Annie the Appaloosa with no discernible spots is a handsome and solid looking girl. She needed some work on foot-handling since she has never had her feet trimmed at her old home. She has a few strategies up her spotless sleeves to postpone the picking up of her back feet which included giving a good kick. As usual there were reasons behind her behaviour including instinct and an old resolved injury but once everything was explained methodically and quietly she just got better and better. Once again we needed to establish that having your leg touched down not mean 'foot up' and that the signal to pick up your feet means sort your others out first so that you can balance. You can see that I have no objection to her having her head down while I am working on her feet nor is she tied up. Teach the horse to accept the task first and then tie up when it is no longer a concern.
"Thank you Sarah, this is all really useful [the notes], as was today's session. I will carry on with the techniques and am also ordering a new bit today." MJ
Kiki came to visit this afternoon having loaded easily. We took him out on a fun walk which included going over ditches, logs and bridges...
...then Immy had a go at working with him at liberty in the inclosure. As we have used clickered rewards for the loading, he was very happy to go with her in the woods....
...and finally he was loaded to go home. All done in under a minute. This is a pony that used to take 5 hours to load to go home after a Pony Club event. He has only ever had one loading session with me and Immy has done all the rest. She has been practising over and over again until it is almost automatic for the two of them.
