Post by Deleted on Feb 4, 2010 14:29:57 GMT 1
I'm going to love writing this and putting up the photos - they really tell the story.
Abbie is a Welsh Sec C. She's got a reputation of being a bit rude, rather determined in her opinions and quite nifty with her head. She also does not like to load. I'd already had a little play with her a while back (her loaners also own Minstrel), so had an idea of what the problem was but didn't really have enough time to work with her properly on that day. Today was Abbie's day for loading.
The feeling I'd got with Abbie before was that she didn't like the ramp. This ties in with her owner, Anne, saying that she was worse since switching from trailer to lorry. When I'd briefly worked with her before, she's been very uncertain of where to put her feet on the ramp and when she did go up she rather launched herself at it, hoping to get it over and done with quickly!
I started with the L shape to have better control if she decided on her favourite evasion of twisting around sideways. I wanted to get this pony really soft and really accepting. A typical Welsh (forgive the generalisation), she hates being told what to do, so explaining that agreeing to work with me softly was an essential first step. At first, we had a lot of head pushing and wafting, but she soon settled and was backing both ways beautifully.
Because of her worry over where she was putting her feet, I moved onto a tarp. No problem. Yes, she had a look, but then walked straight over. That was useful to know as it wasn't the surface of the ramp itself that was causing the problem.
Ok, Abbie, so if you can do the tarp without stopping, can you do the ramp without stopping?
NO!!!
Pleasingly, she was a lot better already for the brief 15 minutes I done with her before, and after just 5 minutes of her planting and me moving her around, she did agree to come on. Again, though, she rather stumbled up the ramp and then launched herself over the last bit.
I had to slow that down. By just closing your eyes, holding your nose and going for it, you can't actually learn that the individual steps you're taking are ok. So first, I asked her to stop on the ramp and see where she was.
Ok, she said, and would you like me to show you the bit that REALLY bothers me?
"It's that step up, see, just there!" "Ah yes! I can see that too. Well, I tell you what, if you practice going up the ramp first, I'll explain to you about that step later." "Ok".
Now, this may sound like we were avoiding the main problem, but until Abbie was comfortable with the ramp itself and with being in the lorry, she wouldn't have been able to concentrate on that key area. She did, then, blast up the ramp and quickly spin round a few times, and incidentally in the process showed us something else that bothered her. She clipped her hips on the partition off to the right, confirming to herself that going up that step was indeed a problem, and I wonder if she's done that before.
She was now going up and down the ramp seemingly quite happily. The two things that gave lie to that were the speed she was doing it (fast!), and the rather worried spin round once she got into the box. Clearly, she was accepting now that she could load, but had to get it over and done with because it still worried her.
So, we slowed things down now, with Anne taking over from me to teach Abbie to stand and relax in the box
and on the ramp
Even with this, we were still getting the blast round in the box as soon as you asked her to put one foot up the step and into the box itself.
We spent 10 minutes on getting Anne to control her head better, and on getting her to slow her down BEFORE she'd speeded up, in other words to work to prevent the spin rather than try and control it when it was all too late
Finally, we could then ask Abbie to walk up the ramp in a straight line, stand still and quietly at the top of the ramp, then walk on quietly and either stand still or move round as we asked her to:
Now it's practice, practice, practice, keeping attention to detail and keeping things nice and slow.
Sorry that's so long but there was just so much interesting stuff going on and the photos illustrate it so well, I thought you might like it!
Abbie is a Welsh Sec C. She's got a reputation of being a bit rude, rather determined in her opinions and quite nifty with her head. She also does not like to load. I'd already had a little play with her a while back (her loaners also own Minstrel), so had an idea of what the problem was but didn't really have enough time to work with her properly on that day. Today was Abbie's day for loading.
The feeling I'd got with Abbie before was that she didn't like the ramp. This ties in with her owner, Anne, saying that she was worse since switching from trailer to lorry. When I'd briefly worked with her before, she's been very uncertain of where to put her feet on the ramp and when she did go up she rather launched herself at it, hoping to get it over and done with quickly!
I started with the L shape to have better control if she decided on her favourite evasion of twisting around sideways. I wanted to get this pony really soft and really accepting. A typical Welsh (forgive the generalisation), she hates being told what to do, so explaining that agreeing to work with me softly was an essential first step. At first, we had a lot of head pushing and wafting, but she soon settled and was backing both ways beautifully.
Because of her worry over where she was putting her feet, I moved onto a tarp. No problem. Yes, she had a look, but then walked straight over. That was useful to know as it wasn't the surface of the ramp itself that was causing the problem.
Ok, Abbie, so if you can do the tarp without stopping, can you do the ramp without stopping?
NO!!!
Pleasingly, she was a lot better already for the brief 15 minutes I done with her before, and after just 5 minutes of her planting and me moving her around, she did agree to come on. Again, though, she rather stumbled up the ramp and then launched herself over the last bit.
I had to slow that down. By just closing your eyes, holding your nose and going for it, you can't actually learn that the individual steps you're taking are ok. So first, I asked her to stop on the ramp and see where she was.
Ok, she said, and would you like me to show you the bit that REALLY bothers me?
"It's that step up, see, just there!" "Ah yes! I can see that too. Well, I tell you what, if you practice going up the ramp first, I'll explain to you about that step later." "Ok".
Now, this may sound like we were avoiding the main problem, but until Abbie was comfortable with the ramp itself and with being in the lorry, she wouldn't have been able to concentrate on that key area. She did, then, blast up the ramp and quickly spin round a few times, and incidentally in the process showed us something else that bothered her. She clipped her hips on the partition off to the right, confirming to herself that going up that step was indeed a problem, and I wonder if she's done that before.
She was now going up and down the ramp seemingly quite happily. The two things that gave lie to that were the speed she was doing it (fast!), and the rather worried spin round once she got into the box. Clearly, she was accepting now that she could load, but had to get it over and done with because it still worried her.
So, we slowed things down now, with Anne taking over from me to teach Abbie to stand and relax in the box
and on the ramp
Even with this, we were still getting the blast round in the box as soon as you asked her to put one foot up the step and into the box itself.
We spent 10 minutes on getting Anne to control her head better, and on getting her to slow her down BEFORE she'd speeded up, in other words to work to prevent the spin rather than try and control it when it was all too late
Finally, we could then ask Abbie to walk up the ramp in a straight line, stand still and quietly at the top of the ramp, then walk on quietly and either stand still or move round as we asked her to:
Now it's practice, practice, practice, keeping attention to detail and keeping things nice and slow.
Sorry that's so long but there was just so much interesting stuff going on and the photos illustrate it so well, I thought you might like it!