The First Touch

Last week, Zach and I spent a good 4 days halter breaking and rubbing on our coming yearlings. Some of them never wore a halter, others followed us around with nothing on them, and some learned to lead at the end of a lead-rope. Our goal was more to get our hands on every baby- all 18 of them, and get where we could touch them, and rub them and where they were comfortable with having a human around. For all but a couple of these horses this interaction made the first time they’d been touched by a human, or had even been close to a human. I’m going to attempt to explain to you, as best I can, the method we use and how most of it applies to when we’ll be on their backs for a couple rides this fall.

We like to start our colts in a smaller than usual round pen. We feel it makes it easier for them to feel what we’re asking them to do. So we build two smaller pens in one end of the barn. They’re not actually round, but they’re round enough to generally keep them out of the corners. Then, we rope them. But we don’t throw the rope at them- we toss it at them, with as little energy as possible on our part- we’re not out to be mean about it- it’s all done matter-of-factly as we mean the colts no harm. What we accomplish with each horse, is to have them learn that they can face us for comfort/leadership, have them learn to move their front feet- independent of their back feet, and have their back feet move independent of their front feet and have them learn to travel pretty and round. All of these things apply directly to what we’ll want them to do when we make that first ride, or the 150th ride.

Once they’re roped, if they’re a very busy colt, we let them get used to moving around while wearing the rope around their neck, and by keeping them out of trouble. Some of the colts will go the opposite direction they were traveling when you roped them, and if you’re not careful or paying attention they’ll get the rope behind them, which to some horses is troublesome. They’ll kick at it, or really scatter around the pen. Our job as horsemen, is to keep the colts on *this side* of bothered. So in order to keep the rope from getting stuck behind them, you have to lift it up and over them. Once they’re comfortable wearing it, the fun begins.

This filly is pretty comfortable with the rope on her neck- so Zach is quietly approaching her.

Here you can see, she’s looking away from him telling him, “Zach, I’m not sure I’m ready to sniff you yet”.

We like to make the right thing easy and the wrong thing hard- this works with kids too in case you’re wondering. In this filly’s case, we needed to get her facing us, and get her front feet to begin to “break loose”. Every horse is different, so we take what they give us and work through the process that way.

Here you can see she’s starting to get the idea. Please take not that Zach isn’t pulling on her to face him- there is slack in the spoke of the rope (that’s the piece of rope he’s holding in his hands, that is loose in front of her). This is how we teach the horse to learn to *feel* their way to a release of the pressure. It’s true that horses move away from pressure, but they learn from the release of pressure, by the horseman having good timing.

Now, Zach is going to work on getting her move her front feet, so he has slowly removed the slack from the rope and his now holding and waiting for her to move a foot. If she were to get bothered, and try to go backward, he’d simply let some rope slide through his hand, so it’d keep tension (as little as possible to get the job done) in the rope, and then he’d step to her hip to drive her forward. Forward, when you’re training horses, is the correct answer 99% of the time. If we can teach our horses to go forward or move their hips from side to side (at this age) and we handle them like that for as long as they’re in our care, they won’t learn to “sit back” when tied up, and they’ll learn they can always get away from something scary by moving their feet.

And she gets it along with the always important release:

Then we do the same thing on the other side. It’s the way horse’s brains work. What you do to one side, you must do to the other:

Here she is taking a step. I’m not sure why there isn’t a release in the rope, but I’m sure if Zach didn’t release, what she gave him may not have been the right answer.

Waiting on another step:

There he gets step and the rope goes slack:

It’s time to change directions. Notice the slack in the rope- we’d like her to follow him to her left side, with that much slack in the rope, but sometimes, the babies (and almost every grown “broke” horse that someone sends us to ride) need more help than that at first. Also note, that Zach has the filly in his peripheral vision- but he isn’t staring her down. Horses can read human body language better than humans can read human body language, and if he’d be looking directly at her, she might very well feel threatened by him. He is also ducking his left shoulder as he walks through. That is also to make him appear less threatening.

She’s turned her head to face him, and is actually thinking about checking him out:

For us (and lots of other horseman) it’s very hard to control the energy we have in us when touching a horse for the first time. There can be a lot of uncertainty there. We wonder if the horse will scatter around the pen, or if we’ll push too hard and scare them. It’s our job to keep them from getting bothered, so it’s hard to reach out and rub them for the first time and not rush it. It’s often easier for the horse, and us, to work our hand up the rope, or use the rope to scratch them, because, while it does carry some of our energy, it isn’t electric like we can be and it’s inanimate. So I have found, that for me, it’s easier to focus on readjusting my rope or using it to rub the babies the first time, and then before we know it, I’m using my hand to rub them, in the same manner in which their mother nuzzled them.

She’s looking pretty comfortable right there:

She’s getting ready to move:

Lookin’ pretty good:

Going to the other side:

Usually one side that breaks loose before the other; that is often the result of the nature of the rope- depending on which side the honda sits. The honda is the smaller loop that you can see the spoke (see above if you missed it) come through. Based on where it sits on their neck it does usually release more on one side than the other. But the horse can learn to differentiate, so they can and do get good on both sides by the time we’re done with them.

We’ve got the hips moving in this photo:

Some horses, will move their hips simply based on you pointing your feet at theirs and walking toward them; others it’s important to get them moving their front feet. In the above two photos, you can see that she steps to her right with her left front foot. By the very nature of which a horse is designed, if you can get the outside (left) front foot to step across, almost always you’ll get the right hind foot to go forward, under and away from you. That is the first step in teaching a horse to disengage their hips. Either for a one-rein stop, for a leg yield, for a haunches in, or the start of a side-pass, which we use a lot around here when we are opening gates!

She’s in a place now where she’s interested in checking my cowboy out:

First touch (notice he used the back of his hand- there is less energy transferred to the horse that way):

Here she’s starting to “turn loose”- you can see only one ear is focused on him:

You’ll have to pardon the crazy lighting in these pictures. It was a partly cloudy day, and I was sitting under one of the barn’s skylights-so when it was sunny lighting was good, but when it’d get cloudy, I had to use the flash. *sheepish grin*

He’s retreated here:

One of the hardest things- for me anyway- is quitting rubbing on my horse, BEFORE they feel the need to leave. So it’s best if you rub for a few seconds, and then start again.

She’s checking him out again:

Note all the hair she’s slipping:

Spring is the best time to get these babies in and used to being around people. They’re very itchy- because they’re losing their furry winter coats! When we get them to a place where we can rub them all over, often we’ll take a curry comb with us, and brush them. They get where they really love that!

She pretty much digs what we’re doing and is relaxed when she works her mouth:

I am pretty sure she’s positive at this point that Zach isn’t going to hurt her- her head is down and she’s kind of enjoying being rubbed on!

I’m sure by now, y’all are wondering how exactly does the rope come off? Well, I’m about to show you.

Zach pulls on the honda (the piece he has in his hand) and loosens the rope:

And then for kicks and giggles, he sees if he can get her to follow the feel of the rope that way:

She has the hang of it!

Then Zach will lift the rope with both hands over her head:

Freedom!

I realize this got long, but hopefully y’all stuck it out to the end! Happy Monday!