Morgan and BlueMan

My name is Morgan and I am 13. I work with a buckskin pony and his name is BlueMan. He got his name because he has one blue eye. Blue is a Section A Welsh pony and he is 7 years old. Most people think horses are all about riding but they’re not. They’re about listening and understanding your horse. Everything is so much more fun if you know what your horse is thinking.

When I am out at PonyPros playing with BlueMan, I use clicker training to desensitize him and teach him new things. At PonyPros, we use a variation of Parelli’s Seven Games (Friendly, Porcupine, Driving, Yo-Yo, Circling, Sideways, Squeeze). The games help to put your horse in the right state of mind. Clicker training is a positive reinforcement style of training where the click tells the horse, “Yes, that’s exactly what I wanted.” Every time the horse gets a click, he gets a treat, meaning a food reward like a small bit of grain.

Here’s an example of how we use clicker training to desensitize our horses and teach them new things. A ball is something scary to a horse, but lots of horses enjoy playing with a ball once they learn how. If you want to teach your horse to push a ball, when he touches it with his nose, click, then treat him. If he pushes it again, he is saying, “This is fun to play with!” You can teach horses a lot of cool tricks with clicker training. BlueMan also likes to play “Chase the Tiger”, an Art of Natural Dressage game.

I’ve loved horses since I was little and I am so happy to be able to work with them. I am always very excited when I go get BlueMan because he comes right to me, and his eyes say, “Let’s play!” When I get him out, we go to the arena and sometimes he starts getting bored. So, I try to find ways to keep him excited by lounging him and changing directions a lot, playing with him at liberty, and letting him chase things like the “Tiger”. I love when I teach him a new trick. Currently, I am working on asking him to lie down on cue. When I rinse him off, I paw the ground with my foot when he paws the ground. Then I click him when he lies down by himself. Soon he’ll learn that, when I paw the ground, that is his cue to lie down.