A Beautiful Day

I declared Monday a non-working, face time day. I went to the barn and tried to just spend time with Matilda and her paddock mates, my own horse Bella and a new pony Lady. It was a beautiful day to sit under a tree and read a bit, but that proved difficult with Matilda's nose in the book. Occasionally I would get annoyed by her closeness and ask her to back up or do a little side step and she did. Once after she moved a little she was so still that I started touching her all over. I was able to pat her from her nose down her neck, back, belly and legs. I think I forgot to mention last week that I did some clicker training to get her to allow me to touch her cheeks without fussing and it worked. I did a nice massaging rub down on her and she stayed perfectly still for it. Of course, I had no carrots and that helps with this sort of thing.

Unfortunately, this was a fleeting moment. Matilda and Bella were not happy with their new friend Lady and, for the first time, I became very nervous in the paddock as they chased, bit, bucked and kicked at each other. Lady was removed from the paddock and I left shortly thereafter, grateful to have had no expectations for the day. While Matilda did not seem particularly fussy with me, that is not the kind of energy I want to work with.

Tuesday I built on the good things of the previous day. I entered the paddock without carrots and asked Matilda to come to me, which she did: YAY! I asked her to stand still and began laying my hands on her, petting and massaging (This is an actual exercise from the book: The Comfort Touching Exercise). I brought the soft brush with me and after I had finished the exercise, I started to brush her. She balked a little when I tried to brush her face, but not as much as I had anticipated and she didn't move her feet. In fact she stood beautifully through the whole thing. I was very proud.

I don't know what else to say about the day other than that Matilda was near perfect. She backed, came, stood still and moved sideways. Now, I relaxed my demands for that sideways movement for today. I didn't worry about how big the movement was or whether or not she moved forward while moving laterally, I just clicked for any kind of lateral movement when I pressed her side and said "over". She's getting more comfortable with that, on both sides, so I might give her one more day before I start trying to fine tune the movement.

We walked together a little bit and Matilda went back into her rush and cut me off mode, but I stood my ground and backed her up and out of my way. After doing this 2 or 3 times, she stopped cutting me off. She was still walking a little fast and ahead of me, but as long as I am not looking at that wall of white, I'm feeling pretty good today. Yep, this is all I'm looking at when she steps in front of me.


I should also mention that once I had the carrots with me, she did not stand still quite as well. That being said, I was able to work it until I could walk from her left side then out in front and around to the right side, a step in to lay my hand on her, then back out and around to the front without her moving.... I may need to start timing them, as the book gives me goals of 1 minute, 5 minutes and one other one I can't remember. I hope it's not 10 minutes of standing still, yikes.

After a break, I decided we should spend the rest of the time playing with the ball. We've decided to see if she can pick up the ball and toss it to me, eventually. She did pick up the ball a couple of days ago, but not by the convenient handle. I made that a possible goal for the day. Starting out by clicking for touching the ball, we worked up to picking it up in her teeth, but she was grabbing the round side, not finding the handle. I went ahead and clicked for picking it up anywhere a few times and then zoned in on the handle. It wasn't long before she touched the handle while she was rolling the ball around trying to figure out what she was supposed to do. Not long again before she was picking it up, shaking and flinging it around. We'll build on that later until she's flinging it in my direction! A very good day.