HOW DO YOU GET A STUBBORN MARE TO COME TO YOU WHEN YOU CALL?

Note: The following excerpt is the transcript from a question I answered from my Facebook Live made in the Steady Horse Facebook Group on 7/24/19. Watch the video or read the text below to learn the answer to the question.

You know, that can be so frustrating when you have a pony that you want to come to, but that pony has no interest in you. One of the things if you have a horse that’s either hard to catch or hard to engage, and this is kind of counterintuitive, but you ` have to be willing to let that horse walk away.

Sometimes you might even just shoot that horse way, push them away because horses are very naturally inquisitive and they love attention. Nothing kills a horse more than when you just ignore them and pretend like they’re not there. Then there, then that’s when they’ll start to kind of meander up towards you and check you out because that curiosity just overcome some, and it sounds kind of silly, but it’s almost like playing hard to get.

A lot of times because we’re kind of straight-line thinkers, we’re predators. We like to just go indirectly for what we want. If we want to engage with a horse, we walk right up to them and we go to pet them. And horses are a little bit different. They take a little bit of time to warm up. So if you can, start to avoid that horse. When she looks at you, you turn and look away.

Maybe you walk away, take a deep breath and then she comes towards you. Then you walk away in another direction. Then what will happen is you’ll begin to create a draw where your horse is just so curious to be by you, to follow you to see where you are. And then you might decide to give her a rub and wait for her to start to relax a little bit. And maybe she’ll lower head and it starts to feel good for her. And as soon as she begins to show you that she’s enjoying that interaction with you, walk away. She wants to be with you. She says, man, I want to go creep up over there and be by her and float towards that direction so that I can be loved on and rubbed on.

So make sure that you’re not just going right in for it. Take your time, be slow and deliberate, but be ready to immediately disengage so that she’ll want to engage more with you.