dwi
Well-Known Member
my last RI told me that they had a pony at the yard who had genuinely been lame and so they had taken it out of the lesson and untacked it. They reckoned that said pony put two and two together and realised that being lame got you put back in the stable. I don't think that they are clever enough to guess that it will work but once they have been lame and been treated differently because of it I think its definitely possible for the idea to enter their heads. Surely thats no different to training a horse to do any tricks? Daisy will fetch a target for pony treats. That isn't a natural behaviour but she learned to do it because it got her what she wanted