Ah, it's so good to find a fellow struggler!
(I guess thats the entire point of the AD-forum
)
Yes, I'm still in doubt too on what to do. I guess I always keep his past in the back of my head, and when I started training him he was very set against working with people (well, he was a really nice pony untill you asked something from him). For example, during lunging when he would come threatening towards you and hint at rearing, or more often turn the hindquarters in and threaten with a kick. And as he's extremely sensitive when it comes to feeling pressured, he would respond like that quite a lot - even while I didn't have him on a lunge line at all and all I did was just stand there.
So when he is running around on his own, I don't want to accidentally put him under pressure by becoming energetic myself as well. (because if he's running along the fence and I move towards the fence, he actually seems to see that as if his path is getting squeezed and speeds up even more in order to fit through the gap)
And another thing is that I don't know why he runs like this: is he just happy to be out of the mud and being able to run again and does he simply like to play racehorse every now and then (because we don't do that stuff when training really, we do canter, wild play etc, but not playing racehorse)? Is it anxiety, or did the initial running itself take him over and he can't snap himsef out of this? Sometimes I do snap him out of it (I just ask him to come back to me by snapping my fingers or go and stand along the fence), but then often he remains very jumpy and on his toes. You can really feel that in his mind he's not there, and eventually he'll run off again, so I'm not sure that that's what he wants/needs either.
My mother was there by the way and she said she thought he looked very happy and smug, especially the times he came back to me, all high and mighty and then let himself get chased off again with a tiny wave - she said it looked like it was a game to him, but I don't know. I find horses who are running around on their own very hard to interpret
So nowadays I just let him run it off and then when he's done, ask him to come along and train again and then his energylevel feels normal again, although a bit tired
(and of course I feel very guilty because he's breathing hard and sometimes even threatens to sweat
).
By the way, I guess a difference between Mucki and my own mucky monster,
is that Speedy always is energetic and high strung and a tiny bit explosive (and a tiny-tiny bit scary), so we already have easy access to our wilder stuff during the regular training and I don't need to use these extremely explosive states to get access to the more energetic stuff. If Blacky would get in such a mood however, I would jump right on top of it - finally we'd get some action!!
While with Speedy (and less of with Sjors) I'd sooner think: 'yeah, hmm, you know what, calm stuff is a lot of fun too! - and let's widen the distance between us a bit, shall we, just for the fun of it?'
Because I always very aware of the safety issue: Speedy is a pony who is very hindquarters-oriented and for him running off on these days is often combined with a buck and a kick in whatever direction - and I don't want to be on the receiving end.
Actually, now that you describe your approach, I think that that's what I would do with Sjors in these circumstances. With him I always feel like running like that stems from anxiety and after a few laps I stop him and use exercises like Spanish walk (still energetic but controlled) to draw his mind back in, and he responds really well to that (and the foodrewards
)
But anyhoo,
that leaves me stranded in the middle of the paddock, bored out of my mind because I want to do stuff together and feel connected and not be in doubt of why the pony is doing all that crazy stuff out there on his own and already feeling guilty about it in case it's my fault.