Peer-based equine learning

Malcolm · Peer-based equine learning

I know quite a bit about this with the human having facilitated it for many years and seen how kids will do stuff with other kids that they won't want much to do with from adults, like riding. If there was a groupf of friends that did it my daughter might still be riding.

Anyhow, I had no idea, until a few hour sago, how fast it can go with horses. I have Moola a new young OTTB chestnut gelding who is afraid of water, but not much else. Since we moved to a new farm there are now streams to cross. He refused first time out. I gave him half-an hour to make up his mind to get across to join my brother and his wife visiting from Canada who were on some of my other horses which cross water fine. I had managed to get an entire ride of refusing young horses across a bigger river last year, and had proved it could be done without force. But a horse will come along to make a fool of one.

He was not shifting and it was hot so I decided to put him in a field where he must drink from a stream and get used to natural water that is not in a “Ritchie waters them right “ ad. To do this fences needing doing and got finished today. I put them in a field with no water for a few hours in the heat to facilitate rapid appreciation of the stream and the pond. Some of the others plunged in and started splashing. He, visibly alarmed, tried to sip a bit . Then fear turned to curiosity and he dabbled a toe in like a school kid testing the water. He pulled back looked again then plunged in to his knees and imitated the others splashing.

I wish I had a video of the whole scene. It would have made a couple of minutes unedited clip with so much to say. It goes to prove that learning is so much more effective when it happens among peers and how ineffective our best intentions in teaching can be.

His pretty pushy chestnut girlfriend led the fray into the water and he did not want to be left out. My teenage son has gone from an all boy school and home to university residence where I reckon that girls will teach him manners and how to put the lids back on jars more effectively than us parents ever could. I guess this was a water hole ritual (never studied the author) like the ones my son will learn in the bars around that new town he is in.
Any other experiences in this type of learning in horses?
Malcolm