Teaching Your Horse to Pee on Command

A few years ago when I was first started my adventure into learning everything I could about endurance, a schoolmate of mine had a reputation around the halls as being an endurance freak.  I would tell people I wanted to do endurance, and they would say, "You should talk to Jane!"  Eventually, Jane and I became very good friends (and still are).  The other mutterings around the halls and even from the clinicians was, "Jane can tell her horse to pee!"  

I was more than intrigued by this--it seemed like an incredibly useful tool for an endurance horse.  And a skill that only a true horsewhisperer would be able to teach their horse.  I was only correct about the former.

During this time, I had become enchanted with parrots.  All types of birds--Macaws, Amazons, Budgerigars, African Greys, Pionus, the list goes on and on.  I was almost obsessed with learning about parrots and endurance simultaneously and spent hours on the internet absorbing every bit of knowledge I could on both subjects.  Soon after, I adopted a little feather-plucked ("oven-ready" as I liked to call him) African Grey named Max.  I had started hearing recently about being able to teach your parrot to poop on command, which also seemed useful as birds poop all over the place.  

Both tasks involved the same basic training method--starting first with putting a cue to a behavior and then slowly progressing to anticipation and finally, commanding (although I don't like the word "command").  Max caught on quickly, and when I got Oscar (another Grey), he also caught on quickly.  Jasper has only proven how intelligent Arabs (and Arab crosses) are by learning quickly as well.

I'll outline what I've done for Jasper.  The first time he peed on trail with me, I immediately started whistling and praising and rubbing him.  The cue I use is a whistle that sounds like, "Twoo twoo twoo twoo."  I also made note of the surface he preferred, which was deep sand.  Some horses like grass or gravel while others don't mind hard-packed dirt (although this isn't the norm as they don't appreciate the splash factor).  Since then, I've started noticing that when he has to pee he'll sort of swing his head to the side really fast and make eye contact with me.  Hard to describe, but somehow I know it means he's got to pee.  And I've noticed he tends to do this when we're riding through sand at a walk.  So I'll stop him and start whistling, and 9 times out of 10 he'll stretch out and pee.

It's definitely not rocket science, and an odd sort of command, but I like it.  Both times he peed on the ride his heart rate plummeted afterwards, so it may be a cause of "hanging" when coming into a vet check.  I know my heart rate gets up if I've got to pee!