Here is why it pays to know as much as you can about a horse’s ethology, cognitive abilities, and potential physical issues, both on a species level and an individual level. TLDR;/moral of the story: when something doesn’t work, ask why. Especially if everything else is working.
- Lip and his people were referred to me by their trimmer, as he was having trouble standing for trimming.
- Lip is an Appaloosa with lovely amber eyes that he sometimes holds half-closed, and they sometimes have some tearing.
- Everyone starts with stand still/face forward and targeting in order to learn the game, and the concept of targeting can be useful for foot handling later on.
- His people were doing a great job of following through on training during the week, and Lip took to R+ very, very quickly, but was struggling with targeting with the white/translucent flyswatter. We tried different ways of presenting the target, including doing so while moving forward, letting him “catch up” to the target. Moving worked the best, but still wasn’t consistent enough to be a solid skill. Something about how the inconsistency presented itself made me wonder if he was having trouble seeing the target. We switched out the white/translucent target for a green one with blue tape.
- The changing of the target made all the difference - making small changes, especially ones that take into account the horse’s sensory abilities (in this case the horse’s visible color spectrum), can make a big difference in performance.
