UNDERSTANDING EQUINE BEHAVIOR

Instructor: Dr. Jennifer Williams

Lesson Six

Foal Training

The previous lessons on psychology, the language of horses, feral horse behavior and gender differences in behavior all provide a background that gives you a better understanding of foal training. The most important thing to remember when training a foal is that every time you handle him, you are teaching him something. And if you teach the foal poor behaviors first, it’ll be twice as hard for him to learn to behave properly!

Previous Lesson Summary

In the previous lesson we covered Aggressive and Defensive Behaviors. Aggressive behaviors occur when a horse is asserting his dominance or his will. These behaviors tend to be more common with herd stallions and alpha mares, and these aggressive horses often give signs they’re about to perform an aggressive behavior.

Example: An alpha mare cocks her hind hoof to signal she’s about to kick.

Occasionally a previously abused horse performs aggressive behaviors almost as if he’s trying to keep people away so they cannot hurt him again. These horses give fewer signs that they’re contemplating aggressive behavior. These types of horses are dangerous, and they need experienced, professional handling. Fortunately, they’re rare and I’ve only come across a few in my career working with rescue horses.

Example: We rescued a starving mare who we could not touch or get near. When we finally were able to approach her, she struck out with a front leg. She gave no warning signs: she stood perfectly still, watching the person approach and only struck when he was close enough to hit. This mare had to be handled by professional trainers and even then she remained dangerous.

Defensive behaviors, on the other hand, usually occur because a horse feels threatened or scared. He’s trying to defend himself from whatever is frightening him, and he will often give several signs that he’s about to perform a defensive behavior. His goal is to get whatever scares him or hurts him to go away.

Example: I worked with a formerly abused horse who was scared of everything and everyone. When I approached him, he raised his head and wrinkled his eyelid (showing tension and fear). When I moved closer, he swung around until his back end was toward me (signaling that he intended to kick). He then lifted a hind leg and then he kicked at me. He gave me plenty of chances to back off, but when I failed to heed his warnings he finally kicked at me.

Most behaviors (rearing, striking, kicking or biting) can be either defensive or aggressive, so you have to look at what’s going on around the horse to understand why he’s performing the behavior. However, bolting tends to be a defensive behavior while charging tends to be aggressive.

We also discussed Gender Differences in Behavior in lesson five. Stallions are motivated by two desires: to breed mares and to protect their herd. All of their behavior stems from those two motivations. Because of this, housing and handling stallions can be a challenge and only experienced professionals should be in charge of stallion care, training and breeding.

Mares are driven by the need to create more horses and to protect and nurture their foal. A mare’s willingness to breed is governed by the hormones released during her estrous cycle. When a mare is not ready to breed, she may kick or bite approaching stallions, but when she’s in estrus (heat), she squats down slightly, urinates, and stands quietly for the stallion to mount and breed. When a bred mare is near foaling, she often moves away from the herd and becomes restless. Foaling doesn’t take long and the newborn is able to walk within an hour. At that time, the mare and foal rejoin the herd. Mares are protective of newborn foals and keep them close, but let them wander further as they age. Behaviorally, mares can range from easy-going horses that a novice can handle to alpha mares who attempt to dominant everyone around them.

Geldings are interesting since they don’t occur in nature. Some geldings become hormoneless horses who get along well with others and are easy to handle and train, but others retain their stallion-like characteristics and can be harder to handle and house.

Foal Training

Foal training is very important because you set a horse up for success or failure throughout life based on how you handle and train him when he’s young. Foal training starts the day a foal is born, because every time you handle or interact with a horse you are training him. When foals are tiny, it is tempting to let them crawl all over you. I’ve seen photos of people with foals in their laps, and I’ve met foal owners who thought it was cute when their foal sucked on their fingers or turned his rump toward a human. I also knew someone who taught her foal to play “tag”: she ran up to the foal, touched his side, and ran away. The foal then ran toward her and bumped her with his muzzle before running away. I also knew a trainer who got a horse in for training who had been taught as a foal to rear up and hook his front legs on the shoulders of his owner.

These and similar situations create horses who are dangerous and can accidentally hurt someone. It may seem cute when a 100 pound foal slings his legs over your shoulders (it doesn’t seem cute to me, but it might to some!). But when that foal becomes a 1,000 pound horse who rears and tries to do the same thing, he could kill someone. A foal who suckles on humans’ fingers can become a biter when he matures, and a foal who swings his rump toward humans may grow into an adult horse who knocks people over.

When a foal has been poorly trained and handled, it sets him up for a difficult life. At some point in his life, he’s going to have to learn that nibbling, kicking, rearing and those other behaviors humans encouraged him to do when he was young are no longer appropriate. It’ll take longer to teach the horse to behave properly: first he has to unlearn the bad behavior and then he has to learn how to behave appropriately. I don’t think this is fair to the horse, either, as he’s going to suddenly be punished for performing a behavior he was rewarded for in the past. He’ll be confused at first and he may behave even worse for a while as he tries to figure out what the human wants.

This is why it is so important to insist on good manners from any foal from the moment he’s born. In the beginning, he doesn’t know what’s right or wrong, and he probably doesn’t even really know that you aren’t a horse like him. He uses his mouth to explore, so he’ll try nibbling you. He’ll also kick at you to tell you to go away when he doesn’t want to be bothered, just like he would with another horse. Some foals even rear and strike as they would if they were playing with other foals. When this happens, you need to discipline him immediately.

Disciplining some foals is easy: you simply walk away and stop engaging with them. They’ll stop misbehaving if that behavior doesn’t get them more attention. You can discipline other foals by yelling/making a loud noise and waiving your arms in the air: you make yourself look and sound big and scary and that’s enough to encourage good behavior in the future.

However other foals are tougher and require firmer discipline. Before you cringe at the idea of disciplining an adorable foal, watch mares and foals interacting. While there are some permissive mares who allow their foals to run wild, most mares don’t tolerate biting, rearing or striking. If their foal acts out, the mare may nip him, push him away with a hind hoof or even kick him. She doesn’t use her full force, but she will get her message across: this behavior isn’t acceptable! When you deal with more difficult foals, you need to prepare to smack them on the neck or rump whenever they misbehave. This is less severe than the punishment their dams often dole out. You need to be consistent: respond each time the foal misbehaves. Also be sure your response comes quickly so that the foal associates the punishment with the bad behavior.

Example: The first foal born at my place, Easter, was sweet and affectionate but he also had an ornery streak. When he was a couple months old, he began nipping and biting at humans. Walking away and ignoring him didn’t work, he kept up the behavior. Yelling and waiving my arms didn’t work, he kept biting. Finally I began popping/smacking his neck whenever he bit at me. After two or three times, he stopped nipping. Unfortunately a few weeks later he decided to try kicking. I couldn’t smack his rump because he would kick as he was running away, but I did throw his feed bucket at him and make a big racket. Within a week or two, he abandoned that behavior, but then tried rearing. Once again, I smacked him and yelled at him, and he then stopped rearing. After that, he was a well-behaved foal for me and he remained affectionate.

There are several different methods of training and handling foals, but the most common method is called Imprint Training. Imprint Training is a foal training method developed by Dr. Robert Miller, a veterinarian, after working with hundreds of foals throughout his career.

The theory behind Imprint Training is based on the principles of imprinting. Konrad Lorenz, an early behaviorist, coined the term imprinting. During imprinting, a newborn animal develops an attachment to another animal, most often its mother or another female of the same species, that it is exposed to shortly after birth. The young animal then stays close to and follows the animal it imprints on.

Imprinting is a phenomenon most often found in avian species. It occurs because the baby bird sees its mother soon after hatching from its egg during a critical period for imprinting. Later, the baby bird will follow his mother even if there are several, similar birds around. When eggs are moved to a different nest and the baby bird is exposed to a different adult bird during the imprinting period, he imprints on that bird instead of his mother.

Konrad Lorenz performed several experiments where he removed eggs from a nest shortly before hatching so that the baby birds would be exposed to a human during the imprinting period. Those baby birds then imprinted on humans and followed them around. So even if you hadn’t heard of Konrad Lorenz before this class, you may have seen photos of him walking around with a line of ducklings or goslings following him as they would their mother.

Dr. Miller proposed that foals would learn to be handled by humans more easily and would learn new skills more quickly shortly after birth, and he called his method of teaching newborn foals Imprint Training. Since mammalian species don’t tend to imprint, this method might be more accurately called Early Foal Handling or Early Foal Training. It involves a regimented procedure that exposes a newborn foal to several things he or she will encounter throughout life such as being touched and handled, the feel and sound of clippers, being sprayed with fly spray, wearing a blanket, etc. The trainer may even stick his or her fingers into the foal’s mouth at the approximate position where the bit will go and may stand over the foal to simulate a rider.

The first imprint training session occurs shortly after the foal has stood and nursed for the first time. To begin, the trainer lays the foal on the ground and restrains him. The trainer then rubs the foal’s entire body, making sure to keep rubbing each area until the foal has stopped resisting before moving on to the next item on the list.

Example: When the trainer first rubs the foal’s ears, the foal may fling his head, struggle to rise, and try to escape the trainer’s hands. The trainer will restrain the foal and continue rubbing his ears. As the trainer does this, the foal eventually lies still and accepts the trainer’s hands.

The trainer repeats the same procedure when the foal is a half day old, a day old, and then for several days in a row. Each time anything is done to the foal (rubbing, haltering, etc.), the trainer repeats it until the foal submits and accepts. After a few days, the trainer begins teaching the foal to lead, stand for grooming and load into a trailer. Some people even begin training their foals to cross tarps and ground poles, to navigate trail obstacles and stand while a saddle pad is thrown over their back.

Those who use imprint training claim it helps create horses who are easier to handle, less reactive, and easier to train throughout life. Conversely horsemen who don’t like imprint training says it creates spoiled horses who don’t respect humans. Some even claim imprint training creates horses who are harder to train as adults. Who is right?

The goal of my Master’s thesis was to answer this question using two separate studies. For the first study, I used 47 foals born at a commercial breeding facility. The foals were imprint trained by foaling technicians who used the procedure outlined in Dr. Miller’s book, Imprint Training of the Newborn Foal. Approximately half the foals received imprint training sessions shortly after birth and at 12, 24, and 48 hours after birth. The remaining foals were unhandled.

We then assessed the foals at one, two, and three months of age. During the assessment, we exposed the foals to the things done during imprint training and to one new item. We recorded the foal’s heart rate during exposure to each item and how long it took to expose the foal to each item. We found no difference in behavior, heart rate, or the length of time each item took between the imprint trained and unhandled foals at one, two, or three months of age.

For the second study, I used 130 foals born at the Texas Department of Corrections farm. I used the same imprint training procedure as the first study, but this time I had several groups of foals. The foals received imprint training on one of the following schedules:

· Four sessions of imprint training administered at birth and then 12, 24, and 48 hours after birth.

· One session only at birth.

· One session only at 12 hours after birth.

· One session only at 24 hours after birth.

· One session only at 48 hours after birth.

· One session only at 72 hours after birth.

· No imprint training.

After the imprint training sessions were over, the foals were turned out on pasture with their dams and were not handled until approximately six months of age. At the time, the mares and foals were rounded up, brought into holding pens, and the foals were weaned. The mares were turned back out onto pasture and we conducted an assessment similar to the one in the first study.

We found no difference in behavior, heart rate, or the length of time it took to exposure the foals to the items for any of the groups in the second study.

Despite the results of the study, I don’t think imprint training is useless or invalid. The foals in these studies were not handled after the imprint training sessions until the assessments. This was to simulate the conditions in which many big ranches raise their horses: they let the foals spend the first several months out on pasture without being handled. I wanted to see if those ranchers could invest a little time in imprint training before putting their foals out on pasture and have easier foals to handle and train when they brought them back in.

I think imprint training is a valid and beneficial training method if performed correctly and followed up with proper handling through the first few years of a young horse’s life. To insure that you perform imprint training correctly, you must make sure you continue each item on the imprint training procedure until the foal stops struggling or resisting. If you stop too soon, you teach the foal that he doesn’t have to accept things he doesn’t like. However if you continue exposing the foal to the items long after he’s stopped resisting, you can create a foal who is dull and lifeless. Additionally, as I said earlier, insist that all foals are well-behaved: don’t tolerate biting, kicking, rearing, or other poor behaviors.

I do believe that foals need time to “be horses”, hang out with their dam, and play with other foals. Make sure your training sessions are brief, but always be consistent. In addition to working on items begun during imprint training sessions, add in other skills such as leading, standing tied and loading into a trailer. Introduce your foal to saddle pads, horse blankets, tarps and other items.

While Imprint Training is the method with the most well-document procedure, there are other ways of handling and training foals. The most important part of handling young horses is to be consistent in your handling, require proper behavior (no biting or kicking), and to keep your training sessions short. If you do use longer training sessions, give your foal breaks to eat, relax and think about what he’s learning.

Last year I had a mare foal at my place and I decided not to follow the Imprint Training procedure. Easter had a rough birth (his legs were bent in the wrong direction and he had to be pulled from the mare), and he had a hard time standing. Once he stood, his dam didn’t want to let him nurse. By the time we had him standing well and nursing, we were worn out and so was he! I decided to forgo formal Imprint Training and just handle him from early on. The night he was born he was touched all over his body as we helped him stand and nurse. Then I made several visits to check on him throughout the next few days, and each time I visited him I talked to him and pet him.

After a week or so, I started haltering him and teaching him to lead and then taught him to pick up all four feet. I treated him much like I would treat any other unhandled/uneducated horse. I kept his training sessions very brief; probably no more than 10 minutes in the beginning. And I rewarded him with pets and breaks when he behaved. He was a tough little colt, though, and he quickly began trying to dominate me. He started with biting, then kicking,and finally rearing and striking. Each time he bit, kicked, reared, or struck he was yelled at (a loud “NO”!) and smacked. I also then walked away and stopped engaging with him. It didn’t take long before he abandoned his poor behavior.

Whether you decide to imprint train or use a method similar to the one I used on Easter, it is very important to remember that these foals will grow into full size horses. It is so tempting to let them display bad behavior now, but the same behavior that some find cute in a foal can be deadly in a full sized horse. Allowing the foal to climb into your lap, chase you in the pen or nibble your clothing creates bad behaviors that can make his life so much more difficult later on. I cannot stress enough how important it is to avoid creating behaviors in young foals that will later need to be fixed.

Some horse owners prefer to leave their young horses out on pasture with their dams until weaning. These young foals aren’t handled unless they’re injured. Although the owner may check on the mares and foals, they don’t tend to interact much with the foals. The goal is to allow the young horses a chance to be horses and grow up before many demands are placed on them. Some farms bring the foals in at weaning time to halter train them and get them ready to show or sell, and other farms wean the foals and turn them back on pasture again until they’re yearlings.

There are pros and cons to this kind of training regimen for foals. Weanlings and yearlings are much bigger and stronger than newborn foals, and they’re not as curious or friendly as very young foals. This means they may be more skittish and they’re too big to be physically restrain. It is also easier to be hurt by a weanling or yearling due to their size and strength.

Because they’re older, weanlings and yearlings have longer attention spans and can tolerate more intensive training. A couple of years ago, I attended a great Young Horse Handling clinic put on by a Texas trainer named Brent Graef. Each clinic attendee was assigned a yearling colt or filly who had not been handled. Brent helped each of us catch our colt and walked us through the process of getting a rope around our colt and starting to gentle him. Throughout the six days of the clinic, we worked with our yearlings for several hours a day. By the end of the clinic, we could catch, halter and lead the yearlings. They knew how to stand tied, have their feet handled, and load into a trailer. The week-long training period was pretty intense, but they had several breaks throughout the day and received plenty of rewards for good behavior.

People are also less inclined to spoil weanlings or yearlings than they are to spoil a newborn. However, these guys can still inadvertently learn bad habits so you have to be careful to be consistent and deliberate with what you do.

Regardless of the type of training you decide to use with foals and young horses in your care, remember you are giving them the building blocks to set them up for success (or failure) throughout life. When you teach the foal to respect humans and respond to requests, you’re helping to create a horse everyone will enjoy handling.

Orphan Foals

While orphan foals aren’t common, they’re not unheard of either. They happen when a mare dies during or shortly after foaling or when a mare rejects her foal and refuses to allow it to nurse. Although rare, occasionally an owner chooses to remove a foal from its dam so that the mare can go back to showing or racing. These motherless foals present a unique set of feeding, housing and handling challenges to horse owners and horse professionals.

Foals thrive when raised by other horses, not humans, so finding a nurse mare to raise orphans should be a priority. Nurse mares provide food, comfort and protection. They also teach foals how to interact with other horses and with humans; in other words they teach foals how to act like horses.

A nurse mare is a lactating mare who adopts and raises an orphan foal. There are nurse mare farms where the mares are bred and foal, the foals are removed at a young age and the mare is leased out as a nurse mare. These “professional” nurse mares are selected for their temperament and milk production and they’re very good at raising foals. However they’re often difficult to locate and expensive, so they’re not an option for everyone. If you work for a large breeding organization, you should make contact with a nurse mare farm now (before you need them).

A mare who has recently lost or weaned a foal may be a suitable nurse mare. Sometimes mares produce enough milk to nurse both their own foal as well as an orphan, so that’s another option. There are also a few mares who lactate year round and are willing to allow strange foals to nurse. If you find yourself needing a nurse mare and cannot afford or locate a nurse mare farm, your veterinarian may be able to help you locate one of these mares

Another option is to create a nurse mare. A veterinarian may be able to induce lactation in a mare who has previously foaled (but doesn’t currently have a foal) through a series of anti-dopamine drugs given orally and through injection. This doesn’t work for every mare and the procedure should be administered by a veterinarian.

Nurse mares offer a natural way to raise a foal, but there are a few issues to consider when using nurse mare.

· They may be hard to find and mares from nurse mare farms can be very expensive.

· Milk quality is highest when a foal is born and declines over time, so a nurse mare whose foal was born several weeks or more before the orphan won’t have the high quality milk the baby needs in his first few weeks of life. You can overcome this by supplementing the foal with milk replacer and carefully monitoring his weight.

· Not all mares are cut out to be nurse mares. Some mares won’t accept orphans, so you need to be careful when introducing them. Restrain the mare with a halter and lead. Put her in stocks or in the stall next to the foal and watch her reactions. If she’s curious and interested in the foal, let her check him out. If she pins her ears and threatens to bite or kick, move her away from the foal. As long as the mare is curious and interested in the foal, you can let the foal sniff the mare and attempt to nurse.

· The first time the orphan nurses from a nurse mare may be uncomfortable for the mare. You can hobble the mare with breeding hobbles or restrain her in a set of stocks until you are certain she’ll accept the foal. Once she appears to have accepted the foal, put the two of them in a stall or small paddock and keep an on them.

Sometimes a nanny goat can be a substitute. Their milk isn’t the same as a mare’s milk, but it is similar. If you use this option, you may need to supplement the foal with milk replacer and monitor his weight and development carefully. The goat will need to be milked and the foal fed through a bucket or bottle. You can also teach the goat to stand on top of something like a hay bale or platform so the foal can nurse. Even if the nanny goat doesn’t provide all the nutrition the foal needs, she’ll still provide companionship and comfort and those are both important to young, growing foals.

Another challenge with orphan foals is to insure that they receive colostrum. Young foals need this nutrient-rich milk within their first 24 hours of life since this is how mares pass immunity to disease to their foal. If the foal doesn’t get the colostrum in the first 24 hours, he will have no immunity against diseases, will be sickly, and may die. Some orphans are able to get colostrum by nursing before the mare dies or when their owners milk the dying mare and feed the foal colostrum in a bucket or bottle. You may also be able to purchase colostrum from your veterinarian or a colostrum bank. If you work for a large breeding operation, make sure you have contacts for sources of colostrum before foaling season begins.

Your veterinarian can check to see whether or not your foal received sufficient colostrum by checking the levels of immunoglobulins in his blood when he’s 12-24 hours old. Immunoglobulins are also called antibodies, and they’re the substances in blood that help a foal (or a human) fight off disease. If the foal doesn’t have enough immunoglobulin, a veterinarian can administer an equine blood plasma transfusion to give the foal the immunity he’s lacking.

Feeding is another challenge you’ll face if you raise an orphan foal, especially if you can’t find a suitable mare or the mare you find isn’t producing enough milk. Fortunately, there are several milk replacers formulated for horses. If you can’t find milk replacer right away, you can temporarily use goat’s milk or 2% cow milk plus a teaspoon of honey per pint of milk (cow’s milk is lower in sugar than mare’s milk and the honey adds enough sugar to the milk).

You have a few options for getting milk replacer to your foal: bottle feeding and bucket feeding. Young foals nurse from their dam multiple times per hour with the frequency of feeding decreasing as a foal ages. If you decide to bottle feed a foal, you’ll practically live in the barn with him at first. Bucket or pan feeding allows you to leave milk replacer out for the foal all the time so that you can check on him less frequently. If he’s living with another horse, you will need to have a creep feeder (a small bucket with an opening big enough for a foal, but not big enough for a larger horse) located where he can reach it. If he’s living with another foal or goat, you won’t be able to leave the replacer out all of the time as the other foal or goat may drink it.

When using a bucket or creep feeder, dispose of any milk replacer that is more than 12 hours old, and clean the feeder or bucket twice per day. Make sure the foal has access to clean, fresh water as well.

While some foals are curious and may discover the bucket and start drinking the milk replacer on their own, you may need to teach the foal to drink. You can do this by dipping your fingers into the replacer, putting them in the foal’s mouth and letting him suckle. Then move your fingers (and the foal) closer and closer to the bucket until his head is in the bucket, right above the milk. If he still doesn’t drink, put a little replacer on his muzzle while his head is in the bucket.

Weight gain in young foals is important since they grow so much in the first year of life. Fortunately several studies have shown that properly-fed orphan foals gain weight at the same rate as foals who nurse from their dams. However getting the proper amount of milk into the foal can be tough, so be sure to have your veterinarian monitor your orphan closely. If he doesn’t drink enough milk replacer, your veterinarian may need to administer IV fluids to help combat dehydration and to get him sufficient nutrition.

At about two weeks of age, you can start feeding orphans a commercial creep feed, pelleted milk replacer, or other feed specially formulated for young foals. You can start offering him hay at the same time, and by three months of age you can transition him onto foal feed and hay and wean him off of the milk replacer.

One of the many benefits of using a nurse mare to raise an orphan is that the orphan learns how to interact with other horses. Mares teach their foals what it means when another horse pins its ears or cocks a hind hoof. Mares teach their foals how to respect another horse’s space and how to live peacefully within a herd. When a foal doesn’t get this training, he grows into an adult horse who often doesn’t fit in well with herds.

Example: The rescue received an orphan foal when she was just a few days old. We could not locate a nurse mare, so she was bucket and bottle raised. As an adult horse, this mare struggled to learn to respect the alpha mare in her herd. She didn’t understand what it meant when the alpha pinned her ears, and she was constantly bumping into the other horses and invading their space. She was often kicked or bit because she didn’t recognize the warning signs from other horses. As she’s gotten older, she is slowly learning about herd life, but it has been a tough road for her.

If you can’t find a good nurse mare and have to raise the orphan yourself, see if you can find a tolerant adult horse who will accept the baby as a friend. Sometimes a mare who has a foal will let the orphan hang out with her without nursing. Sometimes you can find a babysitter gelding or a barren mare who will babysit the foal. The babysitter or “foster parent” will teach the foal how to interact with other horses. Be careful when introducing the foal to potential fosters. Start out by putting them in stalls or paddocks next to each other and then introduce the foal to the foster horse similarly to how you would introduce a foal to a nurse mare.

Many people who raise orphan foals overlook the importance of teaching them proper behavior, and that’s what has given orphan foals the reputation as being spoiled monsters. People feel sorry for the orphan, and they enjoy spending time with him, so they coddle him and tolerate bad behavior. I’ve known people who think it is cute when the orphan plays with them like they were a horse (by rearing and striking or kicking). When the baby is tiny, this may not hurt, but imagine a full grown, 1,000 pound animal running up to you, rearing, and striking. Someone could get hurt or killed.

While keeping the orphan in a stall or small pen may make things easier on you, all foals, including orphans, should be allowed room to roam. If you don’t have a foster horse for your orphan, you can turn him out in a paddock or pasture next to other horses. While he may not get to interact directly with them, he’ll get comfort from having other horses nearby and can interact with them across the fence and watch their interactions with others.

Raising an orphan is a tough job, but it is isn’t impossible. Providing quality food, firm handling, a nurse mare or foster parent, plus room to run, explore and be a horse can help any orphan grow into an adult horse no different than those raised by their dams.

Click Here To Take Quiz

Assignment

Pretend that you recently took a job managing a breeding/foaling operation. Describe (in detail) your procedure for housing, handling, training and disciplining the foals. Explain why you chose such a procedure for housing, handling, training and disciplining. This should be 1-2 pages long.

Please send essay to Dr. Williams at equinebehaviorinstructor@gmail.com

Be sure to include your full name and email address on the document – not just in the email.