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Halter Train your Foal Part 2

February 25, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Article by Anita Lamb

In part one we covered some bonding techniques to proper your foal for halter training, fit the halter gently, rubbing your foal as usual all the time. Chances are, it won’t even notice. Give your foal a day or two to get used to the halter before you move on to the lead, but keep up the playtimes.

When your foal seems comfortable with the halter on, try attaching the lead. Expect some resistance when your foal first discovers it can’t wander off whenever it likes! Safety is important – don’t let go of the lead, because you will teach the foal that it can get away by pulling. This is another reason why these early days are the best time to teach leading – when your foal is small enough you can keep a hold of it!

Foals are delicate however, so there are a few safety rules to follow, and you certainly don’t want your foal to get hurt and associate leading with pain. If your foal rears up, raise your hand to keep the lead level with its head so you don’t injure its neck or risk tipping it over.

If it pulls, don’t face it and pull back – your foal will see this as a confrontation! Turn your back to your foal, and use your spare hand to try and entice it forward with a toy or treat. Walk gently backward until your foal relaxes, and begins to walk forward with you. Always have your helper keep walking the mare forward as normal, heading where you plan to go without any fuss.

Mom is one of your tools too – use the mare to help persuade your foal to do as you ask. Soon your foal will want to keep up anyway!

When your foal has got the hang of it, and has realized that following on the lead is safe and fun, you can start to explore some new areas. With your mare and your helper, take some walks, and visit some of the obstacles you expect your foal to see later in life – water crossings, bridges, even leading in the dark.

This is the easiest time for your foal to explore these potential obstacles! Natural horsemanship methods like these build on your horse’s natural desire for your company. If you resort to forcing your foal to follow you by wrapping lead ropes over its quarters, or chasing it forward, it will soon discover you aren’t that much fun to be around.

A horse’s need for play is one of the three basic needs you use for natural horse training, along with safety and comfort. Foals are especially receptive to play, so now is the time to train your foal with fun!

About the Author

Hi my name is Anita and people are always asking me for tips on natural horse training and what they should do to for the best. Visit me at http://www.horsetrainingwiz.com or http://www.horsetraining.blogspot.com

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Managing Your Foal With Imprinting

February 25, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Article by Ron Petracek

It’s true that mother knows best, but a little human help doesn’t hurt either. Since Dr. Robert Miller introduced foal imprinting about 20 years ago, breeders, trainers, and owners have embraced this hands-on approach credited with producing more manageable, more trusting, and easier to train horses.

What exactly is foal imprinting? In a nutshell, it is desensitizing the foal to human interaction immediately upon birth. During imprinting the foal is handled by humans before its fight-or-flight instinct kicks in. There are two goals with imprinting: to train a horse to have little or no resistance to veterinary, farrier, and training procedures; and to establish a human dominance in the young foal’s life, leading to a more willing and trainable adult horse.

What does foal imprinting consist of? Immediately following birth, a handler gently probes the baby’s gums, teeth, ears, mouth, nose, and rectum. He or she handles the foal’s feet, applies gentle pressure to the sides and back, and introduces it to distracting sounds like the vibration of clippers, the sounds of crinkling paper, and flapping plastic. The goal is to get the foal to experience sensations it will experience throughout its life, and accept them at the earliest stage.

When is the right time to begin imprint training. Most people begin to imprint train their foal about one hour after birth, right after the foal has stood and nursed. Begin by touching the horse’s body very gently, all over. This will help the foal learn that he can be touched anywhere and it won’t hurt. And best of all, this is a lesson the horse will carry with him throughout his life! Foals who have been touched in this manner shortly after birth learn not to move into or jump away from pressure on their bodies.

One thing that is very important to note. Take care not to desensitize the area around the foal’s sides. You want to preserve sensitivity to the rider’s cues in that area! However, you do want them to understand that they should move away from pressure. You can do this by tapping them until they move. When they finally do move, stop tapping. By teaching the foal the concept of moving away from pressure early on, saddle training will be a breeze later on down the road!

Imprinting is also a great way to get your foal ready for a lifetime of easy farriery. What’s the best way to do this? Pick up and handle each foot. Be sure to lightly tap the hoof and sole with a pick. By doing this, you’ll prepare the foal for foot handling, hoof picking, and other aspects of hoof care it will encounter during its adult life.

To help the foal accept things like accepting the bit, veterinary procedures, teeth floating, and deworming, make sure you pay attention to the baby’s mouth during the imprinting process. Put your fingers in both the mouth and the nose, being sure to feel around the gums and pull the lips back. Desensitizing the mouth will ensure that you foal remains a model patient–one that your vet and dentist enjoy working with–through adulthood.

During imprinting, make sure you only touch one part of the body at a time. Continue to touch that part of the body until the foal accepts what you are doing. Never quit while the foal is resisting! To do so only teaches the horse that resistance leads to you stopping. And that’s not a lesson you want any horse to learn!

Initial imprinting takes about an hour. Over the next 12 hours, do two more five- or 10-minute imprinting sessions. A 10-minute session done once or twice a day thereafter will ensure your horse stays up to speed.

By introducing your young foal to varied stimuli, you can instill a lifetime of trust and willingness!

About the Author

Ron Petracek – Equine Articles Director
Http://www.ClubEquine.com
Equine Classifieds,Equine Forum and Articles

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Halter breaking a foal – The dos and don’ts

February 25, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Article by Ane Visser

Halter breaking a foal can be a major experience for both the foal and the handler. Naturally, being a prey animal, a foal will try to find escape routes for anything it experiences as a threat and putting something around its head and pulling it with a rope is definitely regarded as such.
In order to make sure that the foal doesn’t view us as a danger, we have to avoid anything that takes them out of their comfort zone. If any encounter with humans is a positive experience, we will – guaranteed – reap the fruits of what we do at a later stage. Nothing is worse than a horse that turns its back to you when you come into the paddock.
What we normally do is the following. When the foal is a few day old, we approach the mare and foal carefully and just kneel down to make ourselves as little as possible. Normally, the foal will be curious and want to sniff the stranger that we are. If you slowly reach out your hand, it will want to know more about it and it will come toward you. Don’t make any sudden movements, as their reflexes will tell that they are being attacked and they will jump away. If you can stand up slowly, you may be able to touch it and scratch it on the areas that are usually itchy, like the bum and the shoulder. In these first few days you lay the basis of trust for the exercises to come.
When you feel it becomes easier to get closer to the foal, you can try to lay a rope on its back. We normally start doing that when they are a week or so old. More than likely, the foal will jump away and try to get rid of it, but after a few times it will find out that there is nothing to be afraid of and you can start moving he rope toward the neck and head.
Once the foal is comfortable with the rope, you can start doing the same with a halter (make sure it is the right size). And as long as it is comfortable, you can move the halter around its nose. The foal might find this strange initiallyand try to get rid of it, and all that is fine. If you repeat these steps several times, it will start to feel more relaxed about it. At some stage, you will be able to close the buckle and leave the halter on. It might be a little upset about it, but very soon it will accept this strange thing around its face. At that stage, you want to get it used to some pressure on the halter using a rope. You can hook on the rope and put some pressure on it and see how the foal behaves. More than likely, it will be a bit panicked, and it is important to release the pressure immediately. Stay beside the foal and follow it without pressure on the rope. Allow it to stay close to the mare, its safety and comfort zone.
Once it becomes more comfortable with pressure on the halter, you can then try to “lead” it with the rope. You will need a helper who can lead the mare and naturally the foal will follow. Make sure you stay beside the foal behind its eye, in order to make it walk away from you in forward direction. Don’t position yourself between the mare and the foal. Ideally, you will have a second helper who walks behind the foal, but if you don’t, you can put your right hand on its whither to encourage it to move forward. With your left hand you can play with the pressure on the halter if it goes too fast and soon it will learn that the pressure means that it has to slow down. Release the pressure when it goes at the right speed or when it suddenly panics away from you. Try to keep the foal close to the mare and reward it with scratching the itchy bits.
Halter breaking a foal doesn’t need to take much time. You can get to the stage of following the mare (starting from the rope on its back) in just a few days. It is important that you do these exercises regularly and not for too long. We normally spend 5 to 15 minutes to do an exercise to get to the next step, and we do that a few times per day. The rest of the day, we leave the mare and foal alone. This way, the foal learns that dealing with people is fun (the scratchy bit), and it also learns that when we ask something from them, it will be something they can confidently do, without being pushed over their limits.

About the Author

At Dutch Horses Unlimited, we breed and train quality horses in New Zealand with the focus on dressage and show jumping. We have young dressage horses for sale, as well as show jumpers. They are raised in a group of broodmares to make sure that they grow up in a natural social environment. We breed for talent, and at the age of three, they start their training under the saddle.

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