This message is from: "the Sessoms'" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Read more about how horses communicate. To teach your horse to lead, only play with her when you have a lot of patience. A slow start will give lasting results. As John Lyons says, don't start with the goal (ie leading ) or you will have a wreck. The Pat Parelli book, Natural Horse-man-ship, is really fun and good to read. I really reccommend reading or watching video tapes. Your timing is the most important thing, and that will improve as you play these games. So just start.
First you have to teach her that you do not want the opposition reflex, and you can do this many ways. Since you want to lead her, I'd do this. I like the knotted rope halters and Parelli style lead rope 12 feet long, but you can use what you have just try to have a long enough lead. The long lead rope gives you both some space, and sometimes horses just don't move because they do not have enough space to think. You want them to think and learn, not have actions with reactions. The goal is leading but there are going to be many steps. First stand at her side, a few feet away, and put mild pressure on her halter towards the side. You want her to learn to have her nose follow that pressure, not pull away from it. The first times it will take forever, honest, just wait. Your filly will try many things to get rid of the pressure, or perhaps she will be like the older horse I got and am retraining, she just ignored me and let the pressure remain for minutes before she did anything. I suspect she was taught to tolerate pressure unknowingly. Anyway, eventually your filly will do something, and you must watch carefully, pay attention, and decide what happened and what you should do next. If the filly tries to pull her head away from the pressure, do not pull harder (that will cause a fight reaction and guess who is stronger!), just keep the light but noticeable pressure and follow her head movements where ever she goes. When she finally moves her head so that HER MOVEMENT takes the pressure off the rope and the rope goes slack, you reward her by giving her even more slack in the rope, and you leave her alone for 2-3 seconds before you ask again- that is her reward for giving you the right answer. I am assuming she is not flinging herself around as you say she will not move; we want her response to be soft and submissive. You will need to decide when to reward her. Usually the horse will chew and lower its head when its thinking processes are working instead of it reacting without thought, or their ears and eys will soften. If it starts this chewing after you have rewarded it for a proper response, wait until she is done chewing before asking again. I warn you, you might be waiting for 10 minutes, no lie, before you get to reward your filly. But take the time now. She needs to learn that she must move TOWARDS the pressure in order to have the pressure stopped (the reward). If she can outwait you, and you give her the slack in the lead rope because you get bored first, she has learned that if she can just last longer than you, or be stronger than you, she is not learning this important lesson. So you are going to teach her to "give" to the pressure on the halter on both sides, and like the man above, you can ask for a little more once she gets the idea. From here there are several ways to proceed. You can ask her to move her head to the side and out a little bit before she is rewarded, so that it is easier for her to take a step in that direction towards the pressure with her front foot than it is to lean that far over. Or some people have the horse bend its neck around more tightly, and ask the horse to hold its head there a little bit, so that again, it is easier on the horse to move its body to straighten its neck so it moves its hind feet around and eventually its frontlegs, so you again, get the feet moving as a result of pressure on the halter.
