How to Lead a Horse

Leading a horse is done through positive reinforcement, gentle pressure and vocal cues. Train a horse to follow a lead with helpful advice in this video on training horses.

Hi, I'm Rick Gore with the Travis Equestrian Center. Today, we're going to talk about how to get your horse to lead with less work, and hopefully better leading. What we're going to do here is, in order to get your horse to lead, first of all, your horse has got to want to be around you. You see this horse? He's kind of mouthing me, he's kind of hanging all in my space. I'm not a big proponent on keeping horses out of your space and always pushing a horse back. They need to listen, they need to pay attention, but they don't need to always be out of your space. So this horse wants to be with me, so when I'm leading him, I always want to teach him the come cue, so when I walk away, I'm going to say come, and he learns. If I turn and I know he keeps his butt away from he, he knows to keep that away, and I say come, I'm always leading him on a nice, loose line. I'm requesting and giving him the right direction, so he wants to follow me. I'm not yanking and pulling and making him come, because then he learns that he doesn't want to be around me. So leading a horse has a lot to do with lightness and finesse. I like to lead a horse with a, with just a loop, and to me it teaches a horse a little bit more finer touching, it also helps when you're in a saddle. You put a loop over his head, and I just take an old rope and I tie them together, it's no big deal, an old lead rope that breaks, tie it together, and now when I lead him, I'm teaching him to come to pressure, not necessarily on his head, but on his neck, "come". So now he learns to follow me, and I can lead him with nice, light pressure by just guiding his head, and not necessarily pulling on a lead rope and having that control, or that pain compliance, or that force, "come". And I can back him up, "back, back, back, come". And again, by having this being light, later I can move in to where I can have him follow me without hanging on to this. I can have him come. He can follow me by paying attention to me, and knowing he wants to be with me, and I don't need any lead rope. So if you work on being light, and not necessarily pulling your horse around, and use finessE instead of force, you're going to find out your horse will lead a lot better, and he'll be a lot happier.