Well, I'm busy as ever with clients and training and love it to death! I also added a new addition to my family, a 110lb Akita. LOVE HIM!!!!!!!!!!!! My dream dog! Nothing like a 110 lb kid to keep you on your toes lol. He's been with me for a little over a month now, got him from a fantastic shelter from down in Portland, OR. OK, I'm rambling like a giddy, new mother, So let's kick start this!!! Let's do some Q & A... Post your questions and I'll get 'em answered!!!!!!!!
6 comments:
pick me pick me!
3yr old hano/appendix
1 month under saddle
totally mouthy dude by nature
chews his bit like BUBBLE GUM
all. ride. long.
teeth recently floated. snaffle bit...
suggestions?
6 yr old TB mare never problem being tied but now will shy away from familiar things (like saddle pad day after day) and when she hits the end of the rope, just pulls and pulls and pulls! She get's claustrophobic I think? Help?
9 y.o. TB gelding. Everyone at the barn calls him "Nascar" because circles his stall like crazy. Roughly 97% of the time in his stall he cirlces (that other 3% of the time is when he's eatoing/drinking). over and over. again and again. He puts crops cirlce in his shavings.
He spends about 18 hours in a large pasture every day, and his stall has a good sized run attached to it which he always has access to. The bottom half of his stall is made of wood (about 4, maybe 5 feet high) and the other half (to the ceiling) is a sort of mesh/open air thing on either side, so he can see the other horses. The stall and run are both large enough for him to lay down in, so I dont think its that. Right now he gets worked lightly twice a week, but it cant be his exercise program. At the last barn he was at, he was worked regularly four, five days per week and he did the exact same thing as soon as he was in the stall.
If you dont directly adress him and try to pull him out of it, he'll just keep circling. Whereas the other horses in the barn will stick their heads over the gates to say hi when you walk past, he wont stop unless you call his name or ask him to come over (and sometimes he'll just look over and then go back to circling).
I know when he was very young his mother died when he was in the stall with her- could that be the cause of all this? Does he have something like PTSD? (and after all this time?)
Any ideas?
I have a 5 yr old mare that has only in the past year been handled. Before then she was used as a brood mare, and has two foals on the ground. She halter broke a little too well though! I just finished 30 days under saddle on her, and the poor horse doesn't have any confidence what-so-ever! If you are on the ground leading her, she'll follow you through anything. However, once on her back trying to go through the same things she freaks out. Do you have any suggestions on how to go about building up her confidence issues?
7-year-old Arab gelding who i think was gelded late. i think he's an ex-halter show horse and he's totally afraid of the halter and lead. he walks right up to me in the field but as soon as i reach for his halter he jerks his head back with his eyes as big as dinner plates. he's turned out in a breakaway halter because i can't even get the leadrope around his neck without him wigging. it's really not that he doesn't want to be caught, he's just afraid. i've tried talking the halter off and putting it back on over and over and over in a stall and he's okay with it as long as we're working but when i put him back out and come back the next day, it's the same thing with him freaking. i'm totally at a loss.
Yay, question time! I have a 4 year old draft-x mare. She was a PMU foal, and I got her at a year and and a half -- totally freaked out of people, completely untouchable, and she'd probably beaten about the face. Anyway, she's come around pretty nicely, but since she never had the "proper foal upbringing," she was never exposed to things like clippers. I started her on clipper training (and I'll be the first to admit, I haven't been consistent enough working on this). She's not scared of the clippers themselves now or the sound/vibration they make, but she's really ticklish and hates it when the clippers cut her hair.
Any particular hints/tips for desensitizing a ticklish horse to clippers? In the past, I've worked her in the roundpen with the clippers, giving her the choice to either stand quietly, rest, and deal with the clippers, or go off and do some work. That helped, and now she's OK with having the clippers all over her running next to her skin, but actually cutting the hair is a problem.
Thanks for your suggestions!
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