Recently John Chatterton offered to run 3 day charity training clinic for Storm’s Sanctuary horses. John worked with 14 horses saved from slaughter, from new foals, yearlings, colts to 10-14 year old brood mares. John donated all of his time, training and proceeds from the clinic to the ongoing care and training of Storm’s Sanctuary’s […]

If there is one thing I have learned in my life with horses, it is that you never stop learning about them. Horse trainers and owners who have been working with horses all their lives will be the first people to tell you it is not possible to know everything about horses. Every horse is an individual with its own unique life experiences and there is no-one who can claim to have known every horse, or dealt with every problem that can arise.

The most experienced horse people can still make errors of judgement when purchasing a new horse and for those who are new to the world of horses, the path can be a dangerous one for both the purchaser and the horse.

The debate over straight load or angle load floats has been going on in Australia since the angle load float was introduced more than twenty years ago. They refer to testing in the USA proving your horse travels more comfortably, will not scramble and is safer than the conventional straight loading system.

I find it interesting that everyone I've asked to see the results of these tests have not been able to produce a copy. So who has done these tests and how old are they?

After much investigating I have managed to find results of a study that was conducted in 2000 by RAy Goer BVSc, MVSc, PhD, director of research and product development for Kentucky Equine Research in Versailles, Kentucky; Anne Rodiek, PhD of California State University; and Carolyn Stull, PhD of the University of California-Davis. (Published in the American Equus Magazine in the April 2000 edition).

When you can run your hand down a foals legs and it remains relaxed, (as described in the Early Foal Handling article) it's time to start picking up their feet. Put your hand underneath the fetlock joint and say "up" using a gentle pull and release.

As the foal takes the weight off that leg, stop and reward him and change sides. Don't try to get 100% effort straight away. You want to avoid frightening them as they may learn to snatch their foot away. The principle of this method is to teach the foal to relax and to balance itself as it picks up its legs.

The first and most important step for safely loading and transporting a foal is to teach him how to relax and accept being handled. Have a helper hold the mare on a halter just a few feet away from the foal.

It is important that the foal is facing the mare while you are doing the early training so they both feel secure and unthreatened. You next need to train your foal to walk forward by placing your arms in a cradle position around him (in front of his chest and behind his rump), taking care not to hold tightly.

There are many different problems relating to float loading and every trainer has their own method of teaching horses to load on floats. I believe that if horse owners learn my Ten Step program, they will never have problems with float loading any horse.

Once the horse has learned the Ten Steps, he will be calm and submissive and will trust the owner/handler in a float loading situation. The owner/handler will have learned the skills and developed the confidence necessary for dealing with float loading, even when the horse is fearful or has learned that the horse float is a place to avoid.

Foals are very easy to handle on the day of their birth, as they are not aware of the danger around them. I have seen foals walk straight up to a dog and try to smell and play with it. The foal has no idea that the dog could hurt or even kill it.

As they grow, horses have a natural instinct to run away from something they are not sure of, they are flight animals. Flight is their way of solving the problem of fear. When the foal is being born I don't like to interfere too much.

John hosts regular one, two and sometimes three day Clinics all over Australia. When he is working away from home base he frequently allows a spare day or so on either side of a weekend Clinic to be available for private lessons.

We've found that people often want to spend some one-on-one time with John to consolidate what they have learned, and private lessons are a great way to do this.

We've been made to believe that we need to be higher in the pecking order which means we use body language to move the horse out of our space the same way a dominant horse moves his mate away from the feed bin.

When there are more than two horses at feed time, the second horse will challenge the third horse and so on. If you buy a mare to include into your herd, she will challenge your horses to be higher in the pecking order and this is not what a true lead mare is all about.