Working with food: part 2: Hay exercise

Other uses for hay when you're not eating it...

I have a simple exercise I do with hay which is a nice way to start introducing the idea of focus around food.

For safety, I must be able to move my horse away from my space easily at a slow or fast pace without any food around. I must feel that I can reliably move my horse without food.

First, I will sit/stand with my horse while they are eating their hay and just let them relax with me for a time. I am not in a hurry to chase them off their food. It's not about depriving them. Once I've allowed them to eat for a bit comfortably, I will ask them to leave the hay pile either by just my body language and voice or using a stick with body language depending on the horses' nature. I wont hold them away from it. It is just about them letting me move them off slowly and then allowing them to come back as soon as they show willingness to leave.

This game is played with horses all the time in paddocks when you drop several hay piles down with more then one horse. I call it the Musical hay pile game. The top horse will push the others from one hay pile to the next. But at some point you see horses sharing the same hay pile together. I also see this done with grass patches as well. It is not done out of meanness or spite though it may seem that way. It is how horses establish order using food. See more examples of food work in my Vlog of Starting Django http://www.fdhorsemanship.com/#!classroom Happy horsing!