Wednesday, September 19, 2018

How to torture a baby Haflinger

Leo's been having "a day in the life of a good pony" sessions on the regular. Sometimes it's just tacking him up and letting him stand while I do chores, sometimes it's a hand walk, sometimes it's longeing, sometimes it's ponying.

And sometimes I get creative.

If you're gonna flinch when I pick up your feed bowl, you're gonna have to WEAR the feed bowls.

I have sprayed a LOT of water on Leo. Gallons and gallons. He's getting marginally better about it, but we've got a long ways to go.

Charlie sometimes supervises these sessions.

Hand walks on the street are another excellent place to torture baby Haffies, although he's really more concerned about culverts than anything else. I've been playing with a lot of R+ (clicker) training, and that's been an incredibly useful tool when we encounter anything "scary".

Like manhole covers. Those were also concerning... until Leo learned he got a cookie if he stomped on them. He's now a manhole-cover-stomping machine.

The neighbor down the street is have an addition put on, so we stopped to explore the (not actually) terrifying porta-potty.

Also touching mailboxes resulted in cookies, and I foresee a time where I will have to pull him off of mailboxes. 

What are your favorite torture training ideas for baby horses?

6 comments:

  1. I feel like I spend the majority of my life finding the things that Presto doesn't want to do and making him do them.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I guess this is the life of a baby horse parent?

      Delete
  2. I like to have random spazztastic dance parties in front of my horses so they are forced to accept sudden, often surprising, sometimes shocking motions that humans can create in a multitude of situations. I flail, I jump, I squeal, I squeak, I spin, I dip, I twist. Bonus points if I'm able to blare obnoxious music.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I've tried jumping jacks and they ALL think I'm absolutely insane. Even Paddy, who is normally the most "whatever" of them all is like "you crazy lady!"

      Delete
  3. Snooting things for cookies seems to be the blogland consensus for training baby horses lol. Works great for mine!

    ReplyDelete