09/15/2024
It's a lazy Sunday, so let's dive into the wild world of baby handling and all the stuff nobody likes to talk about!
Every baby is like a science experiment gone rogue. Sure, I have my basic baby-handling techniques, but I love to mix things up and see what works best for teaching each little one how to be a polite presence on the other end of the line. No matter how many times I breed the same horses, each baby is a unique little chaos machine.
Now, some things are non-negotiable. I want my contact with them to feel like holding hands with a friend. My friend doesn't drag me around, so I don't drag them around. This is the very basics of in-hand knowledge I want all my babies to have. Of course, they're going to pull me around and test their boundaries because that's how everything learns. But within that, every boundary they push, every misstep they take, tells me exactly what we need to focus on and where we might be having some kind of miscommunication. Babies don't do this to be bad. They don't know what "being bad" is. That's a cognitive way of thinking that research so far has told us they don't have the capability of doing the way we do. It's my job to give them rules, guidelines, and consistency to encourage their polite function with me as their leader, alpha, and partner. As they learn how to handle themselves, I expect them to eventually function on a loose or tight lead, respectful of my space and my boundaries.
Setbacks happen, hard lessons and tough love happen, it's not all roses and butterfly farts, and boom, you have a perfect baby. That's just not how it works. But online, you don't see the wrestle, you don't see the times they flip themselves over, fall down, break halters, snap lead ropes, and whatever else *might* happen. You see what you see in this video below. Just leading, goofing around, working on basic functions of being attached to a human. Something that is NOT stronger than a horse but has to make this creature believe from a young age that I am just as badass as mama horse.
Why don't we see the mishaps? Well, everyone is so up in arms these days about animal rights and cruelty, it's near impossible to load an experience in education without someone jumping down a throat about how inhumane or abusive a 30-second clip is.
What you don't see in this clip is Vivaldi completely eating dirt bolting past me and slipping in mud. What you don't see is him standing on his hind legs using all his launching power to bypass me and my ground rules to get over to mom. What you don't see is me giving him a very stern lesson in reverse all the way over to the other side of the pasture and his resulting baby bucking fit in a circle around me which again resulted in him slipping in mud and hitting the ground twice before he kept his feet to himself and underneath him.
Was any of this bad handling? No. Was any of this abuse? Absolutely not! At any point did I beat the living bejeezus out of him and stand over his quivering body yelling profanities? HAHA double no! What I did do was let him be a baby and provide a solid anchor on the other end of the line. That's all. And in doing so he figured out those two spots in the pasture are a little slippery, and he found out more about his balance on two legs so when he goes and plays with mom or another horse, maybe he won't fall over backwards as much, and he learned that his antics don't win over my anchor rules.
Not everything that isn't sunny skies and fluffy clouds is abuse. Learning isn't easy and sometimes it's kinda ugly. But there's a reason we don't see the hard lessons it sometimes takes to produce an angel on the other end of a lead rope and under saddle.
It is our job as trainers to teach them the things their moms and other herd members can't and it's our job to decipher the species language barrier to make these training methods as understandable across the board as possible.
So here you see an alert, happy baby leading on a relatively loose line, living his best life, and just figuring things out. This is all thanks to the "ugly" stuff people don't like to talk about. Remember, every time you touch a horse, especially a foal, it's a learning experience for both of you. We may never know everything, but we can at least teach them a little bit.
