Some Horses Slip Through the Training Cracks

During the summer, the word is fly-spray. Insects can get bad around horses and it's a continuous battle to keep them in check. This includes putting up bug lights and fly tape, fastidious mucking, vigilance about standing water and, finally, spraying the horses themselves.

Now this can be tricky. There is something inherently scary to horses about being srayed with a spray bottle. I don't know if it's the noise or the sensation of the mist or what, but even the most docile horses usually have to undergo some training before they'll stand still and be sprayed. Even then, after a long winter, some seem to have forgotten about being sprayed every summer of their lives and we have to begin from scratch (pun?). And then there are some that put up such a fight that it's dangerous to even try.

One of my in-law's mares is such a horse. The sight of the bottle will send her into a panic, rearing and kicking out with both back legs. We have found it prudent to wipe the spray on this horse with a rag and she still doesn't always get well-covered. Often the horses will be standing calmly in the field munching grass and Shameless (the un-sprayed) will be swishing her tail and kicking at them and constantly shaking her head.

I wish we could convey to these guys how much better they will feel if they just let us do what we're trying to do with them. I know that we can't, though, and thorough training is what's required to just make them stand still, even when they don't trust the procedure. My problem is that the fly-spray training I've put into all of them didn't work with her. Of course, there's another horse that will be sprayed, but will not load into the trailer despite the same basic training that has all the rest of them hopping right in.

Granted, I have to make adjustments from horse to horse as they each require slightly different methods, but some horses just stump me. Maybe Thoroughbreds just aren't my breed. I can always figure out how to get my Paints to respond to me and they remember from week to week or from one year to the next. And yes, they stand politely to be sprayed. So I'll be thanking my lucky stars for them all summer when each weekend we have to go through the herd with a couple bottles of fly-spray, and one rag.