From the ground to the saddle

Moving behaviors up to mounted riding can sometimes be challenging. But if we take care to prepare and work with the environment it can be surprisingly easy.

I’m always big on shaping with different arrangements in the environment and put my “rider”cue on later when I have it going a bit more.

I tend to stay pretty long with the horse initiating the behavior because it’s so much fun and makes for strong behaviors. Here we see one example of this.

Here my youngster Tiny and I work with moving the shoulders between two mats from the ground. A behavior he knows well. This is second session where we try this from the saddle. We will put in more nuances as he gets stronger and do a cue transfer to the rein later on. But its a very clear example of I often work.

Here I reward him for both doing the behavior "himself" (stimulus mat) and acting on my hand cue (stimulus rider). I think he is so brilliant.