Duelly's Parelli Journey

A little background about Duelly.

I first met him on a pasture day, his owner was trying to bribe him to be caught with a bucket of grain. Big mistake in a pasture of 80 or more horses. He had an old black halter on that looked like he been wearing it for a while. That's usually a dead give away that the horse is hard to catch.

Unfortunately, every horse in the pasture but Duelly wanted the grain and it looked like a wreck was about to happen. I ran the other horses off and helped the owner drive him into the double gates. He still couldn't put the lead rope on him, it was obvious this horse had issues. I wanted to offer to play with him right then and there but for some reason I didn't. I love horses like this because I've experienced first hand how quickly using Parelli methods of love, language, and leadership, can tranform a horse and help them have a better life.

I helped the owner get the lead rope on by very gently asking him to turn and face us. We talked a bit about how Duelly got that way. The owner, I'll just call him T. for now, didn't know. He had been in a pasture for the last 3 years. Usually, when I hear that I have visions of every neighborhood kid trying to sneak a ride or catch the horse. We have no idea if that was part of the problem, but it was obvious the owner wasn't intentionally responsible, he genuinely loved the horse, that was obvious.

Almost every week I would see T. trying to catch Duelly and I would help. I go into the pasture to visit my horses several times a day on pasture days so I had given Duelly a Winnies cookie a few times and walked away. It didn't take long for him to see me and start coming over. He would take the cookie, but if I lifted my hand or moved toward him in any way, he was gone. I wanted so bad to work on that with him but since I didn't have permission, giving a cookie was about all I could do.

Getting Permission To Play

Saturday, January 27th

I was at a friend's barn, she and another boarder were talking about Duelly. It seems there had been a big blow up when the owner and the farrier wanted sedate him to get his feet done. He had bolted and gotten away when he saw the needle. I had no idea that the owner was having that many problems with him, I probably should have known since he was so hard to catch. My friends suggested that I should try to help him, they know very well how attracted I am to horses with problems. I decided to write the owner a note since seeing him was usually hit or miss on pasture days. The next morning he called me and he was more than happy to let me play with Duelly. He said it was obvious that I was involved in Parelli, and he knew a little bit about it since he had been to a tour stop. So, that's how it started.

Sunday, January 28th

It's windy and cold, great weather for playing with a spooky horse :) Duelly was already in the pasture so that meant catching him. I was hoping it wouldn't be too hard it was freezing out there in the open. I walked out into the pasture and into his general vicinity, he came right over. I offered him a cookie and then tried to position myself in zone 2. He was having none of that and off he went. I walked behind him until he turned his head and looked at me, I know he was wondering what the heck I was doing. He then kept on walking. I tried to stay in his blind spot so he would have to keep turning his head to see what I was doing. He is innately pretty lazy so he didn't want to walk too long, he eventually turned to look at me and I walked away. He was standing there just staring at me. He certainly didn't expect that. I didn't expect him to come to me now that he was aware I was interested in him, but he walked up. I reached for his halter and was able to grab it, I hated, hated, hated to do that, it goes against everything I've learned from Parelli, but we had to start somewhere and if I couldn't catch him then we were never going to get started. Another obstacle was his stable buddy, he kept trying to run him away from me, and he was running interference constantly. If Duelly came near me, he would come between us.

I led him from the pasture and immediately "super prey animal" showed up.
He was scared to death just being led. I tried to send him through the gate, force of habit since I rarely lead my horses into anything, he was afraid of the metal gate. I opened the gate as wide as it would go and he finally followed me in, he jumped sky high when it closed behind him. I wanted to put the rope halter on him, that took a while. He was afraid of it, so I moved it toward and away from him until he started licking and chewing. I was able to reach up and put it around his neck, he was snorting so I held it around his neck until he relaxed. He let me put it over his nose and tie it. I took the old one off, I was never so happy to see something go away.

I decided to take a walk with him to an area with really good grass that is on the other side of the barn. I wanted to see how his ground manners were. They were very good for such a scared horse. He wasn't flighty and jumping everywhere, I kind of wished he was, that was easier to deal with. He was snorty, would stop, snort at everything, and I literally mean everything in sight. Once he did his snorting and backing away, we could proceed a little further. It took about 30 minutes to go a just a short distance. A friend drove up in her truck, it's bright yellow, he was very afraid of it and started walking backwards. That was his answer to everything, walk backwards until the human is out of rope, then bolt away and refuse to be caught, I could tell he had it down to an art form. Well, he picked the wrong human to try that on, I own a mule, and I can proudly say that Roy the mule has outsmarted me with that trick too many times to count, so I was ready for it.

First of all, he didn't expect the halter to bite him, but when he started pulling back he could feel it around his poll and on his nose, he did not like that and immediately stopped pulling away. I stopped and started walking again but the big horse eating yellow truck was still there and he started backwards again. Just like the mule taught me, I walked backwards with him until he stopped, then I asked for forward again. He walked backwards some more and we kept it up for a while, when he wanted to stop, we walked backwards more. He hadn't gone nearly as far as the mule usually goes so I was just getting started. The mule has even backed so far with me in tow that he came to the fence were all the rails were down except for the bottom one, and he jumped it backward. So now, I'm not impressed with the backing strategy unless I see the backwards jump again. I have learned to have lots of patience, again I have Roy the mule to thank for that.

Once we were done with the backing and he was asking to stop, I noticed his halter was so loose that it could slip off his nose, I made the mistake of lifting my hand to tighten it, he freaked out and bolted again, and again he didn't anticipate the halter biting him. This time he stopped and didn't go back again.
I was able to finally reach up and tighten the halter. That was something that we definitely needed to work on pretty soon, just getting him used to being haltered without going off the deep end. I guess since he had worn a halter for so long, he had no idea what to do when someone made the motions to put one on him.

Since he was so skeptical, I decided to play "put your nose on it". At first he absolutely did not want to go near anything but after a while he realized that I was going to be persistent so he started trying to do what I asked. Before long, he was putting his nose on a lot of things comfortably and the snorting started getting less and less.

I took him to the tree stump and he surprisingly would put one foot on it. I started to rub his legs with the stick and he went crazy, he was striking with all 4 feet at once. Another thing on the list that needed to be fixed. By this time the list was getting long. I asked him to walk across the training bridge and got him to walk through several mud puddles, he is a fast learner when he's thinking.

I put him back in the pasture, we had been playing for a couple of hours and I could tell he needed a break, plus I wanted to see how catching would go the next time. I went to my barn and did my chores, then went back to get him after and hour or so. This time he didn't have a halter on so if he didn't want to be caught then there wasn't much I could do. He allowed me to approach him, something I couldn't do before. He would approach but didn't trust a human to approach him. So that was progress. He was fine as long as I was in zone 1, but if I moved to stand near his neck or back, he would walk off. I followed him and kept approaching and retreating near zone 2. I would position myself in zone 1, then back up into zone 2, he seemed to be ok with that, but no lifting a hand. He did not trust hands anywhere near his head. I was able to stroke his neck but he acted as if it was the most distasteful thing to him. I could see it on his face, he wasn't at all open to a human touching him, so I left him alone and was content standing in zone 2. He started grazing again and I practiced positioning myself in different zones and standing. One inch in the wrong direction and he would walk off but since I was his shadow he didn't go far. He finally decided that this crazy human wasn't trying to hurt him, just annoy him.

I started lifting the halter toward his nose and asking him to sniff it, he would do that but if I moved to put it on he would back up. Eventually, he allowed me to put the halter on, he was backing up while I was doing it but not violently, or in a dangerous way, I held the halter around his neck until he stopped backing and then rubbed him with it, after doing that several times he was ok with it being put on and tied. That was progess, two hours ago he had freaked out when I wanted to retie it. I would give him a Winnie's cookie each time he allowed me to put the halter on also, he was on his way to the dark side where we have lots of cookies.