We discussed a few of the problems with foal handling, the pros and cons of handling a foal from newborn onwards versus allowing them to essentially be "wild" until they were old enough to train and ride. When you have a mare that's just given birth and a newborn foal, they are certainly beautiful and cute and fun to watch, but that only takes you so far. I couldn't ride any of the three horses we now owned so the idea of not training the foal from day one was simply horrifying to me.
Remi was merely ten minutes old when we first began touching and petting him. We steadied him and provided support when he learned to stand, and nurse. Teri fed him his first few meals from a bottle. He had countless visitors during his first few days, all of which wanted to pet him and cuddle him. He loved to be scratched and itched in those places he just couldn't reach by himself. Already, Remi adored being the center of attention.
By three days old, Remi was quite adept at gallivanting around his stall, jumping around and playing. It was the first day that we had to replace some straw so he'd have enough bedding. I opened the stall door and blocked him from running out while Teri heaved the straw bale into the stall. Remi strode right over to it and put his face into the prickly mass.
He started lipping pieces of straw into his mouth, even though he had no teeth. I was mucking out some of the remaining dirt and manure while he was investigating this new cube of fun. Teri stood inside the stall watching the foal as I finished throwing the last rakeful into the wheelbarrow. Remi started dashing around the stall again, being a goofball.
"OH MY GOD!" Teri exclaimed suddenly enough to startle me. I quickly looked over at her and she was doubled over, laughing. Eyes wide, mouth agape, it was all she could do to point at the foal and then at the bale of straw.
"What?! What happened?" I still didn't understand.
"He just ran up and then jumped right over the straw bale! And then he skidded to a stop and turned before plowing into the wall!"
"Holy crap." I was mentally kicking myself for not getting to see this feat. "Seriously, I can't believe it. He's only 3 days old! That's crazy!"
"I know! It was amazing." Teri wiped tears from the corners of her eyes.
That was when I knew for sure that we had some trouble on our hands.
For her birthday, our good friend Kate bought Teri a lime green foal halter. However, this foal halter was still miles too large for Remi's little head. I went to the feed store and found a tiny little suckling halter that had buckles all over it to adjust the size. I cinched the buckles down as tight as they would all go and the tiny halter fit Remi's head. Getting it on his head then became the problem.
Teri stood on one side of him with her arms braced around his chest and butt while I gently rubbed the halter onto his face. He mildly objected to having it around his nose and was pretty unhappy about the buckle behind his ears. After he was all fitted and it was properly buckled, we let him go. He busted around the stall like a real rodeo bronc, flinging his head around and jumping and kicking. It took only about a minute before he tired himself out and simultaneously realized that the contraption on his face wasn't going anywhere. It seemed like he shrugged and said,
"Oh well. Guess it's time for a snack, then a nap! This thing on my head isn't killing me after all."
After he calmed down and had a nice meal, he plopped down in the straw and stretched out. I sat down behind him and rubbed his neck and shoulders and down his face, then gently unbuckled the strap behind his ears and slid the halter off his nose. Day 1 of halter training: success!
The keys to successful training are simple, yet almost nobody abides by them; repetition, consistency, and patience. To train a horse effectively, you must be patient enough to wait for them to accomplish what you're asking, then reward them for doing the right thing. Repeat the cue until they accomplish the goal again, then reward. Repeat the lesson a few times each day. Consistently use the same cues to ask for the same behavior, day after day. It honestly doesn't take long for horses to learn what you're asking when you train them in this way. Repeat lessons until the horse feels very comfortable with what you are asking, then move on to a new goal. Repeat.
This means haltering and handling the foal every single day, if not twice a day.
Now, just because the keys are simple does not ever mean they are easy. Some days they seem near impossible. On those days, small victories count for just as much as winning the whole damn war.
Each evening we went to visit the horses, and each evening we'd catch and halter Remi. That sounds easy enough, doesn't it? Each day, Remi started more and more to understand that this was going to continue to happen to him and each day, he began fighting us a little more. Restraining him to put the halter on became a wrestling match, one which Teri won every day but he also was getting bigger and stronger every day. I tried not to think about how we were going to be able to continue to fight with him as he got bigger and stronger than us.
After wearing the halter a couple days, we were ready to take the horses and turn them out in the arena to run. Remi had never known anything but that foaling stall so we were unsure what to expect out of him. Since he was so little, all the foaling books recommended leading the mare and just letting the foal follow. Due to his age and desire to be at her side, it shouldn't be a problem. "Shouldn't" is surely the operative word here. As we could've predicted, Remi was anything but easy.
I haltered Rose, then we haltered Remi. We opened the arena gate previously so we wouldn't have to stop and open it once we reached the entrance. Berto was stationed in the stall behind the horses and I took ahold of Rose's lead rope. Teri was standing by, outside the stall to help with corralling if need be. I led Rose out of the stall and started walking down towards the arena. I had chosen a moment when Remi had his nose stuck in the feeder so he wasn't watching as Rose and I started to walk out. When he lifted his head, his mother was no longer in the stall. He was watching her leave him while he was behind the bars of the stall, and he hadn't noticed the open stall door. He started whinnying frantically and running back and forth. Rose stopped and turned around and started whinnying back at him. Berto came up from behind him and ushered him towards the open gate. Remi did not know what to think, this stall was the only place he knew but his momma was walking away and staying was just too scary so out he bolted.
He ran right up to Rose's side and walked with us. He started looking around, surveying his new kingdom. Within a few steps, he gained enough confidence to trot up in front of her and wander closer to some of the other horses in their stalls. Rose strained against the lead rope and called to her foal, she did not like him so close to those strange horses. Teri and Berto kept herding him away from the other stall aisles and from the cars parked out by the hitching posts. Soon enough we had them both safely in the arena, unclipped Rose's lead and watched them both take off.
"Whew!" I wiped my face on my shirtsleeve as I tied Rose's lead rope to the arena gate.
By this time, the sky had started to darken. We had to wait to turn the horses out because people were using the arena. When the coast was finally clear, it was dusk. We chanced turning the horses out because Rose had been cooped up in that little stall for over a month and Remi was already five or six days old, and hadn't been let out yet.
"Wow, look at all the horses." Teri gazed around the property. Every single horse in the place was standing at the front of its stall, ears pricked and head held high. Some of them were snorting and whinnying, some were running in tiny circles, and others were bucking and rearing and biting their neighbors in excitement. Yet all of them were paying attention to the new baby.
Rose and Remi went flying to the other end of the arena. We heard them galloping around, but we couldn't see them well. The dust in the air was thick and there was no breeze that humid July evening. Occasionally they would run our direction, promptly to turn around and streak back into the darkness. It had been about a half hour since we turned them out and it was definitely dark. I had attempted to catch Rose a couple of times, but each time she ran away as if to say,
"Are you kidding? Do you know how long its been since I've felt good enough to run around?! I'm not comin' back in."
Finally, I resorted to a method that I feel is way beneath me and should be considered cheating in all situations. I got her bucket and I put her grain in it, and I walked over to the gate and shook the bucket. Rose heard the feed rattling around, and I heard swift hoofbeats coming my direction. She trotted right up to the gate and started sticking her head between the bars, trying to get the grain. I let her put her muzzle in the bucket and slowly took ahold of her halter. I clipped the lead rope on and took the bucket away. This made her unhappy but too bad, so sad. I had her caught and at least she understood that it was dinnertime and playtime was over. Remi was at her side and followed us out of the arena.
I was a little disappointed in myself, but mostly just glad to be putting them safely back in their stall.
As we walked back, Remi was ready to be more adventurous. He wandered over to a parked car and nosed it curiously, then loped up in front of Rose and I and stopped dead in the way, only to be ushered off and examine something on the ground in one of the stall aisles to our left. He resembled a fuzzy pinball, ricocheting off a fence line, Berto and Teri, a car and finally into the stall behind Rose.
I clipped Rose's grain bucket onto her lead rope and held it while Teri tied the rope on a high bar in the stall fencing. This way the bucket wasn't on the ground and couldn't trap baby foal hooves or anything like that in it. Rose dug in eagerly while Remi nursed. He could barely stand up to finish his dinner, then he promptly collapsed into the straw and fell asleep.
"Big day, I suppose." I murmured. Teri and Berto laughed. We were all pretty tired, worn out from dealing with the hairy ping-pong ball. I knelt in the straw and unbuckled the halter from Remi's head and slid it off. I rubbed all over his head and eyes and ears and nose. We all said goodnight to Rose and called it a day.
The next evening, we turned the horses out again but this time we did it much earlier. We did it early enough to beat all the evening barn traffic so there wouldn't be much commotion and we wouldn't be those people, turning their horses out in the arena so nobody else could use it. I hate those people. We had a similar routine to the previous night. Again, Remi was running off in every direction, making Rose and all the rest of us nervous. Remi learned where we were going though, so he took off ahead of us and ran right into the arena without waiting for Mom. I unclipped her lead at the arena entrance and she took off after baby.
This time, we got to sit on the picnic table in the shade next to the arena and really watch them run. Sometimes, Rose was running and Remi was galloping after her.
Rose quickly tired of this game and settled down to roll a few times and then was content to nose through the sand for mesquite bean pods. Remi nursed a little and trotted in small circles around her. He jumped and bit at her. He trotted around the other side and kicked at her.
He loped around her again and again, trying to get her to play with him. Finally it occurred to him that he didn't need her. If he had been a cartoon, there would have been a gigantic yellow lightbulb that clicked on over his head.
He was looking around the arena - what for, I had no idea. He glanced back at Rose, then turned tail and lit out for the other end of the arena. Rose's head popped up and she took off after him at full-speed.
Remi noticed she was following him, so he continued to run and run and run until he was just too tired. He stopped and plopped down into the sand just as abruptly as he'd taken off.
Babies his age tire quickly and easily, so all the books recommend keeping the mare on a lead rope and letting her run small circles around you while baby runs only as much as he wants. In this case, Remi was running Rose ragged. She was out of shape and had just given birth, her nostrils were flaring and her sides heaving by the time he stopped, so his little rest was a-okay by her.
Over the course of Remi's next few excursions into the arena, he became increasingly bold. He had been known to bolt from the stall almost all the way to the arena before stopping. Rose always whinnied frantically at him, I imagine she must have been saying,
"YOU ALWAYS LOOK BOTH WAYS BEFORE CROSSING THE PATH THAT THE HUMAN MACHINES GO BACK AND FORTH ON! Be careful! You are going too fast! Wait for me! WAIT! WAIT FOR ME, DAMMIT!"
He would finally wait for us, but as soon as we were close he would take off again. You might think that this was okay since he knew he was going into the arena. And it would have been, if Remi always went into the arena.
But he didn't.
One evening, he decided that he would really like to know what was on the other side of the arena fence. So instead of running through the gate, he ran around the left side of it towards the round pen, trailer parking, an open wash and eventually the front gate to the property. My heart leapt into my throat and Rose lifted her head and started to try and go after him. Having two runaway horses is infinitely worse than one so I gave a firm jerk on the lead rope and held her at my side.
"What should we do??" Teri called to me from the arena gate.
"Hang on, he won't go very far and then he'll want to be back with Rose." I tried to sound braver than I felt. Truthfully, my pulse was racing and I was worried Remi would panic and run the wrong way. I confidently led Rose around the gate and headed towards the colt. She was calling to him the whole time and he started whinnying back. Once he caught sight of her coming around the corner he stopped and ran right back over to her side. They both went nicely into the arena, and after they finished their evening run they walked sedately back to their stall. It almost felt like an apology.
The next evening Teri stood beside the open arena gate with her arms wide, to dissuade Remi from going that direction again. It worked. He slid to a stop in front of Teri then turned to his right and loped into the arena. Another crisis averted. The rest of that evening went off without a hitch.
Each day, we continued to work with the halter. It wasn't that Remi was afraid of it, he just didn't like that we were able to overpower him. One day when I arrived at the stall, Remi had his little head sticking out between the bars. I petted him and loved on him and messed with him and still, his head was out. I got his little halter out and held it out to him. He sniffed it and put part of it in his mouth and gummed it. I rubbed it on his face and when he didn't seem to mind, I simply pulled it over his nose and buckled it behind his ears. Head was still sticking out. Triumph! After that day, he no longer needed to be restrained to put the halter on. Simple enough. One battle down, a million to go.
As Remi aged, he changed by the day. Every day he was bigger and stronger and had more willpower. Unfortunately for me. I was tired of worrying what tricks he was going to pull next, worried he was going to run off and hurt himself, and most importantly, worried about all the problems he could get into that I hadn't even thought of yet. It was time to try working on leading him with a lead rope.
We made our first attempt when Remi was ten or eleven days old. We haltered him and got an extra lead rope. The extra lead rope was to drape over his hindquarters and rest in the groove above his hocks, encouraging forward motion. It is very difficult for foals to understand that pulling on their faces means move forward and a lot of them will panic. They pull against the pressure and end up rearing up and even falling over backwards and hurting themselves badly. Foals don't have a great understanding of their own bodies yet and certainly not a great grasp on their own strength. Thus, the use of the butt-rope. The idea is that the rope behind them moves them forward until they understand that they are to move forward when asked by the lead rope. Then you use the butt-rope less and less until one day you remove it entirely.
I took hold of Remi's halter and Teri had the butt-rope in one hand above his back, looped around his hindquarters. I would gently pull his nose forward and Teri would tighten on the butt-rope until he moved forward, then we would release. This would be Remi's first lesson with pressure and release training. He struggled against us but was doing as we asked. We started in the stall, just moving one step at a time. Then we started doing small circles, one direction and then the other.
He was doing okay so I thought it was a good time to turn them out for their evening run. Teri haltered Rose and led her from the stall and I had Remi. The problem with Remi's tiny halter was that it didn't have a ring to clip a lead rope to, so I had to hold onto a cheekpiece. He moved a few steps forward and then leaped forward and then stopped. He wanted to run free like he was used to, and he was mad at me for hanging onto him. Rose and Teri continued to walk away and I was really counting on Remi wanting to be with her, but that didn't seem to be a concern of his. He was content to stand there, not moving. I applied pressure to the butt-rope and he leaned backwards against the rope. This was no good. I abandoned the rope and used my arm instead. I would pull on the halter and apply pressure with my arm at the same time and he wasn't thrilled about it but he walked a couple steps forward, and stopped again. I praised him for moving forward and we took a break. Rose and Teri had stopped a ways in front of us and were watching.
I asked him to move forward again but this time he leaned on my arm instead of moving forward. I didn't want him thinking he could always get out of doing what I asked by leaning on me so I quickly took pressure off his body; he lost his footing and almost fell down because he'd been leaning so hard. I tried reaching over his back and pulling from the other side but he just leaned on me again. I let go again and his feet scrabbled on the hard-packed dirt and he stumbled and fell onto his side. I was still holding onto his halter, but he just lay there on his side and looked up at me as if to say, "Fine, I will just lay here. See if you can make me do it!"
I pulled on him and nudged him and pushed him, but he was content to stay right where he was and snort at me. Finally I pulled him back up to his feet and we were just standing there, taking a breather. A truck pulled onto the property and parked. We made just enough progress to where we were right in front of the tack room and hitching posts. The man had gotten his horse out and was tying him (if you could call it that) to a hitching post. The gelding was staring intently at Remi with his ears eagerly pricked. The man went into the tack room to gather his grooming brushes.
I started to ask Remi to move forward again but he'd had it with me. He jumped straight up into the air and bucked and reared and flailed around. I was still working on forward, but then I noticed at the hitching post the gelding was going crazy. He reared up and pulled against his lead rope. He was whinnying for all he was worth and then he tried to take off. He couldn't run away since he was tied, but his owner hadn't tied him with an actual knot, he had simply looped the lead rope around the post twice. The gelding had enough slack in the rope to actually lope in circles (albeit small ones) around the hitching post. Each circle he made the rope loosened itself a little more.
I began to feel a little queasy. I could just see it now, the gelding would get loose and run right over to us and then Rose would flip out and try to eat him while Remi panicked and tried to get away. I started turning Remi back towards the stall and jerked my head at Teri to get her to bring Rose back our direction.
The man ran out of the tack room at the first sound of commotion and started screaming at his horse.
"BUG, NO! BUG WHOA! Stop! Bug STOP! NO NO NO!" and then started trying to catch him. But catching him was going to be difficult, especially since it was obvious the gentleman was petrified of his own gelding. He didn't want to get too close, but if he fell too far behind the horse would catch up to him and trample him. It was quite comical, in hindsight of course, to see the man and the horse run around and around the hitching post in some crazed game of merry-go-round but the humor escaped me at the time.
Thankfully, before the rope loosened all the way, Bug stopped. After Remi calmed down and wasn't flinging himself at me, Bug was not as excited. He stood at the hitching post, rope just dangling over the top, quivering and snorting. His nostrils had to be the size of dinner plates and his sides heaved with the effort he just made. His owner looked like he didn't want to go within a mile of his horse at the time but was able to force himself to re-tie the lead rope. He turned to us and said,
"He's never acted like that before! I've never seen him do that!"
"It's because we have the baby out. All the horses are going a little crazy when we bring them out." I tried to explain.
"But I've never known Bug to be like that! It's so weird!" It was as if he wasn't listening to me at all.
"Yes but he probably doesn't see many foals. I know there hasn't been one here in a long time so it's new and different to him. The rest of the horses are all acting like idiots. We're going to take them back to their stall now, are you okay with that?" I asked doubtfully.
"Oh yes, he will be just fine I'm sure of it." The guy was trying to sound confident but failing pretty miserably. I raised my eyebrows at him, and shrugged. I nodded at Teri to walk Rose back into the stall.
As soon as Rose was walking toward the stall and I made sure Remi was pointed in the right direction, I let him go. He trotted right up to Rose's side and stayed with her until the stall, at which point she went inside and he darted to the left, between the stall and another tack room outbuilding. Bugger. Couldn't I just cut a break?!
Teri walked Rose back outside the stall just in front of the little aisle he'd gone down and she nickered at him. The aisle was only twenty feet long, he turned around and ran back out again. We attempted getting him back into the stall once more and this time he actually went in. We took off their halters and poured Rose's evening grain into her bucket.
I sighed heavily as I hung up their halters. I was silent for the car ride home, brooding over the day's events.
Is this what my life is going to be like if we keep this damn horse?
Here he is only eleven days old and already I'm failing.
As he gets older he's going to get more opinionated, more willful and much, much larger. If things weren't difficult enough for me at the time, imagine how hard my life was going to get when he hit a thousand pounds. I was certain his mature figure would fill out at least 1200 pounds, if not more. Both his parents were large horses and he was already larger than most foals his age.
Maybe its best if we don't keep him. I don't know if I can do this.
These thoughts all churned in my head the whole way home.
For the first time, I really didn't know what to do. I was all but ready to throw in the towel and give it up. I was exhausted, and I was overwhelmed with a sense of hopelessness. We only made it halfway to the arena and there was mass chaos that, admittedly, could have ended much worse. I hadn't won my battle, if anything, I had certainly lost.
I had never been so discouraged about horses in my whole horsey life.
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