You have halter trained your horse or foal,
but every time you turn your back it tries to bite
you or it steps on you when you are leading it.
Now what?
This article deals with horses that lag behind
while leading.
Things You Will Need
 Halter
Lead
Rope
Lounging
whip or dressage whip
A
print out of this lesson (you may print one (1)
copy for personal use)
Lagging Behind while leading
Horses are so big and much stronger than us.
That means you can't force them to do what you
want. The horse has to be willing to do it.
Jerking, yelling, hitting and other such tactics
only serve to make the horse afraid, nervous, and
resistant.
It is important to teach the horse how you
expect it to act by taking your time and building
a foundation one lesson at a time. Is your horse
halter broke? If not, refer back to the article Halter
Breaking.
Put the halter and lead rope on your horse.
Have your whip in hand. If your horse lags behind
you when you lead it, you need to teach it to walk
next to you. Generally horses are lead with you on
their left side and your right hand holding the
lead rope about 4 - 6 inches from the halter.
Part of the training is teaching your horse to
move forward.
Stand near you horse's left shoulder with the
leaad rope in your left hand, you are facing it's
rear. Have the whip in your right hand. Now, kiss
to the horse or say walk at the same time you tap
him gently on the hip. If the horse talks any step
forward, praise it. If not, repeat. Keep working
on this until the horse responds as you want. This
is a very important lesson because once the horse
has learned to go forward like this you can get it
to load in a trailer or do other things that
horses don't do easily sometimes.
After the horse is going forward well, practice
without the whip. Do this from both sides. If the
horse doesn't go forward with a light tap, use a
little firmer tap. Don't wack it though, this will
only scare it. Reward it for ANY forward motion,
no matter how small. I belive in treats for
difficult horses, I am sure some would disagree,
but I find it can cause a horse to really warm up
to you if you have a tidbit of carrot or other
favorite food in hand. This works very well with
abused horses. Gaining trust is the FIRST step
when dealing with an animal that has learned only
pain from humans.
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