Paddock ruse solves Riley's mailbox panic
Last week, I had the pleasure of working with a lady who was finally able to fulfill a lifelong dream.
Judy, now in her late 40s, has wanted a horse since she was old enough to walk.
School, work and raising children had always prevented Judy from realizing that dream until December when she was finally able to buy her first horse.
She bought the horse with the dream of riding it off into the sunset at every opportunity. But there was one problem. Between Judy and every sunset, there were mailboxes, and her new horse was deathly afraid of them. Whenever Judy’s horse, Riley, saw a mailbox, he would act as if he had never seen one in his life and was sure it was an alien from some horse-eating planet. Sometimes, Judy and Riley would be just walking along the road and Riley would suddenly see a mailbox next to him, spook sideways and end up in the middle of the road with traffic coming.
Judy knew it was just a matter of time before Riley put her into the path of an oncoming car unable to stop. What should she do, she asked?
First, I said to have Riley’s eyes checked to see if the problem was strictly behavioral or if there was a medical condition affecting Riley’s eyesight. When Riley’s eyes checked out fine, it was time to do some training.
There is no reason for a 20-year-old horse to be afraid of a mailbox. I think Riley had probably been traumatized in some way by either a mailbox or right before or after seeing one. This trauma then became ingrained and linked to mailboxes.
Riley needed to stop seeing mailboxes as a trigger toward fear and start seeing mailboxes as a trigger toward pleasure. If we could get Riley to see the mailbox as an item triggering pleasure the fear would go away.
It worked.
We put several mailboxes in Riley’s paddock and slowly got them close to his food. After several days, Judy put horse candy inside the open mailboxes and then also on the open lids of the mailboxes on the road near her house. Within days, instead of a mailbox-fearing horse she had a snoopy horse wanting to stick his nose into every mailbox he saw.
This was a much safer problem and one that Judy was able to easily overcome. The mail on Judy’s street no longer has to compete for space against apples, carrots and sugar cubes. And the mail-carrier can stop wondering where all that produce is coming from and why.
Judy and Riley are now riding safely off into the sunset.
Terry Jester is a nationally recognized companion animal behaviorist. To learn more about companion animal training, visit www.rockymountainrawhide.com. For questions
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