Bagging It

As it sometimes happens when you are working around horses, Meredith, one of our most faithful volunteers, got hurt a few weeks ago. She was helping to move round bales of hay into one of the fields for the horses when her foot was caught between a bale and a round bale holder, fracturing a bone. As a result, she had her leg in a cast up to the knee and was on crutches, making it really difficult for her to get around. Being a determined (and I must say tough) woman, Meredith has continued to help where she can at the rescue but she hasn’t been able to do much with her horse Beau for the past few weeks, so I have been playing with him.
Meredith’s horse, Beau, has been at the rescue since he was a youngster and he is now a big guy. While he is a friendly and people oriented horse who loves attention and treats, he is not very confident and can run right over you when he is scared. I learned that lesson first hand last summer and ended up momentarily directly underneath him after he knocked me to the ground. Fortunately I wasn’t hurt and the episode gave me so insight into how to behave around a horse with Beau’s lack of confidence.
The lack of confidence in a horse can manifest itself in a lot of ways. Being prey animals, horses are instinctively focused on their own safety and when pressured their first reaction may be, “I’m outa here!” An unconfident horse may throw its head up in the air, wring or violently swish its tail, snort, show white around it eyes and generally act agitated. But it may also simply freeze up and retreat inside of itself, going to its “happy place” to escape from pressure and then, finally when the pressure gets to be unbearable, explode into action, kicking or striking out. You will often hear people referring to an unconfident horse as either crazy or unpredictable.
Since Meredith has been out of action, I decided it would be a good time to see if I could help Beau become a little more confident. Beau’s personality or Horsenality™ in Parelli Natural Horsemanship™ lingo is “right brain”. What that means is that he tends to be more fear driven than dominant and he shows both ‘introvert’ (tense, hesitant, timid) and ‘extrovert’ (high headed, bracy, over-reactive) behaviors when you work with him.
When working with an unconfident horse, one of the most important things you can do to gain his confidence is to play the Friendly Game™. The goal of the Friendly Game™ is to build trust with the horse. Being prey animals, horses are naturally skeptical because in the wild, they can end up as someone’s lunch. We humans are predators and we often act like predators even when we don’t mean to. The Friendly Game™ is a way of demonstrating non-predatory behavior to the horse. By using rhythmic, repetitive motions and approach and retreat, we can help desensitize a horse to a lot of the thing that are just naturally scary.
I’d played the Friendly Game™ before with Beau by tossing a rope across his back and touching him all over. Beau is pretty good about being touched and doesn’t tense up when petted or rubbed with your hands but he doesn’t like anything being tossed at him and he isn’t too sure about the stick and string we use as a training tool. A good way to help a horse become more confident with something scary is to keep the scary object in front of you while leading the horse. Because the scary thing is moving away and the horse is following it rather than being chased by it, natural curiosity will eventually overcome fear and the horse will begin to approach and investigate. So I decided the best way to help Beau stop worrying about the stick and string was to lead him while I repeatedly beat the ground in front of me with the string. I had Beau on a 12 foot lead line and when I started walking while striking the ground with the string, almost all 12 feet played out of my hand before Beau began to walk behind me. I just kept walking and hitting the ground, not paying any attention to Beau who was dragging along behind me. After walking for a few minutes, I began to feel some slack in the rope, as Beau came up to investigate. When he did, I stopped walking but kept beating the rope on the ground. At first, it was had for Beau to stop and stand still, but eventually, he could stand quite close to me while I slapped the ground with the string.
Over our next few sessions, I played several versions of the Friendly Game™, tossing the lead line over Beau’s head, twirling the string above my head, beating the ground with the stick and pretty soon, Beau was standing quietly no matter what I did, soft eyed and head down. Then I decided to up the ante and introduce a plastic bag into the mix.
I’m not sure what it is about plastic bags but they can send a lot of animals into frenzy. I have a cat, one of my three live-in, household predators, who is absolutely terrified of plastic bags. When he was a kitten, he got himself tangled up with the string holding a mostly deflated Mylar balloon and found himself being chased around the house by a noisy “balloon monster”. To this day the sound of a plastic bag sends him scooting from the room. With horses, the problem may be more visual than sound driven but I have found that waving a white grocery bag around can send a lot of horses running for the hills.
When I pulled the plastic back out of my pocket and tied it to the end of my training stick, Beau immediately came to attention. Throwing his head up and snorting, he retreated to the end of his 12 foot lead line and then, wild-eyed, stood facing the bag. I know a little about horse body language but I didn’t have to be an expert to read his expression. It screamed, “OMG! What in the world is that and how can I get as far away as possible?”
Ignoring Beau’s obvious plastic bag angst, I turned away from him and waving the bag in front of me, started to walk. Snorting like a freight train, Beau dragged along behind me. I kept walking until the tension on the rope slackened just a bit and then I stopped walking, dropped the bag to the ground and waited. Beau eyes were riveted on the white plastic blob and he was beathing hard but he made no attempt to pull away and after a few minutes, he relaxed enough so that his head came down and he exhaled a big sigh of relief (I’m sure at not being eaten by that horse eating bag!). I praised Beau extravagantly and then picked the bag up and started again. After about 15 minutes, Beau was able to stand quietly at a distance of 3 or 4 feet from the frightening bag and I figured that he had about all he was going to take for his first grocery bag encounter so I stuffed the bag back into my pocket and fed him a treat. Eventually, I hope to be able to rub Beau all over his body with the bag without having him tense up. It may take a few more, horse-bag encounters but given the good progress he’s already made, I am sure Beau will get there in due time.
I’m really sorry that Meredith hurt her leg, but I have been having a good time playing with Beau. Mere is now in a walking cast and I’m sure she will be back in the saddle soon. I’m hoping that Beau’s adventures in bag land will give him a leg up in becoming a happier and more confident partner for her return.