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Fear Of Sandpiles - December 8, 2000
We live in Northern California, where winters are wet. And we live in Napa's Carneros region, where the soil is almost pure clay. "Slippery as snot," an old cowboy once said. Ruby's pen was only 24' by 24', so mud quickly became an issue.
So we ordered a load of sand for her pen.
The sand guy promised he'd call to let us know when he was coming, so we'd have everything ready. Instead, he called from his cell phone as he was coming up the drive. The pen wasn't ready and Ruby was still in it. Michael took Ruby out on her lead rope while the load was dumped. She's seen big noisy trucks a few times before, (propane and UPS) and tolerates them fairly well, but doesn't love them. And this one would be coming very close!
The sand was dumped in a big pile blocking her gate. We cleared a nice path through it right away, and started to lead Ruby back into her pen. Nothing doing. She stopped cold. We figured that with a little reassurance she'd come right in, as she had done with crossing the bridge, going over logs, etc. Nope. No way.
Here a bit of frustration was starting to build - horse with feet planted firmly, man pulling on rope, getting nowhere. Total impasse. A little panic: what if we absolutely can't get her back in? Our 15-year-old son, Cubby, thought we should poke her with a stick. I said, no: she's not being disobedient to bug us - it's just that she's really scared.
Reasoning that she was scared of the sand, we started making a big deal of "Here I am walking on the sand" up and down the path, in and out of the pen. Still no deal. Michael put her favorite food, alfalfa, in the path. She'd strain forward to get it, but wouldn't walk onto the path. At some point I saw that she had inadvertently stepped onto the sand, and was okay with that, but still just wouldn't come into the pen.
Suddenly I realized that it wasn't the sand underfoot that bothered her, it was the big pile next to it. So Michael pulled off a little handful of sand, let her sniff it, and then encouraged her to sniff the big pile. She started doing that, and then started playing with it like a kid in a sandbox, tossing it into the air with her nose.
And then, with no ado whatever, she simply walked into her pen.
We were relieved, and also proud of ourselves for getting past what looked like it a serious problem. Most of all, it was a wonderful lesson for our son - all of us really - in "thinking like a horse", and also in nonviolent problem solving. The horse was not trying to be bad. The horse was scared.
Sure, we could have forced her past the sand pile and into the pen. We could have whomped her on the butt, or done something to scare her forward. We would have accomplished the short-range problem of getting her into the pen. But the long-range trust and affection we've worked to establish with her would have been wrecked.
Now she loves her sand. And we love how clean she is!
MANY MONTHS LATER: A DIFFERENT SANDPILE STORY!
In September of 2001, in preparation for Benny's arrival, we bought a load of sand for the round pen that will house him until he is gentled. Sparky has always loved sand (he's from Nevada, after all) and Ruby has learned to love it.
There are two ways to spread a load of sand:
There's the Hard way
And there's the Mustang way!
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Pawing... Ready to Roll... |
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| The sand gets spread pretty fast! |
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