How To Handle Your Foal

 As said there are at least three ways, you can start him off.

No headcollar for the first day or so

Headcollar from day one

Clicker Training

Lets deal with all three to some degree.

First Way No Headcollar

To lead him for the first time, you first need to have Mum on a lead. Then place both hands around the little one. The left arm around his breast and the right arm around the hindquarters. One arm prevents him from moving forward with its hand placed on his off shoulder. The other restrains him from going backwards and this hand is on his hip. This prevents him from moving away from you.

Naturally at first he will struggle to free himself from this strange person. Usually, he will try to plunge forward into your left arm. Fortunately he is not very strong at this time, and if you keep cool you should have little difficulty in holding him

His first lesson should be in a controlled area. Remember that it is a basic element in the horses make-up that he will give up on any type of struggle or resistance from the moment he realises he can't win.

Since horses never forget, this is a very powerful first lesson that will imprint on his mind. As you are not going to frighten or hurt him, he will gain confidence and learn to trust you as time goes on.

Lead the mare around and push the little foal around gently behind her. In this way, he can see Mum and feel confident. From here, you can keep leading him and then put a headcollar on him after a day or so.

Why Does My Horse Do That

The Horses Memory

The thing that is working in our favour is that the horse has an incredible memory. Now this can work both for you and against you. So just remember, that all good things are remembered but so are the acts that he gets away with! So the lesson here is to make sure that only good things happen if possible.

He can associate the idea of reward with good actions and punishment with bad ones. However, you must make the reward or punishment instantaneous as a few seconds can be too late. This applies to all animals.

As an example, we had a gelding who was a bit bossy and again, he was the offspring of our boss mare at the time. He was her first foal and she didn't mother him very well at all. She protected him but she was not overly affectionate to him. After all, she had been a show mare before this youngster arrived and motherhood was not one of her career goals.

He was only about 18 months at the time, and a complete rarity in that no one in the herd particularly liked him. Dragged up as opposed to being showered with love. He was the one we refer to later in the picking up the feet lesson. One day, all the mares and the younger ones were next to the house and I went out to just be sociable and check them over. The mares acknowledged my presence but went on eating. I was chewing a "Minty" at the time (this is a mint flavoured lollie). As I moved near the gelding, he decided that what I was eating, must have been pretty good and by golly he wanted it!