One day when I walked out to the pasture, I noticed that Sue was more outgoing. Her eyes were darker and more intent. Much to my amazement, she had moved up one horse in the pecking order. wow
Sue got to attend a clipping and braiding clinic a couple of weeks ago.
When I took her to the clinic, I noticed that she hadn’t regressed. In the past, if I didn’t play with her on a consistent basis, she went back to being very nervous at the start of our play time.
Well, of course someone had probably ripped on her ears trying to get her head down to force a bit in her mouth and she has not been thrilled about me playing the friendly game with her ears. I usually
get so that I can touch the outside of her ears after we play the games for a while.
So, clipping of the ears was not something that she was thrilled about. However, we did manage to get a little tiny bit of the outside of her ears clipped by the time the clinic was over. She’s not a “bit” afraid of the clippers. The clippers touched her head
and feet…no problem. By the end of the 3 hour clinic, we had a french braided mane and tail and looked really cool.
About two more weeks have passed and I’ve not done anything with Sue. Today, I took her to the stable to see if I could ride her.
Well, amazing things happened. She seemed very relaxed. We did a few extreme friendly game things that would have made her flinch and she didn’t flinch at all. My eyebrows went up.
On the ground, we circled at a trot and she didn’t panic. We did use the barrels as a calming safe place. In the past, I found that stopping her at a
barrel and having a treat be there for her, calmed her down quite a bit. But we were able to make multiple circles today without panicking. We even did “S” turns and she didn’t really panic. I
thought that she was ready to ride just about 5 minutes in to our games. Now that was amazing.
I got on her and rode. She was the most relaxed I’ve ever seen her that early in our ride. We played the bull’s eye game so we could stop at barrels and be safe…and dwell. We walked and then we trotted. I thought, “why mess this up” and got off.
I took Sue out of the arena and some of my best friends…twin teenage girls that work at both Pine Dell and For the Horse Ranch,
were petting Sue. One girl said, “Sue looks better”. I thought that she meant that Sue looked a little slimmer.
No
The girl said, “Sue’s eyes are sparkling. Before, her eyes were dull.”
I swear that Sue’s eyes have changed to a very dark shiny color. They didn’t look like this before. It’s amazing.
Another statement: April 07 will be a year since I got Sue. Tony told me last May that he thought it would be a year before Sue went into a real recovery mode.