Page 166 - February 2021

EQUINE HEALTH
Foals and young horses understand the concept of discipline because this is how the pecking order works in the herd. For example: A youngster that is too aggressive when nursing his mother (bunting and impatient) gets a nip on the backside.
mational problem that you want to change, you need to do it before they are two to three months old and then follow through after that. By looking at these foals early, if there was something that needed to be changed, I could do that,” says Nelson.
“The second reason was that I got to teach that baby how to pick up its feet and stand. When I am teaching it how to stand, I put the foal against the wall or against the mare.
I start with a hind foot (because it’s easier for the youngster to balance on three legs with a hind foot up rather than a front foot since the fronts carry more weight). I take as long as necessary, because I don’t want to frighten the baby,” she says.
“I teach it to pick up its foot, and then teach it to hold its foot up. Some people teach their horses to pick up a foot, but they don’t hold it up long enough. With some clients, I finally told them to not pick up their horse’s feet because they were not helping that horse’s foot manners. I teach people to pick their horse’s feet up and hold them so the horse gets used
to the idea of having its foot held, and not just jerk it away.”
Horses are prey animals. They instinctively want to be ready to run away from predators. Escape is their self-defense, so they feel vulner- able if they don’t have control of their feet
and legs. “Being able to move, to run away, is always a concern for horses, even though most domestic horses live in an artificial environ- ment without wolves or saber-toothed tigers. If you are picking up their foot and holding it up, you are asking them to go against a hard-wired instinctive response. So having their foot held up has to be more pleasurable than the natural anxiety of having that foot trapped,” she says.
If the foal is nervous the first time, just hold the foot briefly rather than trying to hold onto the leg, and don’t hold it very high off the ground. This is less threatening to him at first. “I always take plenty of time when working with foals and teach people how to run their hands down the leg and then pick up the foot.”
Dean Moshier, a farrier in Delaware, Ohio, says that with young foals he doesn’t hold the foot very high when he does the first trim, or even put a front foot between his legs if it’s a flighty youngster. “I don’t want that foal to feel restricted and trigger a fight,” he says.
“It’s easier to handle their feet the first few times when they are still with the mare. For the first trim, it helps to have the youngster in the stall watching mommy get done. Then they have a clue about what is going on and it’s not such a foreign idea. It’s amazing how easy it is to train a horse if they have some idea about what is expected of them. The same thing with feet. So, I trim the mare before I attempt to
do the baby the first time. Then the baby has some idea about what I am doing, what I smell like, the tools, and what the tools sound like. Nothing is scary; they can see that mom is calm about this. But if their first trim doesn’t happen until they are weanlings, we’re at a disadvantage because we don’t have mom as a role model,” says Moshier.
Desensitizing the young horse, getting him used to being touched and realizing it won’t hurt him, may take longer with some horses than others. “When the horse is a baby, a lot of people like to touch it all over as soon as
it’s born,” says Tommy Boudreau, a farrier in Texas. “I’ve had a lot of clients who try to
imprint their foals and then don’t do anything else with them until they bring them in as weanlings to halter break. They can’t believe it when that colt is spooky and trying to get away from them and won’t let them pick its feet up.”
If imprinting is not done properly - continu- ing each action (ear handling, mouth handling, foot handling, etc.) until the foal no longer resists and completely submits and is totally
at ease with it - the result may be a youngster that is not afraid of people but hasn’t learned to submit to a person.
Some of these half-way imprinted foals end up being headstrong and stubborn and harder to handle than one that wasn’t handled at birth at all. They may not be ticklish at all when you run your hand down the leg or try to pick up a foot, but they still try to jerk it away because they didn’t learn to yield during the imprinting session.
“People also need to realize that it takes more handling than just the first day,” says Boudreau. There is no substitute for spending a lot of time with a horse, starting slowly with gradual steps, to gain their trust and keep it.
“You have to treat them like your own kids. You want them to love you, but you also want them to respect you. There has to be some firmness along with kindness because you don’t want to spoil a young horse. Sometimes it takes
“The earlier the better,
for some corrections to be effective.” – Dr. Tia Nelson
It is important to note that imprinting is very important and must be continued. Some half-way imprinted foals end up being headstrong and stubborn and harder to handle than one that wasn’t handled at birth at all.
164 SPEEDHORSE February 2021