GHS Trail Park: for Proprioception and Confidence

Great Heights Stable Trail Park:

Using the course for proprioception and confidence at the same time is a game changer.

This lovely horse is a boarder who is going to participate in my education program. We started to prepare for this with some education.

Doc has a history of chronic tripping in the front end and interestingly deep seated fear that he masks extremely well. He tends to go into freeze and the only signs he’s worried are muzzle tension, popping eyeballs, holding his breath, and body brace. I’ve been doing small hoof awareness exercises and breathing techniques with him just in my daily handling of him in and around the barn which has made huge differences. But we can always build on this.

Day 1 we learned about gentle pole work, which I love.
He also was introduced to clicker training to help me not only clear up beginning communication but also help him quickly replace his deep seated fear with curiosity.

For him I taught him “touch”. Reaching towards a scary object is marked and the try is reinforced with Timothy pellets. In 10 min on the first day he figured out he could use this as a way to Show me what scared him…. It was Literally everything: mounting block, walls, signs, doors, tools, bikes, equipment.. and even the hay bales!

But the amazing thing about this process is he could show me these things and then do something about it. He had a Tool for managing his Fear. All of a sudden a horse who got tight and high headed, pop eyed and snorty was marching around and asking to stand near objects to process and explore. Game Changer!

Day 2: made sure our Tools from Day 1 were still working and then went to the arena. He marched right by several items that the day before were terrifying to him. Then he began asking me to explore the area touching objects and spending time processing near them. It was slow and completely driven by what he needed. This seemed to blow his mind.

Not long after he got interested in the obstacle course and began engaging with them on his own.

There is a lovely progression I see with the Course and horses: they’ll sniff, paw, touch one hoof, then they might stand front hooves on with back hooves quite far out behind them. The. They may go internal- I now believe from watching this over and over again that this initial internal work is almost like a Reboot: afterwards they normally come out very curious, much more balanced and hoof aware (coordinated and proprioception).

Later Internal work seems to address internal bits that are out of alignment and are usually followed by wiggling and then releases like yawning, deep eye rolls (normally an indication that something is readjusting in their hind end) and relaxation of fascia.

Doc did both of these internal type moments- the first one was followed by him happily and confidently going over the gentle bridge, the arch, teeter totter, and the bottom box (standing front feet on, all feet on, then pausing with ducky butt up!). He was very content. Nothing scared him in the arena (and mind you it was Angry Deafening Rain!!).

At the end he Parked on his favorite obstacle and began doing lots of wiggling and readjusting his hooves before shaking, yawning, eye rolling and letting out these huge deep breaths and whuffs.

It’s going to be amazing to see how he develops if this is our baseline!

Видео GHS Trail Park: for Proprioception and Confidence канала Great Heights Stable