Thursday 6th December

Well the past couple of nights I have been in Aberdeen, so haven't been able to do anything with the ponies!

So tonight I decided to play with the trailer again with Blossom. It was a horrible windy night, Blossoms doesn't like the wind so I knew it was going to be a challenge!
We started with just playing with the seven games on the grass, she was really full of herself, so I had to put alot of effort into keeping her out of my space!
Once she had settled and was listening to me we moved to the trailer. I started with just getting her to squeeze passed me next to the ramp in each direction - she was really confidnet about it, even to the right!
We then moved on to circling over the ramp, she done it a few times in each direction. Then decided she wanted to go in the trailer, she would stop on the ramp and put her nose in the trailer then try and walk in. So I played the game of don't go in the trailer. I would let her stop if she wanted and smell but I didn't want her to go right in. I think this really worked and made her really curious about getting in the trailer!
When I asked her to go in the trailer she walked forward very confident and stopped half way in the trailer. So her front feet were in but her back feet were still on the top of the ramp. I would leave her for a bit then back her out. When I asked her in the second time she went straight in, I was so proud of her!! But typical just as she seemed relaxed a big gust of wind came and really rocked the trailer and made loads of noise! So this scared Blossom so she came out quite paniced, so we played with yo yo's on the ramp to try and build her confidnce up again. when I asked her in again she went to the same spot as she went the first time we loaded. So we done lots of approach and retreat to try and get her confident again. Gradually she would go in a bit further, but always seemed to want to keep at least one back foot on the ramp. She was really doing lots of licking and chewing and really seemed to be exploring the trailer more, really sniffing the ground. I decided to take the front breast bar down, so she could go all the way in if she wanted, she seemed to be really curious about the floor near the front of the trailer but the bar was stopping her going any further forward. So as soon as I asked her in again, she went right in, all four feet in the trailer. But she wasn't confident yet and would come out herself pretty quickly. So again we done lots of approach and retreat. I also done more friendly game in zone 4 and 5 with her, I feel that when she is going in the trailer she is theN panicing because she is expecting us to shut the divider and ramp on her. Playing friendly in these zones really seemed to help her as by the end she was standing with all four feet in the trailer munching a haynet. I should mention this haynet as been in the trailer since we started playing on Monday and she has never even looked at it before. This really showed me she was confident!! So I tried just shutting the back end of the divider accross, I didn't lock it in place but it did make the space smaller. She did turn round to have a look at what I was doing, but stayed in the trailer happily eating her hay. So I done some more coming out the trailer going in the trailer and everytime she went straight in and went back to her hay!!
I was really happy with her tonight and did feel she was more confident, it took us an hour tonight to get this, but I think if we hadn't had the scare at the begining it would have been alot shorter!