Little Victories

[AngC]

We've had Coco since Jul 2011. To date, I've never been able to walk up and halter her in the pasture. She's pretty good with a lot of other training, but she refused to calmly allow the halter unless she was in the stall. I taught her the command of "INSIDE" and then she would go into one corner of the stall and be calm about haltering.

Today I was serving dewormer all around. As a treat, afterwards, the two girls were going to get to go on halter to eat some grass, so the husband was standing by. I was trying to get Coco to go INSIDE, and she wouldn't To make a long story short, I slipped the lead around her neck and popped the halter on her. I have no idea why today was any different.

Four stinking years. I don't think I can convey how happy that made me!

 

[Rocklone Miniature Horses]

That's awesome

 

[Marsha Cassada]

Hurray for Coco! Little victories keep us going.

 

[candycar]

Great job! Maybe there's hope for my CoCo Puff the little mini mule. 4 years I've had her and still have to corner her in a stall to touch her, or halter her. We do it the same way as you! Say "in the stall CoCo" - play ring-around-the-rosey a couple of laps, slip lead around the neck, then put the halter on. If I could only pet her when she's "free" or give her treats out of my hand. I would be over the moon!

 

[BSharpRanch]

I have a mare that was really skittish and would try to jump out of her pen when approached. I spent a year coaxing with treats, lots of brushing and hand grazing. She got better but just barely. Then I started her driving training and all of a sudden she was meeting me at the gate, ears up and almost putting her own halter on by herself! She LOVES her job!

 

[AngC]

... Maybe there's hope for my CoCo Puff the little mini mule. 4 years I've had her and still have to corner her in a stall to touch her, or halter her. We do it the same way as you! Say "in the stall CoCo" - play ring-around-the-rosey a couple of laps, slip lead around the neck, then put the halter on. If I could only pet her when she's "free" or give her treats out of my hand. ...

There's always hope. You just have to keep trying different things. My initial mistake was chasing her around, as some recommend. She goes faster than I do. ...and I think that was a real set-back for us, especially because I was trying to chase her around 3 acres of pasture. Another setback was that I didn't realize, at first, how afraid she was; to the point of trembling; I don't know who did what to her. We did make progress on some things. For example, when the farrier visits, she'll lift her hooves before he even touches her leg. We just had a disconnect with the halter. Treats from hand? ...piece of cake. She's actually the most gentle about taking one out of our hand. She just didn't want to be haltered. And I was reluctant to push her too hard, because I think her independence could be an asset and didn't want to "knock" it out of her. Three years later and Coco still bosses/protects Baby. .And if we ever had a pack of coyotes get serious, I could envision Coco thwacking the heck out of them.

I've since repeated the haltering twice more, so we got over some kind of hump there. I just don't quite know how it happened. I had made a concerted effort to try to get her to associate the haltering with something pleasant. In the earlier days, I had tried treating immediately. It just didn't work. It was when we first started haltering and then taking her out for a walk with a green grass nibble, followed by coming in and getting a little reward, that it first started to work better. So I guess my secret is that I bribed her. She still doesn't like to be touched. She tolerates it.

 

[lucky seven]

After 5 years, Seven just tolerates being touched as well. I guess some are just more aloof than others. Either that or they figured out that bribery works in their favor.