Franklin Levinson's
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Messed up my horse
Dear Mr.Franklin,
I found your site surfing the net looking for information on training my 5 year old quarter horse. It is a great site and I have bookmarked it. Anyway I made a big boo boo with my horse and I am worried I may have hurt my trust with her because I just bought her about 2 months ago. The problem is I was feeding my 2 horses and I put their hay in a wheelbarrel and pushed it out across the field. When I put the 1st to flakes out, my older horse as usual went to it first. Then as I put last to flakes out my new horse went to eat, there was loose hay in there so I lifted the wheel barrel up to get it out and my horse turned around and kicked very close to me. So I yelled and charged her which caused her to run. Then I sort of shooed her cause she kicked at me again and it was muddy outside so she slipped and fell on the ground (it was a slow fall). I thought I was doing the right thing but now that I looked back on it she was just defending herself. She doesn't seem to come up to me as quick as she use to. I really love this horse and want to really have a bond with her. I would never thing of hurting her but I think I have. Do you have any advice for me about this.
Thank You.
God Bless, Carol
Hi Carol,
One of the things I love about horses is how they will forgive a human's error once the human is back on track. You are correct that your horse was probably startled and defending itself. Your horse is atill a bit suspecious of you for the time being. I like to set boundreis around food as it is a great opportunity to interact meaningfully with your horse and do some training. Carry something like a leadrope of wand of some sort when you go to feed. Use the wand or rope to get the horse's attention. Have all horses stand patiently and wait on aparticular sopt until all food is laid out. Allow one horse at a time to approach their food. Pay attention and be precise and firm about having horses approach the food. As the leader of your herd, you control the resources of the herd and should do so all the time. If you want to avoid problems around food or boundry in general and develop respect adn trust with your horses, train them and set boundries. Your horse will forget all about your error in no time. Become the great leader. There is a ton of information on all this in the archives of my website along with training DVD's in the shopping corral that will prove invaluable to you. Educate yourself more. There is always so much to learn and the horse is a great teacher.....
Sincerely, Franklin