Re: [haflingerfriends] broken elbow - a valuable lesson

I take it that she kicked you? First place I'd start is to be very consistent about what position you expect her to be relative to you (I would say no more than point of shoulder level with your position, I feel more comfortable personally with my horse's nose level with me). To work on this, start leading with a normal "feel" on the lead. As soon as the horse "thinks" about getting more "ahead" of you than you want, stop and back up. Mark Rashid also has an exercise where you walk a few steps with the horse and turn and face them. The horse is expected to immediately halt. If the foot in motion at the time you turn "lands" in front of the grounded foot, you ask the horse to back up. One of these exercises should help improve leading. (You ask as "light" as possible, but get as "big" as you need to when asking for the back, from little "twitches" on the lead to "energetically" swinging the free end of the lead or even smacking it on the ground in front
of the horse)

Jeanne White in Southern Wisconsin

________________________________
From: susanna_thorne <susanna_thorne@yahoo.com>
To: haflingerfriends@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Sun, February 7, 2010 7:39:43 PM
Subject: [haflingerfriends] broken elbow - a valuable lesson

i'll be brief because typing left handed is new to me. i took my new to me haflinger mare for a walk in the woods. we were on a well packed snow mobile trail. it was the first day of moderate weather, maine has seen all winter.

i asked my husband to walk with me because i didn't know how the mare would act.

so with a rope halter and lead we walked. my mare was doing very well. we were both enjoying the sun shine and crisp temperatures. we were on th way home i gave her some slack with the lead, she picked up speed and swung her butt around and planted her hoof smack on my right elbow. it's broken!

the tragedy is that i'm 8 weeks away from graduating from nursing school. we've been working on ground manners like not pushing, crowding but obviously we were not ready to be out of the paddock.

and more obvious is that my mare does not recognize me as the leader.
so, it's back to establishing who's boss in a firm, consistent manner. i did some research and this mare has a well established history of being pushy. any thoughts on how to correct the butt swing and how to set the tone that crowding, pushing and brat behavoir is not tolerated. gots to go i'm studying for a cardiac exam

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