Sitting here doing emails so thought I would post on what Fred is up to:). This lovely boy is here as he has some issues with being very sensitive around his legs and tummy which has started to effect him being able to have his feet done. Hes a very accomplished eventer and super reliable under saddle, but his fear based evasions with his legs have started to escalate and become dangerous. Horses are a flight animal and this boy can be pretty explosive when he decides he doesnt want certain bits touched, plus hes huge which makes his reactions even more interesting:). So, first job in his session today has been lots of ground work to get him really focussed on whats being asked of him. Fred then introduced a front leg strap so he could slow his thinking and physical reactions down a bit. We dont want to stop his reactions, we want to slow him down so he has an opportunity to actually process and think about what Fred is doing with him. Only when he is processing what is happening to him can he start to work out that actually, he can cope with being touched and handled as it isnt going to hurt him. Repetition with this then starts to build his confidence with it and teaches him to relax. Fred has a often repeated phrase, that evasion breeds evasion. With this boy, every time he has a big reaction he confirms his own fears in his head, so each reaction tends to get bigger and bigger if not addressed. This sort of training is very much building blocks but he did extremely well today and it was nice to see him so much more accepting towards the end of his session. Talk about horse eye candy too!
Posted on: Wed, 21 Jan 2015 00:02:07 +0000
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