What is Trick Training?

Trick training is like any other kind of training.  We give a horse a signal or cue and they react with a trained or conditioned response.  In this case, we are teaching horses to do fun or fantastic feats.  You can teach your horse anything from "counting" to "shaking hands" to "rearing."  Only your imagination limits what you can do. 

Methods

There are several methods to teaching horses tricks.  I use a treat reward to teach my horses.  You can use clicker training; you can use some other type or reward other than treats.  It all depends on how you prefer to train.  I understand that when I give my horse treats, I must be responsible to make sure that he never nips, bites, or nuzzles to get treats.  You can train your horses without treats, but it might take longer.  You can even teach some horses to be able to do tricks at liberty.

Motivation

I use treats  to help encourage my horse to learn the tricks.  Once Jackson learns a trick, I start to wean him off of treats.  This way, he will to the tricks anytime with only an occasional treat.  I also use lots of verbal and physical praise.  Horses, like dogs and other animals, respond very well to your tone of voice.  If you use a high pitched, excited voice, they will pick up on that.  If you use a low, bored voice, well, it isn't very motivating is it?

Is Trick Training for You?

Trick training is very fun.  It is also a lot of work to have a good trick horse.  To teach some of the other more advanced tricks, plan to spend at least and hour a day, every day.  If you only have time to train on the weekends, plan to teach some of the simpler tricks such as, "yes," "no," "count," and "kiss."  There are quite a few that you could teach that are simple and learned in a relatively short amount of time.  People will still be amazed at what your horse can do and you will have fun teaching your horse.