Native demonstrating how horses use their lips while foraging to carefully pick preferred plants!
(This is also why they are so good at separating supplements or feed they don't like out of their meals 😂)
We played a few different songs, but this is probably my favorite clip - how cute is Aspen raising her head at the "whinny" at the end of the song?!
Day 3, Salalah and Maverick learning some Christmas themed targeting, and Beau and Native showing that even with a new target, they know what this is all about!
(Featuring Native staring at me in the background of the clips of Salalah, and nickering at me in the clip of Beau. He wanted his turn 😂)
It was a cold, windy, rainy evening, but the horses got their lights! Native, Triumph, and Reese enjoyed their alfalfa snack in front of our display.
I foolishly trusted my weather app that said it wasn't going to rain until later on and figured I'd wait until it was a bit darker out to switch them on, so of I wound up filming in the dark, in the rain, and the horses were more interested in hay by then, but these three stuck around for a little bit!
Native got his in a bucket! This can add to the difficulty as it involves more layers to sift through with less space to move things around.
A note on difficulty level: how challenging you make your enrichment activities really depends on your horse! Native here is an expert at forage puzzles and enjoys working out how to get to the food. Some horses can get frustrated more quickly, especially if they have little to no experience with the exercise, so start easy and keep an eye out to make sure your horse doesn't get frustrated.
Val (left) and Aspen were very into theirs! These smart girls knew just how to move the branches to get to the treats.
Reese and Triumph enjoying their Christmas forage bin!
"My horse is bad for the farrier."
"My horse doesn't like his legs touched."
"My horse isn't good about picking up his feet."
We have all probably met at least one horse (and likely far more than one!) who is not a fan of having his legs or feet handled. It isn't unusual to have a horse step away or yank his hoof back. There are a number of reasons why a horse might not want a human handling his feet, but here are some common ones:
-pain. This is especially applicable to horses who *used* to be good about picking up or holding up his feet and no longer is - older horses, for example, often have more trouble with this on cold days, when their arthritis might be making them particularly stiff. But any horse could have something going on to make hoof handling unpleasant. I've seen a number of horses with thrush or even just a pretty mild stone bruise not want to pick up the opposite hoof, which puts more weight on the painful hoof, or not want to have the painful hoof treated or otherwise messed with.
-handler technique. Sometimes people try to pick up hooves at an angle the horse finds uncomfortable (such as lifting too far to the side, or too high up). This could be because it hurts, or because the horse finds it hard to balance on the other three legs that way - which is why it's also smart to make sure your horse is standing reasonably square and on reasonably flat ground before you try and pick up a hoof.
Sometimes, the *human* is tense about this procedure (often because they've had problems in the past), which the horse then picks up on; sometimes people tend to grab at the horse's legs or yank back when the horse is trying to pull away.
-he's never really been taught. It can be easy to forget that this particular behavior not only has to be trained, but that like many of the things we ask horses to do, it goes entirely against their nature. Flight is a horse's primary defense, so naturally, he knows having a predator grab onto a leg and keep him from runnin
How many of us know at least one horse who has the tendency to turn into a giraffe or try to run off the opposite direction when presented with a fly mask, halter, or bridle? 🙋🏼♀️
This could be for a number of reasons - maybe his bridle doesn't fit quite right and presses on sensitive facial nerves, or he has tension and pain around his poll and the halter can put additional pressure on those areas; maybe he has a negative association with being caught or ridden. It may also be that he simply hasn't been taught how to lower his head into the halter/bridle/mask. Perhaps that has excalated into frustration for a handler, trainer or rider and now he has negative associations with the objects themselves. It could be one or more of the above reasons, or it could be something else entirely. Either way, fighting with him on this is no fun whatsoever for either of you and only makes things worse (for him, for you, and for any other/future handlers) in the long run.
If, like me, you live where the state bird could be a gnat, teaching your horse to 'self-fly mask' is every bit as helpful as self-haltering and bridling! It makes life much easier and more pleasant for all involved.
I've seen a lot of posts recently involving desensitizing. This is something I could talk about all day long, and I do plan on doing multiple videos/posts on what exactly desensitization is and why we do it, how I introduce new/scary things, etc. But really, I hardly even like to use the term desensitization anymore - a lot of what I see being advertised as "desensitization" is not, by definition, desensitizing, but flooding. I've seen videos where a horse is put in a round pen with balloons or plastic bags tied to his saddle and either chased or just left alone to run around the pen until he stops reacting. I've also seen people hold horses on a tight lead rope and throw tarps or bags on them, again, ignoring any panicking and not allowing the horse to get away from the frightening stimulus. It's kind of like taking someone who is afraid of spiders and locking them in a room full of spiders until they stop freaking out and trying to escape. Unlike a human, though, the horse is a both a prey animal and a flight animal, and they cannot even reason any of this craziness out.
So, do I still desensitize? Yes and no. I *don't* want a horse that has been exposed to a fear-causing stimulus to a point where he no longer reacts because he's shut down. I *do* want to encourage his natural curiosity and create positive associations with novel objects and situations, and build a history of good experiences with me. I want him to know I will not punish him for being afraid, and that I'll be there as a calm steady presence. I don't want to provoke a big explosive reaction or have him go into a state of learned helplessness. Neither of those outcomes would give the end result I am trying to achieve, even if we were to put aside the ethics involved!
At the beginning of this video, I call Native over from where he's been snacking on some hay to show him the umbrella. You can see that he is curious, and that he chooses to approach me and investigate, and I open it slowly where he c
My horse Native loves "forage boxes," and they are one of my favorite enrichment activities, too - they're easy, cheap, small enough to use in a stall if need be, and you can vary them in terms of difficulty depending on the horse.
In this video, I used this container, but you can also use a cardboard box, or a muck bucket, whatever you have around. These are just gallon jugs and dollar store cones in here; you can use all kinds of things for the horse to work around, like a soccer ball or jolly ball or a large dog toy. The more items in the box, the more things they have to work around so the more difficult it is. Start simple and work your way up, and keep an eye out to make sure your horse is not getting frustrated.
