19. July 2010 by admin.

Tony and I had a wonderful meeting with members from WSPA, The Donkey Sanctuary, WHW, Guide Dogs, and The Brooke yesterday. The meeting was held at the Donkey Sanctuary and organised by someone from WSPA as a brain storming/sharing session to discuss ways in which to help working equines around the world. It was lovely to be invited to be a part of the group and it was great that Tony was able to come with me. We invited friends down to our house for supper and Daisy cooked an excellent teriyaki salmon dish with roasted red peppers and a heavenly asparagus salad. This, I could get used to!

The clinic has gone really well and our liveries are also being total stars. The mare that had the issue with the poles has learnt that they won’t actually bite her and has also been ridden around the farm. She hasn’t been doing any ground work on the clinic as we don’t want to run the risk of her being spooked if another horse bangs a pole in close proximity but she has thoroughly enjoyed all the body work. The race horses have had front shoes on and a McTimoney treatment too so are almost ready to return to the racing yard and the three year old has come into season which has made it quite interesting working her in hand!

I have a family wedding to go to tomorrow so must go home and find something to wear but time seems to be running out. Getting up at 5.15am to walk dogs, bring in horses etc still hasn’t given me enough hours in the day and sleep is looking like a far better option than trawling through my cupboards. It will be fun though and nice to spend time with Tony and our daughters; and a real bonus to finish the day clean and not covered in hair.

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19. July 2010 by admin.

It really is non stop at the moment and I confess to flagging slightly. It has been a long day on the yard as I have been mucking out, working horses with Tina, feeding, tidying up, stone picking and getting stables ready for the visiting horses who all arrived this afternoon. Emily is home for a couple of days and Daisy arrived home yesterday so I will take tomorrow morning off as Tina will be teaching and Mags and Shelley will be on the yard to greet everyone and help on the clinic. We also have two work experience girls in but one has been with us on a previous placement so there will be plenty of people around to feed etc.

I think I shall walk the dogs now and then partake of the Pimms that has just been made by one of the participants on the clinic. I shall then go home to bring in the donkeys (I took the girls home last night) before falling into bed.

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19. July 2010 by admin.

The race horses’ owners have been to visit and are thrilled with the changes in their horses. They can’t believe they have only been with us a week and want them to stay for longer. I am loving having four extra horses in and with a week long clinic starting next Monday we will be packed so I shall take my female donkeys home to free up some stable space. The new young horse is a poppet but was very braced through the neck when she arrived on Monday. She can tip out of balance and walk through people very easily but this is a common pattern with youngsters. Too many people label them as dominant but when you watch them on the move you can see that the weight falls through their nearside shoulder and near fore making them lean towards the handler. Whilst horses are naturally more one sided, as are we, this is exacerbated by our handling of them since we are so conditioned to leading them from the near side.

As with most youngsters she really finds it hard to turn to the right due to this pattern of bracing that has been set up from an early age. When lunged on the right with a bit in her mouth she apparently took off which doesn’t surprise me in the slightest. In my opinion she isn’t ready to be lunged - she cannot maintain her balance in a straight line, let alone on a circle. Her owner is lovely and has asked us to work with her for a month so that we can teach her some coordination and self control and we will put her through the clinic next week as I think she will benefit from working in the company of other horses once she has learnt some of the basic leading exercises.

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19. July 2010 by admin.

I have been back in England for a few days now but have not had time to even think about jet lag. I arrived home last Wednesday and went to the farm on Thursday to catch up. Our little mare that was in for starting is now backed. She is still unsure about poles but I have every faith that we will get there in the end. We also have two lovely race horses in for two weeks before they go back into training and another mare due in tomorrow. I have been doing dog demonstrations at a county fair in Essex over the weekend and also managed to get in some gardening at my mother’s cottage in Suffolk so my feet have barely touched the ground since I returned.

Our daughter Daisy has elected to stay on in the US for a further few weeks which is actually great as Tony, Jon and I have secretly decorated and redesigned my old office so that she can move into a bigger bedroom. We will now have more time to get further along with the project before she comes home. The room (actually it’s two small rooms joined together) is a funny shape so I suggested putting in a stair case up to part of the attic which will be a dressing area and it is looking totally amazing. There is a lot to be said for having a male best friend (Jon) who is a very talented builder, joiner, plasterer, etc. The guy can build a whole house including electrics and plumbing (which I think is pretty cool) so Daisy’s new room is a piece of cake.

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19. July 2010 by admin.

I am back in Connecticut after a wonderful, wonderful week. We spent the last day of the clinic working with the horses and watching Robyn give a demonstration on how to start handling a very young filly foal. She was only a few months old and Robyn showed the group how to put on and use a simple body rope made from the catch ropes that we use. This is an easy way to help teach a foal to lead without applying any pressure on their head. It also helps to balance the foal through the body and in fact can be used on any horse. This technique was used on Knick Knack and it enables the handler to show a horse how to organise his body more effectively without hanging on to his head and I can tell you from experience it is brilliant for teaching donkeys how to be calm for the farrier.

  We were fortunate to have Lili on the course who is a bare foot trimmer. Knick Knack was brought into the feeding area and whilst he munched happily on grass in a raised bowl, Lili, Mandy and Robyn continued with the trimming work and the result was pretty outstanding. The four year olds were led out to pasture where they will be turned away for a few weeks to process all the information they have learnt. Six days before they had to be herded in and out of the corral and watching them lead quietly out in a string to new grazing was a wonderful sight. I find this work as exciting and inspiring as I did when I first started learning this unique technique in the Bitterroot Mountains over sixteen years ago, and I wonder what on earth I would be doing with my life if I hadn’t met Linda Tellington Jones and her sister, my dear friend Robyn Hood. I love all the connections that this work brings. I have so enjoyed meeting up with my old friends and making new ones too. Louise - I hope you enjoy this blog - it was a pleasure to meet you and I am so glad that you have discovered Horse Hero through Linda’s website. This is what it is all about. Sharing, learning, growing, helping horses and having fun.

It was really sad saying goodbye to Mel and all the wonderful people that I met. I don’t know when I will see them again aside from Barbara and Robyn as they will be in England in the autumn. I may just have to go back to Bitterroot next year. I had to leave before the final group supper as my flight was early this morning and Barbara and I headed down to Jackson to dine once more in what is now one of our favourite restaurants. We got to bed around 1.00am and were up at 4.00am. I flew out of Jackson on the first morning flight and slept all the way to New York.

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19. July 2010 by admin.

The horses have been walking through the labyrinth and over raised poles during the past few days and they have also learnt to walk between two bales of straw and over wood. The youngsters need to feel confident about walking on wood as they will have to walk over a large wooden bridge that crosses a fast flowing river when they move closer to the ranch house where the five year old horses are worked. They will need to come into the corral in front of the main building to have their feet trimmed and will also be brought into this area when they are part of the trail riding group when older so it is a highly necessary part of their education. We actually teach all horses to walk over a variety of surfaces as I have written before. It helps to reduce spooking and also gives confidence to horses that are worried about travelling in a horse box or trailer and the key is to keep it simple so that they can learn in easy stages. They have to become used to the noise, and the feeling of walking over different surfaces.

There is also the visual stimulus to consider as well. It is accepted that humans have four working memory ’slots’ although it was originally thought to be seven. Working memory is a more active version of short term memory and scientists now believe the same is true of the horse. Once new steps in any exercise are successfully processed and pieced together that sequence can take up one slot, regardless of how many pieces there are in that sequence, enabling the horse to take on board more information provided they aren’t overloaded. If they are given too much information the brain becomes flooded as there aren’t enough empty ’slots’ and the horse either shuts down or panics. He certainly won’t remember every piece of the exercises the following day or develop in confidence so again the key is to work slowly with each step. This will actually save time in the long run as the exercise becomes truly embedded.

Once the horses were happy to walk between bales of straw we asked participants to stand on the bales and progressed to teaching the horses to walk next to raised wands and/or pool noodles and then under them. The sliding saddle pad exercise was also taught to the four year olds and all the horses were driven with chest lines. There are several steps to this process starting with someone walking up behind the horse and saying whoah and offering the horse some grass or hay. We start by walking up slowly and calmly, then progress to walking up a little more quickly and even slowly running up behind the horse. This naturally needs to be done from both sides and the handlers can give a signal to stop in the beginning so that the horse learns to quietly halt and turn his head if he sees or hears anyone approaching him from behind.

As well as being an excellent exercise for the horse in terms of teaching him to listen to a signal behind him as opposed to up by his head, it also helps him to overcome concerns of movement behind and can be extremely useful if he ever escapes from his stable or field without a head collar. It is also a great exercise to teach horses that walk off when you want to catch them from the field.

The group are tired but thoroughly enjoyed the trail ride yesterday afternoon. It is a tradition to take one afternoon off to ride up into the mountains and the views are truly outstanding. Robyn, Mandy, Barbara and I stayed behind to work with the five year old horses under saddle and continue with helping a young horse named Knick Knack who has real issues about having his feet trimmed. He is so unbalanced that he has found it really hard to stand on three legs and after a two hour unsuccessful stint with the farrier he was left untrimmed for many months. His hooves are really flared and he has a large crack on the left fore and Mel is desperately concerned.

Using the clicker, the wand and some body work Mandy and Robyn have been able to teach Knick Knack to pick up each foot without panicking and to circle each leg in preparation for him having his feet trimmed. Working in short sessions on and off for the last five days has certainly paid off. This afternoon Knick Knack fell asleep in the corral whilst we were working with the five year old horses. He was in such a relaxed state that Robyn and Mandy were able to continue with their work whilst he was lying down! Mandy was even able to start trimming his hooves with the nippers and all the time Knick Knack snoozed away.

This is obviously potentially a very dangerous situation to put yourself in but as Knick Knack had grown in confidence throughout the week and certainly trusted Mandy and Robyn he remained totally calm

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