As you may have guessed from the title, this is Willow! She is a 12 year old Welsh Section D, who has lived the majority of her life on the Welsh hills. She was owned by a farm as a broodmare, but they couldn't catch her so she just spent her days being a wild horse. We don't really know what happened, but she was either swapped or sold and ended up at an auction in Wales. Her current owners were simply looking for a nice companion for their yearling while they took their other horse away to compete in horseball. So, they bought her and brought her back to England, only to realise she had likely been drugged, which is why she was so sweet and placid. Once they got her home, they could not get near her, not even to herd her into another paddock. It wouldn't have been a massive problem, but she had pretty long feet that really needed trimming.
So her owners put a shoutout on Facebook, asking if anyone knew any good natural trainers. Everyone was recommending this really great lady who we knew would be super busy, so we got in touch and I offered myself. I was 100% expecting them to say thanks, but no thanks, which I would've totally understood - in their position I would've probably gone for someone with a bit more experience - but they said that they were open to try it. So, I went to meet her, with my only goal being for her to accept me. I could immediately see that, even though she was lovely, she was highly intelligent and very wary. But I really wanted to help, so using low value treats, we got to a place where she would let me touch her face for a short period of time.
However, in the end, they had to get someone else out to catch her and trim her feet, as it really did need doing and, A) I'm not a barefoot trimmer and B) We just weren't at that stage in our relationship yet. So now that we don't have a specific goal like before because her feet are ok, I'm just slowly trying to build up a relationship and her trust in human touch. Eventually I would really like to get a halter on her as her owners would like to sell her and replace her with a tamer, more suitable companion. At the moment, I'm working on normalising the halter, so that it becomes as mundane as anything else, because currently she has a lot of negative connotations with it. It'll be a long, slow, process but I'll learn a lot from it.
Watch this space!
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