Trouble afoot

Ok, the title is a bad pun as you will soon see !!
Ritchie and I went to the yard yesterday at around 3pm. My intention was to play with Billy first prior to the sun getting too low. (see the post on Sun Angle ). Before going to his field however I decided to check on Filly. To say she was unhappy in her box is an understatement. She was almost alone in the barn, all but one of the other horses having been let out. The one horse left was not in line of site. Add to this she was out of hay. Look at this from her point of view. "The entire herd has deserted me and I'm now left alone in a dark cave without even the comfort of food". She was bucking and rearing round the box. I was afraid that she would kick a wall with her bad hoof and cause further injury. Fortunately Ritchie arrived and I asked her to quickly get the halter and 22 foot lead rope while I tried, unsuccessfully, to calm her. I then had to lead a young horse high on adrenaline to the field, which was fun. She was so high that my attempts to correct her behaviour barely registered on her left brain, immediate phase 4 pressure was all that got through.
Bear in mind that it is permissible to mimic their energy levels to get a response, so if she is at phase 4 already in her pressure on me then going straight to phase 4 on my part does not break any of my principles. Messing about at phase 1 would have been a dangerous waste of time.
In the field she started eating manically. The mouthfuls were taken very very quickly. This is a definite sign that an explosion is imminent and she is still on adrenaline. Sure enough the fun began pretty soon. I started by putting a fence to my back to prevent her from being able to do continuous circles as she bucked, reared and.... what do you call all four feet of the ground at the same time (a bronc ?). Every half circle she has to stop. This allows for a brief low energy moment where I can influence her behaviour as the left brain kicks in to say "stop, fence in the way". Whilst she is briefly LB I could try to shut down the reversion to RB by giving her something to do, such as hind quarter yield, back up, anything to force her to think. Note I pick the "slow down" yields.
Once she was a bit calmer and could listen to me we needed some movement to use up the stale adrenalin so I swittched to travelling circles. These are normal 22 foot circles at trot, but with me walking. I noted that she wanted to do small circles around me not use the full 22 feet of rope available. This meant that she was seeing me as a place of safety and comfort rather than trying to leave which was gratyfying. Travelling circles forces the LB to kick in as she has to deal with a moving target, maintain gait and direction. To add to the intellectual challenge I then did some direction changes on the circle, which also caused her to slow down, then falling leaf pattern, which is a direction change every half circle whilst I walk towards her. This has the effect of enhancing my dominance as I continuously move into her space and the repeated direction changes cause her to slow down. I continued this until it was clear that stopping was her idea and hey presto we had a calm Filly again.
If you look at the principle I employed it was to increasingly engage the LB by making the movement more and more challening to her intelectually, thereby putting her in the frame of mind to think rather than just react.
Once she was grazing I had a chance to give her a good look over and found that the hoof putty had been dislodged from her injury, and a small amount of blood was seeping out.
Ritchies timing was immaculate as she reappeared at that moment. She was given a calm horse to graze whilst I leapt in my car and dashed to the tack shop to get some more putty before it shut. We took her up to the yard to apply the putty, giving her a hay net to chew on. Again she was very very patient whilst I sorted the putty out. The previous lot had gone hard and almost fell out as I pulled on it. Never having applied the stuff before, which prefers to stick to the hand rather than the hoof it took me some time. She only asked for her hoof back to move a bit and get more comfortable, and she always gave it back immediately. I would like to think she knew I was trying to help her, but that would be being anthropomorphic of me, a condition I continuously fight against !
After all this we put her back in her box as the other horses had been brought back in and I left to play with Billy.
Uneventful with him really. We continue with the desensitisation to the stick which is coming on well, introduced lateral flexion of the neck towards me, which is delightfully soft. Less than Pat Parelli's 4 ounses he uses as a bench mark for yields. In fact after the Filly incident it was a most relaxing and enjoyable session. I can't wait to get him into the school where we can use more obstacles to enhance the sense of play, and also start to work on the sideways game. We initially start the sideways games by facing the horse towards a barrier of some sort, a fence or wall, preventing them from moving forward. This makes it easier for them to work out that the aids mean sideways as the option to go forwards is removed. The only long barriers available in the field are barbed wire fences, which I don't think are appropriate to use !

For anyone trying to post comments to this blog, I think I have finally managed to fix the problems. Please do so as encouragement is always welcome, as is criticism which will make me think even more deeply about what I am doing ! If you are going to criticise please do so constructively rather than just oppose the methods I use without properly researched evidence to back those criticisms up. Neither of us learn anything that way !