Buster's Environmental Education Begins

I was able to get Gretchen, the Dream Valley Helper for All Horse-Related Activities, to take some pictures yesterday. So, if you like the photos, all credit goes to Gretch.

Buster, 17 April 2013

I'm making a concerted effort to work on Buster's feet at least every other day - Eric the farrier is coming in a few weeks, and I'd like to think that he has a chance at surviving Buster's first hoof trim.   So I got Buster out of the pasture and went immediately to the arena to clean his feet.  Julie met me there for horse-holding duties.

Note:  if you ever decide to do this sort of thing, I think you need a minimum of three other people willing to assist.  This is definitely something that I can't imagine doing alone for a lot of reasons!

One of our more successful hoot cleanings

 Buster was way more cooperative than he has been in the previous few days for the hoof cleaning: the front feet were absolutely boring and it only took me two tries to be successful on his right rear - usually where he . . . puts his foot down, so to speak.  So now I'm going to have to start concentrating on getting him to make his feet lighter to lift.

The next thing on the agenda was to start seeing how he was going to do with "external stimuli", so

• I can get started getting him  used to some things I *know* he'll meet on the trail, and 
• He can get used to the notion of meeting new situations and, with luck, learning to trust that I won't put him in danger while doing so.

As you can see, we started with a saddle pad.  First, I used it as a hat (Sunny is *very* suspicious of floppy hats), which only seemed to pique his curiosity.  So we moved on to rubbing him with it, then sort of tossing it over him.  The grand finale was when I pushed it off over his rear end.  He was a total trouper throughout - he looked askance about twice, then decided that if it kept him close to the carrots, he was stayin'.

Sunny will tolerate a lot of things while standing still, but walking with them is a whole 'nother deal, so the next step was to get Buster to take a walk while wearing the saddle pad.  He was initially a little skeptical - as you can see from the picture below, I had to put some pressure on the rope in order to have him come along, which is unusual for him.

 It didn't take him long to loosen up, so we moved over to the center of the arena, where all the horse-fitness equipment is kept.  Take a look at the photo sequence below: After he got pretty relaxed, we marched across the cavallettis, then turned to walk across the little jumps.  Just as I stepped across the second one, I turned around so I could help him across them if he needed it.  I looked just in time to watch the saddle pad fall off his rear end - and, as you can see, he just kept walking with me, then stopped when I did.  Sheesh.

Note the saddle pad on the ground under his hind legs

Then we marched back to the gate where we started, I congratulated him on his accomplishments, and he went back to the pasture.  He did a great job, even if I do say so myself!

 Wanna annoy your horse?  Come join us.

donna