18th December 2024
Lara is a pony that always asks the question “What’s in it for me?”. There is nothing wrong with a reward for doing something, in the same way as we want to be paid for our services. What we want to avoid is the reward becoming the focus rather than the activity.
This is the first session with Lara. We are working out the best way to get her focus and ask her to participate in putting her head collar on.
We are working with engaging her in the activity and rewarding her with a treat for that engagement.
Lara does not have a positive association with the head collar. Additionally, you can feel her defenses come up when asked if we can put it on. If we allowed this to spiral it will inevitably turn into a fight, so we are changing it into a more positive association. We are not asking anything of her when the head collar is on either. We just then take it off again. We use gratitude a lot as this is what we want to change the conversation to in the long term. Gratitude and peace of mind are the ultimate rewards, and when a pony has not experienced either from a human it can take some time to show them the possibilities.