Horse riding isn’t all about riding—a giant lump of it is about looking after your horses. Taking care of your horses ‘ feet is one of the most pressing and challenging jobs you need to perform to maintain the horses ‘ overall health. Being proud creatures and particularly protecting of their appreciated hooves, horses won’t easily let you pick their feet up. You’ll find that more frequently than not, going about it haphazardly would finish up with you being kicked stupid.
Horses that have undergone intensive equestrian training all commenced with the fundamentals, and among the fundamentals of caring for them is caring for their feet. It will not be straightforward to get them to lift their feet up for you, but with enough patience and if you follow these steps, you’ll soon win.
The key things you want to remember are Restraint, Repetition, and Reward.
These three regularly surface in several facets of equestrian training—especially when doing basic actions. When it comes to making your horse raise her feet for you, you will need to apply all 3 repeatedly. First things first: work in an enclosure where you can get to work safely, and start with the front legs. You want to ascertain if you want more control of her. If you do, put a bridle or halter on her. The process entails repetitive steps of making her become used to your signals (without stomping on you). Run your hand down from her shoulder to her foreleg. Usually nothing happens yet, and if the usual holds, ask her (utilizing the reins naturally) to step back in order to shift her weight. When she does, release the rein and let go of her foreleg and reward her. Repeat this until she shifts her weight when you place your hand on her foreleg.
The following steps are the same, only applied to different, possibly more delicate areas of your horse’s feet. When she consistently shifts weight when you place your hand on her foreleg, advance your hand down to her cannon bone. She’ll shift her weight back for sure. Restrain her from doing this. When her foot leaves the ground (even a little), release the reins and move your hand away and reward her with praise or strokes. Repeat this process until she’s ok with you holding her foot after she shifts her weight when you touch her foreleg.
When you begin to be in a position to lift the whole hoof off the ground without getting yourself kicked back, don’t push your luck. Set her foot back down as soon as her toe lifts, release restraints, and reward her. Each other try keep hold of the suspended foot longer. If you believe you can safely restrain her from pulling away or putting her foot down until she relaxes, then do so. Otherwise, just let go and reward her.
The hind legs are a different matter, as some horses simply are not used to lifting up their hind legs. Almost all of the time its more difficult. The same process of restrain, reward, repeat is followed — only this time you start with getting her familiar to shifting her hips away from you. From there, work your way until one of her hind feet leaves the ground. A note of caution though: the back legs are stronger than the front, and some horses are natural born kickers. If you believe you need to run her through a deadening program such that she does not kick your head off when you touch her back legs, then by all possible means, do so. Remember the closer you are to a horse the less impact a kick has.
Restrain her just enough to let her to know your objectives, reward her for each correct response, and repeat the process until it sticks. Basically, that is what equestrian coaching is all about.
Horses are Heather Toms’ passion and she enjoys sharing her extensive knowledge through her 100’s of articles with other horse lovers… like all things about stable rugs
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