Post by Deleted on Jun 11, 2010 13:11:10 GMT 1
When owner Mandy called me about her loading problem, my first reaction was "yes, no problem". I do quite a few loaders and, although each one is interesting and each presents its own challenges, they are usually not too hard. I then went on to ask Mandy over the phone about her horse, Puzzle, and she started to describe something a little less "normal". Well, she said, he's worried by things in general. What sort of things, I asked. One of the things he hates above all, she replied, is having his front feathers trimmed with scissors... You can pick his feet out, you can hose his legs down, but don't try and clip his feathers with scissors! We agree that maybe I should come and meet Puzzle without worrying about loading, just to get to know him. And I'm so glad I did!
Nature or nuture, or a combination of the two, has made Puzzle a very worried young man. Mandy knows his Puzz's brother and mum, and both are very nervy and hard to settle. He's wary even in his stable or on the yard outside, can be hard to catch, will fly into a panic at a pheasant, and gets very wound up at the thought of cantering. Lots of stuff going on there... and apparently his brother is worse!
His training has been sympathetic but little accidental incidents have left some marks, though. One of these involved a static shock while having his feathers trimmed. Puzzle has not been able to cope with it ever since.
On the first session with Puzzle, I worked with pressure and release. We did some leading first - he wasn't too bad but we did just tighten things up a bit. Then we moved on to leg handling. He was not vastly happy with me next to him but settled and allowed me to stroke his leg. He allowed me to stroke his leg with the scissors:
We even managed to stroke the leg with the scissors without that running foot, (I'm doing ok here, I thought... ).
Then I snipped one tiny bit of hair, literally 2 or 3 strands... OH NO, YOU'RE NOT DOING THAT!!! And after that he could not settle. I might as well have had a cattle prod in my hand.
We clearly had to change tack. We called it a day and arranged for me to come back a few days later with my friend the clicker.
Session 2, then, was just about teaching Puzzle what the clicker was. We started off with targetting the feather duster. In front of him, no problem whatsoever. In fact... hey... this is ok!!! As soon as we started to move the target around, though, to one side of him, he couldn't cope. With the duster anywhere near his shoulder, he would just stand and eye it, but couldn't quite bring himself to move towards it.
Clearly, Puzzle needed more time. He'd tried hard and we were sure he would continue to try, but we had to be fair and not ask too much too soon. I left Mandy with the homework of getting Puzz used to targetting the duster wherever it went, hoping that he'd learn that strange things round his legs were ok, and that we'd be able to teach him to target the scissors, wherever they were and whatever noise they were making.
Well, gold star for Mr Puzzle. Within just a day or two he'd really cottoned on to this, and was targetting the duster wherever and also the scissors. Fab. So, time to go back and see if we could push further.
Duster, good. Scissors away from leg, good. Hand on leg... hmm... ok then. Scissors on leg, fine. Scissors making a noise, fine. This was all even done without him being clipped on.
He was doing so well, it was time to go for it. I snipped a few hairs off his feather. No way! You're not doing that again!!! Not quite such a bad reaction, but still he hated it. At first I thought it was the feel, but no, you can pull his feathers and he's ok. I was stumped, until I realised that of course the sound of scissors snipping at the air is very different to the sound of scissor snipping at hair.
We did some work snipping up an old pink towel, and he did seem to settle, but again once you combined the sound and the feel on his leg, he got jittery again (although again not as bad). We were getting there, but still hadn't cracked it.
I'm very glad there are no neighbours overlooking Puzzle's field. The sight of 2 grown women chopping up a pink towel round a horse's leg while singing Postman Pat very loudly (and clicking, too) would have raised the odd eyebrow in leafy Essex! This, though, gave me just the time to start snipping away. With his feathers between the length of my fingers of my left hand, I muffled the feel, and then snipped very quietly. Oh, click-treat, click-treat, click-treat!!! What a good boy.
He was aware of what was going on, he thought about it, he fidgeted a little, and then he... dropped his head to nibble some grass! Wow!
With him now able to do that, we walked him onto some longer grass and he then quite happily stood and munched, with his head right down next to his leg, while Mandy snipped the hair off his other leg. Then back to the first one because that's the one we'd started with where he'd been more worried, then stop.
I'm pleased to report that Puzzle now has (not very) neatly snipped feathers on both front legs!
Now, I know we've not got him loaded, the original point of Mandy's call, but we have taught him that one thing that he was convinced was going to kill him hasn't, and that is a fantastic thing for him to learn. Mandy is now going to do lots of despooking work with him, to really cement her leadership even in challenging situations, and then we'll look at loading.
Nature or nuture, or a combination of the two, has made Puzzle a very worried young man. Mandy knows his Puzz's brother and mum, and both are very nervy and hard to settle. He's wary even in his stable or on the yard outside, can be hard to catch, will fly into a panic at a pheasant, and gets very wound up at the thought of cantering. Lots of stuff going on there... and apparently his brother is worse!
His training has been sympathetic but little accidental incidents have left some marks, though. One of these involved a static shock while having his feathers trimmed. Puzzle has not been able to cope with it ever since.
On the first session with Puzzle, I worked with pressure and release. We did some leading first - he wasn't too bad but we did just tighten things up a bit. Then we moved on to leg handling. He was not vastly happy with me next to him but settled and allowed me to stroke his leg. He allowed me to stroke his leg with the scissors:
We even managed to stroke the leg with the scissors without that running foot, (I'm doing ok here, I thought... ).
Then I snipped one tiny bit of hair, literally 2 or 3 strands... OH NO, YOU'RE NOT DOING THAT!!! And after that he could not settle. I might as well have had a cattle prod in my hand.
We clearly had to change tack. We called it a day and arranged for me to come back a few days later with my friend the clicker.
Session 2, then, was just about teaching Puzzle what the clicker was. We started off with targetting the feather duster. In front of him, no problem whatsoever. In fact... hey... this is ok!!! As soon as we started to move the target around, though, to one side of him, he couldn't cope. With the duster anywhere near his shoulder, he would just stand and eye it, but couldn't quite bring himself to move towards it.
Clearly, Puzzle needed more time. He'd tried hard and we were sure he would continue to try, but we had to be fair and not ask too much too soon. I left Mandy with the homework of getting Puzz used to targetting the duster wherever it went, hoping that he'd learn that strange things round his legs were ok, and that we'd be able to teach him to target the scissors, wherever they were and whatever noise they were making.
Well, gold star for Mr Puzzle. Within just a day or two he'd really cottoned on to this, and was targetting the duster wherever and also the scissors. Fab. So, time to go back and see if we could push further.
Duster, good. Scissors away from leg, good. Hand on leg... hmm... ok then. Scissors on leg, fine. Scissors making a noise, fine. This was all even done without him being clipped on.
He was doing so well, it was time to go for it. I snipped a few hairs off his feather. No way! You're not doing that again!!! Not quite such a bad reaction, but still he hated it. At first I thought it was the feel, but no, you can pull his feathers and he's ok. I was stumped, until I realised that of course the sound of scissors snipping at the air is very different to the sound of scissor snipping at hair.
We did some work snipping up an old pink towel, and he did seem to settle, but again once you combined the sound and the feel on his leg, he got jittery again (although again not as bad). We were getting there, but still hadn't cracked it.
I'm very glad there are no neighbours overlooking Puzzle's field. The sight of 2 grown women chopping up a pink towel round a horse's leg while singing Postman Pat very loudly (and clicking, too) would have raised the odd eyebrow in leafy Essex! This, though, gave me just the time to start snipping away. With his feathers between the length of my fingers of my left hand, I muffled the feel, and then snipped very quietly. Oh, click-treat, click-treat, click-treat!!! What a good boy.
He was aware of what was going on, he thought about it, he fidgeted a little, and then he... dropped his head to nibble some grass! Wow!
With him now able to do that, we walked him onto some longer grass and he then quite happily stood and munched, with his head right down next to his leg, while Mandy snipped the hair off his other leg. Then back to the first one because that's the one we'd started with where he'd been more worried, then stop.
I'm pleased to report that Puzzle now has (not very) neatly snipped feathers on both front legs!
Now, I know we've not got him loaded, the original point of Mandy's call, but we have taught him that one thing that he was convinced was going to kill him hasn't, and that is a fantastic thing for him to learn. Mandy is now going to do lots of despooking work with him, to really cement her leadership even in challenging situations, and then we'll look at loading.