Farrier fear help

[thistlebloom]

I love that your husband has gained that mares trust! That's wonderful.
Good news on Brownies little progress. Every little layer of trust and confidence builds on to the next layer. Good work.

 

[U B Ewe]

The horse is never to old to learn new things. It may take time to get this horse use to having it's feet handled. The horse needs to be introduced to new things, new places, new people and worked with until his fear of these things is gone.
Sending this horse to a trainer is not out of the question. It is not a question of age. Unless you do not own this horse.

 

[lalabugs]

I agree the horse is never to old to learn new things. I do not own Brownie. I own Ranger who is a 21 year old mustang. That I adopted from this rescue. I reached out to trainers with in a 2 hour distance from the rescue, for Ranger. They all told me it was pointless, they would not touch a horse at that age. I was told more than once "its a waste of your money". I am personally not going to send my horse to someone who has the mentality that it's pointless and a waste of money to send the horse to them. I am sure there are trainers I do not know of, that I did not contact. I asked all my horse friends for recommendations on trainers. I contacted them. I do not want to send the horse to just anyone. I want to make sure the person knows what they're doing.

We have not adopted Brownie. We are working with him, with the prospect that my youngest daughter will be able to work with him by herself. Right now he is her horse, but not officially adopted. If I wanted to send any of the horses to training. At my expense, the rescue would let me. I am here to help them and the horses.

 

[thistlebloom]

I think the biggest issue with sending a horse like Brownie or Ranger to a trainer is the time/results factor. With a 30 day or 60 day typical time frame and an expectation that they show X amount of progress in that time they aren't necessarily mentally geared to the incremental progress that is sometimes all you can expect from a horse that has a level of PTSD.
There is a certain amount of pressure from seeing results and getting paid for them.
Dealing with that PTSD first requires what may look like you are doing nothing with them, other than just being present with them. What you are actually doing is waiting on them to relax in their own time. A horse learns best when their mind is relaxed.

 

[lalabugs]

One huge accomplishment today. With my help we were able to halter the mare. First time haltered in YEARS!! My husband does not know horse language. Certain things she would do, he was not sure what it meant. I showed him how to catch/halter her. We will continue catching her daily, and making the time a positive experience.
I had my husband take her out to the round pen to get some energy out. My husband earning her trust was a huge factor in today's accomplishment.

Wind knots will be tomorrow's challenge after catching her.

Brownie we have started having my oldest daughter help pick his feet up. He is on alert with anyone new.

 

[thistlebloom]

Good job!

 

[lalabugs]

We have been working with brownie. He has been doing great. We have been able to pick up his back legs with no fuss again.

Unfortunately when we went out to the rescue yesterday, Brownie had been attacked by 2 dogs. He is pretty messed up. His eyes, head, sheath, back legs, and anus all were attacked. He is fearful. Took us about 20 minutes to halter him. He usually comes running to the gate waiting to be haltered.

The vet was out as soon as he could come. Brownie got antibiotics, anti-inflammatory, rabies, tetanus, eye ointment. The next 10 days before my surgery will be taking care of him. The vet did say it's not as bad as he has seen dog attacks. Thankfully the rescue heard commotion with the horses. They were able to stop the attack. It could have been much worse.

Training will be halted until he is recovered.

 

[thistlebloom]

Poor Brownie I hope his healing goes without incident.

 

[lalabugs]

We are hauling brownie down to the vet hospital today. He has been healing great, except one eye. One eye is white now. Our vet does not have a facility and said he needs to be taken to the hospital where they can put a drip system in place to keep antibiotics on his eye.
We will see what the vet hospital says when we get there.

 

[lalabugs]

Here are pictures of his eye. We have no % of prognosis. We will be treating him 4 times a day. Recheck in 2 weeks. He currently has no eye sight in his left eye.