How to stop my horse from PAWING

Hey guys, in this article I'll be talking about a very common problem, which is horses that paw. So we're going to analyze why horses paw and I'm going to give you some strategies that will help stop the pawing. There are basically three main reasons that horses paw: the first one is in a way 'emotional' as bored or frustrated horses can show this behavior; for example this can happen while we are tiding up our horse, as he may paw highlighting us the fact that he is bored; the same can happen when a horse feels frustrated because of a hard training.
The second reason is a learned behavior such as a horse that starts pawing when sees that we are carrying its food; if we feed him at the very moment he is pawing, he will learn that in this way he can achieve what he wants, and he will do it every time we feed him, as we will have reinforced a wrong behavior.
Horses also paw when they are facing a new situation, such as a trailer, a new place or things like that.
The main solution to the pawing problem, is actually not punishing the wrong action, but rewarding the correct instead: for example, when we are tidying the horse, if he starts pawing, we can move him for a second, ask him to stand still and reward him, when he does so. In this way he will understand that this is the correct thing to do and he will be rewarded when doing that. Of course, this will take time in order to make the horse stop from pawing. If we are in the case of a horse pawing when 'studying' a new situation, we have to allow this behavior as it is totally natural.
There is also another very common situation where horses paw: for example when we are taking them to the paddock and we are standing besides them while they are grazing. This happened to me a lot of times actually and every time I used to think "ok, this is normal, as he is inattentive now, he's only focused on eating and does not care about my presence", but what was real in my thought is just that he didn't care about my presence. Horses are totally conscious of what is around them (you see, a mare would never paw her foal even when grazing and 'not caring' about him!) so, there is a very low chance that your horse pawed you because he was unaware of your position beside him. This is a case that derivates from the fact that your horse does not recognize your authority; by saying this I don't mean that your horse has to scared about you and stay ten thousand feet from you, but just that as we all know horses are pack animals and are used to a hierarchy. The very moment your horse paws you, this may mean that you are at a lower level in his hierarchy or you are not even included in it. Well, this is something very important that may take lots of pages to be clearly explained, and if you like me to, I can write you down in another article some strategies in order to solve this problem. Of course as I have written lots of times, lunging and ground working are two of the most commonly used and effective ways to work on this issue. This is because when we are ground working the horse, we both are at the same level, so we aren't overwhelming him, but at the same time, we are asking him to do things and this in a way needs its respect. Ok guys, this is all by now, please let me know if you'd like to know more from this area, or maybe you have a specific case that you want me to write about and I'll be so glad of listening to you!
Saba

P.s. in the photo there's my love Cleopatra pawing while eating her hay!
P.s.2 I took a cue for this article from lots of YT videos, Internet Forums and sites!