KBR Horse Training Information

Exercising Body AND Mind

Horse Poker

THINK OUTSIDE THE BOX!
The game is 5 card stud (colt)

In geometry the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. However in horse behavior and training the shortest distance could be around the corner and in though the back door. Once you understand how a horse perceives and thinks, you can create interesting situations where you can "think outside the box" and get amazing results.

To prove this point we decided to invite an ungentled wild horse to our Thursday night poker game at Wild Horse Workshop '01 in Corvallis, Oregon. In this game we played "5-card stud colt." The ante was bits of alfalfa and we had a halter laid out on the table.


We started the game, the colt was allowed to enter the pen and he regarded the whole scene with great curiosity. Within a few minutes he had sniffed all of us, decided to take a couple of cards of his own and walked off with Robert Denlinger's hat. It didn't take him long to realize that he had to stretch across the table to reach and sample the "pot."

The horse will take one.

We set up a clicker pattern just before he reached the pot. Then we shaped his behavior so that he had to touch one of our hands, then the halter, then poke his nose through the halter to get a click and access to the pot.

Periodically over the next 20 minutes or so the colt would lose interest, do a "walkabout" for a few seconds, but he would always return to the game.

Within another five minutes or so, the people closest to him were rubbing his face and slipping the halter up onto his face and the poll strap behind his ears.

Hey! I caught you cheating!

Finally Robert, sitting on the "tie-off" side, formed a latch knot and the colt was haltered.

A short while later we broke up the game, put a lead rope on the halter and rubbed on the colt until he decided he really liked it.

Friday he was haltered for short while (using the conventional "walk up and halter the horse" method) and practiced yielding to pressure and leading.

Saturday morning he was haltered and led by a workshop participant to the sale ring where for the most part he moved quietly on a slack line with the auctioneer calling bids over a loudspeaker.

It should be noted that this colt was brought into a pen and evaluated for a few minutes a couple of days prior to the game. (We wanted to be sure that we didn't draw a "kicker" while we were seated in the pen.) Other than that the colt had not been worked.

Here's our poker horse on adoption day!


Our primary strategy that achieved success was that we didn't focus our intentions on or direct our gaze at the horse. Instead we maintained subtle but curious activities and let the horse make deliberate interest-based decisions to come and interact with us. The next day another poker game was staged for the local TV station with another unhandled horse that produced the same results.

We've been often asked after these games, "Who won?"

"The horse, of course," we reply.

The players in this hand: (left to right) Becky Tipton, Willis Lamm, Kenny Johlke, Robert Denlinger and "Poker."

Continue to "Poker" Joins the Triple Crown Long Ride!

View the video: Poker Game at the Tooele, UT Workshop.

The original poker game was conceived by Rob Pliskin (seated left) in March, 2001 at IRAM. The horse is "Bubba," an unapproachable large yearling which Rob later adopted.

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