WESTERN DAILY PRESS, FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 20, 2002
How TTEAM work put Basil back in contact
In the space of six short weeks - the length of the summer holidays - Caspian stallion Basil has been learning that contact with humans is not so bad after all. Using the. Tell ington-Jones Equine Awareness Method, SARAH FISHER has been working with Basil during the summer with amazing results.
EVEN though I work with horses on a daily basis, the success of TTEAM (the Tellington-Jones Equine Awareness Method) work never fails to amaze me. Competition riders repeatedly report a marked improvement in the athletic ability of their horse, and owners who have their horses for pleasure consistently find their equine friends more co-operative, happier and easier to handle. Some of my clients with performance horses that were on the verge of being written off, due to previous injuries or patterns of behaviour, ring with news that, not only is their horse back competing, but achieving greater results than ever before. Obviously TTEAM cannot save every horse. Sometimes the horse carries congenital deformities or such a high level of pain that its quality of life is in question. In these cases TTEAM can only serve to reduce stress, to enable the horse to be handled safely, and to give the owner a greater understanding of how they can best help their horse. If a significant physical problem is the cause of difficult behaviour, it is usually evident very early on. Although, initially, the horse may make massive changes in the first sessions, he either reaches a plateau qui,ckly or keeps reverting to unwanted, although often less marked, patterns of behaviour between visits. In Basil's case, the changes between the early sessions were so great and so consistent that I felt confident we could bring about some seemingly impossible alterations to his behaviour over time. But, even I have been amazed at the speed with able the horse to be which this has come about. For six years, Basil has not been able to tolerate contact. He wears a headcollar that was put on when he was doped to have his hooves trimmed at his last health check, and he hasn't been touched since. The prospect of having humans in close proximity was enough to have him jumping over the top of anyone who was in his way, and someone walking into his stable was enough to set him rearing and scrabbling against the walls. In six weeks, the length of the summer holiday Basil has completely turned around. He has learned that it is safe to stand quietly in his stable, calmly eating his hay while Fleur, the daughter of his owner Jane, strokes him gently over his shoulder, neck and body with her hand. Every time I have been back to visit Basil there has been a dramatic shift in his behaviour. He has gained weight, has less tension through the body, and settles really quickly with the work. He stopped rearing after session two, and Jane can muck him out without having to keep a careful eye on him in case he panics and tries to escape. The first session was broken down into 10-minute segments, giving Basil plenty of breaks to process what was happening. Now Basil is happy to be stroked for 30 minutes at a time. He genuinely seems to enjoy contact and almost seems relieved to be touched. All these changes have come about through a careful, quiet approach and are down to the pa duce stress, to en tience and understanding of his own- ers. After showing Fleur how to use the two schooling sticks to initiate contact, we then moved on to working with one schooling stick, covered in a sheepskin buff so that Basil could become accustomed to a softer, warmer touch as a stepping stone towards contact with the human hand. When Basil showed real concern, we went back to the work he already knew - stroking with two schooling sticks - to reassure him. It is all too easy to keep pressing forward and to continue until the horse accepts the new information. But there is real value in going back a few steps if the horse begins to struggle with what is being asked of him.