Post by Deleted on Feb 12, 2010 17:26:51 GMT 1
It really is about time I introduced you to one of the most important men in my life. Meet the fella. He does have a real name but that's what he's called and that's how I think of him, so the fella it is for here.
The fella belongs to laurac. He's one of the more difficult horses I've worked with. I've known him for just over a year and in that year he has challenged us both, on more than one occasion to the point of almost giving up. Along the way, we've had tears and we've had smiles. We've also had an immense amount of learning and friendship and, above all, trust.
I'll let Laura fill you in on his background but briefly it involves a young big warmblood horse being pushed through dealers, rushed in his education, and also pushed way to hard. The result was a horse who associated work with stress and pain, with force and fear. He became difficult in every respect. You couldn't catch him, he wouldn't stand still for anything, he was hyper reactive to anything he perceived as a threat and was unable to take reassurance from Laura.
She moved him to a rented field and got him a companion, which did help. She then spent the next year building up trust. He learned it was ok to be caught and ok to be handled. That, though, was roughly where it ended. Ridden, he would rear, spin and panic. In hand, he would rear spin and panic. Tied up, he would fidget and was difficult for the trimmer.
Somewhere in all this, Laura decided she needed help. That was back in December '08. We have, then, spent the whole of '09 trying to get to the bottom of things.
When you have a horse with a known history of what I can only term abusive training (not at Laura's hands), your starting assumption is that this may well be the cause of his problems. Step 1 was to create a safe space to work in. The fella is big, 17 odd hands of big, and agile to go with it. You don't want to be working in a muddy field with electric tape with a horse like that. There are times when we can say ok, that's what we have to work in, we'll have to go with it. There are other times that you have to make the extra effort or not do it. This was one of the latter. Laura arranged for some woodchips to create a good footing area, my pen found a new temporary home. We could then start work.
We started in the IH conventional way - leading, backing up, moving around and, importantly with him, teaching him to stand still. We then moved onto the longlines. He made progress, things were going well, and Laura's confidence grew. Neither of us thought we were out of the woods, but we were both happy with progress.
Laura put a lot - and I mean a lot - of time into the fella. He learned to stand still. He learned to lead. He learned to lead quite nicely on the roads. He learned to back up amazingly. And he learned to longline. He'd still throw a wobbly from time to time but by really tightening up on making sure that Laura was always giving him instructions and not just going with the flow that he decided, that improved too.
Come the summer, it was time to put this all to the test. Laura took him for a hack with a friend. For safety, she decided to load him and drive to somewhere away from the roads. He was on edge before she loaded him and became more so as he travelled. With hindsight, at this point she should have just walked him in hand to calm him down, then taken him home. Oh, if only we all had hindsight...! Instead, the hack went ahead, until the fella spun into a panic. Laura thankfully managed to stay on, then get off safely, while the fella stood there covered in sweat and shaking like a leaf.
At this point, we knew there was something more than just a rather highly strung horse with a bad background. Laura had him scoped - that came back clear. We tried going back a few steps but there was something not quite right still. She started to notice more that he wasn't right behind. The vet checked him out, fine on a straight line, lame behind. Ah, maybe we were getting somewhere... He went in for a full lameness workup... nothing. But nothing. Back to square 1.
During a previous visit, the vet had made a remark that he thought the fella was borderline with shivers. Laura started to look into this. Other words started to come into her thinking - tying up, problems with hind legs (he has always found it difficult to keep his off hind up for any length of time)... She ended up looking into EPSM.
I'll confess this had not crossed my mind. He looks well, backs up beautifully, never seems low energy "Monday morning"ish. But, the rest of it did all fit in. A bit more research and Laura changed his diet to a high oil + selenium/Vit E diet. 2 months later, and this horse has changed. He's relaxed. He can stand still. He can work beautifully, I mean really beautifully. You've probably seen this photo before in Laura's avatar, but here is the big version:
This sort of thing makes you want to dance. When he's like this, he's a complete joy. On those days, you believe you've cracked it. We're not there yet, though. Today was not good again. He was fidgety before leaving home and we put that down to a van next door. He loaded beautifully (a recently acquired skill!), but was restless when then ramp went up.
We arrived at the school Laura hires to work in and he was just not with us. Very fidgety when tacking up and putting the lines on, and then just off in his own world, but not a happy world. Something was bothering him and we don't yet know what. We had a few kicks at the belly, some head shaking, and a bit of this...
I got him settled by keeping control, did a circle on each rein and stopped there. I didn't want to work him further if he was unhappy and also wanted to reward the settling down. No panics, no sweats, no shaking, just nice and calm so we can finish.
The good news of the day was that he then loaded straight off to go home - not something he's done well before, especially when stressed. So, a bit of a knock but there are positives in there too. We had a chat about why he might have been unhappy today and are wondering if it's because it's gone cold again, maybe that could make his muscles less easy. This is still a learning curve for us about this horse. Something triggered this, something made the change between those two sessions in those two photos. Learning what will help us help him.
I've decided to write up a summary of the fella as encouragement to those who have difficult horses, who sometimes feel like giving up. It would be great if training these difficult ones would be linear, but it's not. The ups are great, the downs can be a kick in the guts (figuratively). Days like today could be really knock your spirits but if I compare with this time last year we HAVE made progress, and lots of it. We'll get there, wherever where may be, eventually.
I have to finish this post with my fave ever fella photo. See, he's an angel sometimes, and even has the halo to prove it!
The fella belongs to laurac. He's one of the more difficult horses I've worked with. I've known him for just over a year and in that year he has challenged us both, on more than one occasion to the point of almost giving up. Along the way, we've had tears and we've had smiles. We've also had an immense amount of learning and friendship and, above all, trust.
I'll let Laura fill you in on his background but briefly it involves a young big warmblood horse being pushed through dealers, rushed in his education, and also pushed way to hard. The result was a horse who associated work with stress and pain, with force and fear. He became difficult in every respect. You couldn't catch him, he wouldn't stand still for anything, he was hyper reactive to anything he perceived as a threat and was unable to take reassurance from Laura.
She moved him to a rented field and got him a companion, which did help. She then spent the next year building up trust. He learned it was ok to be caught and ok to be handled. That, though, was roughly where it ended. Ridden, he would rear, spin and panic. In hand, he would rear spin and panic. Tied up, he would fidget and was difficult for the trimmer.
Somewhere in all this, Laura decided she needed help. That was back in December '08. We have, then, spent the whole of '09 trying to get to the bottom of things.
When you have a horse with a known history of what I can only term abusive training (not at Laura's hands), your starting assumption is that this may well be the cause of his problems. Step 1 was to create a safe space to work in. The fella is big, 17 odd hands of big, and agile to go with it. You don't want to be working in a muddy field with electric tape with a horse like that. There are times when we can say ok, that's what we have to work in, we'll have to go with it. There are other times that you have to make the extra effort or not do it. This was one of the latter. Laura arranged for some woodchips to create a good footing area, my pen found a new temporary home. We could then start work.
We started in the IH conventional way - leading, backing up, moving around and, importantly with him, teaching him to stand still. We then moved onto the longlines. He made progress, things were going well, and Laura's confidence grew. Neither of us thought we were out of the woods, but we were both happy with progress.
Laura put a lot - and I mean a lot - of time into the fella. He learned to stand still. He learned to lead. He learned to lead quite nicely on the roads. He learned to back up amazingly. And he learned to longline. He'd still throw a wobbly from time to time but by really tightening up on making sure that Laura was always giving him instructions and not just going with the flow that he decided, that improved too.
Come the summer, it was time to put this all to the test. Laura took him for a hack with a friend. For safety, she decided to load him and drive to somewhere away from the roads. He was on edge before she loaded him and became more so as he travelled. With hindsight, at this point she should have just walked him in hand to calm him down, then taken him home. Oh, if only we all had hindsight...! Instead, the hack went ahead, until the fella spun into a panic. Laura thankfully managed to stay on, then get off safely, while the fella stood there covered in sweat and shaking like a leaf.
At this point, we knew there was something more than just a rather highly strung horse with a bad background. Laura had him scoped - that came back clear. We tried going back a few steps but there was something not quite right still. She started to notice more that he wasn't right behind. The vet checked him out, fine on a straight line, lame behind. Ah, maybe we were getting somewhere... He went in for a full lameness workup... nothing. But nothing. Back to square 1.
During a previous visit, the vet had made a remark that he thought the fella was borderline with shivers. Laura started to look into this. Other words started to come into her thinking - tying up, problems with hind legs (he has always found it difficult to keep his off hind up for any length of time)... She ended up looking into EPSM.
I'll confess this had not crossed my mind. He looks well, backs up beautifully, never seems low energy "Monday morning"ish. But, the rest of it did all fit in. A bit more research and Laura changed his diet to a high oil + selenium/Vit E diet. 2 months later, and this horse has changed. He's relaxed. He can stand still. He can work beautifully, I mean really beautifully. You've probably seen this photo before in Laura's avatar, but here is the big version:
This sort of thing makes you want to dance. When he's like this, he's a complete joy. On those days, you believe you've cracked it. We're not there yet, though. Today was not good again. He was fidgety before leaving home and we put that down to a van next door. He loaded beautifully (a recently acquired skill!), but was restless when then ramp went up.
We arrived at the school Laura hires to work in and he was just not with us. Very fidgety when tacking up and putting the lines on, and then just off in his own world, but not a happy world. Something was bothering him and we don't yet know what. We had a few kicks at the belly, some head shaking, and a bit of this...
I got him settled by keeping control, did a circle on each rein and stopped there. I didn't want to work him further if he was unhappy and also wanted to reward the settling down. No panics, no sweats, no shaking, just nice and calm so we can finish.
The good news of the day was that he then loaded straight off to go home - not something he's done well before, especially when stressed. So, a bit of a knock but there are positives in there too. We had a chat about why he might have been unhappy today and are wondering if it's because it's gone cold again, maybe that could make his muscles less easy. This is still a learning curve for us about this horse. Something triggered this, something made the change between those two sessions in those two photos. Learning what will help us help him.
I've decided to write up a summary of the fella as encouragement to those who have difficult horses, who sometimes feel like giving up. It would be great if training these difficult ones would be linear, but it's not. The ups are great, the downs can be a kick in the guts (figuratively). Days like today could be really knock your spirits but if I compare with this time last year we HAVE made progress, and lots of it. We'll get there, wherever where may be, eventually.
I have to finish this post with my fave ever fella photo. See, he's an angel sometimes, and even has the halo to prove it!
