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Champagne Perfect Melody, a Tennessee Walker, retrieving Crazy Mr. Pumpkin Man
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Here a client learns how to play the "Yo-Yo" game with a mustang mare he purchased from Four Square Horse Training.
Here his mustang is learning how to be "Super Horse" wearing a tarp cape!
Yielding the forehand in the "driving game".
A young mustang demonstrating her cool, calm and sane training.
A young Dixie Lee Walker, Arabian X Tennessee Walker, daughter of Athena, learning to travel in a bit.
Champagne Perfect Melody learning to rear on command by touching her nose to an elevated target.
With practice, the dramatic rear becomes a classic levade. All taught through communication. No equipment is used on the horses to teach this behavior.
Tara's Golden Banner touching his nose on command to the flag. This was no small feat for this horse. He was terrified of the flag. Teaching a horse how to target an object instills confidence. "Tricks" such as the levade/rear and the bow are simply the horse moving his body in such a way so he can make contact with the target with his nose. Eventually one can graduate the horse to hand signals/voice command which had been paired with the target and then do away with the target altogether. Below is Melody in the early stages of learning the bow. The target is the end of the training stick
 High Rock Arwen, a BLM mustang who can be seen by clicking the "A Blast From The Past" button to the left, was completely gentled through the use of target training. I do not use a halter and drag rope to gentle mustangs. They are delivered in their birthday suits. Arwen was the most feral of the mustangs I've ever adopted and she could not tolerate me touching her with anything. She would throw herself to the ground as though stabbed to escape touch. Through a combination of the use of a method coined by Monty Roberts as "join up" paired with the specific intent to have Arwen choose to touch me first; Arwen was set up to make a choice and learned to come touch my shoulder. My shoulder was her first target. She readily learned to target all sorts of objects and loved the game. The first time I asked her to load into a horse trailer, I used a target and she was so into the "game", she loaded into the trailer as calmly and confidently as though she had done so her entire life, when reality was that her last trailer loading experience was courtesy of a squeeze chute. I always choose to domesticate my mustangs without the use of halters or drag ropes. It makes a huge difference in how the horse relates to humans when they learn to choose to be with people versus being made to learn to tolerate being reeled in and touched when it is not their choice.  Here Arwen is choosing to touch Tara.
Arwen giving Tara a look of confidence and interest.
First settled hand contact!
Once the mustangs become comfortable with being touched all over, I introduce the halter as another grooming tool. Putting it on is anti-climatic! The mustangs have already learned to join up and follow me at liberty, so leading comes naturally with the halter and lead. Sometimes they will react a little scared to pressure on the halter, but they quickly calm and figure out the release. Now, historically, in my limited case sample of mustangs who came here initially started by other people with a halter and drag rope, I find that these horses have a somewhat sour view of the halter from their initial experience of it being an instrument used to limit their ability to escape. They view it as something to evade. A horse taught how to choose to be with people does not usually have to be "caught". They will catch you!
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