Worked up about getting your mare into equestrian training suited for dressage? An old adage reminds of crossing bridges when you are there, and if you and your equine partner have just met, you are a long way from the dressage bridge—you’re possibly still at the holistic horse care and health maintenance bridge. Before embarking on glorious training programs and horse riding expeditions, you first have to understand how to take care of your mare and her grooming and cleanliness wants. Take cleaning her udders for instance.

If you’ve been feeling out your pony, you should really know she is both proud and sensitive. She’ll easily go fight or run on any danger or discomfort—even just the perception of it. And the majority of the time, especially for horses that are new to their domestic dwellings, the source of both danger and pain is you. And if you think you’ve seen your mare get sensitive when you touch her ears or mouth, try jumping on her udders.

You want to establish you are not going to harm her. From there, you make her get used to your touch, regardless of where you’re touching. The entire process takes patience, and is not a one day deal. You’ll have to patiently work on getting her comfortable to the routines for days until she finally gets it. Before you start, know 2 things: practice patience and always reward her positive responses and improvements, and always stay safe—that is, away from places she could easily kick your head off.

The steps to making a horse let you touch her is to begin at places you can already touch, and carefully work your way to the part that you want her to become used to. Say you wish to train her to not react negatively to your touching her ear. Then start stroking her face where she permits you, then gradually work your way to her ears. Move your hand fast enough so that your hand brushes her ear and moves away before she can react, gradually slowing down till you can touch her ear, then hold it, and do whatever with it without her reacting. Always reward your pony for responding properly, regardless of whether it is just for not pulling away. The same general procedure applies for your horse’s udder. Only before you actually get there you’ll need to make her happy with you touching nearly every other part of her body first.

Know that she’ll most likely unleashe on you if you rush the task. So work slowly. To be safe, always stay next to her shoulders as if to mount and start on a horse riding orgy, so if she steps away with her hips and kicks out you either can’t be reached or have enough time to scram. Holding her head towards you through her reins also helps, so that you can partly restrain her when she starts reacting.

As in equestrian sport where you don’t ride with just your bare hands, you also don’t clean your horse—any part of her—with just your hands. So be certain to introduce whatever it is you will be using to wash your mare’s udders to her the same way you did with your hands. And don’t use cleansers that will irritate her.

Most horses need sheath or udder cleaning only four times each year and others might need monthly cleaning. You can do it yourself or let a vet do it. Whether or not you select the latter, you may still have to go through the motions of coaching your pony to let people touch her delicate areas. Vets can help in giving pointers when you choose to do so.

Horses are Heather
Toms’ passion and she enjoys sharing her extensive knowledge through her 100’s
of articles with other horse lovers… like all things about cheap horse rugs