How to Teach a Horse to Bow

Teaching a horse to bow down can be done using a carrot as a lure and positive reinforcement. Teach tricks to a horse with helpful advice in this video on training horses.

Hi, I'm Rick Gore from the Travis Equestrian Center. We're going to talk a little bit on how to teach your horse or get a horse to bow down for you. First thing you want to do is make sure the horse is comfortable with you being around him, being able to do a lot of sacking out, a lot of different things underneath him, being comfortable with the horse by his legs, making sure he knows what what cues are and that he'll let you lift up his leg. We're going to come over here, have him face the camera little bit; get a nice soft spot on the ground so we don't hurt him. And I'm going to use a carrot just as a little indicator to help him. So he wants his carrot and I know he wants his carrot so I'm going to get him to drop his head a little bit and get the carrot. So as he drops his head, I'm teaching him to come to the carrot. And then I'm going to advance this and get him to come a little farther each time over time, "Good boy, come here". So we're going to go little bit lower this time. So the first time I give him the carrot here, then we went there; this next time, I'm going to see if I can't get him to go all the way down between his legs and I'm going to pull it back from him just a little bit. "Good boy". Now since he got his head all the way back there, I'm going to give him another carrot and this time I'm going to help him and show him that I want his leg to go up. So I'm going to pick his leg up, hold his leg back and now I'm going to have him come back to the carrot, "Good boy", and then let him go. Again, most horse trainings are little steps. Show the horse what you want him to do and then lead him to the right answer. So I held his leg up, I got him to bow a little bit; I'm going to hold his leg up and I'll make him come a little bit farther back this time. And he almost went down, "Good boy", and we'll let him go and he came back up, he did a good job and this time he's ready to go all the way down 'cause he's a carrot fiend, "Good boy". I'm going to hold his leg up, we're going to get him all the way down and then after I get him to do this, get him to go all the way down, come on back, "Good boy". And then from then on, we just keep going on farther and farther and farther and then I associate that with the words such as bow; like I associate this with yes. And that's how you get your horse to bow using carrots.