misbehaving yearling

Question
QUESTION: Hi-
 I am a 33 yo equine veterinarian. I rode horses for about 6 years as a kid/teenager then got away from it due to monetary constraints.  I have worked with horses in various settings ( living history farm, doing stable chores for extra money, and now for 8 years as a veterinarian) but have never trained one myself.  I consider myself a capable but not an outstanding rider by any means.  I DO have a lot of experience training other animals ( dogs, oxen, cats).

  I have recently acquired a yearling mustang.  He is not wild: his dam was adopted from BLM pregnant and foaled in captivity.  I board him at my next door neighbor's farm, where he is turned out on a sizable pasture all day with six other horses( he is the youngest). I bring him in at night   .

I have been working with him for a few weeks since he came home.  He will come to me to be haltered, stand ( usually anyway, and a firm reprimand will make him if he does not) for haltering/unhaltering, walk politely through gates, leads well, stands for grooming, picks up feet, lets me handle his eyes, ears, mouth, under tail etc. he has made great progress with this since getting him.......BUT....I recently began trying to teach him to lounge.  He will not move forward, but if i try to motivate him to move off with the rope, he will come in at me, sometimes biting at me, or at the swinging rope.  He  became quite frustrated during that first session--it seemed like he thought it was some kind of game, but i wasn't following the rules......I admit I was frustrated also.  After the first failed session, I tried again today with similar results.  When I let him go today, he tried charging at me twice from behind me.  Both times a loud "NO!" and a big wave of my arms stopped him in his tracks.

  It seems almost as if the lounging thing is like a game to him, and after we are done, I have to work twice as hard to show him I am NOT his playmate.

  Understandably, I have given up on the lounge-lining until I figure out where I am mixing him up.  In the meantime, any motion of his lips toward my body is met with an increasingly firm "NO!" and an increasingly firm pop under the jaw.  
 My questions: 1.  What is the best way to nip this behavior in the bud?  It has only happenned two days in a row so I hope to be able to turn this around.

2. What is the best next step to communicate that I am NOT a playmate but a leader?  Tonight after we both calmed down we worked very briefly on him standing on the slack line instead of coming toward me as he does whenever he is on a slack line.  I thought maybe that would begin to communicate that my space is MINE, without the added excitement/distraction of me trying to get him to move out.

3. SHOULD I be lounging him at a year old?  I know light work at the walk should be ok physically speaking, but what about mentally? Is asking him to work on the lounge line like asking a kindergartner to do long division?  Should we just keep on working on leading, giving space, standing for all sorts of stuff, and worry about the other stuff when his brain is more mature??

I will add that I do not feel he is being aggressive per se..rather he seems rambunctious and like he wants to play( if he wanted to try to hurt me, I have no doubt he could).  That doesn't change that he shouldn't be doing these things, but it does give you an idea of the attitude he presents with.  If I discontinue the session ( as I have both times since he did not seem to be learning anything good from me), he follows after me trying to get me to reengage with him.

Thanks for any advice.  I clearly am miscuing him somewhere, I am just not sure where.
         Denise

ANSWER: Hi Denise, well you are right and I am glad to hear that you are looking at what you are doing wrong and not blaming the horse.  You seem like you are doing some things right, but some things you are off.

If you are a Vet, you should not mind reading and educating yourself.  I put my web site together to help answer a lot of your questions.  Read the first 10 pages, most are small the three longest are Horse History, Horsemanship tips and horsemanship.  As you read you will notice a common theme and it will help you to think like a horse.  You have to understand how a horse thinks and survives in a herd.  You and this little guy is a herd of two.  I have a section on herd behavior this will explain this.

You are seeing a horse that is just a horse and is just doing horse things.  The short answer is, this horse is the youngest and the lowest in the herd, he is looking for someone to be higher and he found you.  Is little acts of disrespect are playful now but will turn into aggressive bites and or kicks.  Not that he is being mean, he is just being a horse.

Being with other horses are good for him and they will teach him manners.  Watch the herd interact, see how the horses treat each other, watching horses be horses really teaches you to understand them, they a complex communication system and by learning this you will be able to tell what your horse is telling you and how he talks to you and other horses.

Young horses love to play, this teaches them how to act later in life.  He can hurt you as a young guy and really hurt you as he gets bigger.  You have to establish your order in the pecking order now.  You have to understand what moving his feet mean to him.  You must know and understand what he looks for in his leader and do you show him that.

Read the three pages I listed above and then drop me a line on what you think you are doing wrong and what you plan to do to fix it.  I will let you know if you are on the right track and will clear up any confusion.  I do this so people will take the time to learn so they  will understand horses which makes it better for the horse.  Take the time it takes and it takes less time.

I will be waiting to hear from you,

Rick

---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: Hi Rick-
  Thanks for your quick reply.  I did read your website pages.  I have also read a few books on equine behavior and I often watch him interact with the older horses.  
  Last night after writing this email and reading some more, I sat down to analyze the situation as I do when i am having trouble with a dog.  I knew I was some how not showing him what I wanted to show him.  I then realized a few things. One, I have been letting him get away with subtle rudeness in the form of crowding, I think b/c I am accustomed to being crowded by horses so much as a vet( many are not well behaved and I am too busy with vet stuff and too worried about client relations to do too much about it if the client doesn't see it as a problem), my brain just registered it as normal.  Two, although I was doing the lounge training as I had been shown to do it( have lounged horses but they all already knew how to do it), what it resulted in, because of his head coming toward me, is me backing away from him.  I think in his mind, this was like " hey, wow! I'm moving her! Maybe I can be in charge!".  It was only after this that the behavior escalated to the bite.  Then, and it was a mistake, I DID back away from him on purpose.  So I think I suddenly set up a new idea, that he could push me around.  The second attempt at lounging only reinforced this, as again I was backing away from his forward motion as he continually swung his head in at me.  It was after that session that the behavior escalated to charging.  I did not run away when he charged, but I did not chase him down and give him what-for either, as Pistol, the top horse, would have. ( I know he would b/c i have seen him do it many times).

This morning when i went to give him his morning feed, we had another escalation.  I do not let him charge for his breakfast but always use one hand to keep him a distance away until the food is on the ground and I have stepped clear. That was a fight at first, but then he accepted it, and we have had no problems with it for almost two weeks.  Today however, he backed off the food. But after I let him toward it, he swiveled his butt and kicked one leg at me.  I knew I had to do something, and since i had his hay net in my hand, i started swinging it and screaming bloody murder. When he put his butt to me again I smacked it with the hay net and then chased him to the end of the stall( his stall is not really a stall but a partitioned part of the barn so it is pretty big). I stood between him and the grain until he put his head down.  Then i let him toward the grain, but when he started eating immediately touched his hind end and asked him to yield.  He stepped over about 5 feet, no hesitation or kicks.  He yielded from the other side just as well.

After I turned him out, I walked in the pasture to see if he would try any of last night's antics.  I had a lead rope with me. No charging but eventually he did come up and I scratched him,etc.  Then--he tried to bite..Up went the rope, I was hollering, charging at him.  He hesitated at first, turned his chest to me like "make me!". I swung the rope really hard so it whistled really loud.  He turned tail and ran with me chasing him( I am a distance runner fortunately).  I chased him off a good ways, then went back to standing.  He eventually came to me with his head down.  I scratched him and rubbed him with the rope.  He tried again to nip, although the second time he did not make full contact, and i was with him for 15 or 20 minutes before the second try.  This time when I raised the rope, he did not put his chest toward me or try to charge.  He turned tail.  I chased him swinging the rope for a good ways.  He ended up standing "in the corner",the part of the pasture the other horses send him to when he annoys them, away from the food and water.  Eventually he went to the round bale.  When I approached, he lowered his head and backed away from the food.  Again, he allowed me to rub him with the rope, scratch him, etc.  I left it there as he did not try to bite again, yielded the food to me, and still seemed to trust me.

So for now, I am not going to try lounging anymore.  I will stay in the field with him where i can safely run him off if he is bad.  I will continue the leading, desensitizing, walks, etc we were doing as those all seemed to have a positive on his behavior ( he is over all better behaved then he was when I first got him, esp about handling, haltering, leading--but i think i set him up for failure with the way I handled the lounging thing). I am also clicker training him a targeting command, which I think I will keep doing.  Clicker training seems relaxing and fun for both of us, and he is not nippy about the treats as he only gets them during clicker sessions.

I have a round pen but it has too much grass right now to be used for training.  I have to kill off the grass and get some sand.  WHen the round pen is ready, I will work him in there some.  A lot of people around here view lounging as an essential skill, but I am not exactly sure what i will teach him with it that he can't learn in the roundpen. I do not know if I should continue it, and I have no plans to try until I am sure he is not confused about who is in charge.

I would love suggestions on what else to do and to know if I am on the right track.

Oh, also, since I know horses use their mouths like another hand, I am not going to pop him for touching me with his lips, etc.  This was a suggestion many horse people I work with made, but since the problem with biting is in how he views his relationship with me, I would rather address the whole relationship and allow him to use his mouth to check me out, say hi, etc as long as he respects my space and does not try to bite.

Thanks again, I am sorry this is so long, but I am really trying to think this through just like I would a training problem with a dog.  It is easy to get overwhelmed and lose confidence b/c the people I work with think I will make the horse a "pet".  Which I do not realy understand the negative in that.  My dogs are pets, and love and trust me, they are also pets who know I am their leader and obey me.  I WANT my horse to love and trust me, although the people I work with say I will ruin him if he likes me too much.  I hope that is not true, and I hope we are on the right track.  Thanks again-
    Denise  

Answer
Sounds good, I have two things, one, making a horse a pet can be dangerous.  My quarter is my pet, but not like a dog or cat, I have to constantly put him in check and move him when he tries to push me.  Horses are not driven by praise and acceptance like predatory animals are, dogs and cats, since they are prey animals, they look for release, no contact, and want to be left alone.  Even if they like getting treats and food, they don't have a prey kill instinct like dogs and don't care around people like dogs.  You can make him your pet with limitations that he will not push you or see you as an equal or lower herd member.  That is where people get into trouble with horse pets.

As for lounging verses round penning, lounging requires more skill and communication.  In a round pen it is easy to chase or push the horse and wear the horse out until he is tired.  Since you do not have a line on the horse, you can not confuse or mess him up as much.  The flip side is if you can lounge him correctly, you are using better and are more aware of your body language and communication with the horse.  So anyone can chase a horse around a round pen, but not anyone can lounge a horse correctly and make it look smooth and like a dance.  :)

The bites and nips should get less and less as you maintain your position as leader.  Just be aware that it is in the horse's nature to test you now and then, so don't take it personal and be sure you are aware of it and you move the horse to show that you are still leader.

Also don't get in the habit of chasing him off all the time, if you can make him face you, come to you, disengage his hips, make him back away controlled from you, all of these will establish you leader position as well.  You don't want him running away every time you correct him or that will become habit.

Remember six ten-minute training session are better than two 30 minutes sessions.  Horse learn by repetition, so more shorter sessions are better to teach them and get them into a habit.

Hope this helps,

Rick