Yesterday, I haltered Rags and put him through some groundwork exercises, including walking between poles, then over poles, then turning 360 degrees inside a square, and so on.\u00a0 Tigger was a bit intrusive, walking right behind Rags sniffing his butt or walking behind\/ beside where he could bump Rags with his nose in the flank.\u00a0 After noticing increasing signs of maybe-jealousy, and slightly less aversion to being touched, I tested this by walking back to Tigger after taking the halter off Rags.\u00a0 “Are you lonesome?\u00a0 Do you want to do some work with me too?”\u00a0 He stood still and his face ‘softened,’ ears more forward.\u00a0 “Well, here’s the halter…do you want to put it on?”\u00a0 The tiniest drop of the nose toward the halter.\u00a0 I held it open for him and he put his nose in.\u00a0 Without\u00a0 the lead rope even over his neck, let along around it.\u00a0 No pulling back at all.\u00a0 I fastened the halter, talking to him…didn’t have any treats with me, this was pure horse &\u00a0 human signalling.\u00a0 Picked up the dangling lead rope and said “OK, then, walk on.”\u00a0 He walked with me quietly and–judging by ears and eyes–happily.\u00a0 Walk, whoa, back, walk on, turn right (gee) and left (haw) –he remembers those voice commands.\u00a0\u00a0 Walked over a slightly raised pole, walked into the square and rotated around.\u00a0 No tension in him, just calm cooperation.\u00a0 I kept it short, praised him, and dared to offer a little petting, which he accepted–stroked his neck, shoulder, and some of his back.\u00a0 No twitching or jerking.\u00a0\u00a0 Then I let him go.<\/p>\n
This morning\u00a0 I went out with the halter and some treats.\u00a0 He was farther away but started coming toward me before Rags did, confidently; they got to me at about the same time.\u00a0 I talked to Tigger: “Would you rather be first?”\u00a0 I offered a treat; he ate it.\u00a0 I slipped the rope over his head this time, he put his nose into the halter when I held it for him, and I fastened it up.\u00a0 We did a few more things; I was aiming for calm, relaxed, happy in his body language and expression.\u00a0\u00a0 Rags came along but (since Tig is the alpha) didn’t try to bug him.\u00a0 No flank or butt sniffing.\u00a0\u00a0 Tigger got more stroking of his head, neck, shoulder, withers, and body than the day before, then I turned him loose.\u00a0\u00a0 Then it was Rags’s turn, and Rags was in a careless-clumsy mode (“I know this stuff, no reason to worry”) but if he stepped on a pole, or hit the higher pole, we did that one again until he didn’t.\u00a0\u00a0 Tigger watched us without interfering.\u00a0 He wants to be first.\u00a0 Even when it’s being haltered and asked to do stuff, he wants to be first.\u00a0\u00a0 He wants my attention and (from observation) he’s watched Rags getting the petting, the hugs, the attention and time-with-human, but…he’s still anxious.\u00a0 I’ll be sure he gets it, and gets it first, even if I need to give Rags more because of riding.\u00a0 (Which I’m not doing right now for Reasons.)\u00a0\u00a0 Later, he tolerated touch when he wasn’t haltered.<\/p>\n
Happy about this.\u00a0\u00a0 I had hoped that since he bonded to Rags, and saw Rags getting attention and petting that Rags clearly enjoyed, he’d realize it could be pleasant.<\/p>\n
This evening, the air’s dry enough that static electricity was making his tail fan out a lot at the bottom…I didn’t have a camera; it was feeding time, but it was something to see.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Yesterday, I haltered Rags and put him through some groundwork exercises, including walking between poles, then over poles, then turning 360 degrees inside a square, and so on.\u00a0 Tigger was a bit intrusive, walking right behind Rags sniffing his butt or walking behind\/ beside where he could bump Rags with his nose in the flank.\u00a0 Read More…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[49],"class_list":["post-653","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-horses","tag-horses"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/653"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=653"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/653\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":654,"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/653\/revisions\/654"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=653"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=653"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=653"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}