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 ought to know she is both proud and sensitive. She’ll easily go fight or flight on any danger or discomfort—even just the perception of it. And most of the time, especially for horses that are quite new to their domestic dwellings, the source of both danger and pain is you. And if you suspect 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 pony let you touch her is to start at places you can already touch, and carefully work your way to the part that you need her to get used to. Say you need to educate her to not respond negatively to your touching her ear. Then start stroking her face where she allows you, then steadily work your way to her ears. Move your hand quick enough so that your hand brushes her ear and moves away before she’ll react, eventually slowing down until you can actually touch her ear, then hold it, and do whatever with it without her reacting. Always reward your horse for responding correctly, even if it’s just for not pulling away. The same general process applies for your horse’s udder. Only before you get there you must make her comfortable with you touching almost 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 do not ride with only your hands, you also don’t clean your horse—any part of her—with just your hands. So be sure to introduce whatever it is you’ll be using to clean your mare’s udders to her the same way you probably did with your hands. And do not use cleaners that can irritate her.

Most horses require sheath or udder cleaning only 4 times ever year and others might need monthly cleaning. You can do it yourself or let a vet do it. Regardless of whether you choose the second, you’ll still need to go thru the motions of training your horse to let folk touch her sensitive areas. Vets can help give pointers when you make a decision to do so.

Horses are Heather
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