About a week after we changed stalls, it was time to start working on a new skill for Remi. The key with babies is to always keep them busy and learning, but never to overload them with too much at once. The hope is to keep them from being bored OR frustrated, although it's rarely possible.
My mental checklist was coming along nicely. Haltered, check. Lead rope, check. New stall, check. Next was picking up his feet for cleaning and eventually, trimming.
To start working with him on his feet, I began simply extending my brushing from his body onto his legs. Babies are so new to this world that their skin is very sensitive and everything is tickly. Remi had been known to strike out or kick when we would touch his legs, so the first thing was to desensitize him. I brushed firmly to eliminate that ticklish feeling and wasn't dissuaded if he flinched or kicked. To his credit, he didn't try to kick at me, just would lift his leg and stomp in annoyance. When he tolerated the brushing of his legs, I moved to running my hand down his legs. Again, firmness was key. Too light of a touch and he would stamp his feet. Each time he flinched I would talk soothingly to him and continue to touch his legs. If ever he learned that kicking or stomping would get people to leave him alone, we would have big trouble on our hands.
After only a few days of desensitizing, Remi didn't much care about what touched his legs. I started lightly swinging the lead rope at him and it didn't fluster him. I let the rope swing and wrap around his neck, over his back, even under his belly and got no negative response. I began swinging the rope so it would touch and wrap around his legs and feet, and it didn't bother him. Excellent.
The next step was actually picking up his feet.
For this, Teri and I took him out of the smaller box stall and into the sandy run area, for safety purposes. We haltered Remi and left Rose alone, as she followed him everywhere without a halter. We let Remi stand close to Rose and then with Teri holding his head, I petted and stroked his neck and his shoulder, then down his leg. I paused at his bottom fetlock joint, just above the hoof, and applied light pressure. He was still so small that even if he didn't want to lift it, I could easily pick the leg up. At first, he didn't seem to mind much that I had his leg. But then he decided he wanted to try and go somewhere else. This proved difficult to do, since I had one of his legs tucked up underneath his body. He was able to shuffle his hind legs a little bit but when it came time to move that front one he realized he couldn't do it easily. He began to transfer his weight backwards onto his hind legs and then lift his front leg off the ground and lunge forward. Teri was still at his head, trying to hold him still but that was by no means an easy task.
"If he wants to lunge around a bit, go ahead and let him. Don't let him get away and don't let him put all his weight on you. If he falls down, then he falls down. Hopefully it will be a valuable lesson." I advised.
"Okay..." Teri didn't sound convinced about my plan of action. Perhaps that was because she was the one in the line of fire. I was relatively safe, to one side and holding his hoof up still.
The idea here is that as soon as Remi quiets down enough to stop trying to escape, I put his foot down. The more he rears and plunges and hops around, the longer I hold up his foot. If he falls to his knees because of it, he learns that moving around when his foot is in the air equals falling down.
Remi flopped around for a few minutes but quickly exhausted himself. As soon as he stood still, I set his foot down and we both praised him and hugged him and told him what a good boy he was.
The whole time he was catapulting himself around the stall, Rose was dutifully following us around, ears pricked and watching him carefully. When he was finally finished, she nickered at him encouragingly and nosed his face. I think Rose understood that this was something he simply had to learn.
I walked around to Remi's other side and then picked the same battle with the other foreleg. This one was easier, he didn't jump around as much. I decided that starting with forelegs first was a good way to go, since I didn't feel like dealing with those kicky back legs just yet.
We haltered Rose and took them out to run around for awhile, even though Remi should have been tired out enough already. He always seems able to find just enough energy to run around in the arena.
We continued to pick up his front legs for the next few days, making sure to brush and run our hands down each leg to maintain the desensitization, then pick up each foreleg in turn. Teri got in on the action on the second day and discovered that it's a little disconcerting to hold up the leg of a baby who is very close to falling face first into the sand - on purpose, no less. She got the hang of it quickly and by the third day he was standing still long enough to introduce a hoof pick. The pick didn't bother him any, which was nice. The continuing fight was simply his patience, which babies don't have much of anyway.
Four days after I picked up his forelegs for the first time, I decided everyone was ready to do the back legs. I asked Teri to hold his head again, and I picked out both his front feet. Then, facing his hind end, I ran my hand along his back and his hindquarters, then down his left hind leg. At the fetlock joint, I applied pressure and lifted his leg up towards his belly. He swung his leg around a little but didn't fight me very much. I set the foot back down and praised him. Then I repeated the same exercise on the same leg again and then a third time. The action of picking up his leg was no longer strange to him. I moved to his other side and repeated the same procedure.
Picking up and holding a horse's feet is a very counterintuitive process for the horse and can be dangerous for the person. Laying a sound foundation for Remi was very important to us so he would be well behaved and not fearful. Horses are prey animals, and their main line of defense is being able to escape predators. Allowing someone or something to hold one of their legs off the ground and prevent them from running away is something that takes trust. By getting an early start with Remi we were ensuring he would not fear having his feet dealt with, but rather that he would feel comfortable with the process. Horses who never learned to trust in human beings have been known to strike or kick us, causing very serious injuries or even death. Picking out feet is an every day routine for many horse people but if the animals we handle aren't trained properly they can be very dangerous indeed.
Over the next few days we handled Remi frequently, always picking up his feet and working with him. He still fidgeted and jumped around but his tantrums were getting more manageable and shorter in length. This is a common struggle with foals, I was not discouraged in the least.
Once he was accustomed to his hind legs being handled, I began to ask more of him. I would pick up a leg and bring it up towards his belly, but then I would slowly stretch it out behind him and rest his leg against my thigh so I could pick out his hoof. I was so proud of him because this didn't bother him in the least bit. He was acting like an old pro. The same thing happened on the other hind leg. I was more concerned about his hind legs, yet his front legs were the continuing source of trouble. Amazing. And even the trouble he was giving us was laughable in the grand scheme of things, a little hopping around here and there but that was it.
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