Clinton: Handle Your Foal’s Feet Now

The biggest mistake people make when it comes to having their horses stand quietly for the farrier is waiting until the day before the farrier comes out to teach their horse how to be confident about his feet being handled. At the ranch, we begin desensitizing our foals’ legs to our touch right from the beginning and progressively work our way up to safely handling their legs. The key to building a horses’ confidence about having his feet handled is to chip away at it during each training session. It often seems like the more you try to force a horse to be good with his feet, the more resistant he becomes about it. If you make handling your foal’s legs part of your daily routine, he’ll learn to stand still and relax while you work with his legs.

In fact, whenever we trim our young horses’ feet at the ranch, we just take our tools out to the pasture. We halter them, do a little bit of groundwork with them to get them to use the thinking side of their brains, and then trim them right there. Then we’ll move on to the next horse. When you train your foal to be respectful and willing from the start, it makes your job a lot easier when you eventually need to do things with him such as trimming his feet, giving him vaccinations, etc. Plus, if you teach your foal how to stand still and be respectful when his legs are handled now, your farrier will thank you.

Teaching a foal to be confident about his legs being handled is one of 30 exercises covered in detail in the Foal Training Series.