Oh well, I was going to stay out of this because I don't raise foals and because we had the good fortune of buying two young Icelandic mares that were apparently mostly well handled.
However, I once bought a very fancy Section A Welsh pony for my grandson. I'd probably had horses for 35+ years or so when I bought Summer. She'd been raised by this sweet older couple who brought her into the house and referred to as their baby. I will never know what part of Summer's very bad behaviors were caused by poor early handling and what part were just built in, but she was a little witch. I really never had much success in fixing her. We sent her to a pony trainer (now my grandaughter-in-law), who started her for Gabe. He rode her over fences in some hunter schooling shows and she was just as fancy and successful as I thought she would be. but a real brat to handle. We traded her to Ellie for a quarter horse when Gabe got too big for her. The day I went to load her to make the trade, I took her through the gait and she made a bee-line at a full gallop for the trailer, jerking the rope out of my hands. She self-loaded, but in the rudest possible way. She ended up on the pony circuit down in Florida and was showing in some very exhaulted company, but last I hear she was still a real stinker. Early handling? Who knows, but whatever it was, she never changed very much. Nancy
