All the Creatures

The one thing I have learned as a horse owner and trainer is that you can never start too early training young horses. Sure, almost everyone knows that you train a foal to wear a halter and lead them around. In fact most experienced breeders will have the foal use to having it’s feet picked up and have had their feet trimmed at 6 weeks old.

I have found another very useful training tool for foal and weanlings, the horse blanket.

Foal wearing Techno fleece blanket

By putting a blanket on a foal or weanling horse you would not only keep them warm and clean, you will also teach them not to spook at items rubbing against their bodies. The sight feel of fabric moving around them will help desensitize them for saddle training later on. Use the blanket as a training tool. I don’t want to hear you say “my young horses don’t need blankets”, but instead “blankets will help de-spook my horses, so I use them”

You don’t even have to leave the blanket on for more than a few hours a day it you don’t want to. In fact it would help with their training if they got use to having the blanket taking off and put on again everyday. I also like to take the blanket off over their heads so they get use to having something block their vision once and awhile. It also gets them use to having something brush around their ears and head, making them less head shy.

So will you be using a horse blanket as a training tool from now on?

Have you been out on the trails lately? Are you hiking with your dog, riding your horse or just going out for a bike ride? Do you know proper trail etiquette? Knowing what to do out on trails is not only common courtesy but a huge safety factor too. If you ride your horse or your bike you are well aware of the sometimes conflict going on between horseback riders and bicyclists out on trail…it is not a good one.

In order to educate both horseback riders and bikers, 2 organizations have started an education campaign. The Idaho Backcountry Horsemen Ass’n and the Central Coast Concerned Mountain Bike Ass’n (CCCMB) have jointly issued this poster:

You can find out more about the on going trail user education at this webpage at the CCCMB Horses, Bikes and Trails

If you have ever run across a really bad horse trainer that either was so inept or abusive to horses that you felt a need to speak out but were afraid to, here is an outlet for you. I was just sent a link to a brand new blog that hopes to list all of those really terrible horse trainers. It is appropriately called “Horse trainers from Hell”. I encourage you to tell everyone about it because I can’t wait to read the comments about horse trainers in my local area. Link is below

Horse trainers from Hell