Jessica Jahiel's HORSE-SENSE Newsletter Archives

"Catch me game" with yearling?

From: emustuff

Dear Jessica,

Thank you very much for the time you spend each week doing horse-sense. I don't know what I would do without it.

I searched your archives about round pen training. I agree with you 100% about waiting to lunge any horse under two and then only for short periods of time. My questions is about my yearling. Can I play with him in a round pen playing games like the "catch me game" that Pat Parelli teaches in his video "The Seven Games"? I watched him do this recently and was very impressed with how the horse responded to him. (The horse was over 10 yrs old) Would I be doing more harm that good by doing these things with my yearling? Is it any different than lunging ? Are these games ok to play with a yearling or should they only be used on older horses?

Hi -- depending on the size of your round pen, you may be able to work with your gelding there. If it's at least 66' across, you can do some basic horse-handling work, but don't chase your youngster around the pen even if it's 80' across! Longeing is not good for yearlings, and neither is running around a round pen -- it's the same activity minus the longeline, and the too-young horse's hocks and other joints will suffer in the same way. Let all that wait until the horse is a full two-year-old, or older if he is a slow-maturing animal. There are a lot of things you can teach him while you wait: how to lead, how to tie, how to walk and trot and turn and halt and back in hand, how to stand for vets and farriers and people with noisy clippers, how to go forward when you ask, even if it means getting into a trailer. Neither one of you will be bored.

As for those particular "games" -- I would avoid them entirely. Horses are horses, and they exhibit horse behaviour. They do things that are normal for horses, they act like horses, they REACT like horses, and they need to be respected and understood for what they are. They don't play the kind of "games" that are described in that video, and it would be a big mistake to start interpreting normal horse actions and reactions as "games." Horses respond very well to humans who use their body language to "talk horse," and who "speak" clearly and slowly. Interpreting and responding to body language comes easily, naturally, to horses. It's not a game, it's a survival skill for prey animals that live in herds. You can learn to "talk horse" -- it's not complicated. Horse body language is as old as the hills. Watch horses interact with one another, read some of the genuine experts on the subject (Henry Blake, Lucy Rees, Tom Ainslie and Bonnie Ledbetter, Marthe Kiley-Worthington, etc.), and stay away from anyone who tries to make horses into something that they are not.

That's not to say that horses never play games -- but when they do, they play with each other. Young horses do a lot of trying out various "practice behaviours" that they would need in later life if they were still in the wild. Mating and fighting are the basis for most of those behaviours. Horses DO play games with other horses, but believe me, you do not want to get involved in the games that yearling geldings play with each other. They involve rearing, pawing, and the free use of teeth to pull off each other's halter; in the absence of halters, tyoung geldings will do their best to pull off a little hair and skin in the area where the halters would be. And if you really want to see something entertaining, turn out a pair of geldings wearing blankets.... and watch while the blankets are reduced to confetti. ;-)

You don't want to be your horse's playmate. It's very unsafe. ;-) You want to be his trusted leader, the one he follows when you say "Come on, we're going over here now." You're the leader in this dance. Enjoy your horse AS a horse, and don't try to make him into some kind of a human being in a horse suit, with human thoughts and human ambitions and human ideas of "play." Horses are wonderful animals -- they don't need to be anything other than what they are. ;-)

Jessica

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