Overcoming Your Horse’s Magnets

For the past 20 years, Clinton Anderson from Downunder Horsemanship has devoted his life to creating the best training tools and videos available to help bring his method to you. Join him on his weekly endeavors of tackling some of the most challenging situations with problem horses, and problem owners. This week, we watch as Clinton teaches us how to overcome your horse’s magnets.

Clinton starts this episode by describing what exactly a magnet is. Similar to the magnets we use in daily life, a horse’s magnet is a place where your horse is always trying to get back to. It’s something that pulls your horse’s attention away from the tasks at hand. Your horse may be trying to run back to the barn, run back to their pasture buddy, get back into the trailer when you’re at a show, or even run back to the gate. Magnets are things that are constantly drawing your horse’s attention away from what they need to be doing. They pull them into a totally different direction both mentally and physically. 

All horses have some kind of magnet. Typically, the younger a horse is, the more insecure they are, and therefore, the stronger their magnets will be. This insecurity is usually within themselves, and they therefore don’t want to put in work. Instead, they’d rather be somewhere they’re comfortable with and avoid being challenged. While this is more common in younger horses, it can still affect horses of any age, training level, or breed. Sometimes their magnet is even other horses, and it can seem impossible to separate the two. 

Clinton lets us know that every day he works with a horse, he always takes time to identify what their magnet is. This gives him the opportunity to help the horse overcome the pull and until that’s taken care of, a horseman will only have a part of the horse’s attention. However, having two-thirds of your horse’s attention is not good enough. 

As soon as you identify the magnet, it’s important to try to do things that discourage your horse from wanting to be in that location. You’ll need to simultaneously work on encouraging your horse to be present and fully attentive to you. The best way to accomplish this is get their feet moving. Move their feet forwards, backwards, left, and right. Make them work and then when you let them rest, don’t let them go back to the magnet. Instead, have them rest in whatever location you’re working, so they begin to understand that their magnet isn’t the only place they can relax. 

When your horse’s magnet is small, it can be less obvious to notice. Therefore, you always want to pay special attention to which direction they pull you. While some people don’t think there are hard and fast rules on how to do this, there are ways to help encourage positive changes in your horse. As mentioned, some of the best ways to do this are to put your horse to work and avoid immediately letting them run off to their magnet when you’re done. This breeds the idea that they’re safe from work while they’re at their magnet and everywhere else requires effort.  

For the past 20 years Clinton Anderson has devoted his life to creating the best training tools and videos available to help bring his method to you. Now, Clinton has created a way to bring 20 years of horsemanship into the palm of your hand. Introducing the mobile method. It’s part of the new Downunder digital experience. And it makes learning the method easier than ever before. 

Our Downunder Horsemanship app gives you access to your digital training kits and allows you to download videos and training content directly to your mobile device or view them on your computer. The Downunder Horsemanship app also offers over 86 hours of free, in-depth training content. You can access all the training material through three different levels by joining our No Worries Club. 

To learn more about the Clinton Anderson training method, become a member of the No Worries Club, or to get information on any of the products seen on our show, head over to our homepage and download the Downunder Horsemanship app today! If you’re interested in getting accelerated results, let a Clinton Anderson Certified Clinician bring the method to you!