These boots were made for...

...killing Saddlebreds. Apparently.

It has been a wild, woolly and adventurous couple of weeks on Planet Quattro. Trainer that Q is probably heading to in the fall wanted me to make sure he wears boots/bandages calmly on all 4 legs. Well, silly me; I didn't THINK that was going to be a problem...!! He wears boots on his front legs without any issues at all, other than garden-variety Twinkletoes "let's just GO!" stuff. And I know perfectly well that horses can get a little weird about hind boots, but Godalmighty! Can you say "screaming plunging kicking bucking UTTER hysteria"?? I sure can.

I've always started horses in hind boots by putting them on in the stall at feeding time (and then bailing the heck out of there). But Quattro's stall has concrete walls, so I didn't feel comfortable creating a scenario where he might want to kick the walls hard. Good thing I took that into account, because the first time he had them on, if I had done it in the stall, he would for SURE have pulled a Barbaro, probably on BOTH hind legs...

With the stall out of the question, and no safe place to handgraze a horse who might get loose (another method of introducing hind boots I've used successfully in the past), I ended up, after much ponderance, putting them on him for the first time in the indoor. NOT ideal, but it was the safest option of those available: strongest fences, least stuff for a horse to get hung up on. He was fine for about 3 turns on the lunge line but then, after he realized the hind boots were on and were NOT coming off, he just stopped dead and kicked and reared and fly-bucked and sunfished and then tried to bolt. I reeled him in, took the lunge line off and decided to let him "run it off". Boy, did he! He was so wired and pissed off he actually started to CHARGE me a couple of times! Twenty minutes later, dripping with sweat, he finally condescended to let me catch him, but was still kicking back and cow-kicking.

I consoled him, turned him back loose and went to get a HELMET before attempting to remove them. I didn't get to be this old by being stupid with a baby greenie.

So we've been doing boots on all fours every other night. I've been doing my little variation of clicker training: you stand while I put the boot on, you get a cookie. Hoof moves, you get a spank with the crop. One cookie per boot, including the fronts just so he gets the correct behavior reinforced.

He's been such a wreck that there really hasn't been any option of advancing his training. Right now, it's more a question of "Let's see if we can get all 4 boots on, lunge you for a couple minutes each way, and get them OFF again without anybody getting hurt, maimed or killed."

I'm pleased to report success in this regard. :-) This morning he was actually pretty good, with only ONE violent kick per hind leg putting them on, and another getting them off. He lunged quietly and obediently with them on, and that was a first. But I'm still wearing the helmet.

Next step - shipping boots. Won't THAT be fun!

The adventure continues.