Trickster Dudley

Friday January 23 2015

Dudley cracks me up.

I decided a couple of months ago to teach Dudley tricks, and I joined Jain Brand's Horse Tricks Academy at Horsetricks101.com.

She's got step by step videos of building basics of different tricks, and points out that sometimes it's the horse that gives us clues as to what tricks he might already know. Dudley already learned from a long-ago trainer to bow - and we aren't even working on that trick yet. He already had a habit of throwing his head up in the air - as you see here from my 2008 post, America's Next Top (Equine) Model. I just turned that into a trick, by timing my training cues right.

Dudley and I don't practice every day, and when we do, it's only two carrots' worth: I cut 2 carrots into bite-sized pieces, and we practice a few tricks until the carrots run out. It's just a little fun during the day when he's hungry and wants a snack to eat!

I made this short video to show how he's progressing with minimal practice. As you can see from the video, he just cracks me up.

[embed]


or link:
http://youtu.be/8Z1UFNxV9KM