I’m going to talk a little about cleaning the sheath of stallions or geldings. I don’t relish discussing this topic, but I keep coming across people who believe it is an important part of horse husbandry.
When we think of ways we create worry in our horse we tend to think of pressure that is too big or ill-timed or a release of pressure that is inconsistently timed. These things can cause a horse’s cup of worry to fill very fast. But what about an event that we don’t recognize as causing worryy?
People sometimes get cranky with a horse for stuff he does because we think “he should know better” or “he knows not to do that.” But if he knew better he would not do it.
The way a horse is can always be attributed to two things, nature, and nurture. Everything a horse does, how it responds, and what it understands, is a combination of what it learned from its life experience and what it inherited in its genetic makeup.
We deal daily with our horses exhibiting a vast array of behaviours. Some we want and some we don’t. We spend much of our time with our horses correcting or re-training the behaviours we don’t want.
