Shaping Up!

Getting back into things after what seems like a rather long winter, has led me to consider the use of shaping plans in training. Beacause we don’t live in an ideal world, and because most people are in the position of having to juggle their horse training with other important aspects of life, I do feel it helps to have a certain degree of structure in what we do.

I found some excellent shaping plans on Ben Hart’s website www.hartshorsemanship.com, and chose a few that I felt were particularly pertinent to where we are right now, and where I am aiming for in the near-ish future. The ones I chose were preparing for veterinary examinations, safe leading, long lining, and shaping for confidence and trust.

Reading through these brilliant shaping plans also gave me the confidence to start writing one of my own for shaping for hosing legs.

Before we embarked on that, I gave Faith a nice groom, frankly the most thorough one she has had for a long while now. I have begun tying Faith up to have her feet picked out. Now I know Faith was taught to tie up before I bought her, but I have to say, I have always been a little concerned about the prospect of her panicking a bit if she gets spooked, and doing something unreasonably dramatic.

If I’m honest, I just feel so much safer and calmer when working with a horse that is at liberty. I know that if something untoward happens, both myself and the horse can quickly and easily remove ourselves from the situation, regroup, and come back to what we were doing when we both feel ready. It also makes me acutely aware, when training, of when I have perhaps pushed a bit too far, as Faith will simply walk off if she feels uncomfortable. With a horse as reactive as Faith, this has proved to be a strategy that has worked really well.

But given that she is very good to groom and have her feet done etc. at liberty, I felt it wasn’t too unreasonable to re-introduce the tying up, even if it was just for the few minutes when I was picking out her feet. Faith has been very good at this, and it is clear that she understands that if she takes the slack out of the line for whatever reason, she needs to step closer to the tie ring again to release the pressure. In a calm situation this has been absolutely fine, but I was still unsure what she would do if spooked.

Tonight I found out. The past couple of evenings, that yard has been rather wet when I have brought the horses in. Normally Faith is fine with this, but she has a tendency, if spooked, to suddenly start panicking a bit about her footing. This almost inevitably leads to a bit of a ’Bambi on ice’, type situation, which escalates until she is finally on something grippy (usually in her stable) at which point she starts to calm down.

So Faith was a little bit ‘looky’ tonight. I put her headcollar on in the stable, and let her loose on the yard for a few minutes to wander around and sniff the ground a bit and establish that all was quite safe. When she was calm and happy, I tied her up and picked out one front hoof, and one hind. Then something spooked her, and for the first time I saw her quite deliberately pull away. However, when she felt the pressure on the headcollar, her first instinct was to turn back towards the ring to release the pressure. This was good, but I could see from her eye that she was still very worried. So I just slipped two fingers in the noseband of her headcollar and encouraged her to stand just where she was, with lots of ‘aaahhhh good girl’. After about ten seconds, I unclipped the headcollar and let her loose on the yard again to release the tension.

So although that was all fine, and in fact pretty good for a horse that hasn’t really been tied up at all for two years, I think I might invest in Ben’s ‘tying up’ shaping plan, and just revisit the whole thing from the beginning, as much for my own peace of mind as anything else.

Having given Faith a nice groom, I thought I would embark on my own shaping plan for leg hosing, which, although well underway, has already reached page three without as yet even mentioning a hosepipe!

So steps one and two, which is what I was aiming for tonight, was to target a big yellow sponge, and perhaps to touch her with it on the shoulder while whe was standing calmly and at liberty. This doesn’t sound very impressive, but given that Faith scarpered to the far end of the yard as soon as she spotted the big sponge, I was very pleased to achieve these two albeit humble stages on the shaping plan! However, she was very brave, and after a few minutes of enthusiastic targetting, she was happy for me to rub her from the top of her left shoulder to her knee with the great big sponge.

So tomorrow I will reapeat the process, and perhaps attempt to move on to touching her right foreleg and shoulder, which is the side of which she is a little more protective.