We had to bring them in from pasture. When we found them the other two horses were good about getting caught, Marsan tried to come to me and just couldn't quite do it, so she walked off. I decided to just let her go and follow mom and other horses back toward the gate. Eventually she realized that her herd was gone, so she came trotting up. We waited at the gate until she came, which didn't take very long. While we were walking home I kept gently asking her to stay on one side of the road while I occupied the other, when she came into me I waited and then sent her back out. I want her to start finding relaxation out and away from me, as another way of building her trust. So far this seems to be helping her a lot. One thing that seems to be really important with her is "doing less sooner, instead of more later". I find that when I chip away little by little at the fears she shows me, it goes better than spending all of our time together playing intense friendly games! So that's what Linda really means when she says go really slowly, not just slowly in your phases, slowly playing through things! I thought that I had to QUICK get her confident and trusting, instead I need to slowly build her her confidence and trust! A parelli instructor told me that what you focus on becomes bigger(than everything else), here I've been so worried about how she is sooooooo scared of all these things. I've found that I can just have a plan in mind and let her unveil the fears she has, then we work through those instead of starting with those. This is my "light bulb" moment!!!!!!!!!!!!
It was interesting because when we got near the barn she slowed down all the way to stop and started eating leaves and stuff. When I asked her forward she was totally in another world and she was very introverted. Hmmmmmmm......
On thing I did with her, was I would be walking along and all the sudden lunge at her, as I lunged I would focus on making my expression friendly then rub her. Both times her head came up and she started to get worried then when I rubbed her she relaxed. I did this twice and waited to see how she would feel about it, she actually licked her lips and payed better attention to me. Again, hmmmmmmmmm.......
Once I kind of had her attention again, we did lots of transitions in z3 to keep her focus on me. That went really well. When we got to the corral gate she I asked her to touch it and she gave a solid touch. Once in I asked her to touch the feed bucket with her foot, this is one of those things that we are chipping away at. She really panics when she feels like her feet are trapped, so I'm working on getting her confident with putting her feet into things. The first time she hesitantly touch it with her nose. The second time, she confidently smeared her nose on it LOL. The third time, she put her foot on the rim and slowly removed it. I took all of the pressure off and waited and waited and waited...finally she sighed came up behind me and blew. Then she gave me her little nudge and we were done.
Starting to understand Marsy a little more :)
PS: I was sorta experimenting with the picture thing so that's why it's so big, looks kinda cool though LOL.
No comments:
Post a Comment