Post by Deleted on Mar 17, 2011 10:58:37 GMT 1
A few weeks ago, I posted a thread asking if anyone could help find a home for Toby. He's also on Project Horses. I've not had any interest at all, which is a shame because he's actually a nice little pony. He just has some not very nice issues.
So... I thought I'd keep a diary here so that he can show you himself what his potential is through the progress he's making.
I'll start with his history and a recap of the last couple of months.
Toby is 15 years old. He was owned by a near neighbour for 14 years, i.e. since a yearling. He was backed and ridden by their daughter. If I've got it right, he was only ridden on their property. During that time, he was gelded but otherwise never saw the vet, he had his feet done somehow but not by a farrier (this is hazy) and lived for the first 10 or 11 years with another horse.
The daughter then moved away, took the other horse with her but left Toby behind. He was then on his own with no company of any sort for 3 + years. He has basic care - food, water, mucking out - but that was it. At one point there was a 12 yr old girl who came to groom him and she rode him once, uneventfully. Otherwise, he was entirely on his own with nothing to do, nothing even to see.
At the beginning of last winter, they ran out of hay and he was fed on 2 meals of Molichop + a mix (looked like Pasture Mix) + carrots. No forage at all. He had a muddy paddock but when this got too wet he was kept in 24/7.
Another neighbour got involved and, to cut a long story short, he was in such a mental state that she decided to get him out. He therefore ended up with me.
When he arrived here he was so wound up you couldn't even lead him. He soon settled, though, and I was able to turn him out with my ponies within a day or two. He is bottom of the heap and has never caused a problem with the girls at all.
His main issue was and still remains food. Having been deprived of the mental need to eat for 18 or so hours a day, he is food obsessed. He was (and still could be) dangerous around any food, but high value food in particular. Ideally he would just flatten you to get to it but, if prevented, would quickly resort to serious biting and if that didn't work would also kick. We have had a couple of big sessions over this and although it's better I still would not trust him one inch if you had a feed bucket in your hand, or even something looking like one. When he first saw my grooming kit box he thought that might be feed.
He does, though, now know that he must take a step back and wait, and with hay he is much better. I do, though, always take the precaution of having a headcollar on him and a leadrope in my hands as he has days that he just tries his luck. With consistency, though, I hope this will continue to improve.
His other big remaining issue is separation anxiety. If you think of 3 years of being deprived of company, then having it back, you can see where he's coming from! For the first week he appeared to be surprisingly ok with being away from the girls, then his attachment to them kicked in big time and he went from being fine to blind panic. This, I'll confess, caught me unawares and the first I knew of it he was trying to climb over a stable door and when that failed crashed through a fence instead.
This is also improving. He's not to the point that you can leave him tied up or unattended, without food and without company, but he will stay on his own for 10 minutes with food and he will also now lead away from the girls. There is work to be done but at the moment I'd say there is a lot of improvement still waiting in the wings and I'm hopeful he'll get over at least the worst of it with time and careful management/training.
He was absolutely awful with his feet. Fronts were just big fidgets, hinds were full on cow kicking. This is now almost ok. He's been trimmed twice by my EP. Fronts were very good, hinds were much improved and there has been progress since. He does not like having his feet held firmly but if you just balance a foot in your hand rather than hold it (which of course is what we all should do anyway), he's happy to have his feet picked out. I've also started doing some movements with his legs and he's fine. So that's nearly ticked off the list.
The other big issue we've had is him hating being touched. He's a friendly lad so I was struggling to see what was motivating this behaviour. He'd come to you and say hello but if you tried to stroke him he'd bite. Even worse was if you tried to groom him or otherwise touch his body. Fidget fidget fidget, bite bite bite. He was fine if distracted with food but otherwise he was impossible. My first thought was discomfort of some sort. You'd sometimes get a flinch, I got an "ouch" reaction sometimes on pressing his back, a couple of times I could feel a warm spot on his back. I therefore called a friend who does Equine Touch over. She has treated him twice and he was awful. The second time was worse than the first. It make it almost impossible for her to treat him.
Just to keep this in chronological order, this got me really asking myself if he was the right pony for my neighbour, the one who had taken him on, to keep. The original hope had been that he'd be a pony for her 10 year old novice daughter but I was coming to the conclusion that he wasn't. With this questionmark in mind, I asked my buddy Bridget Hughes to sit on him when she was down this way. She did, briefly. He was clearly distressed. In fairness to him, he didn't do anything, other than tense completely and resist being asked to move. He did take a couple of steps forwards, though, and Bridget got off. If I had not had him on a line, I would not have been surprised if he'd tried to buck her off, he was that tense.
At this point we decided to look for a new home for him. His new owner is (understandably) reluctant to pay huge vets bills if it turned out he had some major issue - ulcers were definitely top of the list, for example - especially with no guarantee of what you'd have at the end of it. She's not at all horsey and was starting to ask herself what on earth she'd taken on! This was when I posted her and put him on Project Horses, with an honest assessment of his problems at the time.
Since then, though, we have moved on. I couldn't accept in my mind having a pony here who I felt might be in some discomfort even in the field, so I decided to call in my physio, Mish Brooker. We took the precaution of a grazing muzzle to stop the biting but he was still difficult to examine. He moves well, no sign of any lameness or anything (thankfully it seems that his poor diet has not cause laminitis). The two issues she found, though, were a) that his back was very lordotic (dipped) and b) that he had pain in his back, coinciding with the places I'd been sometimes finding heat. In a way, this was good news as it's treatable. You don't want him to hurt but if that's what's causing his problems, there there is a better outlook for him.
If during the examination he was awful, during the treatment he was truly amazing. I'd not seen a relaxed Toby before so to see his head drop, his eyes droop and his breath sigh was just wonderful. Toby is now on a programme of the famous carrot stretches (or hay stretches for Tobes - carrots are too exciting), and he is starting to look better already.
So why, then, did he still hate being touched? Why would he still bite for England if you tried to groom him if he didn't have hay? Ping! Lightbulb moment for Liz!!! My belief now is that he has, possibly for many years, trained people to give him food by throwing the most almighty strops. I'm of course not certain but I can imagine that he was given hay to keep him still while being groomed when he was a ridden pony, and then when left alone with gradually worstening manners I have to believe it was the only way of mucking him out.
We have, then, now had 2 absolutely huge sessions where I armed myself with hat, thick coat and gloves and said, in effect, go on then. Throw it at me and it won't work. Session 1 he threw all he could think of. He thwacked my hat with his head, he bit my hat repeatedly. He tried spinning to kick, he tried rearing, he tried pawing, swishing his tail, absolutely everything. I have little strength at the moment and this took all I had but in the end he stopped and stood there looking at me, asking what he should try next. That's what you should try, Toby, just standing there. Then he got some hay. Session 2 started off in the same vein but then he remembered, what if I stand still - bingo!
Since then, I've groomed him tied up twice, going into everywhere - between front legs, under his belly, everywhere, and he's not so much as swished his tail. Phew, I ache like an achy thing but if that's what was needed then it had to be done.
By the way, since having his back done, he's been much better with his hind leg handling. I had thought that would be the case.
So, that's the bad. It's not all bad, though. There are some truly fantastic things about this pony. Despite his poor manners, he's a lovely boy to have around. He comes to call (mainly because he's hoping for food!), is very easy to catch and has learned to lead like a dream. He can still be a bit bargy in gateways - I think for 3 years he was turned out and brought in by just opening a gate and bribing with food - but that is coming along really well.
Best of all, he is as far as I've found so far, bombproof. Given he'd never been on the road before (according to the first neighbour who owned him for 14 years) he doesn't give a stuff about traffic. I've walked him on the road with cars coming up behind him and he barely looked at it. We've not me very big traffic but did see an oil tanker yesterday and he didn't care much about that either.
We've walked him over tarps (what tarp???), dumped it on his back (what tarp???) and he's stuffed his head in it (oh that tarp - does it have food?). Yesterday he walked past a big plastic bag hanging on a line and flapping in the wind - he stuffed his head in that too. Today I have a chap cutting a tree down for me (don't worry, it's a leylandii), so went and got Toby. With the chain saw and a wood chipper both running at the same time, Toby just stood there, vaguely interested but nothing more.
His lack of worry at things does have one downside - I have tried to longline him and couldn't get him to move. He simply didn't see the point and wasn't bothered by anything I could do behind him to ask for forwards motion. I simply don't have the energy to try this sort of work any more. I understand he used to lunge well, so I'm fairly sure he could be trained to longline, it just won't be by me, at the moment at least.
For anyone who missed the other thread, here are a few pics. We took some video the other day but I've not watched it back yet. If there's anything interesting I'll post that too.
You can see his back on this last one, how dipped it is. I'll have to take a photo soon to compare it with now - there should be a difference!
Well done if you've read this far! I should be updating this regularly, with shorter posts (all breath a sigh of relief!).
So... I thought I'd keep a diary here so that he can show you himself what his potential is through the progress he's making.
I'll start with his history and a recap of the last couple of months.
Toby is 15 years old. He was owned by a near neighbour for 14 years, i.e. since a yearling. He was backed and ridden by their daughter. If I've got it right, he was only ridden on their property. During that time, he was gelded but otherwise never saw the vet, he had his feet done somehow but not by a farrier (this is hazy) and lived for the first 10 or 11 years with another horse.
The daughter then moved away, took the other horse with her but left Toby behind. He was then on his own with no company of any sort for 3 + years. He has basic care - food, water, mucking out - but that was it. At one point there was a 12 yr old girl who came to groom him and she rode him once, uneventfully. Otherwise, he was entirely on his own with nothing to do, nothing even to see.
At the beginning of last winter, they ran out of hay and he was fed on 2 meals of Molichop + a mix (looked like Pasture Mix) + carrots. No forage at all. He had a muddy paddock but when this got too wet he was kept in 24/7.
Another neighbour got involved and, to cut a long story short, he was in such a mental state that she decided to get him out. He therefore ended up with me.
When he arrived here he was so wound up you couldn't even lead him. He soon settled, though, and I was able to turn him out with my ponies within a day or two. He is bottom of the heap and has never caused a problem with the girls at all.
His main issue was and still remains food. Having been deprived of the mental need to eat for 18 or so hours a day, he is food obsessed. He was (and still could be) dangerous around any food, but high value food in particular. Ideally he would just flatten you to get to it but, if prevented, would quickly resort to serious biting and if that didn't work would also kick. We have had a couple of big sessions over this and although it's better I still would not trust him one inch if you had a feed bucket in your hand, or even something looking like one. When he first saw my grooming kit box he thought that might be feed.
He does, though, now know that he must take a step back and wait, and with hay he is much better. I do, though, always take the precaution of having a headcollar on him and a leadrope in my hands as he has days that he just tries his luck. With consistency, though, I hope this will continue to improve.
His other big remaining issue is separation anxiety. If you think of 3 years of being deprived of company, then having it back, you can see where he's coming from! For the first week he appeared to be surprisingly ok with being away from the girls, then his attachment to them kicked in big time and he went from being fine to blind panic. This, I'll confess, caught me unawares and the first I knew of it he was trying to climb over a stable door and when that failed crashed through a fence instead.
This is also improving. He's not to the point that you can leave him tied up or unattended, without food and without company, but he will stay on his own for 10 minutes with food and he will also now lead away from the girls. There is work to be done but at the moment I'd say there is a lot of improvement still waiting in the wings and I'm hopeful he'll get over at least the worst of it with time and careful management/training.
He was absolutely awful with his feet. Fronts were just big fidgets, hinds were full on cow kicking. This is now almost ok. He's been trimmed twice by my EP. Fronts were very good, hinds were much improved and there has been progress since. He does not like having his feet held firmly but if you just balance a foot in your hand rather than hold it (which of course is what we all should do anyway), he's happy to have his feet picked out. I've also started doing some movements with his legs and he's fine. So that's nearly ticked off the list.
The other big issue we've had is him hating being touched. He's a friendly lad so I was struggling to see what was motivating this behaviour. He'd come to you and say hello but if you tried to stroke him he'd bite. Even worse was if you tried to groom him or otherwise touch his body. Fidget fidget fidget, bite bite bite. He was fine if distracted with food but otherwise he was impossible. My first thought was discomfort of some sort. You'd sometimes get a flinch, I got an "ouch" reaction sometimes on pressing his back, a couple of times I could feel a warm spot on his back. I therefore called a friend who does Equine Touch over. She has treated him twice and he was awful. The second time was worse than the first. It make it almost impossible for her to treat him.
Just to keep this in chronological order, this got me really asking myself if he was the right pony for my neighbour, the one who had taken him on, to keep. The original hope had been that he'd be a pony for her 10 year old novice daughter but I was coming to the conclusion that he wasn't. With this questionmark in mind, I asked my buddy Bridget Hughes to sit on him when she was down this way. She did, briefly. He was clearly distressed. In fairness to him, he didn't do anything, other than tense completely and resist being asked to move. He did take a couple of steps forwards, though, and Bridget got off. If I had not had him on a line, I would not have been surprised if he'd tried to buck her off, he was that tense.
At this point we decided to look for a new home for him. His new owner is (understandably) reluctant to pay huge vets bills if it turned out he had some major issue - ulcers were definitely top of the list, for example - especially with no guarantee of what you'd have at the end of it. She's not at all horsey and was starting to ask herself what on earth she'd taken on! This was when I posted her and put him on Project Horses, with an honest assessment of his problems at the time.
Since then, though, we have moved on. I couldn't accept in my mind having a pony here who I felt might be in some discomfort even in the field, so I decided to call in my physio, Mish Brooker. We took the precaution of a grazing muzzle to stop the biting but he was still difficult to examine. He moves well, no sign of any lameness or anything (thankfully it seems that his poor diet has not cause laminitis). The two issues she found, though, were a) that his back was very lordotic (dipped) and b) that he had pain in his back, coinciding with the places I'd been sometimes finding heat. In a way, this was good news as it's treatable. You don't want him to hurt but if that's what's causing his problems, there there is a better outlook for him.
If during the examination he was awful, during the treatment he was truly amazing. I'd not seen a relaxed Toby before so to see his head drop, his eyes droop and his breath sigh was just wonderful. Toby is now on a programme of the famous carrot stretches (or hay stretches for Tobes - carrots are too exciting), and he is starting to look better already.
So why, then, did he still hate being touched? Why would he still bite for England if you tried to groom him if he didn't have hay? Ping! Lightbulb moment for Liz!!! My belief now is that he has, possibly for many years, trained people to give him food by throwing the most almighty strops. I'm of course not certain but I can imagine that he was given hay to keep him still while being groomed when he was a ridden pony, and then when left alone with gradually worstening manners I have to believe it was the only way of mucking him out.
We have, then, now had 2 absolutely huge sessions where I armed myself with hat, thick coat and gloves and said, in effect, go on then. Throw it at me and it won't work. Session 1 he threw all he could think of. He thwacked my hat with his head, he bit my hat repeatedly. He tried spinning to kick, he tried rearing, he tried pawing, swishing his tail, absolutely everything. I have little strength at the moment and this took all I had but in the end he stopped and stood there looking at me, asking what he should try next. That's what you should try, Toby, just standing there. Then he got some hay. Session 2 started off in the same vein but then he remembered, what if I stand still - bingo!
Since then, I've groomed him tied up twice, going into everywhere - between front legs, under his belly, everywhere, and he's not so much as swished his tail. Phew, I ache like an achy thing but if that's what was needed then it had to be done.
By the way, since having his back done, he's been much better with his hind leg handling. I had thought that would be the case.
So, that's the bad. It's not all bad, though. There are some truly fantastic things about this pony. Despite his poor manners, he's a lovely boy to have around. He comes to call (mainly because he's hoping for food!), is very easy to catch and has learned to lead like a dream. He can still be a bit bargy in gateways - I think for 3 years he was turned out and brought in by just opening a gate and bribing with food - but that is coming along really well.
Best of all, he is as far as I've found so far, bombproof. Given he'd never been on the road before (according to the first neighbour who owned him for 14 years) he doesn't give a stuff about traffic. I've walked him on the road with cars coming up behind him and he barely looked at it. We've not me very big traffic but did see an oil tanker yesterday and he didn't care much about that either.
We've walked him over tarps (what tarp???), dumped it on his back (what tarp???) and he's stuffed his head in it (oh that tarp - does it have food?). Yesterday he walked past a big plastic bag hanging on a line and flapping in the wind - he stuffed his head in that too. Today I have a chap cutting a tree down for me (don't worry, it's a leylandii), so went and got Toby. With the chain saw and a wood chipper both running at the same time, Toby just stood there, vaguely interested but nothing more.
His lack of worry at things does have one downside - I have tried to longline him and couldn't get him to move. He simply didn't see the point and wasn't bothered by anything I could do behind him to ask for forwards motion. I simply don't have the energy to try this sort of work any more. I understand he used to lunge well, so I'm fairly sure he could be trained to longline, it just won't be by me, at the moment at least.
For anyone who missed the other thread, here are a few pics. We took some video the other day but I've not watched it back yet. If there's anything interesting I'll post that too.
You can see his back on this last one, how dipped it is. I'll have to take a photo soon to compare it with now - there should be a difference!
Well done if you've read this far! I should be updating this regularly, with shorter posts (all breath a sigh of relief!).
But, at least she replaced him with a good pony. My word, how he's coming on at the moment.
