It's all jolly good fun!

Faith was rather reluctant to leave her stable this morning, evidently unsure what colour the world was going to be today. She is just very careful where she puts her feet bless her, and to be honest, that is not a quality I mind in a horse.

Yesterday, I bought her a Jolly ball, and this morning I put it in the field, to see what Faith would do with it. She walked over to it, and poked it, looked at me, then rolled it with her nose. She looked at me again as if to say; “Seriously, why would I want to play with that, when I have my very own Haflinger to play with?” She then mooched off to poke Tommy to see what he would do.

This evening, I fancied have a go at putting her rug on. However, when I draped it over her door, she reared right up , and pretty much tried to climb the back wall of the stable! Bizarrely though, when I left it on the stable door, she was happy to sniff it and give it a little chew.

So I gave her a little groom, and then we spent the next 20 mins or so just putting the rug on and off the stable door, and rewarding Faith for being calm and relaxed and standing at the door. Now I know that Faith has worn a rug before, but clearly, for whatever reason, she isn’t happy with the idea at the moment. So that is fine, we will just start over from scratch, no problem.

I am not yet using the clicker with Faith. Her reactions are so lightning fast, that I don’t think that my timing can consistently guarantee that I mark the right moment. So I am just using a much more generalised positive reinforcement, keeping –R to the absolute minimum that I can, and rewarding each little try that I can.