Saturday Afternoon



After taking Duelly from the pasture for the second time, we walked around the barn and visited with friends. He would snort if anyone came near him, I started handing out cookies so they could give them to him. Pretty soon several people were walking up with carrots, which he doesn't like, and cookies. He started to relax a tiny bit but no where near "turning loose" as Ray Hunt was fond of saying.

We walked on, he was starting to relax enough to graze but his head was jerking up constantly. I started to appreciate my horses more and more for their calmness. I took him to the jumping arena to play friendly with the stick. I walked away and flapped and of course he freaked out and tried to bolt but after a while he was walking along from 12 ft away but still skeptical. Now I know why I have Carpal Tunnel. I flapped the stick until he would let me get close enough to throw it over his back, he didn't bolt but he couldn't stand still either.

I found a good stopping point and moved on. I sat on the picnic table with his head positioned over my lap and asked him to lower his head. Once he was good with that I started stroking him all over his face, of course he tried to jerk away but I kept my hand on him and when he relaxed, so did I. Pretty soon, he realized he could get me to stop by relaxing and I was able to rub his face for the first time, then his ears and eyes and finally he accepted my fingers in his mouth. He has never been wormed with the tube in his mouth, his owner squirts the stuff in his food and he eats it, that surprised me.

After that I put him away for the evening. He had progessed quite a bit and I started to feel like maybe we could get somewhere.

As I passed people in the barn they would tell me how he jerks back from the stall window and cowers in the corner, so they were glad someone was trying to help him.

Sunday

The next morning his owner came to put him out and he told me he could see a big difference in Duelly's behavior when he approached the stall. I didn't know how he acted in the stall so I had nothing to go by but I was glad he could notice the difference.

It was pretty easy to catch him in the pasture, there was beginning to be a small light at the end of the tunnel.

I played again most of the day with haltering, and touching his face and head. He stopped jerking back everytime I raised my hand. I started asking random people to walk up to him again, he allowed that calmly now after just one day. I was very happy with that.

I took him to my barn to see if I could groom him at all, not that he needed grooming but it was more friendly game. He was terrified of the brush, so once again, a lot of approach and retreat and he finally allowed me to groom his neck and back, but no going near the hindquarters, that was going to require a lot more rapport and I as hoping it would go away when he figured out he could trust me more.

I took out the tarp which was an experience, I had to hold him and lead him with the tarp in hand since he doesn't tie, problem one hundred and one. I had to let him walk at the end of the rope while I carried the tarp to the area I was going to play in. He was snorting and literally shaking, but he did follow me. I put the tarp down since he was so terrified, I'm not sure if I've ever seen a horse shake that much from fear before. I played more friendly with the stick for a hour or more, he would allow the string over his back but couldn't stand still. I did this around the tarp so he could look at it but didn't try to get him to go near it. He was starting to poop a lot and it was getting to be more liquid than solid so I didn't want to push him anymore. Another thing I thought would be easier once he trusted me a bit more.

I took him to my paddock so he could eat hay while I mucked. He was terrified of the wheelbarrow so I moved around with it a lot and he finally relaxed enough to start eating. I wanted to put him back in the pasture so we could play with catching some more but he didn't want to be caught in the paddock, he actually thought about jumping the fence a couple of times when I attempted to play the catching game so I stopped with that, he was just too scared. I guess the wheelbarrow and tarp had been too much for him. I decided we were going to have to do a lot more friendly before anything else. We were to a point where I at least could walk up touch his neck and he would start to back away, that was a pattern for him, but I could halter him while he was doing it. That was the only way he would allow it and I was okay with that for now.

I decided to take him to the round pen and see if we could get turn and face and the catching game a bit better. I stood in the center and he ran like a maniac as soon as he was free. I ignored him and finally he stared looking at me and wondering why I wasn't paying attention to him, he was asking a question for the first time ever. I walked up to him, and he allowed me to touch him, then I walked away and then back up to him quickly, over and over and over until he realized that he could allow a human to approach and not be afraid. When I wanted to do it with the halter he would turn and run, I felt like we were starting all over but the truth is the truth. Thankfully, I had just watched the new levels DVDs and Pat had demonstrated the catching game in the round pen, so it was fresh in my mind. When Duelly ran past me I would flick out the halter and pretty soon he was paying attention to the fact that he was much more comfortable when he wasn't running away. He finally started blowing out over and over. It took ten minutes or more. He dropped his head and came over and stood by me. I was able to halter him and take him back to the pasture. That was interesting, I wasn't sure if playing the catching game was what he needed at the time but as Linda says we have a 50/50 chance of getting it right.

This time when I went to catch him he gave me two eyes, came up and allowed me to halter him without moving backwards. I was very happy with that so I put him up for the night.

MONDAY

When I took Duelly out of his stall I noticed immediately how he had changed his view of the world around him. He was walking with his head lowered instead of being on hyper alert.

I worked on teaching Duelly to turn and face when I looked at his HQ. We played the circling game a little bit and his true horsenality started to show. At the time I wasn't sure exactly what it was but I was beginning to think he was innately LBI, he just had a lot of emotional baggage. He hated to circle when I asked him, he had no problem doing it when I had the stick over his back to play friendly, but if I just stood still with the stick in neutral then he didn't want to move, so I decided to throw the string over his back, allow him to move but we were going to go in the direction I wanted. We played touch it on everything in sight, after a short while he forgot about the string over his back and stopped trying to out run it. We played touch it on 20 or more horse trailers, he was extremely afraid of them and would walk as far away from them as the rope would allow, always putting me between him and the trailers, this was prior to playing "put your nose on it".

I can't say enough how much this game helped tranform this horse. I tell people very often that Pat is a genius for thinking of these things and this was further proof. This one thing was building Duelly's confidence in himself and in me and it was working... fast.

When his owner arrived in the evening, I had turned Duelly out into the little pasture. I asked him to walk up to him and see if he could touch him, and he allowed it. His owner said that was the first time he has been able to do that in 3 years. He also allowed T. to halter him and pet him on the face, firsts for both of them.

We went to the round pen just to see what Duelly would do with his owner in there. It didn't go well, he was still afraid of him in the round pen setting, so I showed him how to ask Duelly to turn and face and he did. Then he walked over to us, that was becoming a pattern now and I was happy to see it.

Tuesday

I had to work, so daylight hours were limited. I went at lunch to visit him and he was at the stall window, he didn't go hide in the back so I was happy with that. I gave him a cookie and hay and went to take care of my boys.

That afternoon, I opened the stall door and waited for him to come to me, he stood at the opening but wouldn't come on out so I walked farther away from the door. He finally came across the threshhold and allowed me to halter him. I turned him out in the small pasture and this time when I took the halter off he stood with me and didn't fly off. I gave him a cookie and he walked away slowly almost as if he really didn't want to go but habit was in control, so he walked on off.

When the owner arrived, Duelly actually turned to look at us from across the pasture. We walked toward him when he looked away and stopped when he looked at us. He walked pretty quickly up to us, and allowed T. rub him all over at liberty. Another first. He also allowed him to put the halter on, he stood perfectly still while I demonstrated how to tie it several times. Then I showed T. how to start touching his ears and eyes and poll. As soon as he touched Duelly's ears, he jerked away and of course so did T. I showed him how to keep his hands up there even if he couldn't keep them on him and how to relax when Duelly stopped jerking away. It only took one time for Duelly to realize that jerking away from T. wasn't going to get him out of it so he lowered his head and allowed T. to stroke his ears and his eyes and put his arm around his poll. I think his owner was pretty overwhelmed with being able to do that.

Linda tells the story of her first meeting with Pat and she says that Pat told her she had a relationship problem. Really, that was pretty much Duelly's problem too, he had never had a good relationship with a human, now he did, and he was starting to like it. I wonder why that concept is so hard for a human to grasp. I know for sure that T. didn't think Duelly's problem was due to his relationship with him, he had it in his mind that for some reason Duelly was just being bad and he couldn't figure out why.

Wednesday

There is always slack in the rope now, he stops when I stop and walks when I walk and doesn't protest at every step toward a new territory. He is also good with me being on his off side. He walked sideways for a while when he was on my left but I just kept on walking and he finally figured out that it was easier to just walk normally.

In my one hour of daylight after work I took Duelly back to the round pen. He was back to being a little afraid of the stick and string so I walked around, with him at liberty, and flapped the string. Then I sat down on a concrete block that someone had put in the middle and kept flapping. He finally started to relax and ignore it. While I was sitting on the concrete block he started to nudge at me so I wanted to try and teach him to put his nose in the halter voluntarily. I stood up and lifted the nose band over his nose and then told him good boy. He knows that "good boy" is the bridge between good behavior and getting a reward, since I've been doing that with him a little bit. It's technically a version of clicker training, but I don't have a clicker. The words "good boy" are my signal. Pretty soon he was shoving his nose in the halter. I could kneel down now and halter him and I could sit on the ground and halter him. That's monumental considering just a few days prior I had grab his nasty black halter to catch him.

Thursday

The weather was horrible, it was cold and windy. I turned him out and when I went to get him he came up to me, not at a trot but at a very fast walk. He is starting to learn the sound of my voice, I started calling him before he could see me, he perked up and started looking for me. A couple of days before, his owner was with me when I called my horses and they came running. His owner said, "I sure wish Duelly would do that" and I told him that he would, I was sure of it, because that is the magic of the Parelli program. It was starting to happen now and I wish he had been there to see it.

Friday

I'm off work and the vet is out doing dental work on several horses. I take Duelly over to where he is working, he isn't snorty and freaking out but he is wary. His experience with vets is not good. He started to relax so I moved on and played touch it some more. He is now starting to automatically put his nose on everything, if he is unsure, he looks at me and "asks a question" as Linda says. It is so obvious that he is making sure that's what I really want him to do. All I have to do is glance over at the object and he gives a sigh and says okay, if you say so and he does it. I feel honored that he is overriding his prey animal nature to make me happy and this is why I love playing with horses like this. A lot of people offer me money to do it, mainly because they're not used to people doing it for free, but I've never taken it because I don't want it to become about the money and by the hour time limits.

I've heard Pat say before the every horse has a particular game that needs to be played with them. I knew, of course, friendly was what he needed most but I started to notice that squeeze was going to be next on the list. He was dangerous when going between me and the gate and he hated to be between me and anything, especially a parked horse trailer, as I said he would put me between him and the object, which I was allowing until he was less afraid of everything.

I took him to the arena and played squeeze with the barrels, they were white and that was momentarily an issue but he was moving and having to think to get through them so he forgot he was afraid of their color. I played with that for 15 min or so, then started playing squeeze between me and the fence. It was hard for him at first. I had to stand 20 ft away before he could go through without looking like he had been shot out of a tube of toothpaste. I moved closer and closer and he was slowly able to walk between me and the fence with only a couple of feet between us and he was doing it left brained. Did I say that Pat was a genius? Fixing that one thing made my life much easier and safer.

Disclaimer for my non-Parelli friends. I know it sounds like I'm hero worshipping to your ears :) but believe me I don't hesitate to speak up when I find something I don't like about the program. As far as the actual games and the brilliance behind them, I will continue to say Pat is a genius because they work so well. Duelly is living proof of that.

The horse Trailer

Of course Duelly has had a bad experience with a horse trailer, his trip to our barn wasn't pleasant and his owner told me they had forced him in by pulling with a rope and using a butt rope. He had to back the trailer up to the quarantine stall to get him out of the trailer in into the stall. He knew there was no way he could get him to voluntarily go into a stall. I cringed when I heard that story and wished that I had been around to save Duelly that bad nightmare.

My trailer has a ramp, so I wasn't sure how he was going to react to that but I had been preparing him for it by walking in and out of the farrier shed and the wash rack, and the teeter totter bridge. I asked him to sniff the ramp and he did it right away. I went in the trailer and stood to the side and allowed him to sniff the ramp as much as he wanted. I had been asking him to put his foot on the tree stump and he actually acted as if he enojoyed doing it so putting his foot on the ramp wasn't a big deal, he was LB and calm. I asked him to move a little closer and he put both front feet on, then I took him away. When we came back to he offered to put his front feet in the trailer, he kept looking at me like he was wondering when I was going to turn into a crazy trailer loading human, I think he was surprised it didn't happen. I asked him to back out and he wanted to go forward so he went on in, just like that. I had spent maybe 10 minutes at the most asking him to consider it, his owner wasn't going to believe that he loaded. I'm certainly not bragging on my trailer loading skills. It really isn't so much me but on the whole Parelli program. I try to follow Pat's "skeleton" as he calls it and things just seem to fall into place, sometimes they seem too easy and I'm amazed even after seeing it work over and over and over. I wonder why everyone doesn't want this, maybe because they've never seen a "super prey animal" take the ultimate chance and trust a human enough to go into the trailer after needing only a few minutes to make that decision.

I asked Duelly to come back out of the trailer and we left it for the day.

Saturday

Saturday morning was like Christmas. I had asked a couple Savvy Club members to order the equipment at the special price so I could get some for my non savvy clubs friends that wanted halters and sticks, the boxes were piled in my tack room when I got there. One set was for Duelly.

The owner and I were going to start working with his feet. I could now pick up his feet, at liberty, and rub his legs with the stick without getting killed. I actually hadn't worked on that a lot, it just became easier the more we played and developed our relationship.

I went over to see if the halter fit him and that was when the fun began. When he saw that white lead rope, he went back to being his old self. He wouldn't let me approach him, he certainly wasn't going to let me put that on him. I stood in his doorway for half an hour and allowed him to approach and retreat and sniff the lead rope. His owner had told me that he has a reaction to anything white, now I believed him. He wasn't voluntarily going to stick his nose in this halter so I had to ask him to trust me to put it around his neck and over his nose. He allowed me to put it on but he didn't like the rope, if it moved he froze and I could tell he was going to blow up if we didn't move on. I led him out of the stall and took him to sniff things again. This worked pretty well, it got his mind off of the rope. He stood on the tree stump and then I led him into the farrier shed. He was getting okay with the rope as long as it wasn't moving around him much, I didn't have time to fix that because the owner only had a limited amout of time that morning and he really wanted to get to the point where he could pick up his feet. T. was amazed that he would even walk into the farrier shed, they couldn't get him in there on the day of the big blow up when they were going to sedate him to do his feet.

T. was able to pick up all 4 feet and hold them and Duelly stood calm and still. After he left it was time to work on the rope thing. I started by lifting it up and down, he snorted and ran backwards, back to his old tricks. I had to keep that up for a while. Finally, I could throw it over his back without a major blow up. This time it was about the rope, he was fine when I switched back to the old dirty one as a test.

I played with the rope like Pat does when he turns it into a jump rope, I twirled and twirled it until he lowered his head. He was starting to get the picture and I started wrapping him up in the rope and rubbing him all over with it. After that session the rope wasn't an issue again.

I put him in the pasture so he could have his free time. When I drove up that afternoon he was way out on the far side. I called my horses and guess who came running. Of course Cherokee ran him off and I wondered if that would deter him from doing it again but as soon as Cherokee walked away, he came running up again. I went to do my chores and came back to put them up, after my horses were out of the way, he came running up and stuck his nose in the halter and I put him up. Inside I was doing a happy dance.

Monday-Thursday

The weather is too miserable to do much but I want to keep up the relationship building. I go out at lunch and give him hay, I really want to have him nicker at me when I approach but it hasn't happened yet. I'm trying to teach him to give me a kiss. He is very afraid of getting a kiss, I can rub him on the nose and he likes it but kissing is a different thing, maybe too predatory for him.

I put him out every afternoon, now he is running and snaking his head around. I'm so happy to see that, his confidence is growing. He is also now frisking me for treats, another thing I'm glad to see and on Thursday, he nibbled at my hand with his teeth, not a bite but a half hearted nip. I never thought I would be happy he is doing that but, to me, it shows his bravery is increasing and I know I have the arrows to deal with that behavior the savvy way if it gets out of hand. I warned his owner that he might start using his teeth when he felt more confidence and I'm glad I did. I don't want him to start smacking him and undoing everything we have done so far.

Friday

It's snowing hard in the morning, I'm have the day off but can't get out to the barn until late. I don't want to take Duelly out and let him get wet and then freeze all night. I would have loved to see how he reacts to the snow but it has to wait.

Saturday

Duelly's owner gets to the barn before I do to turn him out. As I'm driving to the barn I get a phone call from him, he is so excited. When he took Duelly out into the (white) snow it was a non event, he was really worried about how he would react. He walked calmly to the pasture, calmly through the gates and hung around after T. took the halter off. He allowed T's little girl, who was visiting for the weekend, to pet him, a first for her too and she was thrilled. I think he had told me once before that he had put her on Duelly's back and he bolted and hurt her. I'll have to ask him about that.

I take him out of the pasture later in the day. Once again, he comes quickly up to me, sticks his nose in the halter and waits patiently while I tie it. We walk around and near the club house there is a pony party with a huge bouncy house that looks like a castle. There are kids inside and out. He's not scared to death, but skeptical. I ask him to put his nose on it and he does. All in all I'm very happy with his reaction to the whole thing. We walk on down the road and there are several snowmen, the first one I don't see because it's behind a horse trailer, he has gone tto the side of the trailer and I hear him snorting but instead of backing away and bolting he is putting his nose on the snowman. We walk on and two more snowmen are up ahead, he is really bothered by them because they're taller, I ask him to put his nose on it and he does, then he puts his foot on one of them and topples it. He starts rubbing his head all over the snow and eating it and looks proud of himself for killing the big bad (mostly white) snowman. After that I take him back to the pasture for his recess time.

Sunday

T. is out of town for the day so I volunteered to bring Duelly in from the pasture. I went to a dressage lesson with my friend and her daughter, so there was no time to play. When we got back I went to the pasture and he came running, I let him through the gate which he did very calmly, then I haltered him. He was excited to see me, I think he has finally "turned loose".

It's been a fun day at the lesson with my friend and I had the chance to play with another problem horse. Somehow I'm lucky enough to find myself in the midst of them.

to be continued...