Re: [RC] Re:Spooking - Dbeverly4
In a message dated 8/31/2002 4:27:15 PM Pacific Standard Time, JerryK3000@xxxxxxx writes:
I have a similar problem, even with a 180 thrown in at times. What kind of
methods did you use to spook the horse and what were the "more scary things"
you spoke of. Lately I'm beginning to loose my nerve and need to find a way
to correct the problem.
Well, at first any old thing would do (very sensitive horse). Rattling a newspaper gently was spooky. Now we can shake tarps, tin cans, move stuff suddenly (the Jack Russel was great at that part <g>). We've been practising walking on top of scary stuff (tarps and sheets of heavy plywood) recently and that's going really well too. We just started small and worked up. I'm really lucky to have a trainer/friend who knows his stuff and helped me with all this because, I'm with you, I was getting a little bit (a lot) nervous about the bolting thing. I also desensitized him to cattle which he had a BIG problem with at first. I took him to a friend's cattle ranch and put him in with 6 youngsters. He was "working" those cows after about 30 minutes (the food was on their side of the corral). It was pretty cool to watch. I guess you'd call it immersion therapy for horses <g>.
Sylvia
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