Finding the Missed Path. Mark Rashid
Читать онлайн книгу.
tool for horses and one they constantly rely on to receive and decipher basic information. They use their nose for such things as identifying friend and foe, seeking a mate, recognizing territory, distinguishing edible plants from those that are toxic, and helping to seek out or sense danger. Horses unable to get a good whiff of something they feel threatened by only serves to make them feel even more threatened. And I believe that was a big part of what was troubling our gelding.
Laddy obviously felt threatened by the presence of anyone that came near him, in this case me, but because he was so fearful and moving around so much, he most certainly hadn’t been able to pick up my scent very well—something that further unsettled him. On top of that, he was too frightened to even try to get close enough to do so. It was a catch-22 situation.
He needed, and I believe even wanted, to get close enough to me to smell me, but was just too scared. That was why I wanted to see what he would do if we turned him loose in this big pen. Did he run aimlessly around the pen, never settling anywhere specific? Or, would he find a place in the pen where he felt relatively safe, and if he did, would he keep going back to it? In our case he had chosen the latter, which was good for us and would, we hoped, work to our advantage.
The gelding had abandoned then returned to almost the exact same spot in the pen on numerous occasions by now. It was not only a “safe” spot for him, but it had also become part of a pattern. It didn’t really matter how many times he left it, where he went or how far away, he always returned to that same spot. And that was the piece of information we really needed to know for what we would be doing next.
I moved from my spot in the middle of the arena and walked slowly toward the southwest corner—the corner opposite where he was. As expected, almost as soon as I began moving he took off for the north end of the arena. When he did, I turned and went directly to the spot he had just vacated. The arena fence was built from metal panels, and once I reached the place where he had been standing, I rubbed my hands on the metal rails of the panel more or less at his head height.
I then retraced my steps back to the middle of the pen. When I did, he ran back to the south end of the arena, made a large arcing turn and headed for his spot next to the fence in the southeast corner. He stopped right about where I had rubbed my hands on the fence and after carefully watching me for several seconds—probably to make sure I wasn’t going to move again—he slowly turned to the fence and began cautiously sniffing the area where I had left my scent. He moved his nose along the first fence rail, from one fence rail to another, then back to the first.
After a while, he turned and looked at me, then for the first time that day, he relaxed a bit and lowered his head. When he did, I left the pen. I went over to where Marie had been standing and watching and, with my back intentionally toward the gelding, I explained to Marie what we were trying to do.
“Basically,” I said, “we’re just trying to find a way to let him do something that he really wanted and needed to do but hadn’t been able to because he was so scared.”
While I was talking, I noticed Marie looking past me into the pen. A gentle smile crossed her face. “My goodness,” she said just above a whisper. “Look!”
I slowly turned and looked into the arena to see that Laddy had walked all the way to the middle of the pen. His head was down and he was smelling the sand right about where I had been standing. He pawed the sand several times, keeping his head down, and then he quietly raised his head and looked in our direction.
Marie told me that was the first time she could remember when he had actually made any effort to come toward someone, even though he stopped way short of where we were standing, and even though he probably wasn’t trying to come over to us. Just the simple fact that he made the effort to advance rather than retreat was a pretty big deal for him, and one that gave us a starting point.
I suggested that for the next several days Marie try to work with him by just repeating what I had done and see if it made any difference. I would be back in a week and take another look at him then.
When I returned, I was pleasantly surprised to see that things had apparently progressed very quickly for Marie and Laddy. She told me for a couple days after I left, she repeated what I had done, that is, leaving him in the arena and rubbing her hands on the panel rails where he liked to stand. On the third day she came out to work with him and much to her surprise, he walked right up to her almost as soon as she walked in the gate.
From that point forward, things had gone pretty smoothly, and with the exception of a couple of little glitches, all of which he seemed to get over without too much trouble, he appeared to be feeling much better about his life. I spent a little time with him that day, and while he started out a bit on the leery side, it wasn’t long before he warmed up to me, and, like Marie, I was soon able to get close to him and even get him haltered and work a little on leading, with which he really had no trouble.
In subsequent visits over the next couple of months, Laddy became easier and easier to catch and handle, saddle and bridle, and even ride. Interestingly, being ridden was the easiest part of the work we ended up doing with him. He was indeed sensitive and very well trained, but we found very early on, that for him, a little pressure could very easily be too much pressure. Consequently, work done with him had to be tempered with the understanding that he would stay with us as long as he didn’t feel he was being “yelled” at. Beyond that, he seemed to really enjoy being ridden in the arena as well as out on the many trails that snaked through the grasslands around Marie’s place.
I have recounted this story to a number of people over the years with varied reactions. The most common one is disbelief that something as simple as an introduction between us, the way we had set it up, would have such a profound impact on a horse as troubled as this one was. I understand why some folks might feel that way. After all, seldom are we taught to look for simple solutions when working with troubled horses. Rather, we are often taught that the bigger the problems, the more we have to do.
But the truth is that quite often when a horse is really troubled it’s because there’s already been too much done to him, or he has already been under too much pressure. As I said, like water boiling in a pot, turning the heat up does nothing to cool the water inside. Sometimes, the solution is simply to find a way to get the heat turned down. It’s finding that starting point that allows the horse to tell us what he really needs, instead of what we think he needs.
When I was young, I worked for an old horseman who made a living buying and selling horses. There didn’t seem to be many criteria for the horses he would buy other than they needed to be cheap. Size, color, breed, temperament, and even unwanted or potentially dangerous behavior all took a back seat to the price he would ultimately have to pay for an animal. After all, the less he had to pay up front, the more room there would be eventually for profit when he resold him. And sell the horse he would, but only after months and sometimes years of diligent and consistent work and handling.
After bringing a new horse home, he would usually keep him separate from the others on his place for a few weeks—and sometimes even months—not really doing much with him except feeding, watering, and cleaning his pen. I would come to understand later that this was a sort of decompression time for the horse, especially a horse that was coming out of a neglectful or perhaps abusive home. It was a way to give the horse an opportunity to sort of recalibrate a bit to his new surroundings without having to worry about adjusting to a new herd, fighting for food, or having to protect himself. It also gave the horse an opportunity to settle into what would ultimately be a new way of being around people.
Once the horse settled into his surroundings, my old friend would then begin working with him, paying close attention to what he felt was most important to that particular animal. For some horses, it might be something as simple as teaching him how to be caught or how to lead properly. For others, it might be more advanced, such as redirecting unwanted or dangerous behavior, or working on some aspect of riding that the horse didn’t seem to understand completely.
In each case, the horse was always treated as an individual,