Topsy Makes Good Progress

Topsy has had a really good few days and is really progressing through her fear of ropes - she might not be 100% with them yet...but she is improving every day.

When you are dealing with these extreme fears and phobias, part of the challenge is having to "think outside the box", or adapting, or developing techniques that we know work as a whole.  All our techniques are based on horse body language, instincts and psychology...but fear/trauma is a very strong thing and will always take over until we can prove that we are trustworthy, and particularly that we are trustworthy enough to help the pony with an extreme fear.


To be able to help a pony (which is already trusting us) with an extreme fear, first we have to establish what the cause of the problem is in order to help them...so this is what Paul has been doing with Topsy.  He needs to break the problem down into smaller elements.  For instance, Paul has to establish whether Topsy's rope fear is actually about having the clip attached to the headcollar...or is it the noise of the clip attaching...or an association of having a person holding the rope and being too close to her...or is it the feeling of the rope touching her...or something else altogether?  This is what we are looking for in a practical sense, but...of course, for Topsy the fear is not as simple as that - it's not necessarily the touch of the rope that she's scared of...but for her, the touch of the rope triggers a flashback memory of a painful/life threatening event (such as having bits cut out of her ears, or hot irons applied to her skin) which she now associates with being touched with the rope.  She may associate that when a rope touches her on a particular area of her body (e.g her leg), something terrible will happen.  Of course, the human that caused the problem in the first place probably didn't even noticed that the rope was touching Topsy's leg when they notched/branded her...but to Topsy this was her association of the events...and this is now a "trauma trigger".

If we can show Topsy that ropes in another scenario are OK, then we can start to progress and eventually get to the stage that we can address her traumas and she will not panic.   Trust is the key to this though.

For us, the difference between the reactions of a previously untouched wild pony and the reactions of a traumatised pony are hugely different and only years of experience of handling both types of pony allows us to develop an understanding of different levels of worry, fear, trauma and how they manifest...and more importantly it helps us to develop an understanding of how these problems could have been avoided in the first place.

One of the great things is that Topsy is now able to communicate to Paul when she wants a particular type of interaction, such as being stroked under the chin - at the moment, she is finding this comforting, and asks Paul to interact with her in this way.  This is always a big step for a traumatised pony and shows that Topsy is making good progress in her rehabilitation.

To send a message or ask a question, please click on the 'comments' link below