Getting better and better, but I know not to expect it to continue

So BG and the head collar in the field has been going from strength to strength. We haven’t had to use her field shelter again, she is getting more and more confident with having her head collar on in her penned off area, so much so she has stopped pulling back at all and is as good as she normally is in her shelter. We even had a breeze the other night and that didn’t phase her. Okay, it wasn’t full on wind or anything, but every small step counts. When it has been dark she has been continuing just as well too.

This morning she was trying to dip her nose in her food as we walked across the field so I thought ‘okay, I’ll try it her, in the middle of an open field’. She looked for a moment when I put her food down as though she was going to skirt around the edge of the bowl to approach it from the other side and avoid me, but she was actually as good as gold. I left her to eat her food after that, luckily P1 and P2 don’t bother her.

Once she has finished came the difficult part of trying to catch her head collar so I could take it off. I stood a little way away from her and called her to me. She had seen I had put my hand in the treat pocket so came over. I thought she would try to keep her nose on my hand so trying to get round and catch the side of her head collar would scare her into pulling away. No, she was as good as gold. So I got hold of it, gave her a polo to say well done, and took the head collar off.

Now the challenge is to keep this up despite what the weather might throw at us, and to some how keep it going in spring when food is no longer a lure. We’ll see how we get on.

I don’t get to see much of BG in the week due to work and the dark so one day at the weekend we attempt to spend a fair chunk of time with her and give her a thorough groom over. My husband led her round whilst I began the mucking out, and then I set up some poles for her to walk and trot over. She seemed to have more confident over them than in the past. We put out three and raised the middle one a tyres height so she would pick her feet up properly over it. We also tried raising each one at a different end so she would centre herself down the middle of them (she is the queen of avoiding them all if she possibly can).

Then we put out two parallel poles and walked her between them, backing her up as well. Then I got the dreaded mounting block and put that alongside and stood on it as she was led past. There was no pulling back in fear or anything this time, she seemed remarkably calm. Even when I stood up on it as she approached she only tensed but kept walking past and halted alongside.