RE: Dealing with girthy horses/ponies

[Marlene Moss <MARLENE.MOSS@WCOM.COM>]

Just curious as to how others have dealt with a girthiness problem that
either developed or was inherited.  I am considering a pony for my daughter
and the only vice the little guy has is that he is girthy...enough so that
at
<<7, she is too young/small to deal with it.  The owner says she goes slow,
keeps the chaos down to a dull roar, and feeds him carrots when he is still.
All well and good, but does someone know how to eventually get rid of this
behavior?  The pony is a 13 yr. old Shetland and is otherwise well trained.
Thanks a lot. >>

I have a mare that is the sensitive type - small saddle issues blow up in
her mind and she can be very girthy.  She will act like she's panicked -
pull violently on her ties.  Minimally she swishes her tail and blows up.
She is under long term chiropractic care and I have a fairly intense
saddling regime.

One thing I did when she was at her worst was give her some alfalfa to
distract her.  Then I placed the saddle as nicely as possible on her back -
she only 14.3, but I'm only 5'2" so that is pretty difficult with my 24#
saddle.  Then I buckle the first buckle to the first hole.  If she's still
calm, I do the second buckle.  Then I does something different - pet her a
bit, start arranging the breastplate or HRM.  Then (oh and one other
important thing that helped a lot is a girth with elastic and roller
buckles) carefully adjust up one or 2 more holes depending upon how much air
she's holding.  Then I go pick up each of her front feet and stretch them
forward to make sure there are no wrinkles of skin under the girth.  Then I
go tighten another hole.  By this time we're tight enough that even if she
panics or something else goes wrong that the saddle won't go slipping around
her, so I put on the bridle and then walk her around a bit.  Then I tighten
again and then walk a bit.  This is now tight enough for me to mount - which
I mostly do as correctly as possible.  About 10 minutes into the ride, I
tighten again (love english girths, can do this from the saddle!)

This is fairly time consuming, but mostly habit now.  I'm slowly leaving out
steps - like no more alfalfa, and might start up 2-3 holes and sometimes
don't do the leg stretch til I'm leading her around.  She never tail swishes
any more and hasn't had a panic in 3-4 months.  She does pin her ears when I
put the saddle on and do some initial position adjustments - but that had
completely stopped and only started again when I go my new wool back saddle
pad which is larger and bulkier than my old pad - I have a harder time
putting the whole shebang on neatly and she is NOT appreciative!

Good luck and let me know if there is any clarification I can make on the
above.  BTW, all of this was done AFTER ensuring that the saddle fit
properly and that there were no chiropractic issues that needed to be
addressed first.

Marlene