23rd January, 2016 Leading Questions

The overriding lesson from training the Warmblood foals is that a a foal is just a foal and a foal is just a horse. We trained these foals using exactly the same method that I would use with a semi-feral New Forest pony. Their needs are exactly the same. On these courses I have three pressures, the pressure from students needing to get as much out of it as possible, pressure from the owner who needs the foals to make as much progress as possible, and the pressure of doing the very best for the horses. The horses take priority and they are my paramount consideration. In total each of these foals has had under six hours training each with me or under my supervision.

At our third Handling the Warmblood Foal Course all of the foals have graduated to leading out on the yard, either on their own or with their Mums. The great thing about working with these foals is that they change in between each visit and continue to progress each time we work with them. Two of them are now fully weaned and the others are due to be weaned in the next few weeks. Once again we had a very high standard of students today all with a leaning towards IH techniques.

Later the 'morning' foals are turned out with their nanny, Sasi.

Finished for the day.

"Wonderful day learning how to handle the cutest baby horsies..." MA

"Great day today on the Foal Handling course Sarah! Very informative and very rewarding as each foal was so different! Thank you x" LW

"Thank you for an educational and enjoyable day.  What beautiful animals. Please thank Beccy. It was lovely to spend time with like minded people" MW

"Seriously busy but enjoyable foal handling day." BH