Teaching: Allowing The Feet To Be Picking Up

For this I use the approach and retreat method. That is if a horse will not let you touch his feet without kicking I will start by holding him with a halter and lead rope in one hand, with the other hand I will hold a cane or long smooth stick and start rubbing the horse on its legs. I will start up high on the flank and rub downward towards his discomfort zone as I get near where previous experience tells me that he will start to act out I retreat back up the leg. Again and again I will go up the leg only to come back down a little further into his do-not-touch me area.

Note that I start the touching with a whip, and then switch to a walking cane.

 I will go to each leg in turn, rubbing up and down until I can put the cane on the horse’s foot without him trying to get away from it. While their maybe some horses out there that this will take more than a day’s work, but in my limited experience I have never ran into one that we could not get to this point in an hour or two.

 Rear and front.  If the horse kicks at the cane I just move up to where he is not concerned, and then start over again.

 After the horse will stand still for me to touch all four feet with the cane I will start the same process all over with my hands. After he will let me, without getting antsy, run my hands up and down his legs I will star picking them up with the cane. Now I will have the hook part of the cane pointing down. and will hook each leg in turn at the bend of the hock and lift. I will hold the foot of the ground until the horse stops kicking it; as soon as he stops kicking I release the foot to the ground. Over and over again I will do this until the horse allows me to hold each foot up in the air as long as required to shoes him.

Now we move to the round ring and after a bit of trotting around the ring with a few directional changes I let the horse come into the center with me. I pet and rub on him just as I have in all out previous lesions, but this time I go to rubbing down his legs while standing at his side. As long as he stands there I will keep rubbing and reach to pick the foot up off the ground by hand. If he kicks or moves away from me I pressure him to run around the ring, I will run him several laps, and ask for some more changes in direction, then invite him back to the center of the ring. If he does not come I will force a faster gate and more changes of directions, then invite him again. When he does come back to the center I rubbing on him then go back to the foot we just broke off from.

This goes on and on until he will stand in the center of the ring and let me whack on all four feet with a hammer as hard and as long as it will take to put shoe on. It is your job to teach the horse to stand for shoeing, not the farrier! As soon as he stands for each foot to be lifted and pounded on, the lesson is over.  However, you will habve to repeat it from time to time to reinforce his new habit.