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Tired of the only approved toilet being the box or the paddock at home on the property? We can hereby announce that those days are over – if you are ready to invest the effort. With the speed of a horse's learning ability, it's quite a project – but it's definitely not impossible. Teaching your four-legged friend to pee on command is extremely practical, especially when you are at a competition or out on a tour in the wilderness, where the horse starts to get restless and there's a long way home. Therefore, we tell you here how you can teach your horse to pee, right when you ask it to, just like in genuine dog training fashion.
We at Malgré Tout editorial team dare to vouch that the project is feasible. We ourselves have an acquaintance who, one and a half years ago, told us that she wanted to teach her horse to pee on command. Inspired by how many trotting horses learn to pee before a race, she started to say “pee” to her horse, every time it needed to urinate in the box or the paddock. And it's no secret that the whole process was met with a mix of great respect and slight chuckles among the other stablemates. But the project succeeded! For now, about one and a half years later, where the horse has been hearing the command every time it seemed about to urinate, it is now able to do so on request – even outside its familiar surroundings.
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Horse brains aren't large, but still, it's the same type of learning psychology at play as when you have to teach other animals or humans something new. This is called classical conditioning or signal learning. It's a psychological understanding of animals and humans that is based on the idea that an individual is capable of associating one stimulus with another. For example, it's what makes a dog start drooling when it sees a food bowl, even if it's empty, or a horse starts knocking on the stall door when it sees a person approaching the feed cart. In short, the animals have learned to associate an object or action with another.
In this case, the horse must learn to associate the word “pee” with urinating. The learning occurs by saying the command every time the horse urinates – and it must be said many times! When the horse eventually has it repeated enough, it will figure out that there is a connection between the two things. It will realize that the word “pee” means that it should perform the action of trying to empty its bladder.
In fact, this learning mechanism is at play in almost everything we do with our horses. It's classical conditioning that enables the horse to stand still in the stable aisle. It's what makes the horse either come or go its own way when you go out to fetch it from the paddock. And it's what allows you to teach the horse anything at all when you're sitting on it. With an understanding of classical conditioning, it's possible to teach a horse almost anything. The challenge is usually to have the patience it requires.
Finally, we must emphasize that the horse's natural needs can neither be forgotten nor ignored. Even though you teach your horse to pee on command, it's far from certain that you can get it to do so every time or anywhere. As is well known, most horses dislike urinating in places where the water might splash onto their legs – maybe with the exception of estrous mares. So if a horse suddenly doesn't pee when asked, even though it has actually learned to, then it's most likely because the surface isn't right, or because it just isn't in need to pee – and that's something to remember to listen to. With that in mind, there's nothing else to do but find the patience and get started. Happy learning!
Read also: Here's why a physical injury can change your horse's behavior.
