Training Tip: Advice for Catching a Horse

Question: I have a 4-year-old Arabian that I recently purchased. My problem is I can’t catch him. He has lots of energy and takes off running across the pasture any time I try to catch him. I understand the concept of working with him in the roundpen to get his respect, but how can I get him to the roundpen if I can’t catch him? – lwilkinson777

Answer: The answer is to get him in the roundpen any way that you can. It’s impossible to build any sort of partnership with a horse that won’t let you get near him. Will this require you to get creative and put in some extra effort? Yes. But if you want to train your horse, you will find a way. When we get wild mustangs in to train at the ranch, we literally unload them from the trailer into the roundpen. Each horse lives in his own individual roundpen for several days, or sometimes a couple of weeks, until we’ve earned their respect and trust and know that we can catch them.

When we move them out of the roundpen, we don’t turn them out in a 20-acre pasture. We go from a 50-foot roundpen to a small enclosure. When we’re confident we can catch the horses every time we step into the enclosure, then we turn them out in a slightly larger area. We gradually build on that until we can turn them out in a huge pasture and can catch them without an issue, but we didn’t start there.

Everything that you’ll ever do with a horse revolves around establishing a starting point and building from there. There’s no way around it.

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