The Art of Natural Dressage

Working with the Horse's Initiative
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 Post subject: Please help!
PostPosted: Mon Jun 15, 2015 6:24 pm 

Joined: Mon Jun 15, 2015 4:10 pm
Posts: 2
Hello! My name is Mia and I have a white cute pony named Temtation.

My problem is that I have been doing already over half a year only fun, interesting exercises and playing with him in the arena but he still very often doesnt want to leave his horsefriends and grass to go with me to the stables :sad:

Our trainings are really simple and short. I have been doing a lot of bonding too and i can see that he likes playing with me. So I dont understand why. Why he still chooses his horsefirend even if he knows that we are in the arena very short time and he is always going back to the pasture? And my another question is how am I supposed to react when he comes to me in the pasture, takes the garrot and walks away?

Sometimes when I but the halter on, he walks two meters with me and then gallops away. Should I make him to come to the stabels using harsh methods? Or should I accept his desision and just walk away? I have actually tried both of them and they both didnt help. When I started to MAKE him to go to the stable then he didnt anymore let me near him. And when I accepted his answer, then, yes, after 5 days he would come but the whole situation didnt get any better even with the time. And i have also tried rewarding every step he made with voice and carrot but then he walks to the end of the pasture with me and when he realises that he has to come out and cant beg any treat out of me, then he just walks away again. The whole situation only gets easier when there is almost no grass in the pasture left or another horse comes with us.

I think that Im just not good enought as a leader to him and not enought interesting. I think that sadly Im just not better than the grass and other horses. But i really want to be! I want to be his good friend, who he can trust. :yes: And I try sooo hard but nothing seems to work. I simply doesnt know how :sad:

(Im really sorry for my english! This is not my motherlanguage. I hope you guys understand! :smile: )


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 Post subject: Re: Please help!
PostPosted: Mon Jun 15, 2015 7:09 pm 
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Joined: Fri Aug 31, 2007 8:20 am
Posts: 6281
Location: Dresden, Germany
Hey Mia, welcome! :f:

You might want to check out the last three topics in the "Where to start" section of the Links to threads. They are discussions of how to be useful to your horse and create interactions that make sense from his perspective. For me and the horses I have worked with, this has been the most important theme in fostering their motivation - for us, no foodrewards could do that. And it's great fun for the human too, because it can shift your mindset towards perceiving your interactions from the horse's perspecive.

But first and foremost, I think it requires finding out what it is that makes sense to your horse - and this process of disovering in itself can be very rewarding, because if you have that ability to perceive it, you become someone who does not merely get horses to do something but to WANT something. This can result in a shared sense of agency, with both partners feeling that it's them who are acting in complete accordance with their preferences, being in control of the situation.

A very simple example of doing something that makes sense from a horse's perspective is the grazing game that I have described here - and here is a post by Miriam about Making sense of exercises.

Good luck to you two! :)


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 Post subject: Re: Please help!
PostPosted: Wed Jun 17, 2015 8:18 am 

Joined: Mon Jun 15, 2015 4:10 pm
Posts: 2
Thank you so much for aswering, Romy! :smile: I will read them all!

And actually it is one of my dreams to get my horse to WANT to do something! I really want us to be a team! :sun:

Thank you again for aswering and I will try my best!


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