Jan 18
Everyone is getting much better with letting me pick up their back feet (except for you know who…Shiloh) I can pick up everyone’s tail except his as well. I’ve been putting my arms around each of them and even Shiloh lets me do that. The big news, though, is that I clipped Sam’s face today with the electric clippers. I was pleasantly surprised at how calm he accepted the noisy thing. I do have a set that have a high and low setting and I usually start most first time horses with the quieter low setting, but I was able to switch to the faster speed and didn’t have any more reactions from him than the slower one. I was able to take all of the long whiskers off of his nose and the long “goat” hairs under his jaw. He wasn’t ready for me to do his bridle path, although he did let me put the clippers up behind his ears without much problem. The Icy’s manes are so thick that I will be hard pressed to use my small clippers(A-5 Oster) on them. The task was made worse by the fact that when it is raining and kind of warm their hair is wet. He looks very cute, though, and I was terribly proud of him. I’m encouraged and will start doing one Icy a day until I have them all clipped.
I use the clippers on new horses that come in for training as an ice breaker to get them to trust me in an activity that is inherently scary. Some horses don’t have any trouble with it, but some need to discover that I can do something scary to them that doesn’t hurt and as long as I say it is okay, it is okay. This is part of establishing that I make the decisions and am the leader. Before you can train any horse, you must establish that you make all of the decisions when you are near them. Eventually, they will follow directions without question. That is what we really want them to do. We don’t actually teach them to walk, trot and canter or turn or stop or go. They know how to do all of that within an hour of birth. What we want them to do and what we need to teach them is to do it when we want them to.
The first thing that I always have to do with any horse that comes to me is establish the pecking order. There is only one head mare in my barn and that is me. By establishing that, all the rest is just repetition to teach them the cues and balance in what I ask them to do. All horses want to be with the alpha horse. The leader makes all of the important decisions. Once they have established themselves as the leader, they rarely have to do it again unless a new horse comes into the group. I must always make sure that a horse knows without a doubt that I am the leader. Part of it is my manner around them, part of it is making them back off if they challenge me and part of it is never putting them in a position to question my authority. That means that 100% of the time I must be aware of what the horses are doing when I am around them. We like our equine friends to be chummy with us, but they play much harder than we do and they are a lot bigger. Discipline is one of the most important tools that we use and many people just don’t know how or when to use it.
Like I said, I am very happy with Sam today and I expect the others to follow suit, even Shiloh.
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