Horse Training in New Zealand PT. 2
From Wild Stallion to Mild Gelding
At the end of the month of February I spent two months training a bush bred, rising three year old stallion. I’m going to condense our time together into several small posts, 60 days of training is a lot of repetition and tedium, what follows is his story.
Part II
He was very responsive to the halter pressure and picked up on leading after about 3 minutes of slowly applying pressure from different angles. The only “problem” he displayed was the urge to try and nip me when he was worried or frustrated, something that would hold steady through all our time together, but with a rising threshold on his part. He never caught me with his teeth, and it was never very aggressive. I chose to ignore this behavior, I could see it was coming from a place of fear, and since I was the only person to interact with him, it wasn’t a learned behavior. When you choose to punish this kind of fear based behavior, it only increases the horse’s fear of people and usually teaches them to be more sneaky or aggressive later on.
Instead, I spent more time making him comfortable with me by picking up his feet, brushing his tail directly behind him and touching his face, lips and ears and generally rubbing all over him. Never at any point did I hurt him, or retaliate when he showed fear based aggression, I just kept quietly working on the spot. At this point in his training I introduced him to positive requirement or clicker training. I find it hard to juggle a lead rope, a clicker and a reinforcement/treating hand; so I have a sound that I make to mark/capture the behavior I want. A verbal tongue “Click Clack” sound, its very distinctive and is not a sound you can make on accident. (read post about clicker training)
Now that he could lead, I felt it would be great for him to start experiencing the “outside” world with me. (he was born in the wild and lived his first 2+ years roaming the valley so he had already experienced the outside world in many forms but new with me). I walked him through tea-tree bush tunnels and under/through wild 6’+ grass. He took it all in stride, as if he had been doing it all his life, because he had!
Experiencing the ocean was a bit scary, by his standards. When the first wave came towards him he took about 3 steps straight back before the break hit his legs and after that he stood rooted to the spot until it went out again. When the next wave came forward, we walked towards it and continued walking in the surf. That was that, he never spooked at the waves while I was leading him from the ground after that.
Stage I
The next big step of training, was getting him ready to drive or long rein from the ground. This involved teaching him to wear a bit, blanket, saddle or surcingle and girth. I started by introducing and rubbing a blanket on him and once he was more comfortable with it touching him, I put it on and off his back. I taught him to girth, by taking a long rope and tying it around his barrel, then sliding it back and forth and as we walked, I slowly added more pressure to the rope until it was quite snug, walking around until he seem content with the situation.
Stage II
Preparing Roman for driving- dragging ropes. He needed to be comfortable with ropes touching his legs and lower belly. I started by taking a long rope and draping it over his back so it barely touched the ground. More moving and swinging of the rope on his legs and around the body, this he did not mind. Now I added 2 ropes and more slack, dragging it over 5+ feet behind us. A little worry some but overall he did not panic or bolt. He learned early on when leading to stop and stand if something was bothering him. This is a safety I train into my horses so when they experience fear or fright they stop instead of bolting.
Stage III
Having a person walking behind him while girthed (with a surcingle) and reins run through the surcingle and clipped on his halter. This gives him the complete feel of driving without the possibility of to his mouth if he panics with a bit attached. He did not enjoy this, I started in the little “triangle” pen and just stood behind him, then slowly wiggled the rope and asked him to “walk”. He tried to turn to face me and as I followed I applied pressure to straighten his face around. This mind you, was super scary, having the ropes apply pressure along his sides and he spent a few minutes canter around the pen together. After about 5 minutes of trotting and spinning and canter he finally got it. At this point he learned to stop spinning when he got all tangled up in the ropes and just stand.