It's a S**t Job.

Such a beautiful, beautiful day today, warm, blue sky, pretty clouds and a light breeze. The perfect day to sit and watch the horses enjoying some new grass and swaying through their ballet of interactions: nose to nose, or synchronised, seeking each other out for different reasons. I could just sit on my garden chair with my back to the barn door and wait, and wait, and apparently wait for them to poo. 

Normally, I split them up for the purpose of taking samples for their faecal worm counts. This enables me to do other jobs,but I thought that I would have a nice, relaxing afternoon instead. This is how it went.

Theoden: "What's in the cardboard box? No, really, what's in the cardboard box? Hit me with the cardboard box because I've got a blasted fly on me. I don't care if you can't see the other horses, scratch my ears."

I peer under his belly trying to keep an eye on the others for any er, productions. 

Theoden: "Right, if you are not going to eliminate all of these insects, I am leaving. I am going to stand in the field shelter." Exits stage left and now I am down to 6 horses and 6 samples.

Nelly: "Have you noticed there's no water in the trough? I don't care if you can't see the other horses, I need some water and I need it now."

I stand up and go into the yard to connect the hosepipe and turn the tap on. Bearing in mind that it only takes 3 seconds for a pony to poo, I wonder if any of the have 'gone' without me and execute a complete Poo Patrol before sitting back down.

Theoden: "I'm back, no one else came with me and I got lonely." Okay, you can stay here with me - only could you move out of the way?

Horses tend to poo once every two hours and now there is only an hour left. It could get very busy. Horses are normally inspired by the smell of poo and they are all grazing close to the poo pile. Not today.

A gust picks up the cardboard box, shakes open the top, and discards all of my plastic bags in the vicinity. I go round collecting them up and hope that no-one has done anything surreptitious. Second Poo Patrol commences. Sit back down.

Water trough overflows. Run into the yard to turn the tap off and disconnect the hose. Was I gone too long? Third Poo Patrol. Sit back down. 

Horses are all standing in a line like can-can dancers, some facing towards me and others away. What with the breeze and the insects, their tails are continuously moving and Pie, in particular, has a high tail carriage - could that be? Was it? Patsy stands and looks pensive, or could she have COLIC? 

Jack takes a long, long drink and should pee for England. It's Patsy that wins the race to go first. I pick up three little bags, in case anyone else gets inspired, and go and collect a nugget, shall we say, of her poo. The bags are small and the nugget was big and I am now being pestered by seven equines, all wanting to know what I am doing. Dave goes next and now I've got one plastic bag in my left hand, that's Patsy, and his in the right, fingers covered in muck and Henry decides to go but I can't find it. Ah, clever mule is always worried about leaving clues as to her whereabouts, so she has park it on top of Patsy's. Patsy left hand leftest, Dave left hand rightest, Henry right hand. Back to the barn, put the right form in the right post bag with the right small bag and there's poo all over the forms and the postage bags are difficult to open without licking you fingers. I've had to write the horse's names on with a thick marker pen and I haven't got anything else to fill in the other details. 

Sit back down. Relax again. And now the unpleasant Fritham dog chorus starts. This field used to be my haven but now there are several demented collies, one of which barks incessantly when she is let outside and that is most of the time. One of the other set along the road howls relentlessly when the other, younger, dogs are taken out. 

The Fallow deer stream across the fields, all fifty of them, and sit in the Circle to watch proceedings. In the sky, a Red Kite is searching for carrion and a diminutive Kestrel is looking for mice. There's a little Lapwing that keeps going in and out of the barn so I move my chair along a bit so that he has a clear flight path.

The sun coming out from behind the clouds activates a large fly and Theoden gallops about pretending to be a friend when really he is trying to pass it off. I have shut the far field gate because no one is leaving here until they've taken a s**t!

Nelly: "Are my hooves okay? Could you rub my ears please?" Nelly, do go away.

With 3 down and 4 to go, the equines divide themselves up into couples, one who has been and one who has not. My eyes are like a kaleidoscope, and they feel as if they are being stretched as I try to observe all of them at the same time. 

At long last, Theoden and Nelly do their duty. More bag packing. More investigations. I decide to pack up as much as I can and sit in the shade of the oak tree to wait for Jack and Pie. I discover an undiscovered new poo and have to wait for one of them to go in order to work out who was in fact my poo champion. And of course, it was Jack.

I sit in the car with the nub of an ancient pencil to fill in the rest of the forms and wonder what the vets will make of my childish handwriting and my childish implements, and then I chuck them in the postbox at Godshill and hope that I have not jammed the letterbox and that none of the packages will leak.

So there's no photos of my beautiful horses in their rich summer coats because I left my phone in the car and didn't dare go and get it in case it led to any further identification problems. 

Facewash

 

After a lovely drive, we thought we would let Kalina watch Kelly being bathed with the hose at much closer proximity. It was Kalina who chose to go forwards into the yard and to engage with what was happening. 

Although the plan had been to see what she would make of being washed with the hose, this was such a positive move that Claire felt that we should not go any further on this occasion. I agreed. Kalina did take a good look at the hosepipe being taken back to the tap, so as well as washing her, we must do some more work on getting her used to the hosepipe moving around. 

Eco-wash

Kalina with Karioka before she took exception to being washed with a hose. 

The best way to prepare a horse to accept water on its body, is to get the horse quite hot in the first place. This morning Kalina was driven with Bali, Karioka, and Kelly.

The farm location for these horses ia absolutely perfect for access to good wide tracks. 

After their drive, the other three horses were washed within sight of Kalina, and Kalina herself accepted a sponge bath with cold water. Progress! Darn it, I wasn't there myself but I have got a video...

Happy Birthday to You

 My neighbour's pony, Fleur, has just reached her 20th birthday, and to celebrate, her owner made her this gorgeous cake!

Of course it disappeared faster than you could say, "Congratulations Fleur".

It's good to see her looking so well considering she almost died from strangles and the subsequent treatments for it. Her recovery took well over a year. 

Pre-wash!

 

Once again small changes for Kalina - the hose pipe is now about 8 foot long and Claire is imitating the movements needed for bathing her. This is a horse that reacted so badly to being washed at a show that Claire was worried that people might think she had beaten her! Ever since the initial incident with the hose pipe on the floor, she has been terrified of them. This is the first time she has been back in the pen since that event too.

Claire and I agree on which step to take next and often catch ourselves saying the same thing at the same time. Claire has a marvellous attitude to the horses, despite being a very competitive woman, and she is willing to go back to the very very beginning where it is necessary. The horses have a great deal of trust in her and always try to do their best. The only instruction I have had to give has been to not reinforce any slight nervousness by saying 'ooh what's that!' or 'Good Girl' in a slightly high pitched voice. We all do it, and people with children tend to do it more. There has been a lot of yawning going on and if the children are bored watching then we know we have got the pace about right.

Snake Pass

What I like about clicker training, is that it is possible to take a circuitous route which avoids the horse's original reaction to the stimulus. Nevertheless, it's a fine line to tread, knowing which direction to take next - introduce a longer piece of hosepipe, lay it on the floor, touch the horse with it or wiggle it on the ground, let the horse touch it on her own, change the colour, introduce water, and so on. All the time, we are trying to build up so slowly that we don't trigger a strong reaction.

Yesterday, we made four changes - Claire took over from me, we rewarded Kalina with cleavers rather than grass, we slightly increased the length of the hose pipe, went back to a shorter length and repeated all of the work on Kalina's left hand side. There was the occasional slight snort but nothing more and at times she came forward to touch and mouth the hose. All a far cry from her extreme reaction to a moving hose pipe, when she crouched and shook, and tried to breast the bars of the pen in the yard, and her subsequent reactions to anyone trying to bath her. Claire, who spends most of the summer showing her heavy horses has had to take Kalina out of the team.

Asked whether Kalina is generally nervous, Claire explained that at the Yorkshire Show the heavy horses were stabled in the Heavy Horse Village which was reached through a passageway between massive farm machinery and fluttering banners and flags; Kalina didn't turn a hair. 

The whole session was uneventful and afterwards Claire's daughter wanted to practise too. Ordinarily these horses NEVER receive hand treats because they are petted by all kinds of people, young and old, at the shows that they go to. 

I Don't Like Spiders and Snakes

Just like her owner, Kalina has an innate fear of snakes: any sensible horse would have. Unfortunately, a little while ago she was badly shaken up by the hosepipe moving about under the pressure of water and now needs some reassurance that it will not bite her. 

I have worked with Claire a number of times and she is always prepared to take things slowly, so today we introduced Kalina to clicker training and a very small 'snake'; only one problem, she doesn't really like or understand about food from the hand. We packed away all the herbal treats, carrots, and cubes of bread as they were not to her taste and instead presented her with tiny bouquets of clover and grass. Soon she was moving about, backwards and forwards for treats, politely listening for the clicks and waiting until the treat was offered.

 To make them last longer I held the grass tightly so that she had to break it off. 

Next, I introduced a short length of hosepipe that was a mere 12" long to which she had no reaction at all. She was prepared to touch it and happy to let me touch her with it. She reacted to the longer section, about a yard long, by snorting at it and taking a couple of steps back, but in time she was prepared to stand and look at it more closely, even when Rowena, Claire's Mum, was making it wiggle on the ground. As you can see in the picture, she still has a 'running foot', left hind, but she has her head lowered and she is looking at it with both eyes. After this we were happy - okay, I was extremely happy - to lead her out to the fields with her companion Karioka. Tomorrow, I shall not be so selfish and I will let Claire carry on the good work.