Hobbles

["Sarah Roxanne Zawacki" <zawackis@pilot.msu.edu>]

    I taught Elliot how to hobble today.  I thought I'd share, since everyone
gave me so much advice.
    I brought carrots.  Something that really helps Elliot it potentially
scary situations is to be bribed, talked to, and pet.  Interesting note:
to hide the carrots from Holly the Hoover, my mom's old horse who lives to
eat and eats to live, I put the carrots in the bottom of a water bucket
that contained water.  When I reached in, snapped off a small piece of
carrot, and gave it to Elliot, she was curious, but couldn't hear the
characteristic carrot snapping noise because it was underwater, and thus
did not harrass us.
    I tied Elliot up with about three and a half feet of line.  I let him
smell the hobbles, and I rubbed his neck with them.  I had them tossed over
my shoulder, where they were out of the way, but still making noise, and I
ran my hands over Elliot's whole body, starting from his throatlatch and
ending at his fetlocks.  I rubbed the hobbles on his neck on both sides,
and gave him lots of opportunity to check them out with his nose.  Then I
put one on, around his right ankle.  I tugged on it a bit, to get him
used to the feel.  He stood quietly as I put it on, and lifted it in the
air when I tugged.  He'd go through small pawing movements in midair, and
was obviously puzzled.  We did this for awhile, till he'd keep his foot
on the ground while I pulled gently.
    He was tied to a post eight feet from a corner, in his twenty foot
by twenty foot temporary stall, which he shares with Holly.  His hind
end was swung closer to the corner than the open side.  To keep him sort of
contained in case he got scared, but to get him used to the feel and the
sound, I used my finger and clucked gently to get him to swing his body
into the corner.  He took a couple of steps over, heard the noise, and
didn't seem very concerned.  I asked him to swing the other way.  He was
definitely paying attention, but was not particularly scared, just puzzled.
I was cramming carrot pieces in him after every move.  Then, bring more
carrot pieces with me, I untied him and walked him around, very slowly,
in the stall.  We went in circles and switched directions several times.  He
liked the carrots, but didn't seem to be to concerned with the hobbles
after the first step.  I switched legs and walked him around again.  He
was even less concerned, and I kept giving him carrots.  Then I tied him up
again and closed the ten foot sliding door (this is in a 30 by 40
foot pole barn), keeping Holly out and Elliot in.  I hobbled him, and made
sure I had ample carrots.  I displayed a carrot chunk and asked him to walk
two feet towards me.  This method was excellent, because his mind was on the
carrot, and once he got to it, he didn't care what he'd gone through in
walking that two feet.  He sort of stumbled, without going down at all,
and pawed his right front.  He looked confused, so I gave him a carrot.  Then
he remembered the carrots.  I stepped back and held one out to him, and he
took mincing little steps in coming to me.  He'd do pretty well, then get
a bit out of sync and have to stop and think about it.  We went around and
around in the stall, and he got pretty good.
    Then I wanted to make sure he knew when the hobbles were on and when
they weren't, so I took them off, let him smell the chains (he put his
head down after the first stumble, when I put the hobbles on for the first
time, and he smelled and nosed at the chain, so I hoped that he could learn
to associate the chain between his legs with being hobbled and the chain
held out to him with being unhobbled), said, "Okay." and led him around
again slowly.  He stepped very big at first, but then got the idea and
walked normally.  Then I put them back on and, as April suggested, I
tugged the chain a little to let him know they were there.  Then I led him
around very slowly.  I did this over and over again until he always knew
when the hobbles were on (the tugging seemed to ensure this, because it was
never an issue) and when the hobbles were off, as evidenced by Elliot
stepping out immediately without lifting his legs up as though he was
walking hobbled.  We got pretty good at this.
    Then I wanted Elliot to know how to be cool hobbled, and figured
grazing was a good way to go.  So I unhobbled him, opened the door to the
stall, and took him into his pasture, closing the gate before Holly made
it through (she was *very* sad), because I didn't want them to try to run
around together, and I didn't want Elliot to feel his alphaness was
threatened by being hobbled.  So I took him away from the gate enough to
be comfortably out of biting range, but close enough that Holly's presence
might be calming.  Then I hobbled him, tugged a couple of times, and
walked him a few steps to be sure he knew.  He did, so I unclipped him to
let him graze.  This was a mistake!  I should have let him graze on the
leadrope for a few minutes, to be sure that he knew *how* to graze.  He
tried to graze the way he was used to grazing, got upset, did a clumsy
180, and *then* started to graze.  He was fine, but he might just as easily
have tried to run because he was in an open space, but felt contained.
So I clippped him again, and made sure he was okay, and then I let him graze.
He stumbled a couple times, and almost went down once, but through an
athletic feat I wish everyone here could have seen, he sort of leaned back
on his hind legs (he was falling over sideways, btw) and put his legs back
underneath him, executing a neat 60 degree turn in the process.  I sat about
ten feet away during all this.  After the athletic feat, things were
pretty calm until Elliot started to deal with the hobbles by backing to
eat, but lost his balance a couple times.  That, in the end, was his strategy--
back the front feet (probably because he was used to taking smaller steps
backing up than walking forward) until they touched the back feet, then
back the back feet up until the fronts touched again.  He looked pretty
ridiculous, but he seemed quite content by this time.  Of course, with his
front and back hooves within four inches of one another, a strong wind
probably could have blown him over, but I didn't tell him that.  :)  So
then I took them off.  I'll probably give him a day to be a horse, and then
do it all over again on Thursday, hopefully letting him graze longer.
    And, if anyone has read this far, I would also like to announce that
while riding Elliot in circles today, working on stretching down and bending
around turns, I whacked him in the rump with my crop and he got *mad* at
me!  He used to be a racehorse, and the first time I patted his rump, he
ran off and was very frightened.  So to hit him on the rump with a crop and
have him respond with indignation instead of fear made me very happy.  :)



                            Sarah





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