Clinton: A Serious Responsibility

If you have a foal or are expecting a foal this year, you have a serious responsibility on your hands. The work you do with your young horse now will set the foundation of a successful future.

I treat my foals the same way I treat my adult horses, as far as earning their respect and the way I interact with them. A foal will crowd your space, nip at you, kick out at you and do all the dangerous behavior an adult horse does, but people tend to let their foals get away with things. And the foals’ behavior just gets worse and worse and worse.

All bad behavior starts somewhere. Horses aren’t born knowing right from wrong; they only know what they’re allowed to get away with. If you teach your foal to respect you and practice moving his feet forwards, backwards, left and right and always reward the slightest try, you’ll teach him to be a respectful, willing horse. On the other hand, if you allow him to get away with bad behavior, while it may be cute now when he’s little and can’t do much damage, it won’t be so cute when he’s a 1,200-pound adult horse.

I love working with young horses because they learn so quickly. Make it a goal to teach your foal the correct behavior from the get-go so that you have a foundation from which to build a successful partnership. – Clinton

In the Foal Training Series, Clinton works with two foals, one imprinted at birth and one not, to demonstrate his approach to training young horses. The training kit comes with 8 DVDs and 14 Arena Mates and covers 36 lessons. Learn all about the Foal Training Series on our website.