Question, how to get the attention of a nervous horse in hand?
Hello fellow horse trainers! I have a question about my mare. I need some advice or reassurance. Please let me know if this is not the right place. My mare is very much a bundle of nerves. She gets very nervous of everything. Every morning after her breakfast I take her for a walk (in hand, just leading on the ground) out in front of the barn, around the front pasture, then back into her pasture. And every morning she stares and gets nervous when we walk around. Her head comes up high, she tenses up, and stares/fixates out into the distance. When she typically does this I take some random turns in a zig zag pattern until she relaxes a little and then we continue on our walk. Also when she fixates she gets very nervous and spooky. When she does have a spooky episode I again ignore the behavior and keep on walking. The problem is, this does not seem to be getting better with our daily walks. A little background: I have had her since a foal, she is 11 years old, Missouri Fox Trotter breed, (I would say high energy), and knows all basic groundwork exercises and performs them very lightly and well). What I have noticed is when I make her move her feet, left, right, hindquarters, forequarters, circle, bend, etc. this only hightens her energy. It seems to make her more nervous, more flighty, and continues to stare at what I call the "invisible boogie man". I can not seem to get her attention on me as she will somehow position herself to still be able to stare and worry. She tenses and brings her head up, especially when we stop. If she spooks at a specific object, lounging sometimes helps to just allow her to walk past it and observe at her own pace and we leave the object when she is relaxed. Is there anything I am doing wrong or could do differently to get her attention on me when she is "looking" for something scary or "looking" at the "invisible boogie man"? We have been doing this consistently for a few months now and there have been really good days with many really bad days. Thank you all for your insight and advice. Let me know if there is anything other information you need. Edit: She has also seen the vet regularly.
Submitted August 26, 2017 at 01:17PM by F4FoxTrot
via reddit http://ift.tt/2xBS9xX
No comments :
Post a Comment