Revisiting saddling

Well, I managed to get out with Gypsy twice this long weekend, despite the fact that the weather predictions for a warm weekend were completely WRONG. What a miserable cold, windy weekend AGAIN. I'm starting to wonder if we'll ever see spring this year. Both days I worked on getting Gypsy to stand relaxed while being saddled. One of the main Parelli messages is that people rarely if ever ask permission from our horses before we do the things we do with them - including saddling. As horses progressively get worse and worse from objecting to being saddled, their owners get more and more frustrated, start tying the horses up, and ignoring their objections as "being bad". I'm as guilty as everyone else on that one.

So this weekend we started from scratch. Lots of friendly game with the savvy string and stick, followed by some driving game, circling game (she's getting really good at the driving and circling games), squeeze game and then circling/squeeze around my saddle on the ground and then we picked up the saddle pad. But instead of facing her, I started swinging it from side to side and walking away from her, asking her to follow. We did this for a while and then with my back still to her, I started swing it closer before I stopped and turned toward her. She stopped and backed up and started swinging her head around, pawing the ground, so I turned and walked away again and asked her to follow. We did this a few times until she didn't shake her head, back up or paw when I approached her with the saddle pad. Then I just stood with it under my arm until she reached out to sniff it. Then I started rubbing her neck with it, her back, her legs, her belly, etc. Then I opened it up and with my back to her right shoulder swung it to my left (in front of her head) and up on to her back, then off and to my left again and on to her back, and kept repeating for a few minutes, then left it on her back and walked away.

Then I took it off and did the same thing on her left side. Whole different story. All her life whenever there was "activity" on her left side, it meant business: I was going to ride her. So starting to work on her left was quite a bit different. She wasn't interested in standing still at all. Lots of approach and retreat with most of my "approaches" being blocked or her moving back and away from me. More retreating and walking away with me swinging the pad again. She's better when I have my back to her. I was able to eventually swing the pad up on to her back so long as my back was to her. As soon as I turned to face her, she would move away. So I just forgot about the pad and started scratching her whenever I faced her. Swinging the pad on to her back from the right side: no problem. So I swung the pad up on the right, moved over to her left and started scratching her. Then I left the pad up there and picked up the saddle. Then walked away and asked her to follow again. No issues. So I stopped and let her get closer to me, and let her sniff the saddle under my arm. Again, I was able to swing the saddle on to her back from the right side without a problem. Not so easy again with the left side. But we worked it out and eventually -- with the repetitive swinging it up and on then taking it off, she settled down. And we left it at that. Took off the saddle and let her back in the pasture.

Today I started out with playing "find the cookie" using the driving game. I tried driving her -- by making her walk slightly ahead of me with the carrot stick behind the drive line (withers/shoulder) to keep her moving forward and aimed her at places where I had strategically left some horse cookies for her to discover. I hid about 6 of them, and after some struggle getting her to the first two, she started to figure out what I was doing and was eager for me to head her toward the next one. The last one was on the trampoline which she was reluctant to get too close to, but she overcame her fear to get close enough to grab the cookie. That was really kind of cool.

Then we moved on to more friendly game with the carrot-stick/savvy string. She really has issues with any rope swinging around her (savvy string or lead rope) and I'm not sure how long it's going to take before she stops thinking it means "MOVE". Will keep at it. Again, she's better when my back is toward her while I swing the string over her neck. Better, but not great. Anyway, will have to work more at that at every session with her until she's relaxed and OK with it.

We repeated the saddling routine again today. This time I started on her left side. She still moved away at first, but I would say it took about half the time for her to stand still. Right side - no issues. And that was it for today. Didn't do any mounting yet. Will save that for another day when she stops having issues with the saddle.

I have noticed that she crowds me a lot when she gets upset about something (eg. saddling) which means she's insecure. I never really thought that about her before. I always just thought she didn't respect my space. Interesting! As I learn more and more about what her body language means, my thought processes really start to change. So now when she crowds me, lots of backing/driving her away - then "friendly game".