Have you ever thought of training voice cues?
What cue can be used pretty much anywhere without changing? Yep, voice cues! You can ask your horse to walk on / trot / halt etc when leading, lunging, driving, long-reining, riding and it’s always the same sound.
This makes voice cues super useful as they’re so versatile and can bring clarity easily to many situations (except dressage tests 🙄), as they transfer directly.
One thing to watch out for is all your other cues alongside your voice - body position, rein cues, leg cues etc, because your horse might be responding more to these than your voice cues. If they’re not responding to your voice cues when you change position, eg from the ground to the saddle, take a bit of time to make the voice cue really strong on the ground and isolate it from the other cues as much as possible so that your horse really comes to understand its meaning in different contexts.
And, to make sure you’re clear, make sure you’re consistent and that you say the words in the same way each time. “Trr-Ott on” is a really common one in the UK and you know how distinctive it sounds if you’ve heard it. It makes it stand out clearly from everything else being said. And, you’ll know that many many horses respond to the voice cues of the instructor for exactly this reason.
I’m working with India Around the Round Pen here (aka reverse round pen), which is such a great set up to teach and practice voice cues to your horse. You don’t have to worry about steering, direction, or anything else while you focus on voice cues and transitions etc.
Want to see how I train voice cues and how and why I use this round pen training set? Check out • Groundwork P6: Lunging Around a Round...
