Chewie and I have been playing more with mats. I shared some in March about Chewie’s first encounters with these blue mats. You can check out that post HERE.
In our earlier sessions with the mats, my only goal was for Chewie to be confident and curious about the mats. I didn’t try to train her to stand on the mats, although she often did stand on them!
Now that Chewie has encountered the mats multiple times, I thought it might be fun for us to start building some specific behaviors with the mats.
Mats are a great training tool.
Once a horse understands how to stand on a mat and go to a mat, you can use the mat as a starting point for teaching all sorts of other behaviors. For example, a horse could stand on a mat, at liberty, while a person fly sprayed the horse or cleaned the horse’s feet.
Mats can also be used to teach a horse to go to a certain location, such as teaching a horse to walk to a mounting block or walk onto a trailer. The mat helps the horse know what direction to go and where to stop.
Chewie and I have been practicing having Chewie stop with her front feet on a mat.
I have been using scratches as a reinforcer. So, once Chewie is on the mat, she gets lots of scratches on her neck, and her back, and her belly, and anywhere else that she wants!
To practice this behavior, I like to use several mats. This way, when we leave one mat, we can immediately walk forward to another mat. If I only had one mat, Chewie would have to walk in a full circle to get back to the mat.
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