angelaclark2
says
You need to instill some discipline within yourself and not allow your horse to come into your space uninvited. There are several ways you can intentionally set this up. Do not lead your horse on a tight rein / rope by his left shoulder as you are teaching him to crowd you / lean and be heavy on his left shoulder. Do not hand feed or stand infront of the shoulder to rub or halter or bridle. Again this teaches your horse to push /lean on you, the bit etc. and handfeeding encourages biting. Pushing your horse is pointless as he weighs an awful lot more than you do adn you could quickly teach him that. Hitting him in the muzzle could make him head shy or as you often see, if you raise a hand quickly in front of his face he will jerk his head up real fast - a good indication that the horse has been previoulsy brutalised.
When your youngster is worried, he runs jumps towards you to seek comfort. This is potentially very dangerous so what can be done? Never work or lead your horse on a short line. This is the quickest way I know to get hurt. He must be able to move his feet to get himself out of trouble. On a short line this is impossible - he'll either jump on you or pull away, dragging you or you might lose him altogether. Neither of these are very good outcomes for you OR YOUR HORSE.
Work to establish a horse that will lead freely, one that will move when you move, stop when you stop and go at your pace without ever taking the slack out of the line. Teach him to drop his head to the ground and to flex it freely to the left and right, again never taking the slack out. Teach your horse to step freely to the left and the right and lead out on a circle. As the horse's foundation is set, you will find that the problems you are having go away.
It is impossible to go into much detail here but the message I would like to impart is that your youngsters behaviour is quite natural and does not require punishment but redirection through a foundation based on feel and release. I can recommend a book, true horsemanship through feel by bill dorrance and leslie desmond. The english requires some deciphering but if you can persevere there is a lot of good solid information to produce soft, willing, responsive horses without the use of pressure (be it direct or indirect, through tools, body language, environment). Hope this helps anyone who reads this.
06 January 2010 23:22
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