Ridecamp: [RC] Hi Howard!

Gettin' a tad close to home there, are they?

Lissen here:  Yer dead-wrong on this one Bubba.  In the herd, regardless of 
herd-size, there is ONE leader and the rest are lesser-leaders.  If you're 
not THE leader, you WILL be treated as a lesser-leader by ANY horse.  That 
simply means that they will do whatever they feel like doing, and you either 
go along or you fight about it.

HOW you fight the issue is what humans call "Training".  There's as many 
methods to train a horse as there are people and horses, but it all boils 
down to "Who's the Boss of This Herd."  You can use the "tough" methods, or 
you can use the "not-so-tough" methods, or any combination thereof in 
between, but when you're "Not The Boss" of the herd, you just might have to 
ramp up your convincing arguments until you get the "You're The Boss" 
response from the horse(s).

OR...you can just sorta live with it until one of you gets hurt or dead, 
which is a certainty.  Ya just don't know WHEN.

Specifically regarding the cross-ties issue--that tied to an inner-tube 
trick IS on the "last resorts" list, but it works!  We had to pull that one 
out of the hat last year with a 2-year-old filly who had some issues with 
standing still.  She'd flip herself if you even tried to tie her!  After a 
few hours of "pull-and-give" with the inner-tube, she got the idea, and is 
now as good as gold being tied up just about anywhere.  Oh--this is the same 
filly whose owner thought it was "cute" and "natural" for the filly to 
behave this way, until the filly flipped over on her and cracked her skull.  
That's when we got her.  When the owner came out of the hospital, her horse 
was ready for her, and the two are doing just fine.  I should probably also 
point out that the owner is now a firm believer in "Who's The Boss"  and is 
training her filly to have some excellent manners, and REINFORCES the 
lessons several times a week.  Nobody's been hurt since--not the filly, nor 
the owner.

Quite simply, and without caveat, if you do not train your horse, you are at 
your horse's mercy.  And horses do not know what mercy is.

If you have horses, you absolutely MUST take the time (and that means a LOT 
of time) to train the horse and YOURSELF.  If you don't do that, you are 
sitting on a time bomb which WILL injure or kill you.  You just don't know 
when that will be.

Where should I send the flowers?



Karl
Dixie Midnight
No-Sweat vent pads
http://www.dixiemidnight.nv.switchboard.com
Come see us!




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