Temper Temper...

[siennamum]

If I stand with my back to my 'speshul' gelding he will sneakily nip me. It is not naughty in his terms, it is attention seeking (& he thinks he is the centre of the universe). I am not going to avoid ever standing with my back to him on the offchance he will nip me. I will deliberately stand with my back to him and if he nips me he will be told off. He stands behind me pulling godawful faces but not nipping me these days.

Even though I could alter my life to suit him I won't, generally things run smoothly and the horses are happy with their routine. There are certain things he will just have to lump. Having to wait a few minutes while his feed is being made up, not nipping me for attention, standing still when told at road junctions, all things he thinks are intolerable are all things he will just have to come to terms with.

I could describe why he has to wait some evenings for his feed. But I won't it, will result in an in depth time and motion analysis on here of how I could adapt the activities of all my liveries to suit my impatient horse - aint happening.

 

[Oberon]

The old man demands his dinner as soon as he gets in his box .

Any pre-dinner faffing is met with firm resistance .

And god forbid........I bring him in early for some reason (during my lunch break) and then go back down to yard after work between 19.30 -21.30 to skip out, rug up and give dinner.......there is an almighty face!

Snapping at The Tank next door, standing in the doorway and refusing to let me in the stable, snapping at the air if I ask him to move.......

I can almost hear the foul language

Just what you need when you've been up since 5.30 and working a 12 - 14 hour day .

 

[fine_and_dandy]

In your horse's situation I would make up the feed first before you get him in and tie him elsewhere to brush etc if you wish to do this before you feed.

With any of the horses I have had, whether I've had them from babies or not, I have never tolerated bad behaviour from them whils feeding. The deal was and is that they get their dinner, and i am able to do what I wish be it rug, brush, check over etc. if there was a flicker of bad behaviour, food was taken away, I tied them up in stable and finished what I was doing before returning t to them.

Funnily enough, it took the most argumentative one of the lot the longest to work out the easy way...a week!

I don't need nearly a ton of horse taking the p!ss in that way. They all know the word 'wait' so I can easily go in, tie up a net without a horse tugging at it and put food down on the floor without being barged. Also helps with getting pictures of Bailey as he keeps still!

 

[Coblover63]

Oh mine are hateful when I'm preparing their grub. They live out and my yard is an enclosed area in the middle of their paddock so they stand at the fence line making faces at each other and charging around impatiently whilst they can hear me mixing feeds. You would think they were starving, despite the fact that they are all still averaging 14+ poos every 24 hours so hardly going without!!!!

 

[Queenbee]

As I mentioned, he has his hay so it's not like he's being made to starve. I don't really think ten minutes for a brush and a hoofpick is asking the world.

No its not a huge ask normally, but this isn't working for you or your boy.... I would pop a small handfull of chaff in a bucket and let him have that when he comes in, then do what I needed to do and then give the real feed... thats if you need to ride him before feeding, if not I really don't see what the problem is, just whack his feed down for him, far better than encouraging a tantrum.