A pony named Cash
Cash belongs to one of my colleagues at work, who runs a livery yard when she's not being a cornerstone of our finance department. He's a little palomino horse who they are selling for a friend but they've run into a few problems with getting him working under saddle. He had a very scary moment as his owner was getting on a while ago and lost a lot of confidence, now he can barely bring himself to move under saddle. They weren't having any success with helping him change and as we had talked a lot about horses and the things I do, I was offered an introduction.
I went out to meet him last Sunday and we got started on doing some work to try to help him figure out going under saddle and being part of the world of humans again.
It was interesting work. His biggest problem is that he gets too scared to go forward. Well, his real problem is that he really doesn't know much about the world and he gets scared, but the problem I definitely identified was with moving forward. He could lead up if I was in front of him but if I asked him to move when I was level with his shoulder or further back back he would get jammed up. When I asked him to step on, he would hold his breath in little tight grunts rather than moving his feet.
Meeting Cash.
Last week we did some general desensitisation, to try and give him more confidence and let him understand that the world isn't going to harm him and that my tools and I aren't going to either. He is a very sweet fellow, gentle and good natured, just a little anxious.
We finished up on asking him to yield away and move out onto a circle forwards, rather than locking up or trying to run away backwards and we got there eventually.
He is very headshy as well, I think there is probably an old injury around his poll but maybe he has been ear-twitched and not enjoyed the experience. Either way we needed to do some work on setting things up so I could touch him around his head and ears, which was largely a case of gentle persistence.
This week we were able to pick up a little from where we left off last week. I wanted to focus on the forward initially, so we could get him to working in a better place mentally where he could connect moving his feet forward to the cue.
At first he mostly wanted to go backwards. We don't have any pictures of his more anxious moments but they were a lot like this only much more so. My hands were a trifle warm, but there were a couple of times I was very glad to have my gloves on.
But after a short time we started to get a bit of forward.
He tended to break into trot straight away, springing forward with a lot of tension in his body and although he settled I need him to be able to walk off in a relaxed way and stop with me. He also really wanted to put me in both eyes, which won't help when it comes to sitting on him, so we spent a while working on getting him to stay with me and walk with me beside him and my hand on his withers and stop when I did. It took a while to get there but we managed it, which was a big deal for him.
As part of preparation for accepting a saddle again, I spent a while getting him used to ropes around him and swinging them over his back, then moved on to using the 22' line to go around his middle where a girth will go and asking him to move off. He could handle that alright but when he stopped and tried to turn and face me, it put more pressure on the rope and he needed to run through it. The advantage of using a rope like this, just holding both ends in one hand, is that you can just release one end and it falls away without risking getting too tangled around the horse. It took a while to get him able to accept it better. What really helped when I realised that his real problem wasn't the presence of pressure, but that he didn't know what he was supposed to do about it, so I worked on getting him to step towards me through pressure on the girth. That seemed to really help and we ended up with some more gentle work.
We're a ways off where we need to be as yet, but this little guy is making awesome progress and it's a real pleasure to work with him and to help him feel better about the world.
I went out to meet him last Sunday and we got started on doing some work to try to help him figure out going under saddle and being part of the world of humans again.
It was interesting work. His biggest problem is that he gets too scared to go forward. Well, his real problem is that he really doesn't know much about the world and he gets scared, but the problem I definitely identified was with moving forward. He could lead up if I was in front of him but if I asked him to move when I was level with his shoulder or further back back he would get jammed up. When I asked him to step on, he would hold his breath in little tight grunts rather than moving his feet.
Meeting Cash.
Last week we did some general desensitisation, to try and give him more confidence and let him understand that the world isn't going to harm him and that my tools and I aren't going to either. He is a very sweet fellow, gentle and good natured, just a little anxious.
We finished up on asking him to yield away and move out onto a circle forwards, rather than locking up or trying to run away backwards and we got there eventually.
He is very headshy as well, I think there is probably an old injury around his poll but maybe he has been ear-twitched and not enjoyed the experience. Either way we needed to do some work on setting things up so I could touch him around his head and ears, which was largely a case of gentle persistence.
This week we were able to pick up a little from where we left off last week. I wanted to focus on the forward initially, so we could get him to working in a better place mentally where he could connect moving his feet forward to the cue.
At first he mostly wanted to go backwards. We don't have any pictures of his more anxious moments but they were a lot like this only much more so. My hands were a trifle warm, but there were a couple of times I was very glad to have my gloves on.
But after a short time we started to get a bit of forward.
He tended to break into trot straight away, springing forward with a lot of tension in his body and although he settled I need him to be able to walk off in a relaxed way and stop with me. He also really wanted to put me in both eyes, which won't help when it comes to sitting on him, so we spent a while working on getting him to stay with me and walk with me beside him and my hand on his withers and stop when I did. It took a while to get there but we managed it, which was a big deal for him.
As part of preparation for accepting a saddle again, I spent a while getting him used to ropes around him and swinging them over his back, then moved on to using the 22' line to go around his middle where a girth will go and asking him to move off. He could handle that alright but when he stopped and tried to turn and face me, it put more pressure on the rope and he needed to run through it. The advantage of using a rope like this, just holding both ends in one hand, is that you can just release one end and it falls away without risking getting too tangled around the horse. It took a while to get him able to accept it better. What really helped when I realised that his real problem wasn't the presence of pressure, but that he didn't know what he was supposed to do about it, so I worked on getting him to step towards me through pressure on the girth. That seemed to really help and we ended up with some more gentle work.
We're a ways off where we need to be as yet, but this little guy is making awesome progress and it's a real pleasure to work with him and to help him feel better about the world.