Horse sitting :: part 2
Nearly every evening for a couple of weeks, my husband and I went down to the paddock and simply … sat. Now that may not sound very inspiring, I admit. But the change in this abused horse's behavior was.
Initially, the horse stayed as far away from us as possible. Each time we entered the paddock, she would very proactively turn her back to us until all we could see were those speckled, branded hindquarters. Her message was a clear, “I can’t stop you from coming in here, and you can’t make me look at you or have anything to do with you.” Then after a couple of days, when the horse realized that we were merely going to sit and not try to approach her, her natural curiosity began to get the best of her.
Initially, it appeared as a surreptitious, sideways look in our direction. The horse didn’t seem to want us to know that she was even mildly curious about us. I swear I’d catch her looking at me, and then she’d look away! Then a few days later, she was facing in our direction from a safe distance in the paddock. We made a point of keeping our eyes down during most of these encounters, not looking directly at her. Most of the time, we turned our backs to her. This created even further curiosity.
Over time, the distance at which the little horse stood from us decreased, until she was standing just a few feet away. While I had my back turned to her, I could often see the horse’s shadow lengthen on the ground beside me as the sun began to drop. I could feel the horse behind me, sense her inquisitiveness, her desire to learn more about this sitter in her paddock. Pretty soon, she was standing only a few feet away with one hip cocked, resting a hind leg.
The horse didn’t become brave enough to nuzzle or touch us. And, frankly, Teyla may never be that friendly, or if she is, it will be years in the making, given her history. We didn’t want to make food part of the equation, so we didn’t tempt her with food. We wanted her to be curious about us, not the delicious sweet feed in the palm of a hand.
Eventually, I put a halter on her. This involved some slow chasing around the paddock, during which she gave me the dreaded Teyla hindquarter treatment, aiming those hindquarters straight at me, but I persevered. When I chased her a little to keep her feet moving, I was careful not to be too aggressive. My demeanor was just very dogged and very matter of fact. When her feet stopped moving, I stopped pursuing. Pretty soon she realized that if she stood still, she got to rest. I was eventually able to approach her at the shoulder and put the lead rope around her neck then slip the halter over her nose. She still stiffened her body and averted her eyes from me during this process, refusing to look at me in such close proximity, even though I spoke kindly to her. But the fact that she’d begun to realize that I wasn’t going to do anything bad to her was great progress for a horse with her background.
And we began just by sitting?
Yes!
Simple. Elegant. A solution towards creating curiosity and confidence. It’s also a good step in becoming friends with a horse.
One afternoon later, I took Teyla to the round pen. What happened there was pretty interesting.
Flickr Photo Credits: quicklykissme; josh; betweenyesandno;egocrash
Sources: Horse Bliss;
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