A Gap in My Training

We had a couple of rug related incidents which have shown up a gap in Faith’s rug related training. A couple of weeks ago as I was rugging Faith before turning her out in the morning, Tommy decided that it would be entertaining to run his teeth along the metal grille that divides his stable from Faith’s. This freaked faith out a bit, and she took off round the stable before I was able to do the rug up. Inevitably it slipped back, and for a couple of seconds it ‘chased’ her before falling off on the floor. To her credit she went straight over to it and sniffed it as soon as it landed on the floor, and straight away let me put it back on her.

However, since this incident, she has been a little spooky about having it on, and I confess I have lost my confidence a little with rugging her, mainly because I am heavily pregnant, and feeling a little vulnerable, and defensive of my burgeoning ‘bump’, not to mention the fact that it is also making me a little slow and clumsy. Consequently, I stopped rugging her at night, so that I only had to do one rug change a day. It turns out that she didn’t really need to be rugged at night as nom-nomming on her massive pile of hay has kept her nice and warm. As it has been lovely and sunny for the last week, albeit snowy, I have been letting all the neds out naked to play in the snow, which they have all enjoyed immensely, and once again, big piles of hay have kept them busy and warm.

However, yesterday morning felt a bit dark and cold, and I thought it would be a good idea to rug Faith. However, she had other ideas, and just wouldn’t let me near her with it, so once again she went out in the nuddy, and although she was absolutely fine, I felt rather bad.

So I have started work with the rug from scratch again, and have currently gone back to just rubbing the folded cotton summer sheet over her, and gradually draping it over her shouders and along her back. It is clear that she knows what I am doing, but there is some tension there, so I am keeping up the repetitions and a high rate of reinforcement until it is all utterly boring again.

I must confess, I am disappointed in myself for not being thorough enough the first time, and this time around I am going to make a special effort to get her comfortable with the straps accidentally tapping against her legs, which is another thing that owing to my clumsiness (and my inability to see much below my bustline), had started to happen.

One good thing that has come out of it though, is that I have started to re-think my attitude to rugging, and unless it is wet and windy, I have realised that Faith really is capable of keeping herself nice and warm in a natural and healthy way. I do think that plenty of long fibre food, of good quality, really is the key to keeping a fine coated horse healthy and warm in cold weather.