How I Was Taught to Teach A Foal To Lead

As I had previously stated in my much earlier posts, I live on a farm. My family runs a horse rescue. Each year it seems like we take in at least one mare that is pregnant and foals while she is here at the rescue. A couple of months ago there was a beautiful tri-colored filly born to one of our rescue mares. She was a little spitfire from the first time I met her at about 2 weeks old. Due to several unforeseen emergency type events the filly was not taught to lead. She is now 2 months old and got her first "real" leading lesson by me yesterday. Now, since having my daughters, my participation in the day to day happenings at the farms have been less and less. However, over the weekend we happened to be visiting one of our other rescue farms, the one where the filly was housed.

We have a great crew of volunteers that dedicate countless hours to caring for the horses. They are all spectacular and all have amazing talents in different fields. One small field where we are short right now happens to be experience with dealing with foals, the field where I seem to excel (though I have no idea why). When we got to the farm there were several tasks that the volunteers wanted me to assist with, one task and concern was teaching the now 2 month old filly how to lead.

Ideally, one would want to start teaching a foal to lead as soon as possible. I usually like to start when the foal is 2-3 days old. Prior to teaching the foal to lead, it is a good idea to bond with the foal, touching it all over, "imprinting" it. Even at a couple days old foals can have an opinion about having a halter put on them. It is VERY important that you are careful when you put the halter on a new foal. Sometimes they want to back up or rear, you should NOT let the foal run backwards into a wall at this age, they can literally break their back if they back up into a wall fast and hard. To get a halter on a foal it is a good idea to have two people attempt this task. One person should get a hold of the foal, the best way is to get them in a "hug" reaching one arm around the chest and one arm around the rump, slightly higher than the hocks. Once in the hug position the second person should come closer rub around the foals face, bring the halter towards the face

Disclaimer: In no way do I claim to be a professional trainer, nor do I guarantee that my method will work for others. I do not take any responsibility for injuries that may occur to horse or human that tries to use my method(s). This method has been used on small to average size foals and I am not sure if it will work on draft foals as I don't have experience with them.