How can we be peaceful with that?
This morning the two ponies, Chocolate and Querida, and one of the horses, Risada had a session looking at getting their muzzles off with peace. Normally they would throw them off – you know what its like. You just get it off their ears and they throw their heads up and run off, like they have been released from a cage.
Laminitis is something 3 of my herd and I live with. Over the years I have had to release a lot of blocks and emotions around laminitis including fear and worry around what they are eating and how much, how can I control that, not liking splitting the herd up, and hating muzzles. All my issues not the horses, but they could sense my feelings so responded to those. In addition when Querida came to me she had been moved around a lot due to laminitis and also muzzled a lot. They way she eats makes me feel she had a muzzle on at one point for a very long period of time. She has also had rotation in her front feet so her body has to cope with that as well. Just a bit of history..
So I have three little videos for fun. All different. A couple of overriding things came in as well. Timmy is a challenge when the attention is not on him so you will see me putting my foot down a bit. I could separate them to take the muzzles off which I would suggest if I was doing this for anybody else as this makes for a more peaceful environment to start with. But this is as much about Timmy as the girls. The more peaceful every action we do is, the more he will find a level of peace. Timmy can go high in his thinking levels quickly. Cribbing is level 8-10. He can also come down to a 2 or 1 easily. He really struggles though with somewhere in the middle, just being peaceful doing. This is what I am sensing anyway watching the videos back.
Chocolate is first. Why am I finding peace taking them off rather than putting them on. Because I want them to find peace with them on and I can start to do this by bringing down their thinking before I take them off. Not sure if that makes any sense to anyone but me!. With Chocolate she is fairly chilled at this time of day and is nice to watch as she follows me down and we take the muzzle off nicely.
Risada is next. Now, it was easier with Chocolate as she is the matriarch and Timmy won’t challenge her very often. Risada is lower down on the heap and he has no qualms in making a beeline for her. Also Risada is a little more pushy regarding getting her way. She wants the muzzle off. And she wants the treats – she can smell them and this is not helping with Timmy either as he also can smell the treats. But it is an exercise in keeping peaceful and you will see Risada release a lot before I get the muzzle off as she realises that she isn’t getting a treat until she does something. The yawning feels like it is her way of considering things.
And lastly we have Querida. Timmy is getting a little annoyed now and his thinking levels are high so I took 3 minutes to change things around and opened the barn so Timmy would go and get some hay. Interestingly as Querida went into the barn she got quite angry with the muzzle trying to get it off etc which for me was a good thing. I let her get on with it and waited the other side of the gate. She finally came round to see me to get it off. I gave her a treat for that through the muzzle as this is a learning in its own right. And then we could start working at getting peaceful with it. I also gave her a treat when I unclipped it. It was not as peaceful as I would like yet, but we established some things. If she is calm it will happen. It was a lot better than normal as she can go into high thinking levels as it comes off, which always feels like a frustration and a demand to ‘move quicker’ so she can escape. It will start to improve now.
So just a few clips as I learn to work with the herd and their muzzles in a different way. Enjoy.