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[RC] Early handling - k s swigart

Ed said:

I have no idea who or how John Henry was trained
from 0 to 2 years old, shucks I even thought that I
remembered that he was a harness horse.

There is a good chance that, like many race horses (even many horses),
he wasn't trained at all from 0 to 2 years old.  When I picked up my ill
tempered race bred TB as a two year old from her breeder one of the
things he told me was "first you gotta catch her; she ain't never been
caught before."

He may
have been one of those extremely rare individuals
who was so aggressive that no amount of proper
early training would have changed his attitude, but
somehow I doubt that.

There is no way to know if John Henry would have been an ill tempered
son of a bitch no matter what his early handling.  However, this
statement is true for all horses, not just John Henry.  My ill tempered
tb mare might be more manageable were she handled differently (like at
all) in her early years, but those years has already passed before she
crossed my path.  By the time I got her, it was too late to give her
"early handling."

Since very few people raise horses from a baby (and I have recently come
to the conclusion that few people should because it is easier to do
wrong than to do right), but rather have to handle full grown adult
horses, it is fatuous, to say the least, that the bad behaviour could
have been corrected if only it had been done before you got the horse.
John Lyons's (or virtually all other's) techniques are presented as
techniques for working with adult horses.  By the time they get to be
adults, not only has the inherent differences in individuals
personalities already set it; but the effects of early handling has
already set in as well.

Consequently, it is entirely appropriate to assert that one should be
careful in applying any techniques across the board.  There are some
horses that the cookie cutter techniques won't work on, whether it is
because they were born different, or they learned to be different from
their early handling is irrelevant.

kat
Orange County, Calif.
:)

p.s.  It is also possible that any early handling of my mare would have
been WORSE than the none that she got.  Since, I contend, no early
handling is a much better option than poor early handling.



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