Parelli for Miniature horses?

[Greentchr]

I have a friend with miniature horses, one of whom just foaled a few days ago. He is interested in having my teenagers and I work with them so they are easier to show. One is a confirmed kicker/biter, because of bad treatment; second one (the momma) is nice enough when caught, but is hard to catch. The stallion is easy-going, calm and easily handled unless he gets too near the mares :), and even then is fairly easily distracted . We did imprint work with the foal within an hour of birth, then have handled it a bit each day.

I am familiar with Parelli with my regular horse and now am working with a pony. I am not very familiar with mini-horses (they are not Shetlands), however. Do they respond to learning the same as big horses? What if anything, besides size, has been bred out of them? Does anyone here have experience working with minis? How early can you begin working with a foal?

[michelle c]

hi, you can work with shetlands/ minitures just the same as other horses/ponies, they are still prey flight animals and you can start as early as when the foal is born to inprint the foal (pat has a video on this) but he strongly recomends that you get to level 3 in the program before training the foal and the rope halter should not be used early on in the foals life because the bones are still soft and developing!! hope this helps

[Greentchr]

Michelle- thank you for your answer. I will avoid working with the foal with a rope halter- does that mean it is ok to use a flat-halter to teach to lead at this age? or is it just better to wait altogether. The foal is so tiny, I don't have a halter that comes even close to fitting, anyway!

[michelle c]

you can get the foal to start moving away from pressure using the savvy string around his hind quarters, and yes i think you can use a normal head collar but first you need to get the porcupine game good with your hands on all his zones especially zone 1 . Practice putting pressure slowly on the top of his head with your hand where the head collar will go and left and right on zone 1 before you use the head collar, he needs to understand that he has to yeald from steady pressure not fight it! hope that helps, i bet he is soo cute and small :)