Working With Foals Weanlings & Yearlings

brains take years to come online. From the start this gives us a great opportunity to get a horses future right or wrong. Because they are born learners foals can learn both the positive and the negative equally.
If we learn to differentiate between a young horse and a human baby it will help put us on the right track. It is very important when handling a young horse to understand that he needs a lot of time to physically mature. Be aware that overtaxing a young horse physically can be very damaging. While he has an open and willing mind he has not developed at the same speed physically. We have to proceed carefully. Later in this article Ill outline more about the types of movements I will ask of the young horse.
Mistakes are often made in the first training sessions. This happens because foals and weanlings are small and it is easy for people to handle them incorrectly.
The following are the two most common mistakes made
The love love love and buckets of carrots tradition where the cute little cuddly baby turns into a very difficult disrespectful horse when it crosses the 1000 pound mark.
The Ill show him who is boss while I have the size advantage tradition. This often results in the horse losing interest and trust in humans and becoming overflighty and defensive for the rest of his life.
In both these scenarios we tend to realize too late that we only have ourselves to blame for the outcome just like with kids right? Hindsight is foresight. Not only is it hard to find this balance as a parent which Im working on all the time with my two boys aged four years and 18 months but with a horse it seems even harder to know what to do because there are so many confusing ideas about what we should be doing. Combine that with the fact that horses are so innately different from humans and is it any wonder we make mistakes?
Getting Started
In the first instant of contact I want the horse of any age to build a desire to come over and have a sniff to meet me. I want to allow him this time to feel me in his pen and be okay with it. If hes a foal I want to gain the dams trust and make her comfortable with me so I make friends