--- In [email protected], "Virginia Tupper" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > I don't know that Orri is dominant--I'm repeating what his breeder > told me and what the barn owner tells me. Orri 'fights' with the > other 'top' gelding all the time. I see Orri as soft and gentle. > >
I just wanted to comment on this because I was just thinking about the same thing. My filly has been out with another filly, a colt and a mine for maybe a couple of months, now they wanted to take their filly out (2 years old) to break her (that's another topic), they wanted to put mine out with their herd, but they have a gelding who I have seen pin another horse against something and kick the snot out of them. I don't really know their herd dynamics, they said he might give her trouble. I'm not putting her in there. I would like to incorporate her into my herd and I started yesterday with letting them visit over the gate. Here is the thing, the people where I board said my filly is the top horse with the ones she has been with and "needs to be taken down a notch". Yes, she may be the top horse in her little herd, so????? I am guessing she will get to be top horse in my herd, so????? There is always a horse who will tend to lead. In my mind there is a big difference, most of the time, between a lead horse in the pasture and how they act with me. I don't need to control how they act in the pasture. I have a mentally stable herd and they can be pretty playful, but not really mean and don't injure each other. A nip here and there, maybe a little warning kicking, jumping on each other, Dari and Snorri love to mock fight, wrestle, Zoe the mule gallops up to Dari and jumps on his back (a mule/donkey thing from what I can tell). So my filly Rose may be more dominant with a herd, but she accepts me as leader very easily, so there is no problem. There can be a big difference between how they act in a herd and how they act with a person. It has to be looked at on a case by case basis, but the important thing is how they interact with us. > > > I do like what I've been reading about clicker, but part of me worries > about turning my horses into spoiled treat muggers. I was thinking > about trying it selectively to test it out. I think it works great, there might be a little mugging at first, but that goes away when they figure out this isn't the way to get a treat. Clicker training really gets them on board with whaterever you are trying to do really quickly, you can just see those wheels start to spin. Kim
