Today Abbey decided to try not being cooperative with the hoof handling. She had been eating her hay and I wanted to have a quick session and go in the house, so I disrupted her meal. She wanted to go back to it and walked off. I gave her another chance, same result, so it was time for me to back up and put a halter on her. I did some simple yielding--following the feel of the rope away from me and in a circle back to me--both sides. Then back to hoof handling. She was compliant and I added some extra movement, holding her feet a bit longer, and putting the hind feet on my knees as if I were going to rasp. So we ended up making quite a bit of progress.
I find this scenario often with the weanlings. As they learn new things they get pretty good at them and then will try to resist a bit. Once you work through that resistance (and it's usually pretty half hearted) they seem to really get solid on whatever the lesson is. I've found this more often with the youngsters that are "bold" and "confident" types. I think they just like to know exactly what they are expected to do. And after the "refresher", they are usually better at the lesson than before the attempt to resist. Maybe it's just the going back and refreshing the components of the lesson, but it's a good way for a horse to keep us humble and that's gotta be one reason God put them on this earth!
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