Desensitizing foal to plastic

Horses spookiness toward the environment is something that shows itself more when you go on trail rides. In the club and manege the environment is more under control than outside. In club you can prevent people shouting our throwing stuff but on outside trail riding this isn't possible to do all the times.

So, one of the key traits of trail riding horses is being brave, confident, and less spooky toward the environment. Being brave isn't a zero or one thing; it's a spectrum. Although some horses are braver intrinsically, all of them can get better with proper training.

I wrote (here) about important attributes that you should consider when going on a horse trail ride. And also, you should always work on improving them. In this post, I want to write and show you one of our workouts with a recently ridden foal called Shirin. I've shared about her first ride before here.

Working on horse fears

First of all, I want to emphasize that this is not a training that you should start with. Start with groundwork, lunging, saddling, creating a good relationship with your horse then step by step you can start these types of trainings.

Many horses that I've seen have some fear of plastic types of objects, or if not fear, they are not comfortable around them, especially when they make noise. As in most urban area's there are high possibilities of encountering this is something we work on with most of our horses.

As I emphasized before, after making a good relationship with the horses and other basic trainings. First, we start by introducing plastic or snacks inside the club area. Then we will bring them closer, maybe hang them near their boxes and even inside.

After these steps, we start to introduce the horse while riding. So we can see how the horse can control itself when encountered on a ride. It's sort of a simulation. The last part is tying snacks or plastics to a horse saddle or halter and seeing if the horse can get relaxed after a bit, or at least not reacting so wildly.

Remember that when trail riding outside, there could be a situation where the wind hits your horse's with plastic or makes a loud plastic noise. The horse should be able to keep him/her self together and not hurt itself or the rider.

In the above video, you see that as we continue, Shirin gets much better with snacks, and at the end, it's almost like there is nothing there. You see the snacks hit her legs, and there is noise, but there is no reaction. With Shirin's case, I think with a couple of more training sessions and a little growing up with the horse, the issue will get almost completely resolved.