Great start to the day

First thing this morning I went out to see the horses and work with Megan.  This is the first day in two weeks I have been able to walk right up and halter her without the chance of her running off.  She was a prefect angel and did not hesitate to please in every way she knew how. 

I started with the lead rope and desensitizing her and quickly moved on to pivoting or yielding hind and forequarters.  We then worked on some backing and turning exercises.  The next was side pass and circle pass and she did these both flawlessly and without much correction.  I did have to push her away from me because she always wants to walk very close to me even when we are doing a circle pass.  Fyi, a Circle Pass is where you walk forward and send the horse into a half circle lunge in front and past you to the side all while keeping the forward momentum.  It is pretty fun and great excercise for both the horse and the trainer.  

All in all it was an awesome morning, now we are off to Tammy's first riding lesson at a local trainers just down the road.  

Wish us luck!

Making headway with Megan 8/25/10

Today was a pretty uneventful day working with the horses.  Megan allowed me to walk right up to her and did not give me any attitude or reason to not trust her.  She immediately dropped her head when I approached her and she did not pull away when I rubbed her ears and put the halter on her.  We walked to the barn area without indecent. 

 In all the tools I have, there were two pair of hoof clippers, one large and one small.  I am sure glad I kept those for an emergency trim, which we had to do on Megan tonight.  I lifted all four of Megan's feet with no resistance but noticed a rock was embedded in the edge of the left front hoof.  I tried to remove it with the hoof pick but it would not budge.  I ran to get the clippers while Tammy held Megan then we successfully trimmed a little around the rock and it came right out.  There was a lot of pressure on the rock and it was not going to budge without the trim. 

This week we had to start feeding (purchased) hay to the horses in the morning and evening but only after we have them put in some time training under the halter.  The grass in the pasture is very sparse and what is there is brown, very little green at all.  So before the weekend I hope to put in a few posts and run more fencing so we can open up a new pasture area.  If you want to help, I will not turn anyone away :-) We will be driving metal posts and installing electric fencing so it will not be too bad in the upcoming temperatures.  Maybe in a few weeks after we have a good rainstorm we will be able to start work on the roundpen.  The ground has to be prepped but we cant really do much with it right now.  

This weekend is going to be a busy one. Friday night we have a concert at the Oregon State Fair, Saturday we have a Dressage training clinic in Sublimity and a horse play day at the Polk County Fairgrounds where they are having a barrel race and horse riding competition. Sunday we will be about a mile away for Tammy's first horse riding lesson.  It will be an interesting and busy weekend. 

Stay safe and come back often, don't forget to leave a comment once in a while so we know who has been here.   Thanks for looking in on us.

Today's evening session 8/23/2010

I made the decision that I am no longer going to work with Megan twice per day on a regular basis.  Once in a while I will put in 2 sessions with her but I want to work with Fiona the 19 month old Appy. 

We started working on some of Megan's heard-bound issues by removing Fiona from her sight.  We had to start pretty slow and work up to 5 minutes and more and let Megan work through not seeing Fiona.  It was interesting to watch both horses, Fiona has no herd-bound symptoms at all and I hope to keep it that way.  Megan on the other hand is extremely herd-bound and will require lots of work.  During this exercise when we took Fiona out of the corral she was more concerned about all the green grass in the driveway.

I am sure it is a long road ahead of us just to get into Megan's mind where we can get control of her in any situation. I am prepared to put in the time and work so we can get her to be the best horse she can be.

As with any of our posts, please feel free to post comments and suggestions where you see fit.
Thank you and please, Wish us luck!

Breakthrough in Megan's past!

We took Sunday off and did not do any horse training or ground work, it was a nice lazy day we do not get to experience enough.  Today is Monday and I was able to get an hour and a half in working with Megan this morning and I think I may now know why she acts up when we were working with her feet.

Megan is starting to come around and just started figuring out that she does not need to run when we go to the pasture to catch her.  Last week we had to make both horses run the length of the pasture 4 or 5 times until Megan was willing to stand so we could catch her or Fiona.  Today, I went to the pasture and was able to walk right up to her after only one pass in the pasture, then was able to put a halter on her.

I worked with Megan through our everyday standard exercises of lead-rope and whip desensitizing, yielding the hindquarters, and forequarters, lateral flexing, lifting and cleaning all four hooves then continued with sending and side pass-circle lunge exercises. It was a pretty full morning just doing that amount of work with her. 

We were all done with the exercises and Megan came to the barn where I put fly spray and her fly mask on her, all this without incident.  That is where I found where another big issue lies. She was tied but could pull away pretty easily without force. I walked to her side and approached her hind quarters, like I was going to pick up her hind feet and Megan freaked out pivoting away while snorting and pulling her head into the air.  I took her away and into the corral  where she could settle down but she was pulling/rearing and very reactive to the situation.  I was able to calm her pretty fast once we were able to get away from the barn/stall area where I worked with her a little more, reinforcing good behavior not reactive flight response.    We went back to the tack area where I did another little experiment with her tied up very lightly and did the same approach to her hind end. It was not as bad but still very reactive to my presence to her side while she was tied off.


With my experience of animals and humans, my best guess to what provoked her response is, when she was young Megan was either hard tied or cross tied in a stall or working are where she was approached by the farrier where she was possibly put into a situation where all she knew was to react violently. I do not know if anyone got hurt but I do know she is able to rear all the way up on her hind legs and strike, she will also totally sacrifice everything and rearing up to the point of flipping completely over onto her back to get away if in a situation persists.  I truly think that is why she is reactive to confined spaces and pressure, like stalls or trailers and pressure on her lead rope.

Tomorrow we will continue to work with Megan where we hope to get through some of her flight barriers and get complete control of her feet where we can then obtain her total trust and respect on the ground.  Once that happens, we will be ready to "Ride Sally Ride"  Enjoy!

Working with Megan

As in the last post about Megan, we have been working through some issues with her. The main problem up until last weekend was, we were unable to pick up her hind feet so a farrier would be able to trim her hooves.  We have been working with desensitizing her hind end throwing a rope around her back legs and feet, I was finally able to get a rope through her legs and get a hold of one.  She did not kick but certainly did not like it and was resistant to the idea of me picking up her feet.  She will lift her front feet if you just look at them but the back feet had been untouchable until now.

Fast forward to today, I am able to pick up all four feet and scrape a little on her hind hooves. She is not perfect but she has made some huge improvements trusting humans around her hind legs.  Some of the trust came from last week at the trainers and her working through some trust issues.

After everything we have experienced with Megan, I truly feel she was put into the pasture for the last two years because the owners just had no idea what they had and did not know how to treat an Arabian that wants to be in control.  I am sure Megan ran over the top of them and they did not know what to do and they did not seek help from a trainer to work through her problems.

More training gets results

I have been working with Megan twice a day for about 3 weeks now. The outcome has been consistently getting better and I am even getting some respect back from her since our indecent last weekend. As you may know by now, we got another horse last weekend. Her name was target but she had no idea what it was because everyone called her baby. We are thinking of calling her Fiona from the movie Shrek.

Last Saturday we received Fiona and put her in with Megan and everything was fine. Megan took her so far in that she adopted her as her own baby. Within 24 hours we found out the real meaning of "Heard-bound" and how severe it can be.  Here is Megan leading Fiona into the corral.
We were supposed to have Megan picked up here at the house by a trainer and take her to a clinic about a mile away. The trainer "Sheri" shows up and we proceed to taking Megan out of the corral and load her into the trailer. She was having nothing to do with me or anyone else at this time. She was kicking and biting at me, she was throwing her head and even reared up a little. This action blew us away because we had never seen it coming from Megan, at the time and Sheri took Megan and tried to get control. Megan acted even worse and reared, throwing her head even more and in turn broke a snap on the lead rope setting her free to do as she pleased. The lead-rope snap flew back and hit Sheri in the head just above one of her eyes causing a flood of blood.

The chase begins. All Megan wanted to do was get back with her baby, so she found her way around the house (not going into the road or running off) and started calling Fiona again. I made way through the barn getting Fiona haltered and under control, opened some of the fencing and persuaded Megan to come back into the pasture. What a day it had been so far!

Loading up. We decided to take baby Fiona with us in order to keep Megan calm, we got a rope on Megan again and they both loaded perfectly into the trailer without incident and off to class we went.

The adrenaline flows again! We got Megan and Fiona to the trainers where Megan was put into the arena and Fiona was put in a stall. Megan was still pretty high strung and showed that she was irritated, she wanted nothing to do with anyone or anything new and wanted Fiona and to get home, we all knew that was not going to happen any time soon and she started making even a bigger fool of herself. Sheri ran Megan in circles for quite a while, wearing her down so we could have some control and respect from her. Shari then put a lariat around Megan's head and a loop over her nose bringing out the very worst from the horse. The fireworks went off and for some time, Megan was rearing up, kicking, snorting and striking the air while trying to get at Shari. Megan kept rearing up more and more then she went past the point of no return and fell backwards. She was not injured and shook it all off and kept right on going. This went on for about an hour or more until Megan was willing to accept a halter and be lead around the arena. Finally she was calm and orderly while showing respect and took direction from Sheri the rest of the afternoon.

The aftermath. Every day since the arena incident I have been working with Megan and she has been getting slightly better with every training session (1-2 hours twice per day) she has been showing respect, listening, learning and getting used to being out of the same pasture as Fiona. Tomorrow we will be taking Fiona for a walk around the other side of the barn to where Megan will not be able to see her. It will be interesting to see what happens, I am expecting some fireworks, just not as bad as last time.

Wish us luck and watch for updates!

Working with Megan 8/4/10

Megan did good this morning as usual. I worked with the rope and whip desensitizing her the I worked a little on yielding of the hindquarters.

She does pretty good about keeping her distance now, just by wiggling the lead rope she will stay back from me when I need her to. While walking, she will speed up and slow down to my pace even though I do not have the lead rope in hand. Megan will now also back up with the lightest pressure on the lead rope snap. That is a huge improvement over just two days ago.

This morning I was able to work with her for an hour and a half, mostly working with her back feet so they can finally be trimmed by a farrier. We finally go the rope around her right hind leg "YAAY!!!" and kept working on moving it up and down her leg and down onto her hoof. Even after all the work that was done I was still not able to touch her hoof but we did make HUGE improvements over just yesterday. I did work on her left leg a bit and was able to lift her leg and scrape out her hoof. She did not stand still long for that and lunged forward pulling away from my hand. I will have to keep working on her feet at least 2x per day to get her to give me her feet just like she does on the front. You look at her front feet and she will lift then for you, Not the rear ones though. I now know why the farrier had one chance to trim on her left side. He kept holding on to her hoof while she was kicking and pulling away. This just elevates the situation and makes her even more leary of someone at her hind end.

More training logs and photos to come soon.

Thanks for reading, feel free to ask questions or leave comments.

Time for some training thanks to Clinton Anderson techniques

Me and my wife Tammy spent the weekend at a horse training seminar. We were just observers (auditor/spectator) at the seminar but were able to ask questions as they came up. Up at 5:30 am and back to bed at 11:30 pm made for some short nights of sleep but we survived.

The clinic was at the Ruah Ranch in Sublimity Oregon and was put on by Dale Cunningham. He is a Clinton Anderson protege and does training around the USA for Clinton Anderson training clinics.

We learned so much that by the end of the first day it was all a blur, talk about sensory and information overload! Tammy learned that she needs to be more ascertive and I learned many Natural Horsemanship techniques that will replace the heavy handed training I received in the 70's and 80's.

Today was the first day that I/we have really been able to test the waters with the new training we received and it worked flawlessly.

I started with desensitizing the horse with the lead rope, then went on to work with Megan with other techniques learned. She did everything she was asked or told depending how stubborn she wanted to be.

We still can not walk in and pick up her rear feet and think that in a past life she was severely frightened or injured by something or someone around her hind feet. She is a work in progress but is doing great and Tammy is picking up some great lessons on how to be her horse's leader without endangering or risking injury. My goal at this point is to have Tammy in the saddle by September 1st, Tammy will be able to take Megan for a ride and I will not have much to worry about her after the training and exercises between now and then. Wish us luck.