Update on the girls

I’m not sure if I posted this or not so I’ll just say it again in case. A few weeks ago MIL called me asking me to come over and help her with the girls. Apparently they have gotten pushy to the point of dangerous & one of them knocked her over and then the other ran over the top of her. Luckily I don’t think any hooves hit her body but it was enough to scare the shit out of her. I told her I’d come over but the weather didn’t cooperate.

This weekend we finally had “decent” weather (28 with wind gust) so I went over to help. With the horses in their stalls I showed her how to back them into the corner without leaving them an opening to bolt out of the stalls (and potentially over the top of her again).

We started with Sis. Once she was backed into the far back corner I had her change what side of the stall she was on by pointing. Basically I wanted her to keep her butt as a pivot point and just move her shoulder from one wall to the other. If she walked forward I backed her back into the corner and we repeated. She was a bit nervous (I think MIL has gotten a bit carried away with the stick) so we worked on it until she calmed down.

Once that was going well I put the halter on her and backed her in and out of the barn and her stall. After that I asked her to walk out of her stall with my hand on her jaw. If she went too fast or got in a hurry I put my hand on her nose and backed her back into the corner. She did very well so I let her go outside and we cleaned her stall while Cat threw a fit.

Once we were done with Sis’s stall we moved on to Cat. I back her into the corner just like I did Sis and then asked her to move her shoulder from wall to wall. We’ve worked on this at home before so she knew what to do and did it very well. When she moved back to the left side (my left side her right side) of the stall she was over shooting her left hip and was tipping it towards me so I asked her to yield her HQ back into the wall. This is where the fun began!

When I put pressure on Cat’s hip she immediately pushed forward into me so I asked her to back up. Her front feet immediately left the ground and she went into a full & very high rear trying to get away from the pressure. Needless to say she not only went up but came forward towards me since I didn’t remove the pressure. Needless to say that stick can make a nice impact on the jaw.

Once she came back down I kept the pressure on until she was back in the corner where she was supposed to be. Once there I released the pressure and let her soak in what happened. This happened several time. What I noticed was when I went for the left hip she pushed into me and this was where the “rear” started so I took her outside and did some LFR stage I and really got after that hip (didn’t need to get after the right hip).

Then we moved into the barn and did the sending exercise in the alley (showing MIL she didn’t have to go outside). We had fun playing “tag” with her left hip. My stick was able to tag her quiet a few times. EVERY time she came forward into my space and every time I backed her back out of it. Finally lefty started getting the point so we moved back to the stall. Things went a lot smother then.

I showed MIL how *I* would let her out of the stall if she was in a hurry and told her to make sure she does what she can to make coming out of the stall not so fun on the days she has time.

She did call me to tell me that she’s let the girls out several times and they have been good as gold since Sat. Hopefully they continue to be good and MIL continues to stay on top of their pushy behavior. MIL has learned that she relies on the stick too much and she also clucks too much! I need to duck tape her mouth and wean her off of the stick.