Day 27: trailer loading

Today we had just come home from putting on a petting zoo and had the trailer hooked up so I decided to take this chance to practice loading into the trailer. I didn’t think it would really be a problem because the first day when we brought her home she did not want to get out but I still expected it to take a day of work or so to have her load easily and willingly.
I lead her up to the back of the trailer to have her smell it since it had just had a variety of different animals in it. She smelled it and looked up at spud, who we had already loaded in as an example for her, then she got right in. my sister had been looking for the camera and when she came back was shocked to see Reece standing in the trailer totally relaxed. I had Reece come back out then we also took Spud out to see if she would still load. She smelled the trailer again then hopped right in again. I did that five more times then loaded her twice from the other eye and every time she barely hesitated to jump in. She did great and I am really excited to see how she surprises us in the future as well.

day 23: continued

I ended up going out again today after I realized that I never did anything with the water like I had originally planed to do. I brought Reece back up to the barn so I could hose her off. I have done a little bit with this before but not much. I have only ever sprayed her feet some and ‘made it rain’ in her paddock a bit. Now that I have been working with her longer I was confident she would be more willing to deal with the water. I started by spraying her legs and kept the pressure on till the stopped then I would immediately release the pressure. It only took once on both sides till she would not move when I sprayed her legs. I then moved up her body repeating the stop and release until I could spray her on both sides and she would not move. She did not like being wet at all but she loved the rub down she got when we were done. She is now happily drying off in the sun till it is time to go in her stall for the night.

day 23: tarp

today after a bit of round penning we went up to the barn so I could put spray Reece some with a hose. I was almost to the hose when I noticed an old tarp a little ways away and thought it was a good chance. I drug it out and put in on the ground in the middle of a small clearing then led Reece towards it. Needless to say it she spotted it right away and wanted nothing to do with it. I let her back away from it then set her up so she was facing it. She looked at it for a moment then decided it was far enough away so she could relax and ignore it. I figured trying to lead her up to it hadn’t worked so I would try sending her towards it (by ‘lounging’ her, or having her walk in circles around me and periodically switching directions). She was fine at first but eventually she caught on to the fact that for every circle she did I took a step towards the tarp which in turn made her go closed to it. She soon would try to change directions on her own and as soon as she found out I wouldn’t let her she began trotting past it then walking as slow as she could when she was far from it. After a while she would stop and look at it before trying to move away. Soon after that she was touching it with her nose and not moving away from it as much.

I then changed my position so I was almost on top of the tarp and Reece had to go in circles around it. Once she accepted that I had her stop and face it then I shorted the lead some before sending her forward and hopefully over the tarp. It took a few tries but she soon started to step on it fairly willingly going both ways. We are now to the point that I can send her over the tarp and get an immediate response. She is improving quickly and I am really proud of her.

day 19: Turn Out

I had not yet let Reece stay out in the pasture and decided that we now trust each other enough to let her have her own little section to play in. Right next to the arena is a large turn out/ small pasture on a hill and right in the middle is an old tree that my brothers built a tree house in when they were younger (I must have been 5 or 6). Since we mostly let our animals out to do as they please on our 63 acres it has not been put to use for a while and has lots of yummy grass for her to munch on and a few natural windfalls that we decided to leave because she is a super klutz it can help her be more aware of where she puts her feet. After some work in the round pen I lead her in to the turn out and walked her around most of the perimeter and over a few of the windfalls then let her go. As expected she immediately began eating so I let her be so she could settle in.

Day 18: Lots of Company

Today we had some company over from Idaho to visit and meat Reece. Although it had not been the original plan we could not resist bringing Reece some visitors. I brought her out to the round pen to do some normal work then had one of my cousins come in and pet her. We had people come in one at a time as to not overwhelm her to much and eventually we had five people loving on her. She really liked the attention although a few times somebody would jump of a fence or do something spooky that she wasn’t to fond of. After a few min. of love she soon got used to the noise and was no longer bothered by all the people moving around. There were quite a few people outside the pen as well as inside. We had a fun experience and I think that it was good for her to see some new faces. In my opinion it almost mimicked a show setting with all of the people around her although we were in a familiar place and there were not quite as many people as there would be at a show. Over all I think it was a good day with a new thing that will most likely work onto the future as well.

day 15: out to the arena/ round penning

Today was a nice day so it was anonymously decided that Reece should get to go out and play some in our arena. To get to the arena we need to go threw part of the field so we had been avoiding it until we were certain that she would be confident in her new surroundings and not be to overwhelmed. When we first brought her out we lead Spud in front of her so that she would still be with a friend. She was a bit excited while we were leading her down. Doing things like trotting around me and lifting her head up to listen to the cats playing in the grass but there was no real trouble. Once we got her into the arena that had not been used in a while since we would normally go on trail rides she settled right into eating the grass that had grown in there and leisurely letting me lead her around. The moment I got the halter off of her to let her play some she went to trotting and galloping around with spud letting out all of that pent up energy she had collected from being in a 30’x25’ paddock. At one point she began studding a fence and acting like she would try to jump it, so I went over caught her and brought her into the round pen that we had set up at one end of the arena. I had been wanting to do some round pen work with her for a while and figured now was a good time.
We have already been doing some ‘lounging’ in her paddock on her 14 foot line but that was only walking, halting and reversing, now in a larger area we could do more. We started with the familiar. Walking, stopping and reversing on the 14 foot line. Then after probably 10 min. I took off her halter and started some free lounging. She got the hang of it quickly and soon began walking or jogging with either a lift of my arm or a few swings of the lead rope I was holding. On a few occasions, some being my fault because I either was not being aware of my body position or was not paying attention at all, she would stop and eat grass or get a sudden energy burst and go loping around jumping and kicking and playing around to release all of her energy. She did very well and is learning quickly.

days 10-14: review days

I decided that since I had been teaching Reece so many new things in a small amount of time, we should take a few days to just lay back and get solid in the basics, Not only for her but for me as well. I decided that if I could focus on trust with things like giving to pressure, then her leading, backing and other maneuvers that would lead up to things like pivots and haunch turns would be more successful. She is already pretty solid in leading but her backing is not always consistent and her ‘pivots’ are sometimes more like trying to walk a circle around me. I think that these days spent on basic review will really help us in the future when we work on things like backing an L and ground driving.

Day9: sleepy girl

this morning I stuck to more review work because I was the only one home and I try to reframe from doing anything to crazy when there is no one there to spot me and it is also a safety measure since we must keep in mind that Reece had never been touched willingly before about a week ago. Even though there is really not much to report on the gentling process, when I first went down to feed this morning Reece and Spud were both lying down all sleepy. So I walked in and started mucking out the paddock minding my distance since sometimes when a horse gets up they take off at first especially if they are startled. After a few min. I approached her and started scratching her neck and back, she really liked it and stretched out with her neck to the point that she almost fell over while lying down (weird right, how dose that work?). Finally I went and grabbed a few leafs of hay and that got her to her feet right away. I guess lying down is hard work, she ate like she had just ran a marathon. :)

Day8: 4th of July

Yay! Today is the 4th of July! you know what that means? Fireworks! There is nothing better than a bunch of bombs making loud noises and bright colors. For humans anyway, but what about our horses. Basically today we are in a light work mode. Since there has been fireworks going off since yesterday all I’m doing is leading, backing and haunch turns. Tonight we are going to be gone so we are just hoping that she does not freak out to bad.

Day7: let it rain

Today was a fairly warm day so we decided that a little bit of bathing practice would be good. As discovered earlier in the gentling process, Reece dose not particularly like the water being sprayed or even dribbled on her at all so we decided that an indirect hit of water would be good. She drinks a large amount of water and if we hold the hose in front of her she will drink out of it and she will also paw at the water in her trough to splash herself. Me and my sister stood outside of the pen with the hose on full blast and sprayed it up over the paddock so that it reached almost everywhere. We hoped that it would be enough like rain that she would not mind but it was obvious she was not tricked. She would always find the one or two places that water did not hit and hide in it unlike spud, the pony we have in with her, who loved it and stood quietly as content as a bug in a rug. If Reece stopped moving while the water was on (I think she only did once while she was in the water) we would release the pressure. We did this for about ten min. then I turned off the hose and did some quick ground work review before feeding for the night.

Day 6 : wormer and injury care

When we got the mustangs on the first day, we also received a bag full of all sorts of goodies, one of those things was a wormer. We were told to give it to our horses as soon as we could comfortably handle there head. My sister and I agreed that today would be a good day. We were a little concerned that she may try to chew on it like and young animal would. Think about a puppy or even a human baby, they chew on everything and horses are no acceptation. Because I hadn’t given any wormers in a while I caught our POA pony Spud and refreshed my memory by giving him one. After success with Spud I went to take on the challenge of trying to worm Reece. I fully expected a fight, just about every horse I had ever wormed did not like to be willing when they saw the syringe in hand. Much to my surprise she took it willingly, obviously did not like the taste and went to take a big gulp of water right afterwards but she did well.
I praised her and then did some leading practice (which she is now amazing at and tomorrow we will work on haunch/forehand turns.) as well as some other review before my sister handed ma a wet paper towel to dab Recess injured knee with. You may remember that Reece jumped a panel on the first day, obliterated it and got herself a few scrapes. None of the scrapes were very bad, just a little bit of blood on her face but nothing to worry about, once we got her out of the mess of panels and could get a good look at her we saw her right front knee that was very bloody but because we could not touch her at the time we could not tell how bad it was. Once she was comfortable with me touching her I could tell that it was very swollen. First I used the wet paper towel to dab her knee and try to loosen up the dirt around it, then I scratched and inched Reece while Hilary put some antibiotic ointment on it. Now she is doing well and we will continue to keep it as clean as possible.