Eureka moments (long)
 

Some of you may recall that I have been having some (lots of) issues getting my mare to go out of her own yard. For weeks I have been taking her regularly to a local school , lunging her, watching her go off her rocker failing to get her to calm down and then bringing her home... I've tried everything I could think of to get her to complete a calm trip but to no avail, indeed she has been getting worse. Over the last few weeks I've been taking the Shetland with us but this if anything made her worse... I was really getting to the point where I didn't know what to do next....Well today, I had an epiphany- what if I took her out into the school and rather than asking her to do something she would do in the school at home (i.e. Lunging) I took her and did something she really likes... so I took her and after a little walk round on her hind legs ... I just brushed her mane (sends her into raptures in her stable) ... after the first few minutes which did include some acrobatics on her part , I just kept going with her mane and she started to settle... I then groomed her in the school (to some funny looks), played our forward and backward game, gave her a carrot and took a cool calm horse home, for the first time she was like a donkey to lead out of the school ... to say I'm happy is an understatement... I think I'm going to just do this for a couple of months before I even try to lunge her again but it just goes to show sometimes a change of attitude in the handler can give a huge change of attitude in the horse.

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