Taming a Wild Colt

Posted on May 14, 2012 by J.R.

I may change, but for today I am calling our new foal “Blitz”.

I’ve heard that the definition of imprinting a foal is a process of touching the foal for an extended time and breathing into its nostrils within the first few hours of its birth. I was able to do that.  Now that the foal is a week old, by that definition I’m no longer imprinting when I handle him.

When I grain the mare I have made a custom of handling Blitz. He is still small enough so I can restrain him from running away by putting my hand in front of his shoulders on his brisket. Once restrained, I have been petting him all over his body. He is especially worried about his face and his belly. At first he tried to jump away. Now he only winces at the those sensitive places.

Today there was a marked change. I did not have to restrain him. He even took a few cautious steps toward me but was definitely interested. When I scratched his withers he bit me with his toothless mouth on my nose. It was all in the spirit of friendliness. I think it came from a kind of mutual grooming instinct, but I don’t think I’ll allow it when he gets teeth.

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Dancer x Titan = Brand New Baby Colt

Posted on May 10, 2012 by J.R.

Dancer delivered at about 10 o’clock last night, May 7, 2012. I’ve been putting her in the barn for the last couple of nights as a precaution that she wouldn’t deliver the foal near the pond or someplace dangerous. The foal was not due for another week or 10 days. Just before I went to bed at about 11, I called her in for grain and for another night in the barn. She did not come when I called, so I suspected the new foal. I went out in the dense fog with a flashlight and after a bit of searching, sure enough found them. The foal’s hind legs were still wrapped up in the birth sack but he was busy struggling to stand up. I went back to the house and got Kathy to help me carry the flashlight and open gates. I carried the foal, still wet from birth, back to the barn, Kathy walked a little in the lead lighting the way with Dancer worried and following close behind.

When we got in the barn, I spent about an hour imprinting the foal, minus the timeouts I allowed him to try to find the milk faucets. Imprinting is petting/touching a newborn horse all over it’s body. He was worried about it and did relax a bit but not much. I did it again this morning, May 8. He was still worried and maybe a little better. I will continue to do it and see if I can take away the fear of human touch completely. I have imprinted my foals in this way before, though there are many foals I haven’t done any imprinting on. To tell you the truth, I can’t tell if it does any good or not. Is the grown-up horse any better for it? In theory the process seems to make sense. I believe the horse experts when they say that a colt is born with all his learning faculties and can start to learn same as a grown-up horse. Every horse is different. Some foals are comfortable with touching right away and some are not. I don’t know how you could do scientific study to find out if it really works. If you had 1000 foals and imprinted half of them, you could calculate if a higher percentage of horses are easier to train amongst the imprinted ones. I don’t know. It all seems a little far-fetched to me. Nevertheless, when the circumstances allow, I’ll continue to do the imprinting.

The birth of a colt on our farm is one of my favorite things. It is like a Christmas present sitting under the tree that you finally get to open on Christmas morning. This foal is a strong, healthy colt. He seems a little bigger than usual. He is bright bay. He has a unique asymmetrical strip on one side and a snip on the other side of his face, as if God was going to paint in a big symmetrical blaze and then got distracted by other important things, such as saving a lot of people from a tsunami in the Pacific Ocean or something, and didn’t get back to finish painting the middle part of the blaze.

I haven’t chosen a name for him yet.

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Training Dina: day five through eight

Posted on May 3, 2012 by J.R.

These photos illustrate the exercise of pulling. I’m normally mounted on the horse, but I was doing this exercise on this horse when she fell over. When Kathy took these pictures I was  in too much pain to mount.

In these photos I am applying very little pressure to her nose, just enough to tighten the mecate. She was relaxed and compliant this time.

A friend called to offer condolence after our fall. He told me that his horse fell in a similar way as described in the last post. He reminded me that the horse gurus suggest this method for disciplining and settling a horse down. It is not an aggressive correction. The exercise needs to be done mildly. When the horse is stationary, you pull the horse’s head around. If they are tense, they will relax. Pull both ways left and right. It seems to change their attitude. I’ve done it many times on all my horses and I’ve never had an incident.  The trouble is, if the horse attempts to move forward with it’s head pulled back in the manner previously described, it will fall. The horse must remain stationary; if not it is a recipe for disaster.

Stunt riders on the old western movies, before the humane laws, used this method to knock their horses down for battle scenes and such. It generally happens at a gallop. Next time you watch an old Western you can see the riders, usually at full gallop, pulling their horses, forcing them to fall. I bet the riders sustained a lot of broken bones when doing that stunt.

For the past three days Dina and I round penned gently for 15-20 min. I saddled her up and rode her two miles out and back. I kept her at a fast trot and slow canter the whole way. We worked at keeping a steady speed and keeping her from changing gaits on her own initiative, which she attempted often. I consider it a misbehavior for a horse to change it’s gait without my cue.  She was pleasant with no sign of crabbiness. As we walked up our own driveway, we practiced the half pass, halts and rein back.

I am slowing down the training and regimen. For the time being I just want to put some miles on her back. I will still make an effort encouraging her to relax, slow down, be soft to my aids and lose the crabby attitude.

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Horse Training: Dina-mite, day four

Posted on April 14, 2012 by J.R.

It was a gray, gusty day. I knew Dina-mite would be tempted to be spooky in the wind so I made an effort to keep things as calm and pleasant as possible. I led her to the round pen with the saddle on and I round-penned her gently for a short time. Then I rode her walking around the big pen. She was crabby, heavy and resistant. I may have been a little impatient or bothered by her resistance. I should have taken her back to the round-pen. But instead I employed an exercise (used sometimes as a discipline or an attitude adjuster) that I’d done many times before with Dina-mite. This is the exercise: while mounted and with the horse standing still, I gently pull her head back both ways until her nose nearly touches my knees. This normally helps the horse to relax. As I attempted this exercise with her, I pulled left and she gave me her nose reluctantly, showing some signs of irritation. As I was pulling right, she leaped sideways and up and fell hard, wedging me between her bulk the hard ground. She struggled to get up with my right leg and part of my torso underneath her and then fell again. I didn’t have time to get away. The second time she fell, she didn’t get up and I was able to wriggle free with effort. My wind was knocked out. Trying to get my breath and my wits, I crawled a few feet away from the horse still lying there. As I began to breath more normally, still on my hands and knees, I took an assessment of how badly I was hurt.

She just laid there like she thought she was going to die. She was emotionally traumatized but I knew she wasn’t physically hurt. After I’d made my own physical assessment and concluded that I wasn’t going to die either and could move, albeit painfully, I nudged her gently a couple of times with my foot. She got up. At that point I seriously considered calling it a day. I knew I hadn’t broken any bones, except possibly some ribs. I was feeling pretty sick but I hated to leave the horse on such a bad note. I chose to work it out. I led her to the round pen. I took the saddle off. I wanted her to stand for the saddle without restraint of bridle or halter After 15 minutes of free lounging, she joined up and offered to stand for the saddle. Then I rode her to George’s. She was nervous and worried for the rest of our ride but she was not crabby. She was hot and sweaty when we got back to the barn. I brushed her (allowing her to cool off), grained her and put her away.

Either I was in shock or adrenaline was working or I was just willful enough to finish the job with the horse, but when I finally got in the house, I had the shakes and my left upper ribs and shoulder were traumatized. I suspect it’ll be a couple of days before I can get on the horse again but I think I’ll be okay to train from the ground soon.

Hopefully this episode can be a reminder and warning to me and other numbskulls. Horses learn like we do–three steps forward, two steps backwards. As a trainer, when I see that the horse has done an action correctly, I tend to think we have covered that maneuver already and can go on to another step but the horse doing the action correctly a couple of times doesn’t mean that the horse has learned the movement forever. Repetition and patience is the key. Presumption has often been my fatal mistake. Going by the day previous, or memory of her from a couple years ago, I was presuming that she would perform correctly according to my cue or maybe just stand there frozen, but the violent panic attack took me completely by surprise. Most, if not all, of the more serious accidents or mishaps that I’ve had with horses have happened in just this way, that is, me presumptuously pushing the horse beyond it’s training.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Horse Training: Dina-mite, Day Three

Posted on April 12, 2012 by J.R.

I saddled her by the barn and then rode to the round pen about 100 yards. She was crabby, ears pointing out flattened sideways, tail swishing. I round-penned her for a good long while. She brightened up considerably and got a lot more congenial. I rode her to George’s, about a mile.  She needed to become supple to the reins by tipping and/or dropping her nose on cue, but at this point she was heavy and resistant. As I pulled to the side and when I ask her to bend at the pole, she violently dropped her nose and then pushed back again obviously irritated. After a few efforts at rein-back she began doing it nicely, although her head position was still too high. She was quite responsive to my legs and half-passed with agility.

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