Working on trust

Been spending time with the bridling as she is not fond of that.  Daily 10 minutes of repeat, repeat, so that she will relax and just open up for the bit.  Some horses take awhile and it is about gaining trust.  She does like to vote on things and have her opinion.

Also introduced crinkly plastic bags to her.  The first time I crinkled them she was aghast and alarmed but in ten minutes I was rubbing her all over with them nose to tail while making loud crinkly noises.  It probablly helped that when I showed the bags to Theo, she watched him play with them and make the crinkly noises himself. 

She has a consistent intitial reaction and acceptance time  to new things.  I am gettting a much better idea of how to introduce things to her and how much time I need to spend for acceptance.  I want her to be already introduced to these things before I put them on a surcingle and lunge her with them on her or have her in her stall wearing them on the surcingle.

I will have the milk bottles with gravel in them next after I am sure she has accepted all the plastic bag work.  What I learned with the Nokotas is that if they react to something you keep going with whatever it is until they stop reacting and then take off the pressure.  But each horse has different pressure tolerances so you need to be watchful to know when they have started  to accept so you can take off the pressure before reapplying it. Some inital signs are a slight drop of the head, a slight movement towards whatever it is or a sigh.  It can be very faint and knowin gyour horse well helps you see the signs.

No hurry , as I have 2 months before she goes to be backed.  Plenty of time to work on all this slowly with her.