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Horse suddenly won't go through stall door
My friend's 2 year old paint mare, which she has had on the farm since birth, has started to refuse to go through her stall door opening. She was funny about it for a day or two a couple of months ago but got over it by herself. Now she is doing it everyday. She rears up, puts on the breaks and won't go in. When she finally does, she races in. Coming out of the stall is the same way. She's never gotten caught on the door latch or anything else that could have hurt her walking through the door.
Any ideas??
Thank you, Julie
Hi Julie,
This is a 'baby' yet, immature and perhaps easily made afraid. It can be something you or your friend did not see or notice. But it was there and her fear was not addressed as it was coming on. What I would do now is to go back to some basics. I do not know how much your friend knows about training horses, but it would be a reasonable solution to take the horse back to some basic ground training to begin again to develop some 'trust' as that is what it is all about. I would additionally make certain she is desensitized to being touched anywhere on her body. Horses that race through doors, etc. need training that sends them through openings, trailers, stall doors, etc. calmly, without a human going in first. Do you or your friend understand how to do this? There are similarities to longeing where we send the horse around us. But in this case we send them (drive them) in a straight line instead of in a circle. Begin by one line driving the horse down a straight fence line, turing around and back up the opposite direction. Drive her through gate openings that are wide. Begin to make the spaces smaller and smaller that you drive her through (called 'squeezing' the horse). You should be able to send this horse in and out of very tight gates when needed. Trailer training this way is very desirable as well. Let me know if you understand this. There are DVD's in my shopping corral that demonstrate this. Viewing the techniques is a really efficient way to get the education needed. Please consider the possibilities. There are lots of good training DVD's out there easily found in the backs of all horse magazines if you want to explore someone else's techniques. Good Luck and please keep me posted.
Best regards, Franklin