When should I start to play with a young horse? Playing with any horse, young or old, is best done when you have time, when you are not in a rush. For this article I’m talking about a horse that’s a year old or younger.
There is something called “foal imprinting” that is done in the first hour from a foal’s birth. There is much debate as to whether it is good or bad. In my experience, it is only as good as the knowledge and skill of the person doing it. I believe the idea or concept is great and can really speed what the horse is going to need to know in the future.
Whether you do foal imprinting or not, there are plenty of good and fun things you can do with your horses, in their first year, that can prepare them for the future. At any age, and probably earlier than later, having a horse confident around us, responsive, and respectful, is a great thing.
When spending time with your young horses, the objective is to create a partner and not a pet. Someday soon that cute little foal will be big and outweigh us by five or six times. Even as youngsters, horses need to know that we are the leaders and what is safe for them and us. We get them to move for us; not the other way around. I’ve seen yearlings that have already been taught to chase their owners out of the pen. They may be cute but they are still horses and play all the horse games. They know how to use their feet and they know that “he who moves his feet less wins.” If you allow them to start chewing on you, or pushing you around when they are little, look out when they get older.
Some of the practical things you can teach your young horses are to be handled without fear, haltering, leading, picking up the feet, follow a feel, don’t push or pull on pressure, have confidence around us and help them become overall more brave. Even a young horse should have his feet attended to regularly.
Having a horse that is confident around us means we can catch them, load them in the trailer and take them to the veterinarian if needed. If they had been taught not to push or pull on pressure, maybe they wouldn’t get cut up in fences as easily. I have heard of colts that were just weaned and separated from the herd and something spooked them and they ran straight into a fence and broke their neck. If they were taught to be braver, they may not have spooked so badly.
If your foals are born at home, you can spend time with them each day to progressively build their acceptance to humans. While they are getting used to you, use your hands to help them accept your touch all over their body, preparing them for where your hands, saddle, cinch and the halter will go. If they trust you, the rest is easy to do but still needs to be done correctly.
Progressively expose them to the halter, then get to where it is easy to put it on. From this point, very carefully teach the foals to follow a feel. Give them lots of time to find their way forward off of the pressure. If they pull back, which is very likely, slip a little rope so they don’t feel trapped, but keep some pressure on until they move forward. It can be as little as a half step with any foot in the right direction. Then let them have time to think about things.
If you don’t have the luxury of being there when the foal is born, you can still build its confidence and acceptance to humans. Some of the foals we play with in the mountains, for example, have never seen humans until they are four or five months old. They have already learned to live with the herd in the wild and stay clear of anything that isn’t their mother. These ones won’t allow you to walk up and touch them for quite a while. They are very wary and have to be to survive in the wild.
With enough time and the right amount of approach and retreat these foals will allow you to get up to them. When you do get close enough and allow them to touch you, that is when you can reassure them the easiest. It can take a bit of time to get to the point where you can actually halter a wild horse. If you don’t have a lot of time and 25 head to handle then using a rope to deter them from staying just out of reach is the fastest way I know to get up to a horse and start the process of building the confidence and acceptance.
Having said that, many people who put a rope on a horse feel they need to pull the rope tight and start a tug-of-war. I suggest letting the foal wear the rope, then rub it with the rope from a distance. Don’t get in a rush to touch the foal or lead it around. Allow the foal to get used to the feel of the rope without tension on it. When it has relaxed, try using the rope in such a manner that it helps the horse accept its feel, by laying the rope across the foals back, hip and legs, inside and out, giving it time to wear the rope and get over the feel of it.
Then start teaching yields. Put it across the nose from a distance and tip the nose in your direction left and right. All the while you are getting closer to helping the foal feel, follow a feel, and trying to convince it to give you a sniff and allow you to touch them so it can feel your good intention. No horse wants to be lead by something it doesn’t trust. Earn the trust first then the leading is much easier.
Once you have some trust established, foals have to learn to follow a feel but they won’t have to be worried about us as predators taking them back to the cave. After you’ve earned his trust and got the halter on, you can continue with the list of practical things to teach them.
Just because the halter is on doesn’t mean your approach can change. You still need to present everything progressively and fairly from the foal’s perspective. You need to think down the road and ask yourself: Are we creating a horse that wants to be caught, or one that doesn’t? Is the foal calm and respectful, dull and pushy, or scared and untrusting?
What kind of horse appears is the responsibility of the handler. Yes, foals are all different, but if you step up for the job of handling and especially training young and untrained horses then you can’t blame it on the horse if the project goes sideways. If the right approach, feel, timing and understanding is used, a wonderful, very usable training situation will happen. It’s called curiosity and it’s easily found in these young horses. Once they can relax enough to get curious around us the fun really begins. Keeping the curiosity in any age horse is a wonderful tool. It only shows up when there is trust and they are presented with get-to situations rather than always a got-to situation.
Visit our website, www.thehorseranch.com, and look up “Articles” under “Happenings,” where we’ve put a video clip together that I hope you will enjoy.