Excited about getting your mare into equestrian training suited for dressage? An old adage reminds of crossing bridges when you’re there, and if you and your equine partner have just met, you’re some distance from the dressage bridge—you’re probably still at the holistic pony care and health maintenance bridge. Before starting on excellent coaching regimes and horse riding expeditions, you first have to learn how to care for your mare and her grooming and hygiene wants. Take cleaning her udders as an example.

If you have been feeling out your horse, you ought to know she is both proud and sensitive. She’ll easily go fight or flight on any danger or discomfort—even just the perception of it. And almost all of the time, particularly for horses that are relatively new to their domestic dwellings, the source of both danger and discomfort is you. And if you believe you’ve seen your mare get sensitive when you touch her ears or mouth, try jumping on her udders.

You want to establish you are not going to hurt her. From there, you make her get used to your touch, irrespective of where you’re touching. The whole process needs patience, and isn’t a one day deal. You’ll have to patiently work on getting her comfy to the routines for days until she ultimately gets it. Before starting, know 2 things: practice patience and always reward her positive responses and improvements, and always stay safe—that is, away from places she could kick your head off.

The steps to making a pony let you touch her is to begin at places you can already touch, and carefully work your way to the part that you want her to become used to. Say you wish to train her to not react negatively to your touching her ear. Then start stroking her face where she allows you, then gradually work your way to her ears. Move your hand quick enough so that your hand brushes her ear and moves away before she’ll react, gradually slowing down until you can touch her ear, then hold it, and do whatever with it without her reacting. Always reward your pony for responding correctly, even if it is just for not pulling away. The same general process applies for your horse’s udder. Only before you get there you’ll need to make her comfortable with you touching nearly every other part of her body first.

Know that she will most likely unleashe on you if you rush the task. So work slowly. To be safe, always stay next to her shoulders as if to mount and start on a horse riding spree, so if she steps away with her hips and kicks out you either can not be reached or have sufficient time to scram. Holding her head toward you through her reins also helps, so that you can partially restrain her when she starts reacting.

As in equestrian sport where you do not ride with just your bare hands, you also don’t clean your horse—any part of her—with just your hands. So be sure to introduce whatever it is you’ll be using to clean your mare’s udders to her the same way you did with your hands. And don’t use cleansers that will irritate her.

Most horses need sheath or udder cleaning only four times each year and others might need monthly cleaning. You can do it yourself or let a vet do it. Even if you select the second, you can still have to go through the motions of coaching your horse to let folk touch her sensitive areas. Vets can help in giving pointers when you make a decision to do so.

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 cheap horse rugs