One of the most important things for me in a horse is good manners. The young ones need to learn to be led, get their halter on and off, walk nicely and wait by the gate when it is time to come in.
We have been doing lots of that training with our sweet, cheeky boy Odin, who is a year and a half old Frisian cross.
He gets all serious and focused when I put his halter on. I can almost hear him thinking, "Ok, let's learn something new today". He learned the basic concept of being lunged in under 10 minutes. I don't lunge him as he is way too young for that kind of work, but I think it is important to teach him the basic aspects of lunge-line training.
I must admit I have not done much leading with him. Since my horses move freely from their stable to their various fields, they are not led very often. When I want them to come to the stable, I just go out and call. Odin will be the first one charging down the hill in a full galop.
I would like to imagine it is because he is eager to see me, but I think it is because he wants to make sure he gets more food :-)
At meal times, I ask each horse to walk into their box stall, close the door and get their feed. They all know which stall is theirs.
So they are all very used to be asked to do things by voice command. I suppose you could call it a form of liberty training.
Right now, Odin needs a bit of a "brush up" lesson on being led, that is led with a lead rope attached to a halter, not just being led by voice command only :-) .
This video is from his lesson today, except we forgot to put the halter and lead rope on. Odin, as always, was amused and took it all in his stride.
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