Pony Updates

31/10/05

I have been doing quite a bit of work with Socks over the past few days to get him used to being around people. We put him into the pen next to the other ponies so that we could work with him on his own. This makes the work we do with them much easier as they are less inclined to run away from us when they are on their own. (As they are pack animals and completely unhandled, if the rest of their herd runs away their instinct is to follow.)

Once socks was on his own I made sure that my body movements were very slow and smooth as any fast or jerky movements can startle ponies that are unhandled. I walked around very slowly for a while letting him get used to me being there.

I try to put as little pressure on the ponies as possible. You can put pressure on an unhandled pony very easily, for example, just by focusing on them (looking at them, having your body square onto them, walking towards them in a straight line.) I try and keep my body movements very slow, walk around them in circles (This is less scary for them.) If I feel they are getting stressed or about to move away, I will either stop moving, or take a step back from them to decrease the pressure. It is very important to learn to be still around these ponies, and by still I mean completely still. At first, when any movement at all can make them jump, you need to learn to be completely aware of the slightest movement around them. Eventually when they get used to, and comfortable in your presence your movements will be less scary to them, and you can gradually increase your movements.

Anyway, there are many different ways I could have chosen to work with socks, but I am a great believer in using the method that instinctively feels right, and more importantly the method that works for the pony. Some methods can work fine with one pony but not the next so it is important to be adaptable, and willing to change and learn. I walked around very slowly just behind and to one side of socks. I felt there was no risk of being kicked by socks, but obviously this needs to be reassessed with every pony you work with. If Socks or one of his friends got scared, their natural instinct would probably be to run away, and they would be unlikely to kick out. They would probably only do this if they felt really threatened by you and felt that they needed to protect themselves.

After a minute or so, Socks would stop moving. To show him that this was good, I would either stop moving myself, or take a small step backwards, and make sure my eyes were lowered. This is a good way of helping them to realise that you mean them no harm. Then if he walked off again I would very slowly follow after him.

This carried on for a little while until eventually Socks felt he wasn’t at risk, and stayed still. I slowly worked on getting closer and closer to him by making extremely small movements towards him. For example I would move my hand two inches closer to him, and wait for a few seconds to check that he was okay with this. When he didn’t get worried or start to move away (You can tell when they get worried by looking at their ears, eyes, seeing if they shift their weight away from you at all…) I would carry on, and get a little bit closer. If I could see he was worried about something then I would wait for him to relax again before I continued. I tried to make sure that Socks was as relaxed as possible throughout the session. If he makes the association between being relaxed and being around humans, then surely that’s a good thing!

Anyway, by the end of the session, using these gentle methods, Socks was quite happy to be touched and very slowly stroked around his hindquarters, and back area. At first to get him used to having hands on him, I would just keep my hand still, but gradually as he got more used to this I introduced slow movements.

When we had finished we let socks take this all in for a bit and then slowly opened the pen… He wandered out slowly and was certainly in no rush to get away from us !