Pie - Chapter 3

So after 3 weeks of attitude adjustments, rule changes, plenty of food, cribbing collar, and all he can eat hay.....Pie was starting to look good! He was filling out faster than I had anticipated.....of course all this did was make me angry because if all it took was 3 weeks there was no excuse for letting him get this bad.

What drove me nuts about him was the bobbing and weaving! He was neurotic about it and I hate neurotic horses. He would only do it in his stall and it was normally only when other horses were being moved around. I set out to fix this! I put him slap dab in the middle of everything, I moved his stall, if we were going to be doing a lot with the other horses I would get him out and just tie him up. I have never met/seen a horse that ever had too much time being tied. At first he was very interested, curious, engaging......then it got old. I love it when a horse gets bored with something....it means we can move on.

I made sure to leave him tied when we were getting lesson horses out, other people were riding, during chores, he spent almost more time tied than he did in his stall. Eventually we would lead him out, tie him up...he would proceed to remove anything from the post he was tied to(never broke him of that....it was too funny) then rest his forehead on the post and sleep. When he was tied like this I didn't hang a hay bag or give him anything distracting....his job was to stand.

He got to the point where he wasn't worried about everyone else because when they started moving....he got ignored and slept tied up. I started leaving him in his stall for longer periods of time before bringing him out to tie. Eventually I only brought him out if HE was going to be used......he never bobbed or weaved again.

3 weeks after arriving at the barn!