Young Horse Training

You can begin training your young horse at any age.

A normal foal, born away from humans will be jumpy and a little wary of human beings.

The foal will already have innate fear responses to scary objects, sounds and people.

If you are present at the birth of a foal, you can begin training it moments after it has emerged from the bag and has been licked down by its mother.

This is known as "imprint training".

The new born foal innately knows to follow and bond with any large animal that is above it at the time of birth.

Normally this large animal is it's mother. However, if a human being is present the foal can also learn to bond also with the human.

Critical training given as soon as possible after birth, can help create a horse that is responsive and has much lower levels of fear, than a horse would naturally have of a human predator.

We can use this period of time to habituate/desensitize the foal to many different stimuli and events that will occur throughout the horses life. e.g being touched all over by humans, having their feet handled, seeing flapping cloths, plastic bags, the feel and sound of clippers, loud noises etc... the list is practically endless!

By habituating the newborn foal to these stimuli, the foal will retain this learning, and will be a calmer, easier to handle horse in later life that will be less reactive to normally scary stimuli.

We can also use this period of time immeditately after the foal is born and the few days following birth, to teach the foal to yield away from physical pressure.

Yielding to pressure is a skill that the horse will need to know for the rest of its life.

to be continued...