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Stopping a Kicking Horse Continues:
Anyway, now we can handle the horse according to its disposition. We can get it very nearly equal with a good
tempered horse. All the difference in the world is due to the management and training of the colt. A horse with a "not so good' disposition will require more patience and thorough work.
All animals in nature have a self defense of some sort. A horse's self defense is kicking. After all, if you work with a horse that gets badly excited by some cause (such as ropes or chains coming in contact with his legs and those parts of his body aren't broken) his first inclination is to kick it out of the way.
The trick is to break a horse in a way that the habit never occurs in the first place. Too many people think a lesson will be enough to educate the horse to be ready to go. But if you're driving your horse and he gets caught under the tail or the cross pieces of the shaft touch his quarters...and those parts are unbroken, it would likely frighten and excite him enough to cause him to kick.
And the worse part is this: Once started, there is an increased inclination to go on kicking until confirmed in the habit. So the cure is prevention. You must make all parts of his body submissive to sensitivity of his extremities. One way to do this is
using a technique called poling. Essentially, you take a light pole and start at a horse's nose, rub it over the mane, back, belly, quarters, and sensitive parts of the body, until all muscles become relaxed.
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