- This is such a fun and easy trick to teach your horse! It’s definitely one of my top favorite tricks because it’s so cute and pretty funny 🙂 I LOVED teaching it and I know that you will too!
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What You Need To Teach The Smile:
- All you will need for this trick is some treats and – obviously – your horse 🙂 Like I said before, it’s so simple to teach and so worth it!
Step 1:
- Stand in front of your horse and show them that you have a treat.
- hold it out in front of them pretty close to their mouth but not close enough for them to grab it. Wait for them to try and reach the treat with their lip then reward them and give it to them.
- You want them to realize that they’re supposed to reach for it. Remember…have patience!
Step 2:
- Okay, once you feel like they’ve got the reach down, you’re going to start having them raise their head with your hand 🙂
- Put a treat in the palm of your hand and raise it up, their head will follow it up ( make sure to reward them when they do what you ask. It doesn’t have to always be with a treat, a good pet is just as rewarding! ).
- Do this with them several times to make sure they understand. Its an easy step and odds are they’ll pick it up pretty and fast 🙂
Step 3:
- Once they’re following your hand nicely, you’re going to add a signal that will eventually tell them to smile 🙂
- Now it’s completely up to you on what your signal will be. The way I ask my horse to smile is with my finger. I started out by having him raise his head, then I would bring my hand closer to his mouth, so he could see the treat there, and raised my finger in the air. My horse would have to reach with his lips to get the treat but because we’d already practiced that, like in step 1, he did it easily.
- He raised his lips up, his head up as well, and I gave him the treat. We repeated that several times and anytime he would lift his lips I would reward him and let him take a small break.
Last step:
- Alrighty! You’re almost done!
- Last thing you’ll need to do is use your signal and ask your horse to smile, when they raise their lips, make them hold it for a minute before rewarding them 🙂 Teach them to hold the smile for a couple seconds.
- Once they can do that…congratulations! Your horse can now smile! 🙂
Here Is A Small Video That Will Show The End Result 🙂
