Continuation of Session One

 

Sylvia moves on to desensitize Cassie to more things that frighten her. The more you desensitize a horse to fearful objects, the more you raise a horse's fear bar and, in the end, create a more confident horse.

 

Sylvia works on desensitizing Cassie to plastic on the end of her training wand. Cassie definitely has fears there, as she snorts and dances away, but Sylvia nutures her through her fears, stopping to bond on her often.

 

 

 

 

 

Using the now-in-place lower-the-head cue, Sylvia shows Cassie the plastic and wand, but this time with a lowered (more relaxed) head to help Cassie cope with her fears. Introducing a feared object to a horse while encouraging them to drop their head to examine it, helps the horse tremendously to digest the object is not something to fear. Where the body goes (lowered head), the mind follows (more relaxed)!

 

 

 

Cassie is becoming more rational now about the plastic being rubbed all over her.

 

 

 

 

Sylvia moves on to allowing the plastic to fly around in front of Cassie. Clearly, we've flushed out an issue there as Cassie tenses up in fear.

 

 

 

With a comforting hand on Cassie, Sylvia calms Cassie down and Cassie accepts the plastic shaking about her body. A hand on the horse for support speeds learning along by sixty percent!

 

It has been a long and highly productive first training session for Cassie. She has come so far! Time to leave her on a positive! If you leave a horse on a positive at the end of a lesson, they will be far more willing to enter a next lesson up the road. Sylvia then had her husband, Daryl, come in to love all over Cassie to see how she would react to a man. She did just fine, remained soft and relaxed and enjoyed the attention. Next, we brought in Patty Muncy, the President of Roanoke Valley Horse Rescue, to spend some loving, bonding time with Cassie. This is the first time Patty has been able to touch Cassie. What a difference! See the photos below:

 

 

Patty steps in and reviews the lower-the-head cue with Cassie.

 

 

Patty lowers her stature and continues with the pressure and release to encourage Cassie to drop her head to relax.

 

 

Cassie is fully relaxed and Patty spends some TLC bonding time with her, putting a loving finale to Cassie's first training session.

 

The next morning, Cassie's demeanor remained completely changed. She happily approached the staff at RVHR for the first time since she had arrived at the center, asking for more of that new loving human attention she had experienced the day before. She remembered everything she learned. Natural horsemanship succeeds again!

 

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