Just as in the beginning of your relationship, you need to take this slowly. Pay attention to what your horse is telling you and give him all the reassurance he needs. This is a game and should be fun for both of you.<\/p>\n
You will see in this video the first thing I did was put the ball into the pasture with all the horses and kept it at a distance so they could watch it move and still have enough space to feel safe. They could watch the ball, interact or not, and just see what it was. They could also watch how I interacted with the ball to feel reassured that it wasn\u2019t going to hurt me and I wasn\u2019t afraid of it.<\/p>\n
We did just that, observe the ball, for one session. D\u2019Artagnan got a bit brave and got closer and then decided, no I\u2019ll give it some space. That was all I wanted, an introduction to the ball. So we just did that the first session with the ball.<\/p>\n
The next day I brought the ball into a smaller area, that was still open to the large pasture just in case D\u2019Artagnan wanted to still get away and I introduced the ball again.<\/p>\n
This time D\u2019Artagnan was less afraid and more curious and he wanted to sniff it and touch it. That was great. I put some carrots underneath the ball so he would be able to move the ball with his nose and get treats. Now the ball was a whole lot less scary and it even brought him treats. He had a new idea of what the ball was and he was beginning to like it.<\/p>\n
Now that he was feeling safer, and playful, and he was touching and pushing the ball, I wanted to just give him time to process this new lesson. So I gave him some food and let the ball just sit there close to him for a while and we called it a day.<\/p>\n
To illustrate the kind of progress and fun you can have, the 3rd section of the film was actually shot a couple of years ago and shows D\u2019Artagnan chasing a ball and having a blast. Unfortunately, I had forgotten to add the ball cover on that day and he got so carried away that he grabbed it with his mouth and popped it! It deflated quickly but he loved it.<\/p>\n
Hope you and your horse have just as much fun as D\u2019Artagnan did that day but remember to leave the cover on ????<\/p>\n","protected":false},"template":"","class_list":["post-30657","tva_lesson","type-tva_lesson","status-publish","hentry","tva_courses-bo2","post-wrapper","thrv_wrapper"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/teddiezieglerhorsemanship.com\/academy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tva_lesson\/30657","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/teddiezieglerhorsemanship.com\/academy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tva_lesson"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/teddiezieglerhorsemanship.com\/academy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/tva_lesson"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/teddiezieglerhorsemanship.com\/academy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30657"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}