taining a 5month old foal with attitude

First thing I would say is get him gelded. If you don't you will be working against young attitude and hormones. Not a good mix unless you have experience working with colts/stallions.

In the meantime you need to earn his respect and establish yourself as the dominant leader. Its hard to explain this in one post although I can elaborate if you need.

If you have a older, exceptionally quiet, loving gelding I would put him with the gelding. A nice gelding can be the best trainer a youngen can have ;)

Given your description of how this weanling behaved with the Seller, it sounds to me as if the Seller has never handled the poor thing.

The young lad should've been handled from the moment of birth forward.

You are going to have to have the "Patience of Job" and take his training in tiny baby steps, because he hasn't had any training at all. What the Seller did do doesn't even get on the low end of the scale for training.

Folks are right in suggesting to take your time. Make his lessons short, and fun. Don't expect the same things out of this young one that you expect out of an adult horse.

That saying "learn to crawl before you can walk" applies to horse training -- especially when you are dealing with a baby.

I am not a fan of the NH trainers, but this is an exception. I think you might benefit from getting anyone of their DVD's on colt starting.

Best of luck to you

Some other things to help along the way, while getting him away from mom..

1) Food is a motivator to help him remember that it is you that provides. Make him wait and respond appropriately to your demands and enterance into the stall.

2) Tying games help with patience as well as behavior. Once he stands still after being tied, then approach and start adding attention and relief.

3) If he really acts up, and tries to dominate you, it would be worth the idea of establishing "herd boss" with him with several techniques, and worse case scenerio, laying baby down and not letting him up until you get a calm accepting attitude.

4) Lots of basic ground manners in 10-15 minute sessions through the day will help. If you do run these sessions, keep them limited as to not burn out the baby, but once a day in most cases with real badly behaved youth is not enough. Its also a strong imprinting that you are in control.

Weaning of course is the best start if it is that time to do so. That's one you will have to decide on of course. Once you do, after a few weeks, and with settling in, your baby should be getting better. One person here already hit it on the head, which is "small and cute now.. Big and much stronger later"! You don't want a seriousely ill behaved monster on your hands later on!

Thank you all so much ! Im going to try some of these if not all