In-hand Voice Command..

[Linda Baia]

I have started in-hand work with Linda. we are started with the shoulder-in.

I am wondering if you have any voice command for Shoulder-in, leg yield, travers, renvers.

I use voice commands for everything else (halt, walk, trot, canter, back and over).

So why not for shoulder-in???

I hope i am posting in the right forum, otherwise would you please move it into horse training, I just think that work in hand is a bit"classical  

[Bebe1]

I hadn't really thought about it but I generally use Over for leg yield.  Haven't got much beyond that but she understands "swing" to move her hindquarters out of my way in the stable so I'm wondering if I could develop that to become an aid for exercises that involve moving the hindquarters.

You could use any voice command really, it's just a case of associating it with the movement you want.

[Cloud_cirrus]

What about just saying what you want when you ask for it?  I just say shoulders-in, it helps me think about what I want and I'm sure the horses understand it.  

I also say other stuff like 'move that leg' and 'move the shoulders to the wall' I just tell them what I want really, it helps me to work out what I actually want them to do, which sometimes isn't that easy, and if I don't know, how do they know?

Tracey

[hinny_heart]

if I don't know, how do they know?

Very true! I should paint that on a sign and nail it to a post where I school; I often need to stop and think about what I want Denny to do because I am certainly not able to explain it to her and I find it helps if I can explain it to myself first. Or even do the movement myself first ...

[pintopiaffe]

I shall have to ask my teacher.

I'm always astounded that my hose speaks Portuguese quite fluently.  (I, however, do not.)  

[Numbat]

I suspect that lots of people's horses don't know the voice commands as well as their owners think they do, and that it's really the body language they're responding to. And as Cloud Cirrus says, vocalising it helps the human clarify the body language.

[Bebe1]

Numbat, I think you're probably right about the voice command being more for the owner than the horse.

I rabbit on incessantly whilst I'm schooling. I generally don't make a lot of sense and not all of it is commands as such, but my mare seems to respond well to it. I suspect my rambling does more for confirming what I'm doing and getting things clear in my head than it does in terms of being commands but it does help.

 

[sking]

I'm convinced Tonik speaks English - especially when the sentence has the word 'Polos' in it  :P .

Many years ago I was working in Sweden for a little while with a friend who also rode. We were missing our usual riding and managed to find a place that would give us a few lessons in English. The horses were frighteningly posh (coming from your usual British place, we were more used to hairy cobs!) and knew their stuff - and no, I couldn't sit their trots! - and we had fun, the only trouble was that there were Swedish people in our lessons too, and the instructor tended to give his instructions in Swedish first and English afterwards, and those horses DEFINITELY understood the Swedish: by the time the English words were reaching our ears, the horses were halting / turning on the forehand / whatever! Can't have been picking up our feeble signals, as we hadn't understood at that point what was required ...

Sarah

[lmevans]

I'm sure Noosa can read.

She slows right down and walks with her nose on the floor to go over SLOW painted on roads when its the right way up, but marches on like normal when its upside down!


She understands stop signs too!


Maybe I'll get her to read Heather's book!

Lucie x

[hinny_heart]

I'm sure Noosa can read.

She slows right down and walks with her nose on the floor to go over SLOW painted on roads ... Maybe I'll get her to read Heather's book!

I thought I'd put Richard Hinrich's video on and ask Denny in to watch it,  but I can't find a sofa that she's comfy sitting on  

That's my excuse anyway.

[rach]

The danger with using voice commands is that you are training cues rather than aids. It's very handy to have certain voice commands to help you transfer them with in hand work into aids with body language but I wouldn't base my training on them.

[sandpiper]

I am wondering if you have any voice command for Shoulder-in, leg yield, travers, renvers.

I use voice commands for everything else (halt, walk, trot, canter, back and over).

So why not for shoulder-in???

You could use any word you wanted, so long as you are consistent.  It also makes it so much easier to achieve the movement in the saddle when the horse already knows it in-hand!

I used to say 'step out' to my horse meaning lengthen his stride, and he learned this as well as any of the other basic commands.