How do they train horses to fall down on cue with a rider on their back, such as for motion pictures?
Just like you train an animal to do anything – small steps, frequent rewards on the way.
I’ve no experience with that kind of falls, but we trained a horse to sit down on its’ hindquarters for a semi-crippled ride to mount or dismount. I suspect that was easier, because it’s just a variation of a normal horse movement, when a horse is getting up from a roll. The tripping & falling down in movies is unusual, but it could be an extension of the kneeling down horses do to start laying down. But that is much slower, done from standing still, not while in motion.
P.S. Note that in many movies, especially older ones or ones filmed outside the US, the horses aren’t ‘trained’ to fall down – they fall down because they are tripped by ropes in front of them or tied to their legs. Often with serious or fatal injuries to the horses.
I think there is some camera trickery going on sometimes since you don’t usually see the animal fall down in one complete shot. There are cuts that show the horse starting to fall down… then on the ground with the rider falling off.
The reason I asked was because I used to train marine mammals (Dolphins and Orcas) and we were able to use “successive approximations” in order to guide the animal into performing the final behavior we wanted. I just can’t imagine a successive approximation for falling, but obviously there is one.
BTW I looked on YouTube to see if there was any video on training a horse to fall down and I couldn’t find one… hence the question.
the one that came to mind immediately was Blazing Saddles. I haven’t found much to answer the question either, the page below only re-states that the horse was trained to do so.
Horses normally start to lay down by kneeling on the front legs. So you could probably work from that to train them to ‘fall’.