I worked with Baker for about 27 minutes today. I had some help today, so Baker got some extra scratches and Fiona got a nice long grooming session too! I led Baker to the tree, tied him, groomed him and flysprayed him. Once I was done with all that, I turned the clippers on. He did not seem startled or anxious at all, and since he had wanted to play with them on Monday, I let him go for it again today. And he did! He reached for them and tried to touch them and play with them and nibble on them. The whole time he did that, I was scratching his withers (his favorite spot). Up until now, when I have let him touch the clippers, I have let him touch the casing, or the part that I would normally hold on to. It's much smoother, and he is less likely to cut himself when he jerks his head around, and he still gets to feel the vibrations and hear the noise. Since he was handling all this so well, I decided to let him test out the side that actually does the clipping. He did not react any differently when he touched that part. So then, I had Katie step in to help. I had her scratch him whenever I was touching him with the clippers, but stop scratching him whenever I wasn't touching him. That freed up my other hand so that I could hold on to his halter, and keep his head steadier, in case he jerked his head around. And then, I started actually clipping his muzzle hairs. I started with just one or two at first, just to see how he would react. He jerked his head a little, but once he realized that it didn't hurt (and that the scratching would go away when he did that), he settled down and remained fairly quiet for the most part. He didn't really move his feet at all, but he did move his head around a bit, although mostly he was moving to try to play with the clippers. I would stop every 5-10 seconds and switch sides, so he never got overwhelmed. He got a little fussy when I started working on his lower lip, but settled down pretty quickly after the first bit.
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| If you look really close, you can see Baker's clean shaven muzzle! |
I was really surprised at how well he was doing with all of this! Just a few days ago he had really panicked when the clippers started clipping, but today he was more curious, and even "playing" with the clippers. You might note that I started clipping in a different area today than I had before. Usually, the muzzle is a much more sensitive area of the face. So, when I work on clipping the face, the easiest place to normally start with is under the jaw. However, just to prove a point that every horse is different, Baker had no problem with me clipping his muzzle, but definitely reacted negatively when I tried to clip under his jaw. So, for now, I will clip what he is comfortable with me clipping. And, when he is less concerned about the noisy vibrations, and the way it feels when I actually cut his hair, I will again attempt to clip under his jaw. For today, since he did so well with the muzzle, I ended the clipping portion of his session there. There was no need to push things, especially since we got a lot further today than we had. Plus, that will leave me more to clip another day. When you are desensitizing a horse to the clippers, or anything for that matter, you don't want to clip everything all at once. You want to be able to go back and clip for several days. So, once you get one section done, save the rest for the another day so that you can continue to reinforce that the clippers are nothing to worry about. When you are ready to go to a show, then you can clip everything in one day - if you have done your homework, that is ☺. Once we were done, I untied him and we did a few trot sets. He was a bit sassy at first, so I had to make him halt and move away from me a few times in the beginning. We were able to get three good trot sets. Each time, he actually did better if I did NOT say the word "trot", but rather, I just started trotting and let him read my body language. If I said the word, then he actually got too quick and boisterous. We finished with a nice halt and his head down before I took off the halter. I think this may have been our best and most successful session so far!
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