Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Byron came into our barn ( I board 2 other QH horses there) on June 28, 2006 a few hours after he was born as a little orphan.
I couldn't help but fall in love with this little helpless hungry guy and started raising him by hand.
Needless to say I bought him pretty much on the spot.Big risk, but I couldn't help it.
He is not afraid of anything incl. loud noises, tarps ect. Lets me pick up his feet and likes to be brushed.

Now here is my question:

I do understand that foals kick and do jumping jacks around their moms.
Well, I am his mom but can't take any kicking very well. He just started this a few days ago.
How can I get him to stop from doing that?

I need to say that on the leadline he will follow commants like trot, walk and stay. He will also play soccer if a ball is placed in front of him.
He is a pretty smart cookie.

Thanks

You are not going to be able to curb his natural excitement and colt like actions very easily. But you can enforce restrictions within your personal space as folks like to call it. The problems come in when you fail to enforce him not being allowed into your personal space( an area of 24" -36" in all directions of your body), but still want to love on him closely. I would suggest you get the CD from Clinton on ground training and colt behavior modifiction and use those techniques. Quite often you can see his shows on RFD TV on the direct sat. dish.

John Cherry
Cherryville Farms

Cherryville Farms

Thanks,
you are right. I have to make sure about my personal space.
He gets very excited when I take him into the round pen to run around. I must say that at the present time he is inside the barn due to a huge hernia which gets fixed this Friday.
I let him run every night for a while and he has a blast.
I just don't know how to get him to understand about my personal space.

Well to start with, when he is on halter you have to physically enforce the rule. Ie if he comes into it you snap the halter and use the verbal command of no. Over a very short period of time this will sink into his head. When he is loose and you are in his stall or the round pen it is a little more difficult to enforce, but still must be done with a physical reaction and a verbal command. There is a great portion in the CD that addresses working on these and other problems. Additionally there are good sections on things for you and him to do together that will produce the kind of horse you can enjoy as an adult.

But then again that is only part of it, I would really suggest you take a look at the tapes etc. You want to basically re-enforce good habits while he is still small and discourage bad habits for when he is grown and a pain to work with.

John Cherry
Cherryville Farms

Cherryville Farms

http://www.rfd-tv.com/ go to this HTML and you can see the different trainers that have shows on the channel. I personally like Anderson and Reis, but all of them are good.

John Cherry
Cherryville Farms

Cherryville Farms