this may seem a strange question-but

[waterfront]

I have a young pony who has quite a long walk back to the stable yard, he's quite greedy, not much grass in field at present. He's started to get a bit bolshy while being led & tries to drag me over to eat tempting looking grass on the wayside. he's not very familiar with a bit at present. do you think that giving him a nosebag with some hay to munch on while being led would keep him happy,or does this sound a stupid idea. all comments gratefully received& won't take offence if you say yes it sounds really stupid to me!

 

[indiat]

Personally, I would make him walk nicely - you do not want to give him the idea that it is ok to do this, even though you sympathise with his point of view! Our youngster is led in a pressure halter, so it might be worth giving this a try if you find an ordinary head collar is not doing the trick.

 

[YorksG]

The problem with leading and feeding is that this will become his expectation. We lead in old fashioned rope halters and find that those that need a bit of education with leading do well with them.

 

[bumper]

Rope halter and a 12ft line, and gloves. You won't have enough leverage with a normal leadrope: I would encourage anyone with a youngster to always employ this.

It isn't polite of him to expect to be fed whilst being led, just like it isn't polite for a horse to see a hack as a buffet. Nosebag is very bad idea: you need to concentrate on him being polite when you are on the end of the rope.

 

[steph91]

If you're leading the pony in a headcollar, wrap the rope around the nose and back through the loop. Just gives you a bit of extra control. If in a bit, there is no quick fix, the pony needs to learn to respect you and the bit.

 

[missyme10]

I've had this with my filly and another one I sold recently.

Be nice head collars sorted the problem out in both cases along with a longer lead line and I always wore gloves. They soon learnt to lead properly.

I now as a matter of course always use the be nice head collar with young horses, it does them absolutely no harm, and feels no different to a normal head collar when leading as they should be x

 

[Ladyinred]

If you reward this bad behaviour now by allowing either grass or hay then he will grow into the type of pony who always carts his rider onto grass with his head down! Not pretty or nice.

Sometimes just backing him up and growling will be enough to sort it. Do as little as you have to.. resorting to a bit first will give you nothing left to try if the first options don't work.

 

[MerrySherryRider]

Actually, its not a daft idea at all. If it does the job of bringing him in without stress to either of you, then there's no problem.
When the grass improves and he isn't hungry, he'll not be bothered about diving for grass or needing the distraction of hay.
In a perfect world, all horses would walk in beautifully, but yanking on a head collar is ineffective and reinforces his knowledge that he is stronger than you.The Be Nice head collars are awful things, I dislike the metal studs on the poll. Some rope headcollars are little better, too thin and with the knots sitting in the wrong place (unless the user knows how to fit and use one.) My preference is the Dually, (watch its training video first.)- or a plain old fashioned rope around the nose. There has to be complete release of pressure when the horse is walking well and quick effective use of pressure as soon as he dives away from you.
Practice walking nicely in hand when not coming in hungry from the field using pressure and release techniques and voice commands; Walk on.. Woah-and-stand. Get the halt a sharp stop, get him to focus on you all the time by asking for walk to trot to walk to halt to trot, etc. Make it a game so he is guessing when and what the next instruction will be. Do turns and keep changing to pre empt him anticipating. If he is watching you and has an ear pointing to you, you have his attention, if he gets distracted, bring him back to concentrating on you again.
5-10 minutes 'playing' a day will sharpen his responses, teach him how to behave when being lead and best of all, you're both working away from the stress of the initial problem,coming in from the field. It means the problem can be sorted without the stress of 'winning' the battle, but what is learnt is transferrable to the situation where the difficulty lies.
In the meantime, hay net is good. Better than hand treats which could lead to mugging. Sometimes, thinking around the problem is better if it means stress levels are lowered, you're calm, he's calm. Its a short term solution and wouldn't mean you can only ever lead with a haynet.

 

[lucy_jw]

i got dragged by a 20yr old pony yesterday that has prob never been taught ground manners consistently, i would say its better to teach them to lead nicely from as early as possible to stop bad habits forming.

 

[AndySpooner]

It's as easy to teach good manners as it is bad, trouble is most horses excell in what we call bad habits, which to them is perfectly reasonable. 'There's some nice grass, I'll eat it.'

When leading your horse, you want him paying attention to you, your in charge, your making the decisions for you and him.

I like to use a 12' line, and you can choose whatever head collar you like, personally I like to use a thin rope one. I don't want the horse using a head collar against me and bracing himself in a leather or broad webbing one.

I don't try and restrict or confine his head movement by holding the rope near to his head or under his chin. If he decides he's leaving, no way can you stop him like this. I like to have about 4' of lose rope.

I do a lot of ground work where he has to follow me, stop when I stop, back up when I do go left and right, never walking ahead of me, certainly out of my space and always mirroring what I do.

If when we are walking out he dives for the grass, I swing the rope towards his hind quarters, not touching at first, but if he ignores me I up the anti with more energy until either the rope is touching him or he picks his head up. As soon as the head comes up the rope swinging stops straight away, and I mean instantly, and start walking again.

To try and bribe him with haynets or nose bags is just storing up problems for later which will be very hard to rectify.

I believe the key to this is the ground work and constant changes of directions, stops and backups. If he sees you make the decisions, he won't even consider diving for grass when leading him out.