Zahra Horse and the Tarp

If you’re a horse person, you know horses are usually terrified of things that move around, make crinkly noises, and are strangely colored. So, this makes tarps a great thing to play with to help horses get used to weird things.

Teaching a Horse to Walk on a Tarp

Your clicker is loaded, right? So, now you can bring out the tarp.

My horse Zahra had tarp walking experience, but it had been a few years. And back then I never took it so far as I have now.

But let me start from the beginning.

Steps: (In Bombroofing, always take it slowly!! The steps below might happen over a week or two!)

1. On a day that’s not windy, pull the tarp out so that it’s tightly folded and in your hand. Let your horse sniff it and click for curiosity.
2. Unfold it a wee bit and let your horse explore it some more with her nose. Click. Treat.
3. Make some crinkly noises with it and click treat if your horse doesn’t try to run away.
4. Pet your horse with the folded up tarp.
5. Unfold it a bit more and let the horse walk near it. You might want to weight the edges down with some rocks.
6. Unfold it flat and weight it down. Even if there is no breeze, you don’t want the horse to panic if they step on it and it moves too much.
7. Encourage ANY movement towards the tarp with a click and a treat. Don’t expect your horse to just walk on it. Click for sniffing it. Click for the horse even looking like she wants to move forward.
8. Shift into clicking only forward movement. It still doesn’t have to be ON the tarp yet.
9. Click for one foot on.
10. Two feet.
11. Four feet was surprisingly much harder for my girl to master.
12. Bunch up the tarp so that it looks like the photos in this blog entry and encourage your horse to walk on this.
13. Do it all again on a windy day! 🙂