Colt Good Leading
Any advice on what more I can or should be doing with my colt?
As known from my previous post I have a 5 month old colt. I go to where he is boarded and spend time with him brush him and talk to him. (Somtimes he is in a paddock and sometimes in his stall.) He does lead and is halter broke. Sometimes he gets stubborn adn won't move when he is being led though. Am I doing enough for his age or should I being doing more. I want him to be really good when I can actually start training him. Does anyone else have advice on what more I can do with him now to get him ready for later? Thanks to all in advance!
I've raised 3 of them now. My biggest suggestion I can give you is to read and learn. You can interact with that colt for hours on end, but if it's not done right, you can really mess him up to the point of making him difficult to start when the time comes.
If you are asking what you should be doing with him now, I have to assume your experience with young horses is somewhat low and you likely haven't started a horse before, otherwise you'd have some experience upon which to draw to answer your own question. Learn these things in this order to the fullest of your ability:
1. The nature of horses - what drives them, how do they communicate, what are their needs.
- Horse's first need is for food, in the wild they travel great distances for food, water and needed minerals.
- Horse's second need is for safety from predators.
- Horse's 3 need which could be considered part of 1st or 2nd is the need for social order. In every group of horses, there is a leader (wild=herd stallion) and all other members of the group follow a heirarchy in their place within the herd. This social order keeps them fed - the leaders of the group lead the whole herd to the proper places to eat safely, the herd stallion approaches a watering hold first, checks for danger, sips, sniffs, then backs away to allow the others to drink in their orders once he's established safety, when all are done, he drinks his fill then starts the herd on their next venture.
In any interaction with this horse, you are a herd - if just you and he, a herd of two. One of you must be the leader and the other the follower. You become the leader by establishing trust and respect from the little guy - and you don't do this in a Human Dominance fashion. You must understand how horses think and how they perceive everything you do in order to have successful interactions with him.
Consider that horses communicate with as little movement as the movement of a tail or ear. Your breathing rate, heart rate, anxiety level, body movements and focus are all taken in by him and telling him something. He cannot understand your words (no matter whether you think he does or not) so he must try to figure out everything your body is doing (including those things you aren't even aware of) and what that's communicating to him.
When you understand these things, all interactions you have with him change in his perception and yours. You will begin to understand what he knows and what he doesn't know and you can begin doing the following:
teach him to move away from pressure with gradual lessons based on pressure amounts - Pat Parelli's a good teacher of these starts. He teaches you how to start with 1 ounce of pressure and move to pounds of pressure and how to release the pressure to reward the animal when he's correctly interpreted the request - Pat's the master of "love, language and leadership" when it comes to horses and making us understand.
After he understands pressure, you can teach him all sorts of movements and "commands"/"requests" to build on his learning.
He should know how to tie well and stand quietly both cross tied and single tied - but the way to teach this is NOT to tie him up and let him figure it out.
He needs to be able to pick up all 4 of his feet, hold them for the farrier and balance well- this is learned, not natural for him. His feet should be handled every day in order to afford him the opportunity to learn these things.
At 5 months old, his little mind can't comprehend much - when you sense that he's not focusing, he's gone as far as he can. A young horse like he shouldn't be required to be tied long nor to stand long, he's the equivalent of a 3 or 4 year old kid - go, go, go.
By the time he's a yearling, all these little things will add up and you can start progressing to more complicated requests - by the time you are ready to start teaching him to ride, you should be able to complete anything you'd ask of him while mounted from the ground. He should know all leg cues through the pressure education from the ground so the transition is easy for him.
Many clinicians are available by book, video or in person to teach you these things. By any three DVDs from 3 different trainers on starting colts and you'll be so geeked by all the cool stuff, you'll be bustin' with wantin' to help the little buy learn.
He's your buddy, not a possession - treat him like a trusted brother or sister important enough to fully understand and you'll succeed. If you go about any interaction with the focus on results or him "minding you", you will fail.
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