Lessons learnt from Ruby Rose

I am so grateful Ruby Rose came into my life. But there was a time when I so wished our paths hadn’t crossed. A client came to select four mares for her breeding program. Ruby Rose was one of these. She was an eight year old Appaloosa that had spent all of her life running with a mob of 20 to 30 brood mares. She was unhandled. Part of the contract of sale was to have the mares float trained so that they could be floated rather than free trucked. Like my dad says,” If there are 4 screws to be removed from a piece of timber, then one of them is likely to prove difficult.” My float training seemed to parallel the same story. Three mares were a trainer’s dream to work with. Ruby not so. But as I began to think about it, I accepted full responsibility for my total lack of progress. I should have thought of the old saying “Same, same, Different”.  While Ruby was a horse the same as other horses, her experiences, her herd status, her limited interaction with humans and a million other things made her different and she needed to be respected and honoured for those differences. After all they are the things that made her who see was. Once I recognized this, I thought of Ruby as my teacher, she showed me what she both needed and accepted. I began to listen to my horse and I changed the way I did things in response to what she would accept and sometimes tolerate from me. One of the big steps was getting the halter on. Toss out the idea of round penning and asking her to turn and face, that was a disaster. First step was to get her to accept me being in the yard without her snorting and blowing. As the weeks passed routine feeding and cleaning her pen without any attempt to catch her led to a level of trust developing, and the critical distance of my approach and retreat became less and less until we went to ‘first touch. A milestone had been reached but I was a long way from float loading and the weeks were passing. I was determined not to rush the horse for her long term sake. As I told my client, I can get the horse onto the float but once you unload her at home, you may never get her on again. This is something I wanted to avoid, and the owner fully supported this approach. So the relationship building continued.

Ruby is right eye dominant so she preferred me on that side. This created a small dilemma with respect to putting the halter on. Most halters are done up on the left or nearside so I ordered a right hand rope halter and began my halter training. I worked the right side until she developed trust in me approaching and putting the halter on. While this was progress, I had to be mindful not to apply too much pressure or Ruby would cross the line and go into freeze mode or run away if I moved too quickly. I could see her tense or hold her breath. Haltering was a challenge for her. At times I would step back while she was haltered and ask if it was ok to move down her left side, with some reticence we made small moves until she trusted me enough so that I could halter her either side. It took time but now she is ambidextrous.

We began leading lessons. We strengthened the walk forward and stops in a small yard but quickly advanced to a much larger area. An area that she knew well.

Ruby was not a horse to be driven. Often people working with unhandled horses find the horse difficult to send past their shoulder. The horse keeps facing up to the trainer wanting to keep them in both eyes, or sometimes in the dominant eye. This was Ruby. When pressure was applied to move forward, she would either charge off and go to flight mode or she would keep facing up. Something had to change. At this point education came to the rescue. I had done a clinic with Mark Langley and he talked about developing a good lead and then standing still and asking the horse to take a step past you. I tried it and as the Ruby’s confidence grew, she was able to extend the distance she walked past. Quickly Ruby felt confident to walk past me, then walk a circle and then she allowed me to walk behind her and appear on the other side. We were making progress.

Our next step together was what Kelly Wilson, a horse trainer of New Zealand wild horses calls ‘An adventure’. An Adventure is when the horse leaves its familiar area and is lead out into new surroundings. At this point you need to be a little brave yet understand that the horse is going to meet challenges that you are both going to have to deal with. When Ruby and I headed out of her familiar paddock I think we got about 3 steps before she baulked. At this point I knew that she was challenged, head up, nostrils flared, body stiff and eye bulged as some ferocious object twenty meters away. With the lead rope tort I waited. I didn’t pull I just waited until she stepped forward and released the pressure. After a rub on the neck I would return to Ruby’s safe paddock and allow her to settle into the familiarity of her comfort zone before heading out again. With this approach, the scary became familiar and she became more confident as her adventure walks extended from around the sheds and yards out across the road to a conservation reserve with trees and trails. As the days passed she became more relaxed in my company and more confident about what she did.

Horses in a herd rely on each other to provide information about their environment. Threats are assessed and information is passed on or checked out by other herd members. When we take a horse from a herd it has the constant pressure of evaluating its environment and assessing threats so that it can feel safe. I knew that these adventures challenged Ruby as she was always feeling for threats and danger. At times I would stop and give her permission to graze but she would always stand like a sentinel slightly stiff and alert, ever ready.  One day however there was a massive break through. I watched intently as Ruby slowly began to drop her head towards the grass only to see it fly up again and take up her alert stance. I watched with bated breath as this happened four or five times until she finally lowered her head and took a couple of tentative nibbles. Then she stopped, looked at me, her body relaxed, and she fell into a full blown feeding episode. I was punching the air inside my head with utter excitement. I was elated. A milestone has been reached in her mind. She was telling me I was trusted enough to watch over her. She was allowing me to be her filter for her environment. She felt safe with me. Our relationship had taken a turning point.

The job I had been asked to do with Ruby was to teach her to load onto a float. I needed to make sure that she could do this while feeling good about the process. Routinely I would take Ruby for her adventure walks and then offer her the opportunity to load onto a double straight load float. After  the grazing episode the float loading was so much better and the whole float loading process went like a dream and she travelled well from the start.

I was really pleased with comments from her owner when she came to pick her up. She commented on how much calmer Ruby was from when she saw her last time. I always feel a little anxious when a horse goes off to its new home. I wonder how it will travel and then settle in with its new owner. Cues are always a little different and challenges occur but that is the nature of changing ownership.

I was so pleased to get some photos after her arrival at her new home and a text that said “travelled like a pro.”

How good is that. Thank you Ruby, you taught me so much.