Interesting coincidence--my mare Prim and Kyle, her goat stablemate, got out yesterday morning. My husband interrupted my beauty sleep by running into the bedroom and yelling, "Prim and Kyle got out!" Five minutes later I was out the door (dressed, even--with carrots in my pocket--and I'm not a morning person). We have 20 acres and I don't know how long they were out (I'd forgotten to chain the gate of their pipe corral closed), but they hadn't gotten very far. Because one of the first commands I taught Prim was to come when I whistle, I whistled as soon as I saw her and held out the carrot. She came galloping towards me, Kyle gamely trying to keep up, and they both followed me into their pipe corral.

As I said in my earlier post: basic training. If this horse is too unreliable to ride at the moment (and he sounds as though he is), there's still a lot you can do with him--like teach him to respond to voice commands. You do need a corral or other enclosed space, though, so he can't decide he's had enough of you for the day and run off. I think somebody else suggested this also.

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