Fiona Learns to Move Her Shoulders

A few weeks ago, I published a video where I taught a big mare named Fiona to lower her head on cue, using mostly a positive reinforcement method. I received great feedback on that video, so I decided to share another video with Fiona.

In this video, I work on teaching Fiona how to move or "yield" her shoulders. I find that this is an important skill to teach a horse. Often when we are working with them we may take if for granted that they should know how to move away from us, but if you have ever had a horse push forward or lean their shoulder into you as you were leading them, then you have probably felt the need to be able to ask those shoulder to move away from you.

So having the ability to yield the shoulders is important for many leading and handling situations and it is a skill that she would certainly need for in-hand or under saddle work as well.

In this week's video you can see how Fiona moves easily in one direction but she gets stuck and tries to push forward when we move to the other side.