Julie and I wandered off to Hampshire Spirit Horse Rescue on Sunday to help out with their semi-feral ponies. The conditions under foot were just awful and I feel very sorry for those women trying to get feed out to all of their horses by wading through thick, gloopy mud. The ponies themselves are coping very well, there is some grass about and they have a huge round bale of really high quality hay. We were quite the comedy act trying not to lose out boots in the mud.
With Cinders making good progress with Zoe and Bruno temporarily stationed with a food-aggressive horse, we concentrated entirely on Rea. Even though she has been quite feisty in the past, we took the decision to use clicker training to see how she might react. She was one of the fast learners on record and got the three click pattern almost straight away, standing still and waiting patiently during the single clicks and only looking for food when there were three clicks all together.
Annalise took over from me and was soon into the swing of things to. With sessions divided up before and after lunch, and subdivided into with and without the feather duster, she made amazing progress and was soon touching Rea's back end with the feather duster. Each time Rea stood like a soldier throughout the single clicks and then politely took the treats when they were offered with the three clicks altogether.
At the end of the day we had an incident that one day I might find amusing but which was quite annoying at the time. A transporter turned up to take the two semi-feral Shetlands to their new home and insisted on standing on the ramp 'because it was her lorry' while we tried to gently herd them in. The ponies became quite distressed for a while and still this lady stayed where she was, offering things like lunge-reins to put behind them. Eventually, she did move, the ponies went straight in, and she was able to go. I promise I did not say, "I told you so!" but it was very tempting.
Oh well, it does remind me of why I don't work with horses unless I really want to any more.
