Desert Horses

Welcome to my horse blog, Desert Horses. We live in the desert southwest, near Palm Springs, CA, but board our horses up in our local mountains where it is cooler in the summer. I have 4 horses, all rescues. Here is the ranch up the mountains where the horses stay.

Wednesday, August 12, 2009

"D" is for...ABC Wednesday, August 12, 2009





























desensitize! As part of Sunni's training, I'm trying to get him desensitized to different "horse-eating" things like plastic bags, tarps, and other items. So, yesterday, after I worked him in the round pen, I decided to try one of my old birdseed bags which I had saved. There was a nice breeze, it fluttered, it moved, it made noise. HA! Guess what? Instead of his usual drama, he followed Cali up to it to investigate it and didn't run off. PROGRESS! In fact, those two horses seemed to enjoy their new "toy"! Cali, being so calm, walked right up to it. Sunni hung back and when it didn't eat her, went up to sniff it. GOOD BOY! I believe his confidence is growing every day.

7 comments:

Q said...

Your post is very interesting.
I am looking forward to coming back and learning more about these horses and the fantastic work you do.
Wow.
Sherry

Dimple said...

I love horses. Nice story to go with the pics! I had a horse once who never did get used to flapping feed sacks!

jay said...

That's great! As people who take on ex-racing greyhounds, we often have to desensitise them to ordinary things like bags blowing around, buses, vacuum cleaners etc - things they haven't come across before. It's very rewarding, isn't it?

Roger Owen Green said...

there's a different D

Tumblewords: said...

Great job!

Katharine Swan said...

Nice work! Don't forget to also desensitize while he's tied. I always find that Panama tends to think things are different if he's tied or under saddle. I think they must seem scarier if he doesn't have full control over his body and his decisions.

Laughing Orca Ranch said...

That's just awesome! Maybe soon he'll be sticking his nose inside saying, "Anything yummy in there for me" lol!

~Lisa

word verif: bucke
(yikes!)