How I teach kiss and what it gave me

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For kiss, i decided to teach another horse to do it. Sofie already know, but i taught it back when i knew close to nothing. Not even what R+ and R- is, which is just so incredibly basic, every horse owner/person around horses should know all four quadrants of operant conditioning.

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Teaching Sofie vs teaching Fussi

When I taught Sofie, i did it very simply by havinga treat in my hand and using it to lure her mouth to my face, giving it when she touch my mouth. This work very well, but could also cause them to think they should bite near your face. For most horses that's no problem, but for some *cough* Ditte *cough* it can reinforce biting you in the head. Due to this, and also to make it more clear, i went with a different approach for teaching Fussi. I've already taught him to target my hand, so we could work through these steps quickly.

First, i asked him to target my hand, quickly changing it to my finger. As he got confident, i moved the finger closer to my head (I was sitting down due to his size and it was at protected ). We moved closer and closer, until he touched my mouth. As I had taught my finger target first, we had that to go back to (moving finger further from head) when he got unsure, so this really helped him get confident in the trick before he knew what it was. In 2 handfulls treats (small handfulls) he got it and would kiss instead of just touching my finger, though we still had to take a step back to finger away from face every now and then.

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What I gained from teaching kiss

Today, the day after i started teaching Fussi kiss, i went to practise in the pasture (new enviroment, so more difficult). He had a hard time focusing on it as Sofie was also wanting to kiss me (I had so much horse head in my face) but we got a couple kisses, even though i should've taken a couple steps back and not asked for the actual kiss yet. When i walked away, he came trotting after me. He very rarely ever trot. Not even wanting to play with the other horses can get him trotting. But here he was, enthusiastically trotting after me, because he just got so happy from this training. The fact he's reacting this way to his first trick mean I will most likely be making him into a trick pony to help further unlock joy of movement and just enrich his life. Trick suggestions are appreciated, but he's old! He can't always use his body a lot due to this, so no rear etc that require a lot of strenght and can possibly be hard on ts/need a lot of bend in them. But yeah, i need trick ideas.

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Conclusion

With my experiences, kiss is a very easy trick that anyone can teach. It's super cute to get random kisses, so not getting it *only* on cue isn't a problem, unlike tricks such as rear that can get dangerous, making this a good first trick for both human and horse. It's also a great trick to get into the feel of what your horse think about trick training.

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#KissTOTM

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