Gia sessions 1222-1233 - the grooms are grooming!

From Danielle: Gia’s Blog February 24th - March 20th

Well, clearly, I got a bit behind in writing Gia’s blog for the past few weeks. To say it has been a bit busy around here is an understatement! Heather was in the hospital for surgery and I was trying to keep things afloat, we got in a new (super cute) horse for training, and we even had a brand-new addition to the Castle Farm family born on St. Patrick’s Day. With Heather being out of commission, I have slowed my goals for Gia. Prior to Heather’s injury, I felt a need to get Gia back and ready to ride. However, since Heather will be out of the saddle for a while and I haven’t been able to clone myself, riding is still a while off. I decided to really focus on letting the grooms work with Gia WITHOUT me supervising. There have been ups and downs, but overall, I think everyone is feeling more confident and comfortable. (Both horse and humans) Soon, I will reintroduce the saddling process with Gia, but thanks to everyone’s hard work, I don’t think it will be too bad! For this post, Mariana has shared a few days notes with us. I find it so interesting to see how others are learning and growing as horse people thanks to Gia.

From Mariana:

On Monday, I was told to groom Gia……on my own……..without supervision. Well supervision from a distance. I had mixed feelings about this just because I wasn’t sure if I’d do something wrong or if something would go wrong. I just thought about what Danielle told me and pulled through. I started by taking off Gias fly sheet. I let my hand go from her neck to the belly strap to let her know I’m going to take it off. She immediately picked up that left hind, and I sternly told her to “put it down”. She did. Until I moved to the second strap, where she lifted it up for a good couple of seconds. I told her to “put it down,” and that unfortunately didn’t work, so I had to tap her with the whip, and she put it down. After that, I was able to unstrap her completely without any other tantrums. Once the fly sheet was off, it was time to curry her. I showed her the brush, and once I immediately put it on her neck, she started pawing. She’s done this before when I used to groom her, but this was a full-on tantrum. Pawing, lifting the hind leg, and wanting to bite me. I stayed brushing that spot until she calmed down and gave me a sign of relief. Once she did, I moved on. She did this a couple of times when I moved into her chest, and most of her belly. Every time, I stayed on that spot until she stopped and praised her afterwards every time. She really only fought with the curry after that; the hard brush and soft brush were better. Once I was done, I put her fly sheet back on, and she lifted her hind leg again, but only once, and with the command, she put that leg down. We ended with that, and it made me feel a bit upset that she threw a bunch of those tantrums with almost every leg off the ground. It made me feel as if I threw away all of Danielle’s hard work, but the next day gave me more hope for Gia's journey.

The next day, on Tuesday, which is my regular grooming day, was interesting. I did the same things I literally did on Monday. When I brought in Gia, I started by taking off her fly sheet. The same thing happened when I went for the first strap; she lifted that left hind, which I commanded her to put down, which she did, and never put it back up for the rest of the straps. Same thing with the curry comb, I started with her neck, and again she threw her tantrum. I stayed in that spot until she gave me a sign of relief, praised her, and moved to a different spot. After the neck, she did a way better job at keeping all her legs on the ground. Her belly is still a sensitive spot for her, but when I curried her belly, she didn’t react as badly as Monday. There’s a spot near her belly button that she loves getting scratched, and if I don’t find that exact spot, she gets upset, so to curry her whole underside without her lashing out this day showed me more on how her training is taking to affect. After the curry, she did very well with the hard and soft brushes. She got lots of “good Gias” and “good girls” for the rest of the groom. Once I finished, I put her fly sheet back on. While I was putting it back on, she did something different with her left hind. I saw her shift her weight to the right and cocked that left leg with no intention of actually striking with it. Maybe she wanted to, but it never left the ground. She stood still the entire time. She let me finish strapping it on, and as I backed up and praised her, I walked away for a few minutes just to come back and see her still in that relaxed position. She did much better that day I had to give her a treat. I felt much better that day, seeing how different it went. Though it’s Gia, so everything she does is surprising to me, no matter how many times I see her a week. I can’t wait to do other things with her and see better improvements from both of us.