I was watching an old cowboy the other day talking about how to properly catch a horse and teach it not to run from you when you go to get it. He said he NEVER takes a bucket of feed with him and can train any horse to get caught without giving you a fuss. Well, challenge accepted. In this entry we’re going to document each day of his process and see if it really works better than a bucket of feed.
The Process: The first question you probably have is how this process works and how do you teach it. It is actually quite simple: You go into the pasture to catch your horse and you just walk around. If he walks off or runs, you just continue to follow him/her. You try not to walk directly behind them but you follow and attempt to lead them around the pasture.
As you can imagine, this is a very lengthy thing to start doing, so I had to think of a different way to process it in my head so I wouldn’t get angry with all of the walking and running. So my process was simple: I am going out into the pasture to make my horse get some exercise. I am not trying to catch him and I’m going to stay out here until he gets so tired he wants to be caught.
I have a mare, and not that bright of one at that. She, along with her friend, another paint mare, made sure I did a lot of walking on that first day. Almost 2 hours of walking back and forth. I was walking and they were running most of the time, so an hour in and they were both dripping wet and I was still just walking along.
Don’t think the process was not frustrating. I had to keep telling myself that them running from me was what I wanted. It took a few moments of meditation to keep myself from wanting to shoot both of them. Eventually, I won out though and they just stopped running.
The next day was a little hard to compare because I had help, but we just stood there making them run back and forth until they eventually stopped and let us catch them. It only took 5 minutes to catch them but I’m going out tomorrow to catch them alone again to get a better comparison. I’m going to attempt this method for 7 days and will report back on how the process goes and whether or not I’m going back to a bucket of feed. 🙂