Post by kas on Jun 21, 2014 18:07:52 GMT
Little Grey Pony
I opened the stable door and looked at the fluffy white bum, lifted hind leg and pinned ears with some trepidation. What had I let myself in for? Me and my big mouth, I seem to remember something like “If you like, tomorrow I’ll try turning him out…”. How did I get myself into yet another mess?
Caspar was the cutest little grey Welsh pony you could wish for. He looked like the perfect child’s pony with his tiny head, dainty hooves and big brown eyes. And to give him his due, once caught he was an angel of a pony, willing to stand for hours to be brushed and led around endlessly with a small person squeaking on top. The problems with Caspar occurred every morning before he even got a head collar on his head.
Caspar belonged to two of the nicest people I’ve ever met in my time with horses. They rented the yard where I kept my gang and we all got on like a house on fire. They loved their horses and ponies and put endless hours into caring for them and looking after the yard. Caspar seemed to lack appreciation of their dedication and rewarded their loving care by using various parts of their bodies for target practise every morning when they went to take him out of his stable. As soon as anyone opened his stable door he would position himself with his head in the corner, and then as they tried to edge towards his head with the head collar he’d kick them. Various strategies had been used over time to avoid the pain, but he just got worse. It got to the point where only the man of the yard would turn him out, then one morning Caspar reared up and kicked him in the head. Luckily no lasting harm was done, but decisions needed to be made about the future of this little grey pony.
Fortunately for Caspar (she says with tongue firmly in cheek!) there was I. Fully fledged Parelli Level 1, over-confident and over-optimistic and definitely dangerous to my own safety. I looked at Caspar bimbling about the field and thought “how hard can it be?”. It was only when faced with the sheer determination emanating from his angry little body that I started to reconsider my offer of help.
There had been lots of speculation about why Caspar was as he was. It was thought that he had come from Wales through the auctions as a foal, so it was speculated that he might have been ear twitched to be branded. Ear twitching is essentially grabbing a horse or pony’s ear and twisting it hard. This releases endorphins and calms them for a while. I’m not sure about that but certainly most equines who have experienced it once will tend to be very protective of their heads afterwards. So I’d thought that maybe Caspar was Scared Pony.
A knowledgeable friend who had done some sort of horse behaviour training came and looked at Caspar over his door. She observed that he did all of his droppings in one part of the stable, and when he stood in the corner he was standing over the pile. She said that was typical of stallions and suggested that this and some of his other behaviour indicated that he wasn’t scared, he was dominant and aggressive. So then he was maybe Dominant Pony.
One other opinion was that Caspar associated having a head collar put on with having to do work and other things he didn’t want to. He was warning his owners off because essentially he was lazy and he didn’t like his job. So that led to the possibility of him being Lazy Pony.
It was all quite confusing and led to me having ideas about how maybe I would need to make him less scared by helping him to associate head collars with nice things. I also wondered if I needed to get him on-line and follow the guidance of my Parelli teachers to make myself dominant over him and become his “leader”. These things would all take time though and time was one thing Caspar and his owners didn’t have. They all needed to be safe quickly, nobody should risk getting kicked on the head obviously, and Caspar needed to be safe from the risks of being moved on.
Quite recently I’d started to consider the view of a couple of people I really respected who said that you need to look at the horse in front of you. They are just a horse being a horse. Often we don’t have the luxury of knowing their history and what brought them to the situation they are now in. While it might be interesting and entertaining to speculate on what may or may not have happened to them in the past, at the end of it all, what benefit does that give us? So the advice was to look at the horse in front of you and deal with that.
In little Caspar’s case the pony in front of me was for some reason not happy when people went into his stable to put his head collar on and take him out. He was reacting to that by defending himself to avoid it. Why he did it wasn’t as important at the fact that he needed to stop. If he didn’t people would get hurt and Caspar would probably move on to an uncertain future.
I stood just inside in the stable doorway and thought about what I really needed Caspar to do. It boiled down to three simple things; I needed him to move his head out of the corner and bring it towards me, I needed him ideally to come towards me rather than me go to him and I needed him to accept the head collar on his head. All sorts of objects had been flung and tapped on that fluffy little rear end to attempt to get it to move away. I wondered how little it would take to get him to look at me. As it turned out, he twitched an ear towards me when rustled my coat. So I stayed safely just inside the partly open doorway and shuffled my coat and when that ear twitched towards me I stepped back out of the doorway. After a short pause I went back into the doorway and rattled my coat, it didn’t catch his attention as much as the first time, so I had to tap my hand against my side before he twitched his ear, but he also turned his head a little to the side and I could see one eye as he looked at me. So I stepped back out of the doorway. We played around with this idea for a while, I asked him what it would take to get him to turn his head and look at him, and he waited until I did enough, then did it. By now all of the other ponies had been put out in the field and I’d settled in for the long haul. At some point I even went and made a cup of tea.
Returning with the tea it was obvious that Caspar was taking a bit more interest and so we went on - rustle, rustle, TAP! he’d turn and I‘d step back. Rustle, turn, step back. It didn’t take long for him to realise that when I rustled my fingers against my coat he had to turn his head to look at me, at which point I started to ask for more. Rustle, turn… not enough, rustle, rustle TAP! And gradually Casper started to turn more of his neck, his shoulders and his body. Brilliant! Time for more tea!
We gradually worked our way to the point where he had worked through turning right to face me, and then me asking more until he stepped towards me. The next step was to help him to understand that I could and would handle his head without hurting him. We started the pressure and release, me finding out where he would accept scratches, then scratching up his neck until he tensed, scratching there for just a beat or two more, then back down to the safe place. Gradually we were up by the ears and scratching behind him. This was taking ages, others had given up and were mucking out and doing various jobs, but I was caught up in the fascination of the process. Caspar stayed calm and every now and then I retreated to let him mull things over. Each time I returned he came quickly back to the place where we’d left off. His perception of people coming into the stable was changing, he was starting to think that was his cue to come up to them. Some progress and no pain!
This all sounds very painstaking but the good thing seems to be in these situations that as you go along progress gets quicker. This was the case with little Caspar, when I could scratch around his ears I produced a scrunched up halter from my pocket and used that to scratch and rub him. He moved away a bit, but came to me and stayed calm much more quickly. After that it seemed to take only a short time to be able to rest my right arm over his neck while holding the halter under his neck in both hands. Every time he moved away I did the same - rustled my fingers on my jacket. It felt important to not try to restrain him and keep him in place, but to let him decide for himself to come back.
The end of the story? About 3 hours later Caspar was coming to the front of his stable when I opened the door, putting his head down slightly to touch his nose on the halter, and allowing it to be lifted up over his nose and fastened. What a magical result. What a clever and brave little pony. His owners soon picked up on the routine and life went on very happily for them all. A couple of years later he moved home to look after some more little girls without a question mark over his behaviour. I hope he had a long and happy life, he certainly deserved it.
I opened the stable door and looked at the fluffy white bum, lifted hind leg and pinned ears with some trepidation. What had I let myself in for? Me and my big mouth, I seem to remember something like “If you like, tomorrow I’ll try turning him out…”. How did I get myself into yet another mess?
Caspar was the cutest little grey Welsh pony you could wish for. He looked like the perfect child’s pony with his tiny head, dainty hooves and big brown eyes. And to give him his due, once caught he was an angel of a pony, willing to stand for hours to be brushed and led around endlessly with a small person squeaking on top. The problems with Caspar occurred every morning before he even got a head collar on his head.
Caspar belonged to two of the nicest people I’ve ever met in my time with horses. They rented the yard where I kept my gang and we all got on like a house on fire. They loved their horses and ponies and put endless hours into caring for them and looking after the yard. Caspar seemed to lack appreciation of their dedication and rewarded their loving care by using various parts of their bodies for target practise every morning when they went to take him out of his stable. As soon as anyone opened his stable door he would position himself with his head in the corner, and then as they tried to edge towards his head with the head collar he’d kick them. Various strategies had been used over time to avoid the pain, but he just got worse. It got to the point where only the man of the yard would turn him out, then one morning Caspar reared up and kicked him in the head. Luckily no lasting harm was done, but decisions needed to be made about the future of this little grey pony.
Fortunately for Caspar (she says with tongue firmly in cheek!) there was I. Fully fledged Parelli Level 1, over-confident and over-optimistic and definitely dangerous to my own safety. I looked at Caspar bimbling about the field and thought “how hard can it be?”. It was only when faced with the sheer determination emanating from his angry little body that I started to reconsider my offer of help.
There had been lots of speculation about why Caspar was as he was. It was thought that he had come from Wales through the auctions as a foal, so it was speculated that he might have been ear twitched to be branded. Ear twitching is essentially grabbing a horse or pony’s ear and twisting it hard. This releases endorphins and calms them for a while. I’m not sure about that but certainly most equines who have experienced it once will tend to be very protective of their heads afterwards. So I’d thought that maybe Caspar was Scared Pony.
A knowledgeable friend who had done some sort of horse behaviour training came and looked at Caspar over his door. She observed that he did all of his droppings in one part of the stable, and when he stood in the corner he was standing over the pile. She said that was typical of stallions and suggested that this and some of his other behaviour indicated that he wasn’t scared, he was dominant and aggressive. So then he was maybe Dominant Pony.
One other opinion was that Caspar associated having a head collar put on with having to do work and other things he didn’t want to. He was warning his owners off because essentially he was lazy and he didn’t like his job. So that led to the possibility of him being Lazy Pony.
It was all quite confusing and led to me having ideas about how maybe I would need to make him less scared by helping him to associate head collars with nice things. I also wondered if I needed to get him on-line and follow the guidance of my Parelli teachers to make myself dominant over him and become his “leader”. These things would all take time though and time was one thing Caspar and his owners didn’t have. They all needed to be safe quickly, nobody should risk getting kicked on the head obviously, and Caspar needed to be safe from the risks of being moved on.
Quite recently I’d started to consider the view of a couple of people I really respected who said that you need to look at the horse in front of you. They are just a horse being a horse. Often we don’t have the luxury of knowing their history and what brought them to the situation they are now in. While it might be interesting and entertaining to speculate on what may or may not have happened to them in the past, at the end of it all, what benefit does that give us? So the advice was to look at the horse in front of you and deal with that.
In little Caspar’s case the pony in front of me was for some reason not happy when people went into his stable to put his head collar on and take him out. He was reacting to that by defending himself to avoid it. Why he did it wasn’t as important at the fact that he needed to stop. If he didn’t people would get hurt and Caspar would probably move on to an uncertain future.
I stood just inside in the stable doorway and thought about what I really needed Caspar to do. It boiled down to three simple things; I needed him to move his head out of the corner and bring it towards me, I needed him ideally to come towards me rather than me go to him and I needed him to accept the head collar on his head. All sorts of objects had been flung and tapped on that fluffy little rear end to attempt to get it to move away. I wondered how little it would take to get him to look at me. As it turned out, he twitched an ear towards me when rustled my coat. So I stayed safely just inside the partly open doorway and shuffled my coat and when that ear twitched towards me I stepped back out of the doorway. After a short pause I went back into the doorway and rattled my coat, it didn’t catch his attention as much as the first time, so I had to tap my hand against my side before he twitched his ear, but he also turned his head a little to the side and I could see one eye as he looked at me. So I stepped back out of the doorway. We played around with this idea for a while, I asked him what it would take to get him to turn his head and look at him, and he waited until I did enough, then did it. By now all of the other ponies had been put out in the field and I’d settled in for the long haul. At some point I even went and made a cup of tea.
Returning with the tea it was obvious that Caspar was taking a bit more interest and so we went on - rustle, rustle, TAP! he’d turn and I‘d step back. Rustle, turn, step back. It didn’t take long for him to realise that when I rustled my fingers against my coat he had to turn his head to look at me, at which point I started to ask for more. Rustle, turn… not enough, rustle, rustle TAP! And gradually Casper started to turn more of his neck, his shoulders and his body. Brilliant! Time for more tea!
We gradually worked our way to the point where he had worked through turning right to face me, and then me asking more until he stepped towards me. The next step was to help him to understand that I could and would handle his head without hurting him. We started the pressure and release, me finding out where he would accept scratches, then scratching up his neck until he tensed, scratching there for just a beat or two more, then back down to the safe place. Gradually we were up by the ears and scratching behind him. This was taking ages, others had given up and were mucking out and doing various jobs, but I was caught up in the fascination of the process. Caspar stayed calm and every now and then I retreated to let him mull things over. Each time I returned he came quickly back to the place where we’d left off. His perception of people coming into the stable was changing, he was starting to think that was his cue to come up to them. Some progress and no pain!
This all sounds very painstaking but the good thing seems to be in these situations that as you go along progress gets quicker. This was the case with little Caspar, when I could scratch around his ears I produced a scrunched up halter from my pocket and used that to scratch and rub him. He moved away a bit, but came to me and stayed calm much more quickly. After that it seemed to take only a short time to be able to rest my right arm over his neck while holding the halter under his neck in both hands. Every time he moved away I did the same - rustled my fingers on my jacket. It felt important to not try to restrain him and keep him in place, but to let him decide for himself to come back.
The end of the story? About 3 hours later Caspar was coming to the front of his stable when I opened the door, putting his head down slightly to touch his nose on the halter, and allowing it to be lifted up over his nose and fastened. What a magical result. What a clever and brave little pony. His owners soon picked up on the routine and life went on very happily for them all. A couple of years later he moved home to look after some more little girls without a question mark over his behaviour. I hope he had a long and happy life, he certainly deserved it.
