How to Make a Horse Your Friend

Hey guys, I've had a lot of people asking me how to get your horse to want to catch you or come up to be caught uh when you're getting them out of the pasture. So, in this video, we're going to cover that. One of the things I'm super proud of is that even though my horses can work hard and do a lot of cool things, they still come to me in the pasture when I go to catch them. And there's a couple of reasons uh for that. One of the reasons is I provide them with security and leadership and comfort. So, from all the training that we're doing, um they they enjoy the feeling that they have while they're with me. And so, I think for a lot of people, food is the obvious thing. And there's nothing wrong with uh giving them some food, but you have a lot more to offer your horse in addition to food. So, we're going to talk about food, but we're also going to talk about how to build their confidence and how to get your horse to want to feel comfortable with you um when you're in here. And so another thing while we're on this subject and so I'm not catching Marley right now. I'm going to leave her here. But one of the Marley's favorite itchy spots is right here. And so if you can find your hor's itchy spot, they can really enjoy getting some scratches when you come out to the pasture. That can be a powerful way to get them to to also want to get want to get caught. So let's go ahead and halter up Lambo here. He doesn't have as many itchy spots, so that doesn't matter to him as much. But one of the things I like about this horse in particular is he had a really good upbringing from when he was a weanling. And so he's basically kind of always um enjoyed his experiences with people. He didn't have any negative experiences with people. So that is also helpful. But um in a minute, we're going to talk about what to do if your horse is already a little bit afraid of people or doesn't want to get caught. Hey, I'm Ryan Rose and for over 20 years, I've been helping people improve their communication with their horses. Whether you're wanting to fine-tune advanced skills or help solve common behavioral issues, my Patreon page is a great place to get some help. Post a new video there every week. I answer your questions regularly and there's a great community support. So, if you want to start your free trial, click the link below. Now, let's get back to the video. For some reason, feeding your horse as a means of getting them to want to get caught has a lot of like weird stigmas around it. And so if I had a horse in training that was came with being hard to catch, there's definitely some training exercises I'm going to do. But there's nothing wrong also with haltering them up and bringing them to their feed versus bringing their feed to them. And so uh Lambo here has already been fed this morning. But what I could do if Lambo was hard to catch is I could halter him up and bring him into a pen and um I could tie him up here or I could turn him loose in here. And uh there's just a little handful of grain in there, just enough that he he feels like there's something in it for him. And the way you can think about it is whenever you're doing something that your horse likes, getting fed, getting scratched, maybe take them out for a handw walk to graze them, you are putting deposits in the rapport account. Okay? And when you ask your horse to do something that's hard for you or maybe building their emotional fitness on something, that's going to maybe make a little bit of a withdrawal from that that rapport account. Okay. And so if you've got enough deposits in that account, that horse will still be at the gate waiting for you the next day. And so I'm also a big fan of it's good to have horses be kind of by themselves for a time period. And so one of the things I could do is just just wrap him up and let him kind of stand here and and uh eat a little grain uh while he's waiting uh to get uh go to the next next training session, which him I'm actually working on some liberty with him anyways. And so he could just hang out here and graze. And that would be his first introduction to me haltering him that day. So Marley is a mustang that was very hard to catch when I first got her because she was still wild. And one of the things that I had to do before I could focus on building rapport is I had to build confidence. And so right now I'm going to show you guys some confidence building strategies. If you have a horse that is unsure of accepting the human as the human walks up to them, one of the things that I think about a lot with in this scenario is we spend a lot of time walking away from our horses. But when we go to halter them, we're facing them with our eyes and belly button. And our eyes and belly button can be more intimidating to a horse. And so if if I had a horse that was a bit afraid of me walking up and that's the reason they're hard to catch because keep in mind a horse can also be hard to catch because they learn to be hard to catch because they don't really want to come in and do any work. Um if there's no rapport building and it's just work of course eventually they're going to start walking away when you walk out to approach them. And so if they were if it was a confidence issue, one of the things I would do is practice facing them and and have them follow me like this. And I would build their confidence there. Now, if you have a really confident horse, be careful you don't do that too much because they can start getting dominant and pinning their ears as they approach you. So, don't do that one too much. Marley alternates between she can be a little dominant and she can be a little scared, a little bracy um at times. Um she seems pretty pretty calm and chill this morning and so I think she's in a more leftrain state. Another thing that I would do is when I approach a horse in a pasture, I'm going to work on my timing a little bit of how I approach them. I'm not just going to walk a straight line straight up to them. I'm gonna kind of just be a little curious, try to be a little interesting to my horse and kind of walk side to side and see if I can get them maybe to to keep two eyes on me wherever I walk. And I'm going to teach them this ahead of time, though. Okay. So, one of the strategies that I use for teaching this is building confidence by practicing approaching the horse with some energy. So, you can see that startled her a little bit. So, the idea is I'm going to get her used to eagles so that she can handle blackbirds, so to speak. Meaning, I'm going to prepare this much because when I approach her in the pasture, I'm going to do it really, really calmly. Dang it. Forgot to turn my phone off, but we got her shut off now. I'm going to approach them in the pasture softly and quietly and just move around them in a less threatening way. But what I want to do is expose the horse to some pressure and me walking into them with some energy in here. So, if I had a horse that was a bit afraid of me, I would deliberately practice walking up to them, waving my arms, jumping around, and make sure that they can handle some energy coming up to them. And if they can handle this, when I approach them really softly, they're going to get a lot easier to catch. The other thing I do is when I'm approaching them in the pasture, you could kind of think of it as waiting till they have permission or think of it as you're waiting until the horse is in a good frame of mind, which basically means their ears are forward. And if you can offer your hand out and the horse will connect with you like Marley just did and then her ears kind of went forward. That is the best frame of mind to say, "Yep, the horse is ready for you to continue to approach." The level above that is the horse actually comes to you at the gate, which is what we're really after here. So, that's one of the yields that I would practice is building confidence, walking up to them with a lot of energy and making sure they can handle that. Here's another pro tip about this. A lot of horses don't love their face being touched, and Marley was definitely one of these when I was first taming her. I would say she tolerates it now. But if I were to touch her in a way that she enjoys the most, it would be me coming up here and giving her some scratches kind of underneath her neck or kind of right here on her chest. Basically, places on their body that flies will irritate them and they can't get to them. Okay? And so Marley likes kind of some scratches here. The other place that a horse a lot of times will like scratches is I don't have any fingernails right now, but when you have fingernails or if you carry like one of those little short combs with you and you can get in there and kind of kind of rub on it. Oh, she's getting into that one. There we found a spot. But it's basically that's a hard spot for her to reach. And so if you can find a spot on a horse that they like to be scratched, um they'll really enjoy that. Um let me tell you a quick story. A long time ago when I worked for a ranch, there was a friend of mine named Rhett Fincher. And he always, in fact, his nickname around racetracks was horse because he was just, he loves horses as much as anybody I've ever met. And uh he was a racehorse jockey for a long time. But anyways, he uh he would carry this little, you know, this little 4-in comb with him. He always had it in his pocket. and he could go on the ranch and walk up to any gate in any pasture and the horses would come up to him and he'd walk in there and he knew where the itchy spots were on all the horses and they'd get into it and it's like every horse really enjoyed being around him. Um, and that was something that I always have kept in mind that can I get it to where these horses really like me and they want to be with me as well as seeing me as the leader. Okay. Now, another thing that you can do from a yield perspective, if you have a horse that is being defensive when you go to catch them, is before you walk up to their shoulder. So, I'm going to my goal is to be able to approach a horse kind of like this. Okay, I'm going to keep Marley stopped here. When I'm in the pasture, my goal is going to be I'm going to turn my body kind of sideways to them. I'm going to offer out the horseman's handshake here and let them connect with me. And then I'm going to go to their neck and that's when I have permission to kind of halter them up. But if they're standing there defensive or they're kind of halfway thinking about leaving, I'm not going to approach that position. What I'm going to do is I'm going to walk wide around here. And you can see how she her nose is away from me right now. I'm going to see if I can put a little pressure. And this is kind of a finessy kind of situation. Let's not lay down. Like, let's just have a roll right now. We're not rolling right now. That's later. She loves rolling. It's one of her That's another thing you can do is just catch your horse. If they're in a stall especially or a hard paddock, if you bring them into an arena where they have nice sand that they can roll on, they will love that. It's so don't get too attached to what I'm saying with, you know, scratches or whatever. Like, find something your horse likes to do. It could be hand grazing, whatever. And just spend a few minutes. You don't have to do it for an hour. Just spend a few minutes doing it, and your horse is really going to want to look for you and hunt you up out in the pasture. Um, but back to what I was saying about this hind court yield. What I'm gonna do is kind of crouch down and get a little sneaky looking, a little border collie-ish, and put a little pressure on those hind quarters and see if I can get them to catch me with a outside eye. That's what I'm going for with that move. Now, if you haven't taught your horse this move, the first step is to not pull on the halter. It's to put a little pressure here. Let's not lay down, Marley. She really wants to lay down right now, but I'm going to I'm going to hold her accountable to not doing it when I didn't quue it yet. So, I don't want her to lay down, but it's it's it's not pulling on the rope first. So, the biggest mistake most people make when they're teaching the hind quarter yield online and then have it not work so good when they go out in the pasture is they walk around here like this and they pull the nose. And that's a yield that I want her to know, but it's not going to really apply to the catching. I need to have slack in that rope and get her to pivot and go ahead and turn and catch me with that outside eye. Let's do it one more time here. We're not laying down, Marley. Those are a couple things that if you have a horse that is really green or still kind of afraid of people, you're going to want to cross your tees and dot your eyes, so to speak, and work on those steps. Building that confidence, being with you, in addition to building rapport, because until a horse is fully comfortable and letting down, they're not going to really enjoy scratches. They may not even choose to eat grass when you're next to them if they're still bracy and defensive. All right, let's jump into the next one. Another easy thing if you don't want to give your horse feed or put them in a pen is you can just take them out and find a nice grassy spot and just hand graze them. My only caveat with this is I don't want a horse pulling the rope out of my hands to eat grass. So, I'm going to lower her head and give her permission to eat grass. I'm going to cue that. I'm not going to let a horse just take over and eat grass cuz that's one of my pet peeves. I I want them to have patience. You know, just like you go to a dinner and the kid goes to dive into the food, but the other people haven't been served their dinner plate yet. It's like, let's wait till everybody has their food and we'll do it together. You know, it's kind of that that mentality. It's not a bad thing. It's just a let's have a little bit of self-control here, Marley. She really much enjoys her grass. But boy, if you want a Marley to want to get caught, you catch her up and eat grass. She is she'll be your best friend. And also make sure you manage your rope when you're doing this. Sometimes if I'm going to hand graze a horse for a while, I'll put the lead rope like this. Uh because you'd really what would be really bad is if they stepped on it while you're trying to make everything really sweet and they reach up and step on it with their foot. And so if you just tuck that rope over there, uh it can make it a lot harder to to step on. All right. So if you want to take your draw with your horse to the next level and maybe get your horse to run to you in the pasture, you're going to want to have your horse be bold to the stick and string. Okay? And let me show you what I mean by that. I kind of semi stole that phrase uh from Dan James. He calls it being bold to the whip because they use kind of like a buggy whip uh when they're doing it. Um but it's kind of a good way to think about it is like a lot of times we're using the stick and string. We're asking our horses to to drive away from us. But I want the horse to be confident that when I swing the stick and string at them, if I'm leaning back in my body posture, that that means come to me more. Okay. So, watch what we're going to do here. First of all, let's get his life up a little bit because I want him to draw into me with some energy. He's feeling kind of lazy today. It's kind of a hot day down here in Florida. And now I'm going to step back and swing the stick and string at him. And you can see that stick and string added more energy and effort towards coming to me versus running away, which means he fully understands this pressure. So, if your horse did not understand this pressure, what you would want to do is kind of walk backwards on a circle where you can kind of get an angle towards their tail. And they'll kind of do what he's doing where they're kind of circling you. And eventually, they'll start thinking about drawing in. They'll start saying, "This is kind of some work out here." And right there, he switched from drawing around me to drawing to me. And that's where the relief is. And so this becomes a cue that you can go on the pasture and you could use a stick and string, you could have a whistle cue. Uh you could crack a stock with whatever you want. You can get creative and you can create some energy that means come to you more. Um and this is a really powerful thing for training at Liberty. And when I do this, I don't typically use treats. Um I would not use treats at all if I had a horse that was really mouthy or kind of likes to crowd you on the ground. Lambo is really sweet and um he can get scared of things. He can be a little lazy, but he's not mouthy or pushy at all. And so with him, if I was doing this out in the pasture, if I used a cue, like a whistle to say, "Come to me more," I would I would reward that with a treat. So, I should actually go get one of those now. Okay, so this is not sponsored, but German muffins are a pretty hot commodity with horses. They really enjoy the German muffin. So, Lambo is starting to learn this whips up Q means stop. So, what I'm going to do here is I got him stopped. I don't want to do any backing up. up. I just want him to stand there cuz backing up is the exact opposite of drawing. So I'll just check him there and say I want you to stop and then I'm going to let it down and I'm going to get once he starts coming I'm going to give the queue ask him to come into me and then to add to the effect give him a treat when he gets there. So that encourages a little bit of of just reward uh positive reinforcement that he really wants to get here um when we do this exercise. And uh if you just continue to go in a straight line backwards and they're coming to you, it doesn't take very long for them to hook onto this. This can go pretty darn quick. So, it's a really cool little exercise. So, let's go ahead and try it again. So, we're going to do whips up. Ask him to stand there and hold. Oh, I really like how well he's listening to this cuz I just taught him this. Whips down there. Little bit of little bit of halter pressure came on. um thought about canering slightly. There we go. There's the treat. All right. So, let's go ahead and see if this translates to out in the pasture. Okay. So, I've never tried this before out here, but let's go ahead and give it a go. So, again, we're going to give him a hold queue. So, we're in his pasture where he lives. I'll draw backwards just a little bit. Very good. Good boy, Lambo. So, he figured that out pretty good. So, for me, what I like is I I came out here and I turned him loose and he didn't leave. He's happy to be with me. He's still connected with me here at Liberty. It seems like we could go have a little play at Liberty and uh he would be pretty content to to stay with me. Let's go ahead and test it a little bit. Just something kind of fun about being able to just play with your horse anytime, any place, anywhere. So, I hope you guys enjoyed this video. I hope you got some great tips on how to get your horse to like you and want to be your friend and go out there and try with your horses. Leave a comment below if you have a good strategy on how to get your horse to like you more. Hey Steph. >> Hello. >> We're doing your favorite subject today. >> Oh yeah. What's that? >> Using feed to get your horse to want to be caught. I've never done this before. Like why not, you know? Like everybody likes a cool liberty shot out in a pasture. >> What is that stance, Lambo? Bro, stretch out those toes. >> Let me get another reload. Cookie reload.