Ever try to clean a new horse’s ears? Just as folk have sensitive parts of their bodies, horses have parts they would not simply let you touch. The difficulty is, when putting a horse thru equestrian training—or regardless of whether you simply wish to rear the horse and not make him go thru equestrian training—you’ll also must look after her health and overall welfare. This entails cleaning and applying medications and ointments on spots she may be too shy to let you touch—like her ears.
During your equestrian coaching regime you’ll discover that you have to apply 3 things in order to teach your horse whatever it is you want her to learn: Restraint, Reward, and Repetition. In reality as early as now, when you’re only acclimatizing your horse to her new environment and what’s to become her regular routines for holistic care, you already need to apply these 3 concepts.
For the main part, your horse won’t let you touch her ears because she is innately wary of you injuring her. The key to making her happy with such routines as cleaning the inside and outside of her ears is to allow her know that you’re not going to harm her. To be well placed to do that, you both have to be in a safe enclosure where you can work on her ears. Start by placing your hand on a part of her face she lets you touch. If you’ve been into horse riding for a while now, you should really know which parts are okay and which would just make her turn away from you. Stroke her face in a manner that naturally brings your hands close to her ears. Your action would then transition into a stroke that goes past her ears. You’ll notice the slightest touch can lead her to move her head and her ears away. So on your part; you need to sweep your hand over her ears quick enough such that you move your hand away before she will be able to react. Do this frequently until you believe that you can do it slower and slower still till she understands that you are not going to harm her or her ears.
Then you’ll have to target doing pretty much the same only this time you want to touch the exterior of her ears, beginning from the tips. Then work your way to the interior of her ears. Eventually, you must make her comfortable to the feel of both of your hands really forcibly but carefully holding her ears and touching its insides.
The restraint, reward, and repetition cycle is always at work when you do this—restrain her carefully if she moves away and put her back to the first position she moved away from, reward her every correct response (in this case, every time she does not move away) by praising her, and repeat the process until she feels the whole routine is safe, and eventually, to be expected. Also, do not expect that you can just walk up to your horse and grab her ear the following day—you’ll need a couple of days or even up to a week of this to make her feel absolutely ok with it.
Before you introduce a new horse to the fundamentals of equestrian coaching or horse riding, you must ensure she is kept healthy and well. And even before that, you want to let her know she needn’t move away from you whatever part of her that requires cleaning or tending to.
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