeze and tell her to move forward in a straight line when saying them and she learned the words in a matter of days. The more you use words, the more words a horse understands and figures out it should be standard behavior. 

That's another reason why I can be pulled the way Temari is shown in the video. I have no way of pulling her reins back to slow her down or stop her without letting go of the bar to grab the reins. She listens to word cues like slow and stop. My favorite command is Park. She stands where you leave her. Its new so I only trust it while I can see her, but so far it works really well. See my attachment :wink3:

No idea what breed she is. She is a paperless rescue and could be just about anything. I think she is between 15 and 15.2 hh. She is Yellow Dun, which is the dun gene on bay. :grin2: Not to be mistaken for buckskin.


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## LouieTheBlueBetta (Nov 30, 2017)

Beautiful mare! I would love to train my boy tricks like that! I have a paint with no paint as we like to call him he's got a mark the size of a quarter on his belly so hey, he's a paint!


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## trahana (Dec 28, 2015)

LouieTheBlueBetta said:


> Beautiful mare! I would love to train my boy tricks like that! I have a paint with no paint as we like to call him he's got a mark the size of a quarter on his belly so hey, he's a paint!


 Nice. My sister had a solid paint too.


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## ThatFishThough (Jan 15, 2016)

He'll be 7 in May, I believe. Sat in a pasture for years 4 & 5 so he's basically green broke. We did pretty well at our shows this past summer. It's really hard not to compare him to the older horses, though, especially when we have one good show and the next he decides to spook 18 times (literally). I struggle to not put pressure on him; he can do it when we understand each other, but the second I get frustrated or tense up he freaks out... see example picture. I saw someone going to move a trash can out of the corner of my eye and he spooked more at me than he did the noise. He normally looks okay, though. The third pic is from our first show together.

His 8 year old aunt is winning first places at state in everything from English Equitation to Reining.

ETA: RIP. The one is sideways and the other is upside down...


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## trahana (Dec 28, 2015)

ThatFishThough said:


> He'll be 7 in May, I believe. Sat in a pasture for years 4 & 5 so he's basically green broke. We did pretty well at our shows this past summer. It's really hard not to compare him to the older horses, though, especially when we have one good show and the next he decides to spook 18 times (literally). I struggle to not put pressure on him; he can do it when we understand each other, but the second I get frustrated or tense up he freaks out... see example picture. I saw someone going to move a trash can out of the corner of my eye and he spooked more at me than he did the noise. He normally looks okay, though. The third pic is from our first show together.


Oh yeah, he just needs some time and direction. How often do you spookproof or play games with him? One of my favorite things to do is spookproof, I use a style of spookproofing more akin to that used for police horses or warhorses. Most people go about spookproofing by teaching a horse that each individual object is okay, but I've trained my horse to confront what she is scared of. It works great, since horses tend to get scared of just about anything that wasn't there yesterday, or the other side of a brick block that they didn't see yet. It sounds like what happened at that one show was he spooked at one thing and then throughout the rest of the show never calmed down and decided it the scary thing was hunting him, which is why he kept spooking. 
I'm a huge believer of spookproofing, since it deepens the bond between horse and person and helps them learn to calm down once scared and place more trust in their person. 

Speaking of pressure, Temari has trained me pretty well to not put pressure on her hen she gets scared. She freezes and thinks about what is scary, if I push her she runs backwards, but if I leave her be she finishes thinking and goes past it by herself. Its probably the one fault of my training, she has a mind of her own and can out think someone not prepared for her. But it also means I can go trail riding and just let her choose to paths, we used to wander for miles before we switched stables.


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## ThatFishThough (Jan 15, 2016)

I personally never spookproof him (does chasing turkeys count? lol), but I believe he's had some 'desensitizing' from his owner.

He'd be a terrible ranch horse; we went on a trail ride once and my friend & I decided to chase a group of turkeys that was on the path; Duncan did fine until he realized what we were chasing... Spooked, did a 180*, and took off galloping in the other direction, all in one motion. Luckily I stayed on (and I admit that it was fun) but my dreams of bringing him to my uncle's ranch and working cows pretty much died, lol.

I like the way Temari sounds; Duncan reacts first, looks at it later. I'd love it if he could chill the heck out. We went to a show at a new place at the end of the summer and he was *terrified* of the announcer's stand. I worked him near it for nearly 2 hours before the show started, and he just. couldn't. go near the darn thing. He ended up spooking at it in our first W/T/C WP class and took off bucking around the arena... Judge didn't see it and we got second! O.O


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## trahana (Dec 28, 2015)

ThatFishThough said:


> I personally never spookproof him (does chasing turkeys count? lol), but I believe he's had some 'desensitizing' from his owner.
> 
> He'd be a terrible ranch horse; we went on a trail ride once and my friend & I decided to chase a group of turkeys that was on the path; Duncan did fine until he realized what we were chasing... Spooked, did a 180*, and took off galloping in the other direction, all in one motion. Luckily I stayed on (and I admit that it was fun) but my dreams of bringing him to my uncle's ranch and working cows pretty much died, lol.
> 
> I like the way Temari sounds; Duncan reacts first, looks at it later. I'd love it if he could chill the heck out. We went to a show at a new place at the end of the summer and he was *terrified* of the announcer's stand. I worked him near it for nearly 2 hours before the show started, and he just. couldn't. go near the darn thing. He ended up spooking at it in our first W/T/C WP class and took off bucking around the arena... Judge didn't see it and we got second! O.O


The think first is a trained behavior. When I first got Temari she spooked at GRASS moving in a gentle breeze All the Time. Anything that wasn't her hay or grain had the ability to be scary. Especially anything outside the stableyard, I had to pull, turn and backup for about twenty minutes to get to go outside the stable, she was so barn sour and buddy sour it was outrageous. There was no such thing as 'alone' for her. But I worked for four years to get her rock solid like she is now. That's why I love spookproofing(and training), it takes a spooky, shy horse and turns it into a safe horse for even beginners. 

Duncan is just young, with work he would probably make a good ranch horse. Young horses don't have the training to stand their ground, so they only know the two things all horses know: Fight or Flight. 

When Temari finds an object scary beyond all reason we don't go straight at it, we circle it. Like a shark, we start out farther away and keep an eye on it, circling closer until we are right next to it and then I give her the command 'sniff'. Its another command I taught her to help her gain confidence in scary things. Sniffing and touching a scary object helps them realize it isn't going to hurt them, even if they jerk away. I keep treats on me most of the time, so I give her treats when needed, like when she listens to a command and confronts something scary. Treats given at the right moment are a powerful motivator.


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