Hoof Handling: Developing Politeness and Confidence

I thought I would take a few moments to share some strategies that I have been playing with in order to develop my new horses politeness and tolerance with her Hoof Handling. Any of you that have studied with me, know the reverence that I place on positive behavior with hoof handling. Our horses feet are BOTH their mechanism for fight and for flight ... so the more polite, and confident they get with allowing us to take away their devices for safety the BETTER your relationship will get in every other way!

 So, just like with everything equine... the challenges that we have are one of two things... either we don't have enough respect, or we don't have enough rapport ... Its a confidence challenge or a dominance challenge ... or in our lingo ... its Right Brain, or its Left Brain.

To use another Pat'ism ... "Pressure motivates, and its the release that teaches." So with this, with hoof handling, the challenge is that sometimes horses pull their hoof away and then get a release, at the wrong time. So what can we do as horse trainers to help prevent that? Well here are some of my thoughts!

First of all... remember that safety is our NUMBER one priority in this program. Why is your carrot stick the length that it is? Well because that is about the same length as a horses hind leg. This means that you can safely play friendly game with your stick with out putting yourself in a dangerous situation. And that is the best place to start. Before you worry about picking up hooves, you need to be able to pet and rub all up and down them.

After that, here is the piece that I find some people forget, especially with young horses ... The first thing they have to be able to do, is stand with their weight on three feet for AT LEAST 60 seconds (I build my horses up to 5-10 minutes). Before I even worry about ME trying to hold their foot (plus I tend to try to follow Pat's Laziest horseman of the world idea ...) ... I use my carrot stick and savvy string around their leg, like below:

If they go to put their weight on the foot again I just slowing apply pressure with the stick and string until they take their weight off... We gradually build up the time they can maintain this:). And I do both the front feet and the hind.

Once this is going well, then I begin to pick the foot up, BUT I LEAVE THE STICK AND STRING AROUND THEIR LEG! That way ... if they begin to struggle to take their hoof away ... I don't struggle with them, I just retreat myself, and apply pressure with the stick and string so that they DO NOT GET A RELEASE for taking away their hoof. BUT I stay safe :), and I don't get into an argument.

This brings me back to the Confidence vs. Dominance conversation. Horses that lack confidence, need more friendly game ... horses that are bing dominant need more respect. Either way ... its the release that teaches them what the appropriate behavior is. And I find this a great technique to keep the "pressure" (aka, you need to not have your weight on this foot) .... on until you get the response that you would like!