Training a horse not to kick is done by spending time near the horse, grooming the horse, handling his legs and making him comfortable with human contact. Set the parameters for acceptable behavior from a horse with helpful advice in this video on training horses.
Per your question on kicking -- if a horse respects you and knows you are a higher horse he will not kick at you. Any threatening or aggressive behavior must be met with threatening and aggressive behavior from you. You have make sure the horse knows that any threats or aggression will create him work and you will make him move his feet, get a pop with a lead rope or a whack with a something else you are holding, a swat with a hat and even a kick, elbow or knee. You don't want to kick too much or the horse will start kicking back, but if in a situation where you have nothing else, you cannot allow a threat without a hard response from you or the horse will see you as weak and as a lower horse and then he will know he can kick at you since he thinks you are lower. Higher horses can kick lower horses, but lower horses cannot kick a higher horse.
I have some good kick videos on my training video page of my web site: www.thinklikeahorse.org
Hope this helps,
Rick
Hi, I'm Rick Gore out here at the Travis Equestrian Center. Today we're going to talk about how not to get your horse to kick you. I guess there's a lot of searches out there about how to train your horse not to kick you. Horses don't kick unless they're taught that it's OK or that there's no repercussion for kicking. You can't really train a horse not to kick. What you can do is set the horse up to learn that kicking is unacceptable. And you can do that by handling. You do it by brushing and grooming, getting underneath your horse, walking around your horse, letting him know that it's safe to be around him, touching him underneath, in between his legs, rubbing him, being able to walk underneath him, do some good sacking out, rub his legs. The more you handle and touch and around your horse, the less likely he's going to kick you. If you pick his feet everyday, he's going to know when you reach down to pick up his feet, that that's what you want him to do so he'll lift up his foot nice and easy, when you ask him for the foot, he's going to pick it up and give it to you. Same way with the back feet. If I move back here and I do this all the time, he knows to pick that foot up and give it to me, so he's not going to kick me because I spend time around his back legs, his hips, his tail, I'm brushing him, I'm grooming him, I'm spending time teaching him that it's OK for me to touch and be with him and do whatever I want with him. So spending time with your horse is probably the best thing that's going to get you in a safe position to where you don't get kicked by your horse so he doesn't want to kick you and he's not going to try and kick you. And then when he does kick you or he does try, of course you have to give him some good quick discipline, move his feet, make him know that's unacceptable, you're the higher horse and he can't do that. So training your horse not to kick, it's a lot easier to teach your horse that you can be anywhere and kicking is unacceptable and then you won't have to worry about correcting that learned trait.
Specialty: Horsemanship
on April 22, 2010, 2:31 am