Natural Horsemanship Solutions: Teaching a foal/horse to lead

Natural Horsemanship Solutions:Teaching a Foal/Horse to Lead

A 2 month foal is having difficulty leading, her owner writes:

“She foaled out at a breeding stable where they used a rope halter with butt rope on the foals every time they lead them, and always lead from the left side. I was taught that you should always work on both sides
on the horse. She's been at that breeding stable from March when she foaled until the end of May.

Now that she is back home, when I lead her she won't move forward without pressure on her butt, and my coach wants me to try and lead without the butt rope, because she's grown too used to it at the breeding barn that if you remove the butt rope while she is walking, she'll stop. I'll use a dressage whip and lightly tap her hind while clucking to get her to move forward and when she does I release any pressure and walk forward with her. She usually does really well but could get annoyed quickly at
times.

On the left side, she is perfect, will walk, halt, stand still and back up easily. When I move over to the right its very different. She refuses to walk forward, and when she does she's more frisky and wants
to run. Today for example, I went to lead her from the right and she got fed up and pulled a rearing, bucking fit. I always go to lead her with someone else with me (I'm 17 yrs old). After I got her back, I
tried again and let her walk forward and told her to stop and back up when she started to get frisky. I repeated this for a few more times and then let her go.

Lets start with the leading – yes you should always do everything from leading, grooming, tacking up, mounting, dismounting, etc on both sides of the horse. This is because when you ride the horse must be equally comfortable with looking at you out of both eyes – so you wouldn’t want to start something on the ground that only gets your horse comfortable with looking at you out of their left eye. A lot of problems with horses that are shy/ anxious have roots in owners only working the horse from the left. A horse must be equally comfortable from the left and right on the ground before you can expect the horse to be comfortable with you in the saddle.

I agree with your coach that your foal shouldn’t get too used to the butt rope – although it is a good tool to help make the message of ‘please come forward’ clear.

Here are my steps to teaching a foal/horse to lead:

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