Training Tip: Building a Mini Horse’s Trust

Question: I acquired a mini paint with another horse I purchased; she basically just came with the horse as a pasture mate. The previous owners used her as a roping pony, so she’s afraid of people and runs away because of being roped all the time. How do I teach her to trust me and not run? Actually, how do I even catch her each time to teach her?

Clinton’s Answer: I’d let a horse like this live in a roundpen for a few days or even a couple of weeks, depending on how severe her catching problem is. That way, I could begin the Fundamentals with her, which starts with the roundpenning exercises, and wouldn’t have to worry about the struggle of trying to catch her for training sessions. Before I began a training session, I’d remove any water or feed buckets from the roundpen so that she couldn’t get hung up in them as I moved her around the roundpen.

Once I had successfully completed the roundpenning exercises and had her following me around the roundpen and had built her trust and respect for me, I’d turn her out in the pasture, or wherever she’d normally be stabled. A word of caution though, I wouldn’t go from keeping her in a roundpen to turning her out in a 100-acre field. I’d go from the roundpen to a small catch pen. If she proved to me that I could catch her in that size pen, then I’d bump her up to a slightly bigger turnout area, and I’d gradually increase the size of the turnout I put her in as her ability to be caught continued to improve.

Training a mini horse is no different from training a horse—you need to take your mare through the Fundamentals groundwork series.

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