FIlly steps out in a new shoe

Filly favourite pass time

Today Filly was finally allowed out of prison. The ringworm is dead and the shoe fitted holding the hoof together. She was getting desperate to see anything green, and made it very obvious it was time to go. I decided that some in hand grazing would be a good idea as just letting her go in a field would have let her run round too madly and possibly injure the foot. The strategy is to get her calm outside again before leaving her out. I'm glad we did this. Even on a 22 foot line she was a bit of a handful to start with. I had to get quite firm to shut her down her graze sensibly. She then ate at an astonishing speed, I suspect partly due to nerves and partly due to the joy of fresh grass. After 40 minutes she had calmed right down and worried that too much grass in one go could give her colic I took her to the indoor school for a roll. It then became apparent that the bad hoof was still a bit sore, plus the unusual feel of a shoe on it. I picked the hoof out thoroughly and checked the hoof putty was still intact. There were a few small stones in her hoof, so maybe that wasn't helping either. She was putting weight on it when I left this evening.
Billy's turn next. I decided that we had to get over this stick phobia, so loads of friendly game with the stick was required. This seemed to calm him down, the best strategy to start with being leading him whilst waving the stick in front of me. To him it seems that the stick is retreating and he is chasing it. Therefore the stick cannot be a predator because they don't back away like this and so the curiosity is aroused.
Next was circling game, again. They say that you need to train a new pattern at least 7 times before it becomes established. The circles at a walk were a dream, with a nice slack rope all the way round the circle. We look for slackness in the rope as it shows the horse is bonded to us, and circling us, not just being pulled in a circle by the rope. We even managed a few very calm direction changes.
I had placed 2 cones in the field about 10 feet apart. Small objects like this really enhance the purpose in the games. For example the backing up may seem a bit pointless to Billy once he has done it a few times, but back him so that he stands between the cones and the game suddenly has a focus. We repeated this YoYo game several times and he rapidly got the idea that when standing between cones he got a rest. I hope you can see how over many increments this can lead to easier trailer loading for example.

We then played "touch it" with the cones. This consists of me driving Billy to a cone using all the driving games at my disposal, fore quarter, hind quarter, backup etc, such that he arrives standing next to a cone, and hopefully touches it with his nose. Again this is about giving purpose to the games, rather than just pushing him around an empty field he is driven to an interesting object.

Billy tortures a cone

This concept is worth a few thoughts. In nature there is always an energy balance going on, between food intake and movement output. A wise horse does not run away from a sleeping lion, it is not worth the energy expenditure to do so. That energy may be needed later to run from a hunting lion.
He will however expend energy in purposeful play, purposeful to him that is, not necessarily us. Play is what develops bonds within a herd and partially determines hierarchy.
Giving purpose to play, in this case exploration of new objects is worth energy expenditure to him so he participates willingly, and from his expression seems to have fun doing it. He certainly tortured the cones with his feet, inventing all sorts of ways of moving them around. In fact I had trouble getting him to leave them and come to me !! So the driving games now have a purpose worthy of energy expenditure.
It also elevates me a small notch up the "worthy leader" ladder. A good leader in the herd does drive them around but with a purpose. To a good source of food, water or a cone (!) for example.