All The Kings' Horses

I worked with Baker for 30 minutes on Friday.  He was quite sweaty, thanks to this warmer than usual weather we have been having, so I started out by giving him a bath.  He thoroughly enjoyed it, and stood very still while I hosed him down and scraped him off.  Then I moved him into a stall, and, since it was close to dinner time, I went ahead and fixed his dinner.  I wanted to work on desensitizing him to the clippers up near his poll again.  One of the best ways to desensitize a horse to something, is to combine it with food as a reward.  So, I put his grain meal in a feed pan on the ground in the stall.  I turned the clippers on and let him have a bite of food.  Then I approached his poll with the running clippers.  He was nervous and tried to get away from me and the clippers, but I held on to his halter and managed to touch the clippers to his poll.  As soon as he relaxed for just a second, I pulled the clippers away from him and allowed him to have another bite of food.  Then, I

I worked with Baker yesterday for about 38 minutes.  It was a rather uneventful session, so this blog entry will probably be brief, but those sessions are so nice.  I brought him in to the cross ties and gave him a good grooming - he has really been filthy lately!  Meanwhile, I was multi-tasking and watering down the arena at the same time.  Where he was crosstied, he could hear the sprinklers very close, but he couldn't see them.  He was a little startled at first, but very quickly settled down and ignored them.  Once he was all cleaned up and flysprayed, I worked on "pulling" his mane.  He stood so quietly for this that I was able to get almost half his mane pulled in the time I had.  He barely fidgeted, and it was mostly to move around and get someone's attention as folks were coming and going in the barn.  Once my sprinklers were done running, I had to put Baker away and finish my barn chores before lessons started, so that's as far as I got, but it was enough

I've had a busy week and weekend, so this was the first chance I've had to sit down and write about my last session with Baker.  I worked with him last Wednesday for about 47 minutes.  We started in the cross ties with a nice long grooming session.  He was pretty filthy, so I had to spend a bit more time brushing him - he had no complaints though 😂.  He has gotten so patient with tying that, yesterday when the vet was out for fall vaccines, I was out of places to put horses for a few minutes, and had to tie him at the tree where the wash pit is.  He stood there so patiently, watching everything that was going on and just waiting for it to be his turn. Anyway, back to last week.  Once I had him all cleaned up, we moved into a stall and I cross tied him in there.  It has been quite a while since I worked with him with the clippers, but we had started to make some progress the last time.  He had gotten very comfortable with the clippers on his muzzle, and I was slowly working o

On Friday, we had quite a rainstorm here at the barn during lesson time, so several of the students were unable to ride.  However, to make the best of a bad situation, two of the girls asked if they could learn to work with Baker.  Baker has been a good sport in the past when the girls have wanted to help, and it's a great learning opportunity for them to see some of the things that a young horse needs to learn.  Sometimes we take for granted all the things that most adult horses know, but when you see the process it takes to teach those things to a young horse, it can be eye opening. We started by bringing him in to the cross ties to practice standing.  To sweeten the deal, for all parties involved, the girls got to give Baker a good, solid grooming, including picking his feet.  He stood very quietly for all the brushing.  He was a little fussy and stubborn about his feet, so they did need some assistance with that, but not much. Once he was all clean and shiny and happy