Horse Help

BobwhiteQuailLover

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I am riding my horse in a parade, and he is 4, so how could I spookproof him?

Thanks
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How soon is the parade? That's a tall order so I hope you have some time.
There's a great book out there I think it's called "Bombproof Your Horse".
Good Luck!
 
One month? Go to an instructor for lessons, get the instructor's ok that s/he feels the horse is under control enough. Just about anything can pop up at a parade.
 
I do recall, there are occasionally offered, group lessons in getting horses used to sights and sounds. You might want to ask some of your local riding clubs or the nearest mounted police group, if they know of any such sessions soon in your area. Those group sessions are called 'police horse training', 'desensitization training' or various other names.
 
Rode our horses in the town parade a couple years back and they did pretty good. Just got to get them used to loud noises and shouting. The dumb guy behind us in a sports car was reving his engine and honking alot and it spooked some horses but not ours. Try banging stuff like pots and pans around them then let them sniff them to show them its not going to hurt them and pet them alot it helps keep them calm.
 
What chicky gurl said!!
I took my5 yr old into a parade a few years back. I got a Monday night foot ball CD from DH, pots and pan lids, some fake flags, and some loud music cd's...
Band music type...
Day 1, I let him in the small indoor with a flat dish with grain in it.. Let him loose.. and while he was eating.. I walked around with the pot and pan lids.. banging away.. the music blaring in the back ground.. I paid no attention to him.. except to see where he was.. he ran, snorted.. and then realized I wasn't coming after him.. and there was food... he started to ignore me... I would then go around him... in a large circle...
snort/run.. oh. food... kept it going till he was following me.. or ignoring me while I did this.. Time-About an hour or hour and half
Day 2, saddled him but again let him loose.. loud music, crowd noise, banging lids.. till he got over it.. paid some neighbor kids to stand on the outside of the arena waving their little flags.. reaching out.. saying" PRetty horsie, oh can I pet the horsie??!!".. led him past them while they reached out, waving flags.... having them bang the pot lids (they LOVE that by the way)... Time - about an hour...

Day 3, saddle, bridled, loose at first, hay or grain in center or arena.. get the kids to wave their flags and bang pot lids....Lead horse back and forth again past the kids...
Then get on and ride the horse past the kids. as they wave the flags and bang the pot lids.. Time -an hour or less....

I gave a refresher the day before, he was completely calm..
Day of the parade, helicopter doing low level fly bys, nascar type cars reving engines ALOT... Over sized puppets held on peoples backs with handlers... NO issues...
GIANT white crossing lines or Rail crossing X's.. small issue with that.. I would work with that!!!

Hope this helps
Carol
 
Also, a thing to be watchful of is most parades have more than one set of horses. So there will probably be horses your horse doesnt know. You just got to watch and make sure he behaves himself lol. When we were in the parade they had all the people riding horses in one big section and our horses had never met some of the other horses, there was this one horse though that was going crazy whinnying and carrying on.


WIChookchick sounds like she has the perfect preparation techniques id definitely try of those.
 

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