How To Play With A Horse

Oh, good boy. Welcome. Today we're going to be talking about playing with your horse. I'm out here playing with Legend and I love playing with my horses. It's a great way to connect with them and build a stronger relationship and a stronger bond. So today I'm going to be sharing with you four different games that you can play with your horse. Push it over. Good boy. So what makes a great game with your horse? There are four things that I think about when it comes to creating a game with my horse and there's so much you can do. But the four things that I think about are number one, what is our mindset going into our game together? Having a fun and playful mindset can help set the tone for us and our horse to enjoy our time together. Number two, Horses naturally play through movement. So when we incorporate movement into our game, it helps to make it more engaging for us and our horse. Number three, Horses are very naturally curious. And when we incorporate obstacles into our game, it helps to make it more fun for our horse and for us. Number four, Horses naturally interact and play on the ground together. So I like playing with my horses on the ground. Game one, seek and touch. In this game, I'm going to be having my horse seek an object and touch it. Here I'm using a target and I want Sonic to seek the green point in the target and touch it. If you have a horse that has never played with a target before, you can introduce it over a fence like I'm doing here with Soloft. This is a safe way and a fun way to start introducing your horse to the target. Z, go touch it. Go touch it. Good boy. Once you can hold the target and your horse can touch it, you can then set it in different locations in the ring and have them touch it in different locations. Good boy. Once your horse is able to touch the target consistently, you can start introducing other obstacles or objects to your horse. Go touch. Touch. Good boy. Trot and switch. To start this game off, I'm going to introduce it at the walk by just walking down, switching hands and switching directions. Once my horse and I are good at this, we're going to do it at the trot. Switch. Trot. Switch. Switch. Playing at liberty. I usually start off at the walk and then we move to the trot together. Playing at liberty can be such a magical experience. As you and your horse are playing at liberty together, it's fun to introduce different tricks into the mix. Here I'm asking Legend to lay down. Game four is playing with a ball. Crosby, push it. Good boy. This is first time learning how to play with the ball. Push it. Other way. Push it. Good boy. It's always fun to see your horse figure this out for the first time. Here Crosby's got it down and we're now in the ring playing with the ball a little more. Push the ball. Push it. Good boy. Crosby. Come here, bud. Push the ball. Good boy. Legend is a really fun horse to play with the ball with. He always gets really excited and it's always fun to share that time with him just playing around. Touch it, buddy. Touch it. Oh, not the camera. Oh, come here, bud. Come on away from there. What are you doing?