Sue and I attended a Problem Horse clinic. It was a nice day and we were outside. We had about 9 horses in the clinic and while there was enough space…it really wasn’t enough space for SUE, until..
Jenny selected three horses that had varying degrees of unconfidence. We were told to have our horses be as close as possible and play the games. We circled the horses with the humans standing back to back. We didn’t pass the rope, we just kept our own horse. At first we trotted and amazingly, it went really well.
We disengaged the horses and they all turned to face us. We decided to see how close we could get them to stand together. After some shifting around, they were standing right next to each other. Sue wasn’t bothered. That was amazing as she is terrified of strange horses.
Then we decided to see if we could get them to canter…not an easy task for Sue. But it worked out really well. At first Sue thought they were all chasing her so she was going really fast. We stopped and dwelled for a time and they were really comfy…amazingly, Sue was sandwiched between the two other horses. no problem.
We decided to side-pass. What an extreme friendly game experience that was. Sue had me and two other people raising carrot sticks up and down. She did fine. They stood side by side. We humans were in front of them and we side-passed one way and back the other way. Dwell.
We cantered again. This time Sue was a lot more relaxed. The gelding behind her thought she was going too slow and nipped her rear. She tried to kick at him. They were cantering while doing this. what fun
We stopped and formed a line head to tail. The human was in front of each horse, then the next human and horse etc. We backed in a circle.
We played the squeeze game at a fence. The horses were nose to tail. We humans were lined up at the fence. When the last horse went thru the squeeze, we all stopped, turned and faced each human.
While we were dwelling side by side, we humans kept questing for new ideas on what to do. We decided to place an extreme friendly game. On of us humans handed her rope to another human and skipped around the horses. No reaction.
Then the two of us on the outside tried to play the friendly game with stick and string touching all three horses. no reaction.
One of us got a stick and plastic bag and went behind the horses. The middle horse was nervous at that. So the human played approach and retreat. The horse was able to calm down and gain courage from his bored partners.
We were just ready to try another idea when time up was called.
We rode outdoors and indoors for the rest of the day. Sue was able to be outside and inside in the group. She got nervous, but was able to hold it together.
At the end of the day when every one’s observations was requested, all of us with the three horses commented that this exercise made a big to huge difference in how our horses reacted to things the rest of the day. In fact, it was bordering on amazing. Each of us had different reasons why that exercise had helped our horse. One horse was spooky to new things and formerly scared of other horses. The other horse was impulsive scared…he went right brain really fast. That exercise brought back the left brain much faster during the riding portion of the clinic. And there is Sue…she has a football field size bubble for other horses….twiddled down to inches in the morning.