Timmy did not crib today after eating his bucket feed.
I took the bucket feeds out to the herd and just observed this morning. (19th July 2022). When Timmy walked off after his bucket, I followed to see if he had gone to crib on his post, which is the normal behaviour. I kept well back because I did not want to influence him. He went for water and then returned, saw me in the barn, came in for a soothing scratch and groom, and released with a yawn or two, then left the barn.
I always choose to celebrate the moments. Today he got a different feeling from his bucket, one that did not require him to react by cribbing. If I intellectualise this I would say he is realising that he does not need to crib every time he finishes his bucket.
Tomorrow he may crib after his bucket. We will make peace with that tomorrow.
This wasn’t the only work we did today. He went back to his shelter and I joined the herd and he went through a lot of itchiness reactions to the peace of mind. But first we all did a little bit of grooming, Timmy practicing on Querida which she allowed. After that he started wanting more grooming but everybody else was just relaxing now and this frustrated Timmy. He definitely has something within, that when he starts something and it feels good in some way he tends to go into overdrive. So he started pushing me around to give him scratches everywhere. I just matched his energy until he came down a bit and then became peaceful like the other horses and he started to follow.
It took Timmy about an hour of going through the cycles of starting to get peaceful but then getting really itchy. I would continually match this energy until he relaxed and then we would get peaceful and the cycle starts again.
The celebration in this part of the session – he only reacted to the peace of mind with starting to crib once. The other times he reacted by getting itchy and wanting scratches. Is this progress? I think so..
