Faith has a Guardian Angel

This bank holiday weekend, we finally got around to setting up the Paddock Paradise track again. I was so pleased to do this, as I think it is a wonderful system, and the horses are never more healthy and happy than when they are on it.

So yesterday morning I turned the girls out, and showed them that the track into the ‘firing range’ field was now open.

Unfortunately, i had completely forgotten about the small herd of goats that my neighbout is now grazing in her dog paddocks next to the track that goes into the firing range field. As Faith cantered past the fence, she spotted the goats and took fright, and ran straight into the internal electric fence of the PP system. The fence was on at the time, and as she came in contact with it, she tried to leap it, didn’t quite make it, and got tangled up. I was about 100 yards away at this point, and all I could see was Faith leaping three times in the air like a stag, to the accompanying sound of wooden fence posts snapping. On the third leap, she ran out of slack, and got pulled to the ground. I felt so sick.

By the time I got to the entrance of the field, she had somehow untangled herself, and was standing up looking for Tilly. I spent the next hour dismantling the track, and getting the girls back into their original field. I briefly got the chance to examine Faith, and there didn’t seem to be a mark on her, but she was too worked up to stand still enough to let me get a proper look.

So the girls spent the day in their original paddock, and Ipopped out every hour or so just to check that all was generally well. However, it wasn’t until Mum came across to sit with the boys in the evening, that I got the chance to get the girls in and give Faith a thorough examination. Miraculously, apart from a few small rope burns, she was fine.

I don’t doubt that Faith had an angel looking after her yesterday. The sight of her running into that fence and getting tangled was just one of the most sickening things I have ever seen. Needless to say, I shall be waiting until the herd of goats return home before I think about opening up the PP track again.

A different context....

We started off last night’s session by working on Faith’s separation anxiety. I walked Tilly in and out of the yard, and each time we left, spent a few minutes doing some in- hand work out of sight in the field, before returning to the yard again. Even though we haven’t been working on this for very long, Faith is already showing signs of being much more settled. Last night’s session was the longest we have done yet, and Faith was not box walking, and despite the warm evening, for the first time showed absolutely no signs of sweating up at all. There were a few neighs, and she seems to have a telescopic neck that helps to improve her view from the stable, but other than that, she was pretty calm.

A few months ago, I was dallying with the idea of starting ‘matwork’ with Faith. However, fairly soon after the purchase of a small rubber doormat, I decided for various reasons that matwork wasn’t really for us, and said item has sat in the tack room, gathering dust ever since.

However, I have recently decided that it would be helpful to work on building Faith’s confidence with putting her feet on different things. So to that end, the mat has been dragged from obscurity, and we have been having a play with it on the yard.

In the first instance, in a fit of having completely unrealistic expectations, I put the mat on the floor, and asked Faith to target it. To be fair, she did get within about half an inch of it with her nose, and scooted past it a couple of times. Clearly though, it looked to her like a gaping chasm had just opened up in the yard, and given the fact that she will still baulk at the thought of stepping over a very shallow drainage ditch, I don’t quite know what I was thinking in trying to get her to step on a doormat. Cue much slapping of forehead!

So I picked it up, and held it, and we did some targetting with it. No problem, Faith likes this game. In fact the targetting reached an absolute frenzy when Tilly got involved over the stable door, and the two girls got quite competitive over targetting the mat!

So then I decided to get Faith to target it nearer and nearer the ground. This worked really well, until I let go of the mat, and that was just a step too far for her. So we went back a few steps, and targetted it with me holding it while it was on the floor, and left it at that. It just goes to show though, that it is not the object itself that is the problem, it is the context that the object is in that can often raise difficulties. Faith doesn’t have a problem with mats per se, she just doesn’t like “mats lying on the ground looking like a horse eating hole” which is perfectly understandable!

I think the fact that it is black doesn’t help, so I might invest in a hessian, or raffia one as well. Hmmmm.