28th September, 2011 Reaction no reaction

The current state of Chancer's sarcoid

The third BCG injection

The good news is that Chancer's sarcoid is starting to react to the BCG injections of which he had the third today. These are the injections recommended by sarcoid expert professor Derek Knottenbelt from Liverpool University. Apparently it takes an average of five injections to make an impact on this type of sarcoid and the next one will be due in four weeks time. Darling Chancer is only lightly sedated to cope with these procedure and he dutifully falls asleep and doesn't react at all while Amy repeatedly injects the lesion from a variety of angles.

27th September, 2011 Glorious Guilda

Guilda called in for a session this afternoon and had her first canter out on the Forest. I first worked with Guilda on 12th November, 2010 and have worked with her on 24 occasions in total. That equates to just five weeks of five sessions a week if she had come in for more intensive training. It's been an interesting experiment for Jenny and I, to see just how much difference it makes, both for and against, to work with horses as and when. The advantages have been that we have been able to work steadily without Guilda needing to live in and her owner has been able to spread the cost over a number of months (whether she needed to or not). This has kept Guilda really sweet and willing, enjoying her education and taking everything in her stride. Hopefully it means that she will stay that way and that she should be less likely to become injured or sour. The downside has been that we have sometimes had to repeat work or at least overlap sessions to make sure that nothing has changed since the last time we saw her -  it should be that way anyway. The disadvantage in other cases has been that owners have not always been able to do their 'homework' because of time or skill constraints. In Guilda's case she has been led out and about and long reined occasionally and she has also been out to a few shows keeping her mind and body ticking over. The other downside is that it can seem as if the starting process is taking forever but when a like for like comparison is made, it can be seen that the pony is making just as much progress as if he were being worked with more regularly. We have been lucky that Guilda's owner has not put us under any pressure and has no financial or competitive urge to make us hurry up; some of the delays have been hers!  She has also been keeping her own skills up by having regular riding lessons with June Simmonds to make sure that she is ready to take over from us. 


Jenny and I are having a break from starters at least for a while. I am very happy to help prepare horses for starting including everything from groundwork, desensitisation, long reining and everything else that needs doing. I am also happy to point people in the direction of those very few trainers who with starters without resorting to violence and gadgets - i.e. those that work without fear or force. Having brought a horse up without smacking him, it's really hard for people to find someone they can trust not to do so. I am also happy to work with people who want to start their own horses where it is safe to do so and they have the skills to do the work themselves if supported carefully.

26th September, 2011 Wight link

No need to tie the wallabies down, sport

Crane

Penguins - it's moulting season and they seem vaguely embarassed.

A weekend of total relaxation on the Isle of Wight. David and I went to the Seaview Wildlife Encounter where people are allowed to stroke the wallabies providing they don't go off the path. in this way, the wallabies can decide whether they want human company or not. Bit like the New Forest ponies then. Lots of lovely birds too including some very noisy ducks that you are allowed to feed. Visitors buy bags of grain as they go through the entrance and I wondered whether I could introduce this for my horses!

Wouter

 Over the weekend we met up with good friends and clients, Carol, Kate and Andrea and I went out for a lovely ride on the wonderful Wouter today. He was a pleasure to ride and I was able to take in the scenery from what seemed like a great height. In fact he is only 15.2, Carol tells me, but he feels a lot bigger because of his fabulous head carriage.

Wouter appeared in the last Listening Post of which Heather Moffat (Enlightened Equitation) said:

"IH has surpassed itself this time with such interesting articles! It is probably the only magazine I read cover to cover!!"
To make sure you get your copy of the last edition and all future editions, join IH through the website: www.intelligenthorsemanship.co.uk

Natural head-carriage

22nd September, 2011 Animal Magic

Donkey!!!!

Ponies -  they're alright...

Small Indian pony...?

Head lowering for a clickered treat

What's your name and where you from?

Today I was delighted to be asked by Amanda Barton to act as a second pair of eyes as to why her beuatiful Warmblood should be so worried about other animals. This is a horse that stands absolutely calmly next to a cattle grid as traffic streams across it. She is fine while the other animals are still and close by but if she sees them move quickly in the distance and then disappear out of sight she becomes excited and upset. We have now combined our thoughts and she's going to make a few little changes to see if they help. After that, we have a Plan B to look forward to.

"Mag was fab this morning.  I marched out until I got a stitch and she walked past loads of horses. They were not running around like yesterday but we saw loads and the herd with the miniatures was on the move again.  She was about 75% better than yesterday. The most interesting thing was that when she saw the pony that she sniffed yesterday in the distance she licked and chewed right away and put her head right down.  She was pretty much totally fine for the whole of the rest of the walk after that. We went twice as far as yesterday as she was doing so well."AB (23rd September, 2011)

Off this afternoon to do a mass foothandling on Puck and his sisters as it won't be long before the farrier visits. Puck was also long reined for the first time and did very well.

22nd September, 2011 Cleft Stick

And so the fun with the insurance company has started over Chancer's various treatments. There has been no point in claiming for the injury to his leg as the cost of treatment fell below the £250 excess although of course, I have had to declare it. This injury has resolved itself completely and it will be interesting to see whether his legs get excluded on the next occasion.

For the other two, I have been asked when I first noticed the problem. So, when is a lump not a lump and when is a loss of condition a real loss? These are both gradual processes and I think we probably notice them subconsciously first. If I reported every lump and bump that Chancer has, I'd be on the phone to the insurance company every day and my definition of a loss of condition is a lot fatter than many Throughbreds - it was more a stary coat, a lack of interest in life and just being far too docile; nothing I could really put my finger on as, there, that is a loss of condition. However, when Lindy came to work with me, she agreed that he wasn't quite right and so when the vet was out, I took the opportunity to say what do you think. She agreed too.She also felt that the lump was something more sinister. So here I am, several hundreds of pounds down the road waiting to see is my insurance company will pay up or not. And whether they do or not, I anticipate that they are likely to exclude gastric ulcers (which he didn't have) and sarcoids (which he could acquire more of) next year. We'll see...

21st September, 2011 No going back

Happy to back up when only his front feet have stepped up on to the ramp

Absolutely stuck and mentally unable to back up once his back feet have gone in.

Carefully backing out, step by step.

After an early morning visit to Anna for her regular foot trim, it was off to see a Lusitano stallion called Amador. Amador was imported from Portugal by road and by sea and has proved to be a lovely riding horse. He's certainly a bright boy. Although he has always loaded very willingly and travels well, he cannot leave the trailer without leaping the front ramp banging his hip or shoulder every time. He absolutely refuses to back out of the trailer and appears to be very afraid of doing so. This can happen when a horse has never been taught that he can back out in the first place (people have this bizarre idea that backing a horse out of a trailer 'teaches' them to back out when they don't want to load), has been backed out of a step-down trailer; others may have been hit to make them load and then are not keen to back out towards a perceived threat. Amador's owner is keen to rectify this situation so that he she has both options available to her - after all, she has two ramps!

The first thing that was noticeable with Amador was that he isn't all that keen to back up on the ground even though he backs up easily when ridden; his owner says she just has to think back. When a horse is afraid, his natural, instinctive, automatic response to being pushed is to push back and if pulled, to pull back. This tends to be even more ingrained in stallions that use this into-pressure response to engage with their foe. Having backed him up a little and got him a lot lighter by not engaging with his body at all,i.e. using body language as a cue, we used the L-shaped poles to move him around forwards, backwards and sideways and ask us to trust us to manoeuvre him in this way, step by step.


When it came to loading, Amador was happy to back off again when only his front legs had gone on to the ramp, however, once he had committed his back legs, he felt there was no going back! Funnily enough he is not the first Iberian horse I have met with this issue - Raf was the same. Rather than engage with him physically by pushing him hard on the chest or pulling hard on the Dually, I kept up a consistently light ask and rewarded every step back with a click and treat - even if it was actually a repeated step because he had gone forward again. Bit by bit he worked out what he needed to do and gradually he was willing to place one back foot over the lip of the trailer onto the ramp, move it forward again and then try with the other foot. I took my time and 'thought' about him lifting up his withers and engaging his hindquarters and eventually he found the courage to take first one foot and then the other onto the ramp itself. I rewarded him every step of the way and made sure that I kept his head over to the right so that his legs would truly be in the centre of the ramp as he backed up. Once out he was given a bonus handful of pony nuts and then asked to load again.

The second time he backed out a little more fluidly and looked less worried and on the third occasion he backed out relatively confidently. We will practice this again next week and then start to work on asking him to unload through the front door.

 "Thank you so very much for today. I feel a lot happier that we are making progress and will soon have Amador unloading without risking life and limb on either of us." LB

19th September, 2011 Honorary Auntie

Walking in Memphis....

I am ever hopeful of being asked to be an honorary Auntie or Horse Godparent to Memphis particulary as it was me that came up with his name. Trouble is, every time I see him, that Cher song goes round and round my head and becomes an Ear Worm for the rest of the day. Here we are teaching him to lead using a quarter rope which is most appropriate given that he is a Quarter Horse. An amenable little soul, he takes to things very easily and is happy walking towarda photographer. I'm leading his Mum, Philadelphia.

"I loved the session with both of them and it was so lovely to see Memphis getting the right start.  It's something we haven't been able to give our other horses  and the difference between him and his parents at halter breaking is shocking really, he was just so calm and cool about the whole thing!" Alessa 25.9.11

Off to my own horses. Jack still loves jumping and, after picking his feet out, he volunteered to go and jump the jump all on his own.

Just gorgeous

Finally off to Bransgore to go and meet a daughter of Carnaval Drum. This huge Warmblood is allegedly only 16.2 hh but towered over me. She can sometimes be a handful on the ground but today worked beautifully through the groundwork exercises - like a very tall New Forest pony.