This blog post was written to accompany the podcast I did with Shelly Woods for the “Making Ripples ATA podcast show.” If you want to listen to the podcast, you can find it here.
Aurora is my Oldenburg mare. I bought her in 2014 (when she was a weanling) and she spent her first 5 years with us in a big field with two equine friends. In 2020, her little herd had some changes and one of her “friends” started chasing her around. This led to fear and anxiety about going out in the big field so I started keeping her in a smaller paddock near the barn. I was sad to take her out of the big field, but she was a little overweight and I thought it was time to try and get her weight under control.
The downside of moving her to a smaller space was that she could not move as much as before. This is a common problem if you have a horse with metabolic issues. Many of them cannot have any grass, so they end up living in dry lots, which are almost always smaller than regular turnout fields. Horses benefit from regular movement and a dry lot may not provide the horse with enough room or motivation to do it voluntarily.
This is why it is important to provide some kind of regular exercise through riding, hand walking, or groundwork. In Aurora’s case, I was riding her, but she was green. We were doing a lot of walk work which is good for education, but not so good for building fitness and burning calories. To supplement her riding sessions, I added a groundwork session where the goal was to teach behaviors that encouraged some directed movement, but that was flexible enough so that she could choose how much energy she felt like expending.
The exercise routine I am going to describe started out as a simple idea (going to mats) but has evolved over time as I’ve added new elements. I’m still playing around with it, both to keep it interesting and to provide new physical challenges. With Aurora, she does like the routine of knowing what to do next, but I’ve found she also benefits from having some amount of variety, especially on a day when she is a little lower energy.
The exercise routine has three main goals – one is to get her out and moving, the second is to see how she’s feeling, and the third is to give her the opportunity to “let off some steam,” if that’s what she chooses. The focus can change from day to day and and as she’s gotten better at the basic format, I have added some new performance goals, but I’m pretty flexible about how often we work on them. I also want to point out that my approach to stimulus control has been somewhat flexible. Yes, I have cues for the different behaviors and I often direct her movement, but I also pay attention to how she’s feeling on any given day. If she prefers to go faster or slower, I will adjust.
The set-up
My training area is my outdoor riding ring. It’s about 75 feet by 150 feet. There is a fence on all sides, but there’s a 3 foot buffer zone between the ring footing and the fence. When I started this work, the buffer zone contained grass. I had previously done some liberty work with Aurora in my ring and she would ignore the grass. But, when she started living in the small paddock, the grass in the ring became too tempting, so I always work with her on a lunge line. Putting her on a lunge line gives her a lot of freedom, but makes it possible to prevent her from eating. She was already familiar with my ring as it’s where I do most of my training.
- I have rubber mats set up around the outside of the ring. At this point, I only have two – set midway down the long sides. When I started, I had as many as 6 or 8 placed strategically so she would use the entire space.
- The mats are rubber doormats. I like them because they are a good size for two front feet, stiff enough to hold their shape (and not curl up or wrinkle), and safe to land on, even at a trot.
- I put the mat next to the edge of the ring and mark the inside edge with a cone. My footing is dark and the mats are black so the cone provides added visibility.
- Aurora is usually in a cavesson or halter with the lunge line. The goal is to keep the lunge line loose. I have verbal or visual cues for the behaviors.
The routine
I’m going to describe the routine we do most days. Then, I’ll explain how we got to that point.
- I walk her around the outside of the ring, stopping on each mat. I’m usually walking next to her, as if leading. This gives me a chance to see how she’s feeling and she can learn where all the mats are positioned.
- I walk around in the other direction.
- I start sending her ahead of me. I use either a hand gesture or a verbal cue (“forward”) to send her ahead of me to the mat.
- She walks to the mat, stops and waits for me.
- I walk up to her, click, and feed her. Initially I clicked when she landed on the mat. Now that we’ve been doing this for a while, I click her for arriving and waiting for me to get to the mat.
- We stand for a moment. I may ask for a few simple behaviors or just let her rest. Then I click and treat again, ask her to walk forward with me, or send her to the next mat.
- Once we’ve done the whole circuit in walk, I add in trot. If she chooses to trot earlier, I usually let her do it, and take it as a cue that she’s ready to trot.
- I change directions – sometimes I walk both directions, then trot. Other times I do one direction first (walk, then trot), then switch and go in the other direction.
- I have taught her to go across the ring from one mat to another in a half circle. If I want her to do this, I walk her off the mat and position her on the line of travel that arcs around to the mat on the other side.
- Her default is to go around the edge of the ring, but I might want her to turn across the ring or do a circle (or part of one). To ask for this, I taught her that when I say “turning” and walk toward the middle of the ring, we are leaving the track.
- She can do the same patterns in canter, although I am careful about choosing locations where it’s easy for her to pick up the canter and she has enough space before she arrives at the next mat.
- Depending upon what I am working on, I may do most of my clicks for arriving on/waiting at a mat, but I may also click between mats. I might do this if I am:
- shaping how she moves between mats (posture, speed)
- working on transitions
- working on stimulus control
You can add other behaviors or training opportunities to this routine. Since the routine focuses on movement, I like to have a few other behaviors that require less energy and more precision. I often have ground poles out in different configurations and we will take a break and work on a behavior that has a higher rate of reinforcement and/or requires more thinking than moving. Or, I can set out ground poles or other obstacles between the mats so that she goes over or through them when she goes around the outside of the ring.
The training
Most of the behaviors I used in her exercise routine are ones that I had taught previously, but there are some that could be taught or further developed as needed. I’ll put a list of the behaviors I use at the end of this section.
Step 1: Teach the mat behavior.
Aurora learned mat work as one of her first behaviors after I got her. I taught her to follow a hand-held target on to a mat and I’ve used mat work a lot throughout her training. When I started this exercise program, she would eagerly seek out and stand on mats. To learn more about mat work, check out the entry for “mat work” in my blog What Can I Train? M is for …
Step 2: Teach the send to the mat
Teaching a horse to go to a mat independently (sending to a mat) is another useful behavior that Aurora already knew before I started this project. I find this behavior will develop naturally if you do a lot of mat work, but if your horse doesn’t offer it, there’s a simple process to teach the horse to go ahead of you to a mat. I have a complete description in my book, Teaching Horses with Positive Reinforcement, but the basic idea is that you mark and reinforce the horse for “getting ahead of you” as you approach the mat. You may have to adjust your own pace, so the horse has the opportunity to reach the mat first. Alternatively, you can teach a “go forward” cue and use that to direct the horse to the mat.
Step 3: Increase distance
Once the horse will go independently ahead of you to the mat, it’s time to increase distance. When I started with the mats on the outside of my ring, I had a mat every 10 feet. I would walk with Aurora off the current mat, take a few steps, then slow down and send her to the next mat. She only had to walk independently a short distance to get to the next mat. Over time, I increased the distance between mats. I found that a good set-up took into account both the distance between mats and the location. For example, if I wanted her to use the whole end of the ring, I needed to place mats near each corner so that she stayed on (or close to) the track. I added cones for guidance if she chose a path between mats that was not what I intended.
Step 4: Add speed
I didn’t ask for trot until Aurora was consistently going from one mat to another in walk. Initially, I only had her trot for a few steps. So, if we were on a mat, I would ask her to walk off the mat with me, then send her to the next mat. As soon as it was clear that she was headed toward it, I would cue the trot and let her finish in trot. This minimized the increase in difficulty and if she only trotted a few steps, she was less likely to get excited and trot too fast and miss the mat, or land abruptly.
Trotting to a mat does require some coordination from the horse. Aurora had to learn when and how to decelerate to land smoothly on the mat. In the beginning, it helped if I clicked as she approached the mat, instead of waiting until she stepped on it. The click interrupted the trot and she would start to slow down, which made it easier for her to stop on the mat. How you train this part will depend upon if you want the horse to transition down (trot walk halt) upon approaching the mat or trot and stop precisely on the mat.
Step 5: Shape the topography of the behavior
I put this last, but you can shape the posture of the horse at any point in the process, or even teach it before combining it with mat work. Aurora had previously learned to lower her head both while standing and in movement. I taught head lowering with a combination of targeting and lead rope cues.
Once I had her going from mat to mat, it was easy to cue head down a few times while standing (to put the idea in her head) and then ask for it during movement. I did have to be careful about how low she put her head as she sometimes gets unbalanced if her head is too low and that tends to make her go too fast. I was looking for a fairly level posture with a little bit of stretch.
Step 6: Vary the location and number of mats.
- You can create new patterns by placing the mats at different locations.
- When I started asking for turns off the wall, I would place a mat near the quarter or center lines to give the horse a destination.
- I’ve used mats to set up going across the diagonal or doing turns across the ring to create a smaller working space.
- Add poles, cones or other objects to add interest or include other behaviors
Behavior List
Matwork:
- step on to a mat with two front feet
- wait on the mat
- go to a mat from a distance
- leave the mat
Movement:
- walk forward on cue
- trot forward on cue
- down transitions (trot to walk/walk to halt) are useful if you want to cue behaviors between mats
- I taught the cue “turning” to ask her to come off the wall
- I used my “head down” cue to shape her posture
Equipment (optional):
I chose to work her with a cavesson and lunge because that was her normal gear for groundwork and the ring had grass on the edges. If your horse is used to something else, then you can use that. If your horse tends to shut down or get anxious when traditional equipment is used, then you might choose to use targets or work at liberty.
If you choose to use a lunge line, make sure the horse is comfortable with working on it. The horse doesn’t have to know traditional lunging but she does need to be ok with the line moving near and around her body and respond if it is used for direction.
A few final thoughts
This has turned out to be a useful behavior when evaluating a horse’s soundness. I’ve used the patterns with the vet when she wanted to see Aurora trot on a straight line. I’ve also used it for my own evaluation, if I think the horse feels slightly not-right.
I’ve used this pattern to evaluate how a horse feels about the training area on any given day. Like many horses, my horses find one end of the ring to be scary. The level of tension in that part of the ring varies from day to day and I sometimes find it helpful to do some of this mat to mat work before mounting. It gives me a good indication of how comfortable the horse is about being in different parts of the ring.
Want to see it?
I did not video the training process with Aurora as I often did this first thing in the morning and the light was not good for filming. I do have some video of teaching Madagascar the same routine. I’ve put together a short video that shows what Aurora is doing now and how Madagascar is learning to work around the outside. You can find it at Aurora’s Morning Exercise.
Want to learn more about clicker training? Check out my books, Teaching Horses with Positive Reinforcement and What Can I Teach My Horse?
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Tags: ATA podcast, exercise, mat, mat work, movement
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