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Discussion on Claustrophobic Horse | |
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Posted on Thursday, Mar 9, 2000 - 1:41 am: A friend of mine has a 4 year old mare which she swears is claustrophobic. She has had trouble getting this mare to go into the wash area and also to enter a trailer. Now I know you might think that it's just that this mare is not well trained, but she has been working with this mare for months to get her to enter a trailer. She has finally had some success in that the mare will finally go into the trailer but she still comes flying backwards after a few seconds. My friend's trainer says that this mare is claustrophic, and my friend asked me to try to find any information I could on this subject, and how to handle it. I immediately thought of this forum. Is there anyone out there who has had the same experience and who could give us some advice on how to handle this problem? |
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Posted on Thursday, Mar 9, 2000 - 11:07 am: hello Virginia,These rapid dismounts from the trailer are discussed in the articles on training to trailer load, I suggest you review those closely. DrO |
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Posted on Friday, Mar 10, 2000 - 1:06 am: Your message brought to mind my experiences with my own horse in a wash stall.I bought him at the age of 16 and was told his only vise was being single tied,that he had a phobia about it.WEll with all of my reading from famous trainers I thought he could be taught to single tie,however five years later I wonder.The fear I see in him at any attempt to single tie him is just not worth the fight.He missed that lesson early on.In the wash stall at the barn I previously boarded at,there were cross ties,(which he had no problem with)but everytime I took him in there to saddle,bathe,groom,etc.,he got progressively worse. At first it was just the fidgety movement back and forth,side to side,then excessive amounts of pooping,(such as 14 times in a wash session), then the longer he stayed in there the more he seemed to just make himself sick from nerves.He would start looking at his flanks as if in pain,constantly.The vet even injected him with Ace and other medications to calm his nerves,but they never took effect as long as he was in the wash stall.He was so keyed up he would not relax long enough to let the meds work.This became a real problem because he would not single tie so I had to have him in the wash stall crosstied to do anything to him.He would not crosstie in the aisle or anywhere but the wash stall.So when I got my own barn at home a few months ago,I attempted to crosstie him in the open aisle area where I can also bath him,but he would have no part of it.So I began clipping him completely untied,standing freely and he never moved a muscle.He will stand there to be bathed,has been body clipped,and anything else I need to do with him,at two hour increments and has never bothered to move.He just cannot handle confinement in that situation.He gets irritated with me if I don't put him in his stall about the same time every evening and he is confined there,but he seems to want that at the end of the day.In a horse trailer he has to be loosely tied,enough to lower his head .He is fine with that,even though he is single tied at the time.But a trailer is the only place he does not fight it,unless he doesn't realize he is actually tied.I don't know what went on with him in the past before I knew him,but something is etched in his memory that terrifies him and I have had several trainers attempt to teach him to tie.But he actually makes himself ill when he is confined in that way.This probably doesn't help your friend,but I tend to agree about the claustrophobia. |
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