Start simple. Build skills. Watch your horse grow.
From boredom to curiosity — one puzzle at a time
Even the best kept horses can get bored. Many horses live in environments with limited opportunities to explore, choose and interact with their surroundings. By introducing structured challenges, you give your horse meaningful ways to engage with his environment.
The SKILLS system was designed to support exactly that: a clear, step-by-step learning journey that encourages curiosity, confidence and independent exploration.
What you may start to notice:
More curiosity instead of hesitation
A shift from “this might be dangerous” to “this might be interesting”
More focus and engagement
Improved fine motor skills
A calmer, more balanced horse
A horse that feels mentally satisfied after puzzling
👉 You’re not just training behavior—you’re shaping how your horse experiences the world.
SKILLS is a modular puzzle system made up of individual 30 × 30 cm tiles that can easily be mounted on a back panel and swapped around.
Each puzzle introduces one specific skill for your horse to learn—such as sliding, spinning, or pulling—to access food.
You can fill the puzzles with healthy herb or hay pellets (6 mm / low in starch and sugar). Ideally, use something your horse enjoys, but that keeps him calm and focused while solving the puzzle.
The system grows by combining skills:
Start with one SKILL at a time, so your horse learns one clear movement
As understanding grows, combine puzzles side by side
Later, stack different SKILLS into small sequences
By mixing and matching different skills, you gradually increase the challenge while keeping each step clear and understandable.
This encourages thinking, persistence and calm problem solving.
Skill 1, 2 and 3 each introduce a different type of movement, so there is no fixed order. 👉 Most horses start best with Skill 3 It uses a natural movement and is often the easiest entry point.
From there Skill 1 is a logical next step
Skill 2 usually requires more control and understanding
More SKILLS will be added over time, allowing you to expand gradually
The Spinner is the easiest and most structured way to introduce your horse to puzzling. It allows you to teach the concept almost error-free, helping your horse quickly understand how actions lead to rewards. Prefer to start with a SKILL? Skill 3 is often the best place to begin.
An errorless first introduction to horse puzzling.
Start by introducing each SKILL separately, so your horse learns one clear action at a time. Give your horse time to explore and figure out what works.
You can move on once your horse:
understands how to get the reward
repeats the behaviour without hesitation
Step 2 — Mix & match
Once your horse solves individual SKILLs confidently, place them next to each other and vary the setup. This helps your horse learn to generalise:
the puzzle itself becomes the cue—not its location. By changing positions and combinations, your horse learns to focus on the movement and concept itself, building more flexible problem-solving skills.
Step 3 — Combine skills
Place puzzles above each other to create simple sequences. Solving one puzzle releases the reward into the next.
This is an advanced step! Understanding that one action leads to another is not easy for all horses and takes time to develop. Give your horse the space to explore this gradually, without rushing the process.
What your horse develops through puzzling
Working with the SKILLS puzzles supports more than just problem-solving.
Your horse develops:
Curiosity and willingness to explore
Focus and sustained attention
Coordination and body awareness
Fine motor skills through precise movements
Calm, goal-directed behaviour
Confidence in interacting with the environment
Using different SKILLS and allowing the reward to fall onto a surface encourages your horse to keep moving, reposition, and search—adding natural variation to both movement and behaviour.
Why horses enjoy puzzling Puzzle solving activates the SEEKING system—the system behind curiosity and exploration. This means horses are not just working for a reward, but become engaged in the process of discovering.
The Puzzle Panel A flexible mounting system for your puzzles.
A flexible mounting system for your puzzles.
The Puzzle Panel allows you to mount your SKILLS puzzles in a practical and adaptable way—and easily switch between different puzzles as your horse learns.
Using threaded knobs, you can place, remove, and swap puzzles by hand in seconds. This makes it easy to mix and match different SKILLS, adjust the level, and keep the learning process evolving.
As your horse progresses, you can change the setup without rebuilding your entire system.
The Puzzle Panel is available in three options: – with a clamp system for stables with bars (no drilling) – without clamp system for fixed wall mounting – or as a DIY template to build your own setup
These tutorials show different ways to introduce and use the puzzles, based on clear learning principles such as starting simple, building step by step and creating understanding through consistent outcomes.
There is no single “right” way to teach this. Every horse learns differently, and there are many ways to guide him towards the same result. See these tutorials as ideas and inspiration — not fixed rules.
What matters most is the environment you create For this kind of learning, you can’t rely on pressure or force. The goal is to offer a safe space where your horse can explore, try and discover that his actions have an positive outcome.
Some horses will engage with this quickly. Others may take more time — especially if they have learned to stop interacting with their environment because their actions didn’t seem to matter , or were corrected in the past.
Puzzling helps restore the willingness to experiment. Step by step, your horse can start to experience that trying leads to results — and that interacting with the environment can be something positive.
We will continue to add new tutorials over time, showing different approaches, horses and learning styles.
How to: fill the puzzles without stress
Ruhiges Verhalten am Futter wird gelernt
Tutorial Introducing a Skill puzzle
How to test if your horse will play with puzzles
Why Choose Skills the Modular Puzzle System?
Mental stimulation is an essential part of your horse’s well-being. The SKILLS system offers a structured way to provide this—through exploration, variation, and meaningful interaction.
With SKILLS, your horse develops:
Active engagement Your horse stays curious and involved by working with changing setups and new challenges
Independent thinking Instead of reacting, your horse learns to explore, experiment and discover what works
Focus and calm behaviour Clear, consistent outcomes support concentration and reduce frustration
Coordination and body awareness Different movements encourage more refined and varied use of the body
Suitable for a wide range of horses Whether your horse is young, experienced, in training, or in a more limited environment, SKILLS offers a way to support mental engagement and development at their own pace.
By allowing your horse to explore and discover, you give him more influence over his environment—something that is often missing in daily management.
The SKILLS Modular Puzzle System is designed to grow with your horse—step by step, puzzle by puzzle.
👉 Explore the available modules and build a setup that fits your horse and your environment
Horses are strong animals, and they can break almost anything. When introduced well, many horses learn to use the puzzles calmly. For example, our horses have access to them 24/7. When the puzzles are empty, they check briefly and then move on to their other activities.
However, not all horses understand this immediately. Some horses may become frustrated when a puzzle is empty. That usually means they are still learning how it works.
👉 Introduce the puzzles under supervision, and only give unsupervised access once your horse:
understands the puzzle
stays calm when it is empty
and is able to move on to other activities
If used without supervision If you want to mount the puzzles in a place where your horse has free access, keep the following in mind:
Introduce the puzzle in a calm, low-key way so your horse feels comfortable
In group settings, be aware of possible resource guarding → Ideally provide enough puzzles (one more than the number of horses)
Always mount the puzzles securely, following the instructions
Know youw horse Some situations require extra caution:
Horses with strong itching behaviour may try to scratch on the puzzle
Horses that tend to break objects may damage the puzzle
In these cases, avoid unsupervised use.
Use your common sense
We design the puzzles to be as durable as possible, but horses are powerful animals and no system is indestructible. Warranty applies to manufacturing defects, not damage caused during use.
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