Hi Janice, >As soon as I walked out and picked up the blue tarp he blew and spun and >ran around. he has been totally sacked out with the tarp so that seemed > odd.
This is not such an unusual situation. It is one of the reasons I don't find that the 'flooding' approach to introducing new things and the idea of 'desensitizing' works some horses. What was his posture like during all of the work you did with him? From his photos he looks like he has the tendency to have rather high headed posture. High headed and hot usually go hand in hand and when you just sack out or flood a horse may learn to stand still but it is not necessarily because they are comfortable and accepting but rather because they have gone into freeze. While freeze may seem better than flight, it often comes back to bite you in the butt, because when the horse is really stressed is when you realize they didn't really learn to accept whatever you were sacking out with. Sometimes people think that just teaching the horse to lower his head in these situations make it okay - while they may help in some situations, as long as the head is not too low, it often doesn't work in high stress situations. High headed posture creates tension patterns which goes along with less than desirable behaviour. It is not a choice on the part of the horse but a reaction. This is where using a different approach like really breaking "chunking down" the things he is afraid of give him more confidence instead of scaring him into standing still. When the SNS (sympathetic nervous system) - fight and flight is engaged an animal cannot learn. The PNS (parasympathetic nervous system) triggers relaxation and is when information is taken into the nervous system so the horse can learn. This is one of the reasons that we want horses to do things slowly rather than just rush through - like with plastic, narrow spaces etc. This is where I also find that using the clicker can be very helpful - I can't remember if you have done any clicker work with him. If you are interested I will send you an article about a different way to approach work with plastic. I am not trying to push any different ideas on people but I'm happy to make suggestions if you are interested. Robyn Icelandic Horse Farm Robyn Hood & Phil Pretty Vernon BC Canada www.icefarm.com
