#1 Rule

Rule #1 when you are around horses, You Can’t Be Scared!

Being scared only makes the horses more nervous, especially if they are a little jittery anyway.

You have to be confident.  Horses sense fear.

But a horse doesn’t usually intentionally hurt you either.  Sometimes they are more afraid of you than you are of them.

Last Sunday we took Tbug out to meet Snookums.  Tbug was at camp when Snookums was born so she hadn’t yet met her.

A good momma will keep her foal by her side at all times and knows where they are at all times.  And momma I get the feeling hasn’t been handled a whole lot so she’s a little nervous anyway.

Hubs went and got feed in the bucket to see if we could bribe them closer.

In this corner, neither of them were having any part of it.

So we eventually got them moved over to the feeder.

And of course this one, thinks she’s starving all the time decided this time to eat horse feed??!!

Well Tbug was scared of them.  The more scared she let on to being, the more nervous the horses were around her.  I asked her if she trusted her dad and me.  She said yes.  I said ok I promise we won’t let anything happen to you, you have to not be scared.  The more you relax, the closer they will eventually get to you.

She slowly started to listen to me and as she did, the mare started coming and eating out of her hand. 

Eventually Snookums had to come see what was going on on this side of mommy.

And PC got her to eat out of the bucket.

And eventually we had Snookums eating out of Tbug’s hand as well.

And of course she had to brag that Snookums would eat out of her hand and not her daddy’s.

It just took a little convincing of Tbug that she couldn’t be nervous.  As she’d start to get nervous again the horses would step back and we’d have to start all over fresh.

So remember and learn from Tbug, being nervous is not a good thing around horses.