It is important that your horse knows how to move away from you on the ground, and move  away from your legs while ridden. Even if your horse is 'just' a pleasure horse and you only ride out on the trails on the weekends, teaching your horse how to move away from your leg will make your horse safer, easier to ride and more fun. These movements are learned easier when started on the ground. Good ground manners such as during grooming and leading, include moving away from you at your cue as well.

Difficulty: Average

Time Required: Varies

Here's How:

1. I start by teaching my horses to move away from pressure on the ground first. This serves two purposes. If the horse doesn't already have polite ground manners it teaches them to move away from you when tied or led. It also makes it easier to teach them to move away from your leg once in the saddle.
    
   
2. With your fingertips press into the area where you leg would cue. You may also use the vocal cue ‘over’. Adding a vocal cue such as this will be the cue that remains consistent once you are training from the saddle. The leg aid ‘over’ will not feel the same to the horse as a fingertip cue.  Reward any attempt by the horse to move away from the cue. Clicker training lends itself nicely to teaching horses like this.
    
   
3. What you will expect the horse to do once it understands that it must move sideways from my cue, is to step directly sideways crossing foot over foot. Hold the lead rope and guide the horse to turn its head in the direction of the motion. The more exact you can make this manoeuvre from the ground, the easier it will be from the saddle.

1. rain from one side until the horse is responding to the cue consistently. But, be sure to train from both sides so the horse learns to move away from the cue from both sides. Your horse may not instantly understand the same cues from the opposite side.A very eager horse may try to step towards you, rather than away when you first start.
2. As soon as the horse understands the cue from the ground it is time to start working from the saddle. The first thing you may want to teach is a turn on the forehand.
    
   

Tips:

1. Be happy with small successes.
2. Even after the horse has learned its lesson, review every so often.

What You Need:

• Horse, haltered with leadrope.
• Safe working area such as a ring or arena.
• Optional: Clicker and treats
• Lots of time and patience.