Encourage Your Foal to Investigate You

Initially, foals are wary of humans. After all, you are a predator, and the foal is a prey animal. By nature, the two of you aren’t meant to get along. You have to learn to think like a horse, and he has to learn not to react like a prey animal. One way of doing that is to build his confidence in you by encouraging him to investigate you in the early stages of his life.

Kneel down and encourage him to walk up to you and rub his muzzle all over you. That’s his way of doing his own little safety check. Rub his body, find his itchy spots and make being around you a good thing. When he’s confident that you’re not going to hurt him and looks forward to being rubbed, he’ll feel comfortable around you and learn to trust and respect you. Before you can teach him anything, he has to have confidence in you.
 
Clinton covers over 30 exercises in his Foal Training Series that are essential to starting your foal correctly.

More News

Back to all news

See All
0708_Tip

12 months ago

Training Tip: Abused Horse Afraid of Being Bathed

Question: We rescued a 15-year-old horse that was severely beaten and went blind in one eye because of it. I…

Read More
0407_02

6 years ago

2020 Colt Starting Clinic and Clinician Academy Postponed

In light of the constantly evolving COVID-19 pandemic, we have rescheduled the 10-day Colt Starting Clinic and Clinician Academy that…

Read More
0219_Tip

7 years ago

Training Tip: Don’t Bore Your Horse To Death

Once your horse understands an exercise, it’s important to move on. There’s nothing horses hate more than being forced to…

Read More
0909_01

10 months ago

Final Walkabout Tour in the Books

This past weekend in Waterloo, Iowa, we closed the chapter on an incredible era in Downunder Horsemanship’s history with our…

Read More