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[RC] Git 'em (was: Paintballing dogs) - k s swigart

Beth Walker said about training horses to "attack" a dog:

The trick is to get a horse that will do that. ?
I wouldn't have a clue as to how to train one
to do that.

There are an assortment of ways to teach your horse this; however,
almost all of them have one thing in common, which is to give the horse
the confidence that the things they "attack" will run away.

If you want to teach the horse to "attack" on command (the one I use is
"git 'em"), then the lesson is best taught under saddle.  Point the
horse at some movable object, give the command, ask the horse to move
towards it, and then ensure that the instant the horse does, that the
thing moves away.

What this "thing" is just needs to be something movable, and something
that you can count on will move in the right direction when expected.
You can use a cowardly dog, a cow, another horse, or even a plastic bag
on a string if you have somebody available to "operate" the string.

After the horse has built a little confidence, you can "delay" to moving
of the object so that the horse has to "push" on it a bit more to get it
to move.  Then you can have the object come towards the horse, give the
horse the attack command, etc.  You want to get to the point where the
horse is confident (and obedient...more on that later) enough to push on
objects that are coming towards them and believe that if they just
persist in pushing that eventually it will move away.

As the horse advances in its training, you can use all kinds of
"natural" objects as training aids.  When out riding on the trail around
these parts, coyotes play this role beautifully as they can pretty much
be guaranteed to run away from a horse coming at them.

Chris Anton said:

I've got a horse who will go after dogs with
a vengeance. And it got me dumped and hurt!

We were on a gravel road and he spun to get
after a dog coming up behind us,...

This is where the obedience thing comes in.  Just like when training an
attack dog, when training an "attack" horse you have to also be teaching
it the obedience to only attack when under command.  Part of what you
have to teach the horse is to ignore the object until you give the
command.  My horses don't spin around and go after dogs running up
behind them unless I tell them to

Unless...of course, they are at liberty.  However, I have found that if
you have given the horse the confidence to believe that their attacks
against dogs, or coyotes, or cows, or other moveable objects will be
successful, when they are at liberty, they can figure out for themselves
that all they need to do is turn on it and chase it off.  Most horses
find this to be a pretty fun game.  And virtually every dog around my
horses knows to stay pretty close to the fence if it goes in the paddock
with any of my horses.

The neighbor's unsuspecting cat once wandered into the arena my horse
was turned out and was VERY surprised (as was the neighbor who was
watching) when Marla went after it with a vengance. It managed to duck
under the fence in the nick of time to avoid being squashed.  However,
when riding her in the same arena, she had better well ignore that cat,
or anything else that crosses her path unless told otherwise.

"Git 'em" (or whatever command you choose) is a really handy tool to
have in the tool box of any endurance horse as it will even get the cows
off the trail coming out of the vet check and allow you to catch up with
the front runners whose horses WON'T go anywhere near those cows (as I
learned at one ride on where my out time was ten minutes behind the
front runners but there were a bunch of cows on the trail a few hundred
yards away, and the head vet pointed at the front runners horses who
were refusing to continue and said, "You can catch them." Sure enough,
they were still there at my out time, unfortunately, my horse cleared
the trail for them too...and I never saw them again, since the only
reason I was anywhere near the front in the first place was that
everybody else was having trouble with the cows.)

kat
Orange County, Calif.
:)

"If the end justifies the means, everybody is justified." John G. Beck,
PhD



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