2nd May, 2009 Wight Welsh

Pretty tired again today following a 12 hour round trip to the Isle of Wight yesterday. Still, I was able to make significant progress with two out of the three horses that I saw and just a little progress with the other one. All of these horses - two Welsh D's and a Welsh Section A have developed well rehearsed and effective behaviours to postpone things happening and to get people away from them or to release pressure. Whether the trigger was their insitinctive into-pressure response to touch or a way of avoiding discomfort, painful or fearful situations, it has definitely worked for each of them and become a pattern or habit. The first horse turns and squashes people against the walls of her stable if she doesn't like the way she is being touched or feels threatened by something new - a tickly brush, hoof oil or the scissors. In her case I made sure that this behaviour no longer worked by pulling her head round quickly to me so that her bottom went the other way but then made sure that her owners new how to go about desensitising her to new things. I was able to cut a bridle path in her mane without too much trouble and to start to ask her to accept having her chin hair trimmed - note, not her whiskers.

E-mail received 4.5.09: Thanks for coming over we all enjoyed the session a lot, especially A she has been practising some of the leading/handling exercises already. SP

The second horse really struggles to have a bit in his mouth and I don't know whether this stemmed from a poor and forceful approach when he was orginally "broken" or even from the way that he was wormed. The touch and move away technique works for worming syringes and makes that process completely untraumatic. There is no need to jam a syringe into a horse's mouth whilst restraining forcibly. In any event, this horse has learned to flip his head violently when approached with the bit resulting in the bit being thrown in the air and sometimes coming down and banging him in the face - this only serves to reinforce his beliefs that the bit is something to be avoided. I must admit that I struggled to find a strategy with this horse - every time a bit is forced into his mouth, it is simply a management situation and sensitises him further and yet he needs to be ridden to keep him fit and happy. Because he is entire, I was wary of using clicker training - stallions are inclined to become very exciteable about their two hobbies of sex and eating. However, this stallion never bites, is generally polite and has never been randomly hand fed. I made a start with clicker training on the basis that we would stop it if we felt that he was becoming overbearing. I set up the association in the first place - asking him to simply touch the bit in order to hear a click and to receive a treat. He got this pretty quickly and in time he would accept a syringe in his mouth in order to receive a click and a treat and would mouth the bit between his lips in order to receive a click and a treat. Nevertheless, it was hard to get and to keep his attention as he has a beloved mare running with him at the moment and felt that he had better things to do! I should add that he has had his teeth and poll checked very recently and the owner has tried different bits.

The little Section A stallion, that quite frankly would look fantastic in any mantelpiece, was also a head flipper but in his case it got him a release from pressure on the lead rein, postponed his bridle going on or in his mind got him to a mare more quickly. Whilst being cautious about whether there was a physical reason for his behaviour - he has had his teeth and poll checked - this behaviour was addressed effectively with a distracting noise or some big body language each time he did it and a refusal to give him the release in the lead rein until his head was still.

E-mail received 4.5.09: So far so good with Rex, he's stopped the headshaking and is much more relaxed. Erin is as usual a superstar. AC