How I Trained My Horse to Model
As I discussed in my last Blog post, I trained my former horse Wasabi to be the most amazing model. I could leave him in the middle of a field of grass and ask him to stand and pose for me without someone handling him. I could wear any sort of outfit or long dress with him and dress him in whatever I wanted (he was even a pirate for Halloween once). He was my go-to model to use for clients who didn’t own a horse but wanted photos with one and for any crazy idea I had (such as covering his whole body in glitter). He wasn’t perfect, but I will miss having such a great model to photograph and plan to train my future horse to model as well.
Where I Started
Here was my process when I started teaching Wasabi to model years ago when he was recovering from an injury and not able to be ridden. I’ve also started implementing some of these skills for friends’ horses with success as well.
One great personality trait of Wasabi was that he was about as bombproof as you can get. This is usually a bonus in most situations, but for Wasabi’s modeling, this could be an issue because he would often cock a back leg or have a disinterested expression (and not wanting to put his ears forward). I had previously taught him to ground tie, which helped for training him to stand. While I wouldn’t expect any other horse to stand unattended the way I taught Wasabi, I will still explain how I taught him for anyone interested.
I started by working with him untied in the indoor arena at my barn and had a fanny pack with small, low-value treats (in my case alfalfa pellets). I would stand near Wasabi’s head, hold my hand up, and say “stand”. Then I would take a big step back and tell him “stand” again. I would wait a small amount of time (a few seconds at first), then tell him “good boy”, walk back to him, and give him a small amount of treats. When he was good at standing while I was a step back for a longer amount of time (a minute, then a few minutes), I would move on to two large steps back. And so on.
Once he was good at that, I would move around him in a circle, standing in different spots around him on either side so that he would be used to someone being in different areas without moving. I still gave him treats after good behavior but increased the amount of time between treats and when he was asked to stand. I also worked on crouching down in different areas (since I find that often horses get curious when you crouch down and start walking towards me).
If he ever started to walk off, I would tell him “no” and I made him back up to wherever he started, then would just start again. I don’t use much negative reinforcement and instead just focus on little achievements and positive reinforcement instead so horses enjoy modeling and look forward to the positive reward.
Once Wasabi got good inside the indoor arena, we moved to outdoor areas that I wished to photograph in the future. My barn has a gravel driveway with rows of trees on each side that I asked Wasabi to stand in. Eventually we worked on standing still while standing in grass. My trick for Wasabi was to let him graze in the pasture for a couple hours before so that he didn’t try to eat constantly and could focus on standing and modeling.


Further Progress
At the same time, we also worked on placing feet and his posture. One great thing about photographing horses that show in Halter classes is that they usually were extremely easy to pose squarely for their photos. I took inspiration from them to work on posing his feet and asking him to stand without moving his feet, then combined it with asking him to stand while I walked away. I taught him different cues for lowering his head and staying like that for a bit. We hadn’t gotten super far with that last skill outdoors though since grass can be very tempting.
Since I generally photographed Wasabi alone with no help, I also made sure to teach him not to walk towards sounds if I was playing horse sounds to get his ears forward. Many horses want to walk towards sounds, so remaining standing still while loud sounds played, was yet another similar skill. My main tactic was practicing standing in different locations, different poses, and for different amounts of time.
One struggle with Wasabi was being a good model when modeling in grass because he tended to want to eat it and not focus. Do you blame him? One way I overcame this was allowing him to eat grass in the pasture for a few hours before taking photos so that he was not as desperate to eat and would rather have the treats I provided him in exchange for standing still. Eventually he learned that standing still was the easiest thing he was doing that day and he would get lots of snacks for being a good model.
While the journey wasn’t linear and I would not expect every horse to be trained the same way, I hope this Blog post gives others some ideas to implement in their own lives. Wasabi was not always the perfect model, but with repetition and positive reinforcement, I was able to take Wasabi’s natural talents to be an amazing model for me.