I did something yesterday I haven't done a lot. In fact, I don't remember ever doing it with an Icelandic, and I doubt I'll do it again very soon, or very often. I "round-penned" a horse - something I'm not normally a big fan of doing. I thought it might be right for this horse, and I think it was.
Svertla is a very confident almost seven-year-old mare, especially considering the shape she was in when we got her. In my experience, Anneliese has bred some awfully smart and brave horses, and Svertla is certainly one. She's going to be another awesome trail horse. But, Svertla left Unicorn Valley when she was just two, and apparently was neglected for four years, even starved to approximately a 1 or 2 on the 1-10 body condition score. Her sole companion was her older half-brother, Stali, the horse Janice got at the same time who immediately got sick and died of rabies. As I've said before, in my limited experience, a neglected horse is MUCH easier to deal with than an abused or mis-trained horse. I don't think Svertla was ever abused - not at all. Thank God for that at least. But, Svertla still needed some manners instilled. She's sweet - very sweet, but she's been MUCH more horse/herd-oriented than people oriented. Oh, she's friendly enough, and not shy. But she somehow seemed...unaware of people? Unaware that people are different than horses...? If there was a herd disagreement with people around, her priority was to see to the herd, and she'd just seem to forget that people were around. That's caused a couple of near misses, and that's just not acceptable. Her foot actually grazed Cary's leg a few weeks ago as she kicked out at another horse when he was out with them. (Of course, Cary tends to drift off into his own little world, so I don't put ALL the blame on Svertla, even though I didn't see the incident.) But, at any rate, we just can't have that, whatever the reason. We've only done small groundwork sessions with her up until now. She'd be fine for a while, and usually, since the sessions were short, she was good the whole time. But sometimes, she's suddenly get distracted by something and she'd totally forget we were there. I knew I would have to do something about that, but I wanted to think it through before I put her in the round pen. Yesterday, Cary took a few panels out of the "oval pen" and brought her up to the now-round pen. The round pen is next to the gelding's pasture, and immediately, Svertla forgot I was there, distracted by the oh-so-charming Buck, the mini mule, and Loftur, my other rescue from Florida. I have her a minute to "chat with them" but she didn't want to pay attention to me after that time, so I asked her to go forward. She didn't seem to notice, so I flicked the string of the carrot stick so that it touches her tail. She was shocked - I honestly don't think she had even noticed me while talking to the boys - and she went forward. By this time the boys had gotten bored and walked away. She stopped and started to eat the tiny bit of grass in the pen. I asked her to go forward again. She wouldn't look at me and wanted to stop and eat. Every time she'd stop, I'd ask her to go forward, but I didn't let the string touch her after that first time. I gave her plenty of opportunities to turn and face me. I was not asking her to run, just walk, gait or trot was fine, but she did occasionally canter for a few strides. I was very, very quiet in my requests. I wasn't angry at all; in fact, I only wanted to break the cycle she has of ignoring people. I guess we kept this up maybe almost 5 minutes. Yep, five minutes was all it took before she would turn and face me. I didn't become round-pen-obsessed. I didn't quibble that she would stop and face me, but not come to me at first. I broke the round-penning rule, and walked to her first, and rubbed her to reassure her that all is well, that I still like her. It was warm yesterday and she has a lot of fur, but she really didn't even break a sweat. After just that five minutes or so, she gave me her whole attention. At that point, I did a little Parelli ground work with her on the line, then Cary took over, and did the walk you saw in the woods. He got a couple of videos of me working with her, but they are pretty long, several minutes each, with some footage of the ground and the cats and dogs - Cary's usual video style! If I get a chance, I'll cut some of he ground and cat footage out and post a couple to You Tube. When Cary walked away with her, she kept looking over her shoulder to see what I was doing. When he'd ask her to do something yesterday that she wasn't ready to do, she'd turn to me, asking for support. Cary said her change after the brief round pen session was striking. We normally take a few treats on the trail in case we need to sweeten up the scariest situations, but we forgot to get any for Svertla. She was just fine without any treats. She likes praise and rubbing just fine. She's a smart girl - a little bit like Aunt Sina I think. I don't really plan to work her any more in the round pen, at least in the "round-penning" sense. I don't see any point in mindlessly chasing a horse. I MIGHT work her that way again, but my gut tells me I got what I needed - a breakthrough. Now, I think she'll be ok with the sort of handling we normally do with our horses, if we are consistent from now on. Time will tell. I don't want her to lose her confidence and bravery. Those qualities will make her a wonderful trail horse. I don't want her scared of people. I didn't do it to be dominant. I didn't do it because she's dominant, or alpha. I did it because she just didn't seem aware of humans, or that her size advantage can make her dangerous to humans. I just wanted her to be AWARE of people, that we can be part of her herd in some ways, but not in others. (Actually, she's a small Icelandic, but any horse is big compared to any human.) Honestly, I was shocked at the turnaround I saw in such as short time. It will be interesting to see how she progresses from here. It's not about training methods - it's about seeing positive results towards building a partnership...however we get there with the least stress to all of us. At least that's our philosophy. Karen Thomas, NC -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.5.446 / Virus Database: 268.18.8/718 - Release Date: 3/11/2007 9:27 AM
