Hi there, we all know horses spook, but this can be dangerous for both horse and rider if your horse does a big one like when I broke my arm!
The more we can do to help our horses not be afraid the better so no matter how young or old they are we can desensitise them to certain things.
Now I can give you 2 examples just this week, here in the UK we have a supermarket called Sainsbury’s and at the moment their plastic carrier bags are BRIGHT ORANGE!
It was a windy weekend and one of these was caught in the bottom of one of our trees, we didn’t see it. Harley spooked twice in the same place, my daughter fell off both times bless her! It wasn’t till after the event that I walked around wondering what on earth she spooked at that I found it.
Now we cannot show our horses every possible carrier bag or item that might spook them, but we can certainly use this to make sure it doesn’t happen again.
Now horses don’t see colour like we do, so the orange actually doesn’t have that much to do with it. They have whats called Dichromatic Vision.
This means that this carrier bag was not even orange it was a grey colour, so I had to dig further into why she spooked at it, it was something that wasn’t there before for sure and perhaps it was flapping in the wind?
The second example was a piece of a cardboard box again on a windy day, blowing into her path.
So we could say ‘lets not ride in the wind’, but if you are already a nervous rider this is an easy excuse to talk yourself out of riding and keep you in your comfort zone, so let’s look at what else we can do.
I took Harley into the round pen, on her lead rope, and showed her the carrier bag. She definitely did not like it and I’m sure she thought it would eat her. So I kept showing her from a distance, holding it still. I waited until she sniffed at it / got curious about it. I still held it still.
I then ruffled it a little, she backed off, but I kept ruffling it gently until she stopped pulling away from me. She soon calmed down and then I stroked her neck with it.
I then threw it on the ground and we walked around it, she gave it a wide berth for the first couple of times until she then ignored it. I gave her lots of reassurance, I then attached it to a stick and waved it all around her, she stood and let me and so although I am sure there will be many things that could still spook her, my hope is that if ever a rouge carrier bag blows about in the wind again, we have got it covered!
See my facebook page and group to see how I did this with the cardboard in the paddock.
