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My experience with laying down a horse is that I have only done it twice 
in the hundreds of horses I've dealt with and only when the horses' 
behavior was so bad that it was a last ditch effort or in an emergency.
I had a colt who was born with a bad attitude (perhaps abused in another 
existence :-(  ) and it was that or the killers because I won't have or 
sell a horse that can hurt someone. Mark is 6'5 and had no trouble 
catching him off-balance and laid him down. He quickly jumped up before 
Mark reached him (he was on the long lead line) and had that "OK, you 
got me once but just try again!!" written all over his face. Then Mark 
laid him down the 2nd time-- caught him off-balance -- and he again 
jumped up with "just you try again!!" To which Mark laid him down the 
third time. He just laid there still and Mark panicked that he had 
killed him--- no way-- and we knelt by him and pet him and let him know 
we loved him -- just weren't going to tolerate his kicking and striking 
out behavior. We just sat there a while and then stood up and encouraged 
him to do the same. His eyes were soft and he was a totally different 
horse and was never a problem. I did some neurokiniseology on him that I 
learned from Michelle Kaplan so he would not be sore the next day. It 
worked.
The only other time I did it was when a colt tried to nail the farrier 
and almost kicked his mom in the head. I was head and tailing him for 
the farrier and didn't let go for fear of my life! Then he jumped up 
again and kicked and dented the feeder -- this time I hung on and laid 
him down leveraging my weight and put my knee on his neck for a minute 
to keep him there. Then I pet him and let him know I still loved him- he 
was just not going to do that anymore. His eyes softened and I let him 
up and he was good as gold from that point on. The funny thing is that 
my accountant had stopped by to visit and stood outside the fence 
watching while all this was going on. His jaw dropped because Irl had 
only seen me as a professional person in his office. He turned to Mark 
and said "You know, she is tougher than she looks!" (little did he know 
I was hanging on for dear life!) and Mark replied -- "You should see her 
in the bedroom --- a real tiger!"   IN HIS DREAMS!!!
Bette

Bette Lamore
Whispering Oaks Arabians
Home of Bunny and 16.2h TLA Halynov
who lives on through his legacy Hal's Riverdance!
http://www.arabiansporthorse.com

"Life is not  a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely
in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside,
thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming --WOW-- what
a ride !! "




k s swigart wrote:

> Whether "laying a horse down" works as a positive behaviour modification
> depends very much on the association that the horse makes at the time
> that it is laid down.  If the horse makes the association of the person
> "saving" it by letting/helping it get up, then great.  If the horse
> makes the association of "I was doing something stupid and not listening
> to you and fell down so next time I better listen to you," then this is
> also great.
>
> If, however, the horse makes the association, "You put me down." Then
> not great, that horse is gonna be worried everytime you are around it
> that you might do the same thing again.  If the horse makes the
> association, "the last time the farrier came to try to do something with
> my back feet, I ended up on the ground" or "every time I go to a show, I
> end up on the ground." then this is just goign to make the horse MORE
> nervous about the farrier or going to a show because it is going to
> anticipate (and therefore worry about) ending up on the ground.
>
> MY experience is with horses that laying them down DIDN'T work on them,
> it just made the horse more frantic...and now worried about its handler
> too.  However, that is because people bring me horses that are
> "difficult."  The ones that it does work on...I never see.
>
> And the biggest problem with trying it to see if it might work for any
> particular horse is, if it doesn't, you have compounded your problem and
> now have two problems to fix instead of just one; and this new problem
> is even harder to fix.
>
> The old "cowboy" way of dealing with the horses that it doesn't work on
> is to say, "That horse is no good (because it is too stupid to learn)"
> and throw that horse away (or eat it) and get one that isn't so stupid.
>
> It is more likely to work if, when you do it, you take great care in
> ensuring that the horse doesn't figure out that you were the one that
> put it on the ground.  You need to be really careful about what
> associations the horse makes when it goes down.  It's works best if you
> can do it in such a way that the horse thinks he did it to himself
> because he wasn't listening to you.
>
> kat
> Orange County, Calif.
>
>
>
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