High Desert Horse Rescue

20/07/2024

Spamming again.
Colby and Pepper Jack are much more curious about me today.

I am here again humbly asking for your support. Unfortunately t… Caitlin Goelz needs your support for High Desert Horse Rescue Hay Fund and Trailer Repair

17/07/2024

My hay trailer was repaired this week! I no longer have my truck and this is now how I transport hay to the barn.

I’m asking for support funding the repair, well as getting my hay bill paid down. 🫠

I am here again humbly asking for your support. Unfortunately t… Caitlin Goelz needs your support for High Desert Horse Rescue Hay Fund and Trailer Repair

12/07/2024

A sneak peak of what’s coming next. 💕

Weanling c**t AVAILABLE.

04/07/2024

Happy Independence Day to EVERYONE. 💕

27/05/2024

💯

Morning thoughts over coffee...

23/05/2024

Beau

A still horse is not always calm and compliant.

Beau is a horse that spends a lot of his time that he’s being handled in reaction mode. A lot of it is frantic. Just reacting and doing things he thinks is the right answer. We are out of liberty mode and working a lot with halter and lead. I’ve been trying to slow him down and ask him to be calm and present for the things that are happening to him. Watch me, look at the rope, feel what’s happening to you.
Don’t freeze and leave the planet then react big when you snap back.

Pain memory may also be at play here. Being saddled, mounted, and ridden with ulcers/pain can leave a lasting impression. Anticipating pain when these things are happening (even if the pain has been resolved) can bring a horse right over threshold into a response.

20/05/2024

Ms. Dolly Parton

2 year old warm springs mustang. Not for adoption.

Posting video of her almost feels like cheating because she has never viewed “work” as “work” a day in her life.

16/05/2024

I have some training slots open this summer for yearlings/weanlings. Mustangs/feral horses welcome!
Gentling, halter training, leading, trailer, feet, and much more.

I train using a foundation of positive reinforcement to help make their transition into human handling as stress free as possible.

Located in Central Oregon, and I can haul from Warm Springs Reservation.

11/05/2024

Sushi - a novel

Working with a panel between me and a horse is very challenging for me. I have to figure out new ways to ask for behaviors and shape them.

Why the panel? Because I’m trying to keep Sushi honest. She has shown me a few times- very subtle signs -that she could choose “fight” when pushed over threshold. This horse has an insanely low threshold before she reacts, so making progress can be like walking a tightrope in a hurricane. I need to keep us both safe while building her confidence.

This ‘aggression’ is firmly rooted in fear.

I almost rehomed Sushi because I didn’t feel like I had the skill or time to do this with her. But I did not want her to end up with someone that would just run her around a round pen (which, unfortunately, I have already done that in the beginning before I knew better) or end up back in “the bad place” aka slaughter. And unfortunately everyone that would be a good fit already have plenty of horses just like Sushi.

So, I learned. I’m still learning. I’ve heard all kinds of wild advice about this horse from people that have never worked with one like her before. This is one of the most fearful animals I’ve ever seen. She was all reaction and no thinking for SO long.

I have suspicions that she has big reasons for being this way. We can work through the psychological ones, and then address the physical one.

I played around with Sushi’s different sides and found her much less reactive on her right side. So we went from there. And here we are.

We will work together with this panel between us for as long as it takes. Cheers to finding a way.

10/05/2024

Gouda learning all about trailer loading.

I have open gentling and training slots available this summer for weanlings/yearlings.
Please reach out!
I can easily haul from Warm Springs Reservation.

05/05/2024

*ADOPTED!*

Coming yearling warm springs reservation gelding.
Goofy personality, is really coming out of his shell.
Halters
Leads
Trailer loads
Pick up front feet
Loves to be brushed
Lots of liberty work
Very soft in the halter and very willing.

Is in with two other geldings and doing well, learning some horse manners. He is going to be a big boy.

Doing great with positive reinforcement training- has excellent food/treat manners.

Would thrive with a gentle but firm home that will hold boundaries, without stifling his golden retriever personality.

Please message for details!

25/04/2024

Back working with this girl consistently after a long physical/mental break. I injured my back recently and she honestly needed time to chill and just ‘be’. We weren’t making progress and she was stressed.

She still isn’t thrilled about touching my hand, but her sniffing and booping my forehead is the farthest we have ever traveled on this journey.

She is hands down the most sensitive and fearful horse I’ve ever seen. One day at a time.

27/03/2024

Foal season is approaching and so is all the videos of people handling foals roughly. Wrestling, chasing, roping, dragging them around with lead ropes and into trailers etc.

It’s all so frustratingly unnecessary it breaks my heart.
I’ve gentled wild orphans, foals with wild mommas, and foals of gentled mommas. Foals that have never been touched and those that have been around people since birth.
Foals that have been aggressive out of fear and those that would rather climb a panel than be in a pen with me.

I can say with certainty that none of the rough handling is necessary. Foals do not need to experience stress from their handlers to learn how to handle stress. That’s absurd.

Roughness with foals is so oddly ?normalized? and I was never able to truly appreciate that until tasked with handling babies on my own.

Pic of my wildest, spiciest foal for reference. She went from charging me to loading on a trailer and haltering herself in a week.
It’s all just so so unnecessary y’all.
Rant over but I’m still salty as this stuff just floods my timeline this time of year.

16/01/2024

***ADOPTED***

This sweet mare is looking for her forever home.
6 year old warm springs mustang
Petite (14hh) and super willing to learn

15/01/2024

I used to have a lot of misconceptions about R+ (positive reinforcement) training with horses.

I could make a whole list of things that I used to think and say around horse training that simply is not supported by research.

Dogs, giraffes, tigers, chickens, and cats can all be trained very effectively with positive reinforcement- but there is this pervasive belief that horses are somehow different and you need to speak a special language of pressure and release to get them to do what you want. You want them to know you’re the “herd leader.” This is not supported by research.

Pressure and release is negative reinforcement training. “Join up”, round penning, whatever you’d like to call it is negative reinforcement. It is not horse language but a universal language that many mammals (including humans) understand as well.

Unpleasant pressure is applied until you do what the person is asking for. You may not want to do this thing. It may scare you or even cause you pain. You give in to make the unpleasant experience stop. You learn that if you do not do that thing you will experience unpleasant pressure again.
Sound familiar? Humans experience this too.

Humans are not horses but there is a level of empathy that can be tapped when you remember how you felt in a situation like this or how you felt about the individual applying the pressure. Did you respect them? Did you trust them? What was driving you to perform the behavior moving forward?

There is comprehensive research showing that this type of training causes high stress responses in the mammals that it is used on. Partnered with an already scared animal- this can lead to some very problematic outcomes.

I still encounter a lot of push back from people that have the same misconceptions that I once did. It is what it is.

Working with wild horses without pushing them over threshold, round penning, etc. has forced some uncomfortable growth in me.

I promise you that a horse does not need to be pushed over threshold in order to know how to handle stressful situations. They need trust.

Avoiding the threat of aversive pressure is not the same thing as trust.

15/07/2023

Been working on leading with both babies. Yielding to pressure or really having pressure applied to their head is a very weird sensation that they need to get used to so they do not freak out and pull back when they feel it.
They’re also growing so it must be done gently and gradually to protect their anatomy.

01/07/2023

Dolly was very scared of fly spray.
1. Because fly spray is inherently spooky and novel for horses.
2. Because I chased her around with it like a Neanderthal last summer.
We have both grown a lot since then and she is at a point now where she can tell me she is ready to be sprayed and stands at liberty for it. This took about 20 minutes for her to learn. Starting with me spraying the ground and slowly moving to her body - letting her target the bottle to let me know she is ready for the target-spray-click-reward sequence to happen.
No chasing, and she is pretty relaxed about it.

24/06/2023

Prego’s foal, Honey, got a bit of education today as well. These girls are awesome.

18/06/2023

Poppy’s hernia repair fund!
It will be a couple months before her hernia can be surgically repaired. Trying to get ahead of the game and get money saved up. 🙂
Any amount to help offset the cost helps us!
Please share!

Hello! Poppy is a two month old warm springs mustang filly. She came into High Des… Caitlin Goelz needs your support for Mustang filly Poppy hernia repair

09/05/2023

I have come to know that both Sushi (formerly HeLa) and Temple will be here in rescue for quite some time. Both girls hold a lot of fear.
Sushi bolts and shuts down.
Temple disassociates, freezes, and shuts down.
I’m not interested in rushing them and that’s ok. Sushi’s feet are atrocious but I’m choosing to prioritize trust right now.
It’s hard not to compare yourself to others that get halters on first day, etc.
but ultimately some horses take a lot more time and that’s ok.

30/04/2023

A rambling post about rescuing/fostering.
I felt this when I fostered dogs/cats. I’m familiar with this feeling but it’s never an easy pill to swallow - especially if you’ve spent a lot of time with an animal.

You have to be ok with it.
You have to be ok letting them go to a home that may not be as ”good” as yours.
They may be better.
You have to be ok letting them go to a home that possibly doesn’t follow your husbandry/training beliefs.
A foundation is there to build on.
You have to be ok possibly not knowing where they end up.
It could be more beautiful than you imagined.
You have to be ok separating them from the bonds they have built with your own animals and others currently being fostered.
They will form other, possibly stronger/lifelong bonds in their life.
You have to be ok trusting other people to do the right thing.
And this is the most difficult, but most necessary piece of it all.

If you aren’t okay with it- you cannot make room to take in more.
Goodbye is the goal.
Goodbye is a job well done and a possible life saved/changed.
And there will always be more.
There will always be more.

29/04/2023

Storm went to her new home today.
Lots of pasture in eastern Oregon.
It’s hard. I cried. But in rescue- goodbye is the goal. 💕
Happy trails sis. Thank you for all you taught me.

17/04/2023

Today Im grateful for small glimpses of relaxed curiosity. This little tiny lip wiggle feels like such a huge step.
This is the most fearful horse I have ever worked with. A lot of her behavior was reactionary only with not much room for “rational” thought let alone curiosity.
OMG yall it finally feels like it’s happening.

14/04/2023

This girl is really getting the hang of this. We picked up right where we left off today.

12/04/2023

Storm was struggling today with learning leading. I find it really valuable to kindly ask for a behavior they’re good at when animals are struggling to learn a new thing.
A litttle moral boost and helps bring them back into thinking vs reacting.
I really enjoy working with this girl.

11/04/2023

This clip may not seem like progress but it is amazing! That little reach out towards my hand. Progress. We have been stuck at a place where she would let me reach for her just until I was close enough to leave her eyeline and she would bolt. She has never reached out towards me.
She was very uncomfortable with being handled and would freeze and bolt.
Since treating her lice she has become so much more bright and willing.
We are moving forward with protected contact (me behind the fence) and positive reinforcement.

07/04/2023

Today my feedlot rescue horse Wasabi was seen for bodywork and PEMF by Point to Point Healing Alex Lewis.
An old injury from when she was a foal needs some extra care.
Watching her go from a high strung stressed horse to falling asleep in my arms was wonderful. Thank you so much Alexandra Poitevin Lewis.

06/04/2023

These rescue girls have lice. 🤢
I was feeling stressed because I wasn’t sure how I was going to treat them.
I then remembered how I trained my fillies to accept fly spray and figured I could do it with the rescues at liberty. I started with water first and then added the pesticide once they were both confident.
It went so well!
Got them both treated and set more foundations for +R training.

05/04/2023

Learning to trust the scritchscratchies.

04/03/2023

It’s taken me time to understand and allow myself to take my time. For the horses sake.