Baker training session 24 - clippers!

I worked with Baker for about 33 minutes today.  Megan was here to help me, so we were able to get a lot done with him.  We started by haltering and leading him to the tree.  Megan helped by tapping him with the whip whenever I asked him to walk forward.  He was walking much better by my side, with a lot less effort.  He did stop often, and have to be reminded often, but it did not take much of a cue to get him restarted.  Once we got to the tree, I tied him, flysprayed him, groomed him and picked up his feet.  He was fabulous for all of this!  For the next step, I untied him, and went back to just running the lunge line through the ring.  Megan held the tail end, while I turned on the clippers. Baker did not jump, and in fact, he reached out to touch the clippers.  He is very curious!  Most horses will startle at the sound of the clippers, and startle again when they touch the clippers or when the clippers touch them.  When he reached out to touch the clippers, he did not jump at that either.  So, I decided to try to clip a little of his beard, or the hairs growing under his chin.  Once he felt the clippers actually cutting the hairs (it can feel ticklish or feel like the hair is being pulled on), then he did startle and pulled back on the rope.  Megan kept a firm hold on the rope, while I encouraged him to step forward by tapping him on the behind.  You have to take care when doing that, because some horses will react by kicking out.  Every time he stepped forward, I would stop tapping, Megan would relax, we would say "good boy!" and start scratching him.  Then I would touch the clippers to the underside of his jaw again.  This was repeated several times before he stopped pulling back.  And then we kept on until he was visibly relaxing - licking and chewing.  We stopped there with the clippers for today, but we will definitely be working on that again.  Eventually, he will start to see that the clippers don't hurt, especially if we combine them with lots of scratching!  To finish out our session, we untied him and led him back towards Fiona, where we worked on trotting in hand.  He was a little riled up from the work with the clippers, so it took some time before he was listening properly.  I had to make him stop and back up several times, and push him away from me several times, when he would get too close and pushy trying to get back to the security of his mom.  Once we got three good trot sets, which took very little encouragement from the whip, I led him back to Fiona to take his halter off.  He willingly put his head down - even before I was ready, so I had to pull him back up a few times.  Once I was ready, I asked him to put his head down, removed the halter, and he calmly walked to mom to have a drink.  This was a tough day for him, but pretty average for most horses who have never experienced clippers before.  Each day should get a little easier.