EHAL Magazine May 2019

Everything Horses and Livestock Magazine ® Here Hold My Mini - time to hook up

Ok let’s Recap our training. In my first article we worked on desensitizing of our miniature horse. Everything we expose them to helps this.

that can assist you at this point in training. With your horse harnessed, start by running your driving lines thru the saddle turrets. While holding the lines in one hand, step back and take ahold of your cart. I like to be on the left side of my mini while harnessing. Bring your cart forward and run the shaft thru the shaft loops. Moving back towards the rear end, hook up your right tug, then left tug. You will then hook up your hold backs, left then right is how I like to do it. What side you hook up first really doesn’t matter. Move forward to hook up the over girth. The over girth strap is what holds the shafts down. This comes up from the girth and buckles to a strap that comes off the shaft loops, helping to stabilize everything. There are different styles of over girth straps, it depends on what came on your harness. With your mini hooked to the cart, line drive them while walking beside it to make sure they are comfortable with the new pressures they will feel.

Anytime you feel your mini is not comfortable, repeat the previous steps. It’s time to step into your cart. Ask your mini to move forward quietly pulling the cart with your weight. Remember, at this point, they are not finished and need hours of quality driving to help build their confidence and stamina. If you have any questions or concerns, give me a call or book a lesson.

We then moved on to introducing them to their

harness. We put the harness on and let them stand tied so they could get used to the feel of it. We talked about your choices of harness available (refer to our ??? Issue) Followed by harnessing, we started line driving them. With this, our goal is to move forward, turn left and right, learn whoa and stand quietly. We moved to introducing them to dragging poles to get them desensitized to the sound and shaft like feel on their sides. We again worked on forward, left, right, whoa and stand. Remember all this groundwork that seems monotonous at the time, but really pays off with each step and our end goal of creating a fun, calm, miniature horse to drive anywhere. We then moved on to loosely putting them in the cart, letting them feel the confinement of the shafts, and again learning forward, left, right, whoa and stand. As each step is performed completely, it is now time to hook your mini solid to the cart. Use Proper safety practices. It’s a great idea if you have anyone

Dee Jilek Crist

15 Everything Horses and Livestock® | May 2019 | EHALmagazine.com