Back to the old Skittles

I worked with Skittles yesterday. It's been a while since I've done much with her and what I've learned is that she's the kind of horse who will forget everything you've accomplished unless you work with her regularly.

Rather than calling the horses up to the paddocks and then catching Skittles after she's come up, I decided to see how easy she would be to catch in the pasture. When she's up in the paddock, she's often one of the first to come and say hello. In the back of the pasture though, it's completely different. I think in her eyes I've grown fangs and horns or something when I walk to the back of the pasture. It took some convincing to get her to come to me (lots of approach and retreat). But I did, and eventually I got the halter on her. So I started to lead her back to the paddock. Soon the other horses started to follow (as expected) and then as we got around the trees, they all started to gallop past me (as expected). Skittles, being Skittles, jumped forward as well, reached the end of the lead line, panicked and pulled away from me (gave me a bit of rope burn in the process), then took off across the remainder of the pasture and then into the next bluff of trees trying to get away from the 12' line following after her.

She eventually charged into the paddock with the rest of the herd and galloped around the paddock as well trying to escape the lead line that magically kept pace with her. As the rest of the herd slowed and stopped, she eventually did as well, but stood there absolutely quivering. Poor girl! She let me approach and the look on her face was quite comical. She looked like she wanted to approach me, but every time she'd move her head, the line would move and startle her. The look on her face seemed to say, "You gotta help me! Every time I move, this rope keeps chasing me! Yikes! See?! There it goes again!"

So guess what we did for the next hour (give or take)? Yup: Friendly game with the rope. And it took that entire hour (+/-) to get her to relax. By the end of the session I was swinging the rope on either side of her, over her back, around her legs and over her head. And I started using the rope around her front and back legs to try to get her to give to the pressure and lead her by each foot. She did fantastic with that! Hopefully we'll be able to move past the rope today.

No photos of the rope chasing Skittles. I didn't have my camera with me. Today's pic is just a headshot of her from my "library".