Once one of the most common habit in the horse riding is to reward our own horse in all exercises and disciplines, but why we should reward a horse?
Usually a reward is a small portion of food a horse really love. It could be a sweet a carrot, a fruit or any kind of the different snack available on the market, some also with tasty parings. Treats are used to reward horse to get different effect: to get the horse understand the exercise or thing he just made it is right, to reward an intense work or simply to gain somehow its love.
Anyway rewarding is really discussed on a science matter and also for training effects.
Science endorses the assumption, being horses herbivore they don’t consider food as a prize as predatory animals do. This is due to the fact horses find naturally easily to get food instead of predators, who have to haunt for it. Therefore donating it to their counterparts food it is a enormous sign of caring. By the way experience show us how much a horse love receiving tasty treats.
To get the most of rewarding is good to create a positive routine to avoid wrong or spoilt behavior as intrusiveness. Paying attention to atmosphere of the rewarding moment is the key to get the best of training and not encouraging bad behaviors. For instance, it is good to give the treats ever in the same way and position to get the horse respect personal space. In order to make the animal get the connection between a good behavior and the treat, the time between these two should be short.
Even when choosing the snack, one should be careful not to ruin a good balanced diet with the quality and quantity of the treats. It is good to avoid snack with added sugars or with by-products, additives, preservatives, coloring and flavoring. Guidolin Equisnack have all this characteristics and they also contain real pieces of each main ingredients of the different 5 flavours available: apple, carrot, cereals and vanilla, garlic and linseeds.
Finally it is good to know even a cuddle or a relaxing moment with you horse, have to be consider a reward and this can enhance the effect of treats on training. You should carefully observe what your horses enjoy the most and use it to reward it and to improve training and its well-being.
