I received the following question this morning from someone who saw my video “Natural Horsemanship and Foals” on YouTube and wanted some horse training tips. I thought the answer might be of interest to other people trying to rehabilitate horses that don’t trust people.

‪Hi,‬

‪I saw your foals and horsemanship vid and I was wondering if you could give me some advice.‬

‪I’ve rescued a 8 month old foal which was abused by his previous owner.‬
‪He was moved to a field with other horses to ‘recover’ but hasn’t been in contact with humans.‬

‪Since he’s doing quite well it’s time to get him to trust humans again. ‬Any idea where to start?‬

Here is my response:

Hello,

First off, good for you for rescuing an abused horse!

If I had an 8-month-old foal who didn’t trust people and was loose in a large area, I would start with “undemanding time”. Take a chair and a book out to the pasture (or, if you can get the youngster into a smaller paddock or pen without a lot of drama, that would be even better). The goal of undemanding time is to ask NOTHING of the horse for extended periods of time (maybe 30 minutes to an hour), while quietly sharing their space as a herd-mate would do. That means you DON’T try to touch or pet him, you DON’T try to feed him treats or lure him closer to you… for many unconfident horses, it means you don’t even look at them or watch them. YOU SIT AND READ YOUR BOOK QUIETLY FOR AN HOUR, THEN YOU QUIETLY GET UP AND LEAVE.

If the horse chooses to stand in the far end of the pasture or pen with his butt turned toward you for the entire hour, that’s perfectly fine. It’s not a failure, it’s not a lack of progress, it’s just feedback about what the horse thinks about humans at this particular point in time. An 8-month-old still has a high degree of curiosity, so eventually, after 10 minutes or 2 days or a week, he WILL gain confidence and become curious enough to sidle over and investigate you. Again, when this occurs you DON’T betray his budding trust by trying to touch or pet him. You just sit there and read your book and don’t look at him, and prove to him that humans can be nonthreatening. The only possible exception to the “don’t look, don’t touch” rule is if he starts to shove you/chew on you/step on your feet, in which case you give him a nasty look, and add some energy to your body until he backs off a step or two (maybe wave your book around or snap it open and closed to make noise). When he backs off, you immediately go back to reading and ignoring him.

Do this for a week or two, until the colt seems comfortable approaching you, but is maybe starting to get a bit bored with it. Then start bringing a pan of treats or grain in with you and let him find it. Start paying him a bit more attention while he’s eating. Begin by just looking at him and talking to him, then graduate to touching him on the shoulder and neck, working gradually toward the head and retreating before he gets upset or anxious. Put an old halter and rope in the pan with the feed and see if he’ll start mouthing and chewing on it– maybe even playing with it. After he’s investigated it thoroughly, begin petting him on the shoulder and neck with the rope, again working toward his head. The first few times you halter him, don’t even fasten it; put it on and take it right back off.

Before long, he’ll be easy to catch and halter… then you can move on to training him to give to pressure so you can lead him. Good luck, and let me know if I can help further.