Your Foal by Keith Hosman

Author:Keith Hosman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: horse training, equestrian, babies, foals, fillies, young, youngster, colt, filly, horses, green horses, foundation, basics, taming, schooling, young, retrain, john lyons, broke, break, guide, steps, advice, start
Publisher: Keith Hosman
Published: 2016-10-07T00:00:00+00:00

Day Five: Bathing Your Foal

Teach your foal to stand properly for a bath – but also see this as an opportunity to strengthen your position as leader in your herd of two.

Whether you plan on showing your horse in the arena, or to simply show him off to your friends, you'll sooner or later have to accustom him to taking a bath. I give my horses a shower (sans soap) any time it's warm and they work up a sweat. Besides helping to avoid nasty skin problems, it helps cool them down before I feed them. I can get them hosed and scraped off in a few minutes, so it's a no-brainer on an especially hot day. This is easy stuff. Time consuming maybe to teach, but no problem when taken step-by-step. Like many objects on this planet, the hose, sponge, wash rack, sweat scraper and even rushing water are all new to your foal - so your biggest challenge will be keeping your cool and not screaming things like "It's just water!"

Note that you can teach your foal to accept fly spray by following this method as well. Simply substitute the bottle for the hose. (Fill it with water initially; you don't want to spend eight trillion dollars on expensive fly spray, nor would you want to cover your horse with 40 pounds of chemical residue.)

Note also: For now, don't tie your colt at the wash rack; he hasn't had that training yet. The bones in the neck of a young horse are easily damaged - causing him to pull back while tied is to be avoided.

While some horses will soon learn to actually like being hosed down or otherwise babied, others will at best tolerate it for the rest of their lives. Hey, I still don't eat tomatoes and no amount of being whacked will make them taste good - so I accept that we all have our differences. But.... if you've never trained a horse to bathe before or you're not sure how yours will accept a shot of water to the forehead, don't wait till the day of the show to try this out. Like trailer training, it's something you want to test at least the weekend before.

Wash racks are slippery places so the sacking out you’ve done beforehand needs to be rock solid. You want to avoid confrontation entirely so be quick to return to prior training when or if it becomes necessary. If, for instance, your foal simply refuses to allow his head to be showered, leave the wash rack altogether and spend more time sacking out his ears, eyes, and muzzle. You’ve practiced that already, but this time use more objects, maybe ones that make more noise or have a decidedly different feel to them. (Rustling wax paper, a length of rope that approximates the look and feel of a hose, a dripping sponge, etc.) If he's got issues with the hose touching his back feet, fall back and practice with your lunge whip or lariat, wrapping and unwrapping his legs.

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