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Contain your Colt
By Horse Guy | July 4, 2010
The other day I shared some basics about my training philosophies and some first steps to understanding your horse.
Today I want to get into your first lesson with your colt- one of the most important lessons you will give your young animal!
First, It’s critical that you contain the colt in an area that’s manageable. If you don’t have a small enough corral, you will need to construct something. This can be done easily and cheaply…
Turn the colt loose in an enclosure, about twenty-five feet square without any harness whatever on it. A good portable enclosure is made as follows: Build eight panels of fence, each twelve feet long and from five and a half to six feet high. Use poplar or any light timber except for the uprights. These should be 2 x 2 pine timber, without knots and straight grained. Five boards to each panel is sufficient.
These eight panels can be joined together with “pin hinges” so they can be put together and taken apart easily. When ready to make the enclosure, simply fasten these panels together, then form them into a square, two panels to each of the four sides and this will make a pen twenty-four feet square.
Drive stakes at each of the four corners and fasten the corners to these stakes with ropes. The stakes will permit the fence to give if the colt runs against it; however, it will not break, but will spring back into position again.
I used an enclosure like this for years while on the road and never had a horse tear one down.
After he has gone around the enclosure two or three times, you should walk directly towards the corner, giving him an opportunity to turn his left side towards you. If he rushes by you, strike him around the hind legs with the whip and keep him moving until he is again ready to stop.
You then approach him quietly. If he turns his heels toward you, either to kick or run away, strike him sharply around the hind legs.
You will find that colts of different temperaments respond quite differently to the action of the whip.
Some are very sluggish and slow, and it requires quite a sharp stroke of the whip to “waken them up,” while others, just a mere crack of the whip is all that is necessary to make them give you their undivided attention.
To finish this lesson, and discover hundreds more valuable tips and techniques to training even the most recalcitrant horse, you must grab your copy of Train Wild Horses today:
Originally posted 2008-06-05 10:09:50. Republished by Blog Post Promoter
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