From Bones To Beauty: BAGS! AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

Bones has had a rough past few days. Tuesday when I got to the barn Bones had a few empty sawdust bags in the stall he has been staying in. I knew why they were in there, he must have acted like a fool when they were cleaning stalls and adding sawdust to the stall.. so they put some bags in there to get him more used to them.

Before I go on, I would like to mention something. Normally I would go about this whole thing a lot different. But, Bones has been so bad with these bags that when he got afraid of them, he would loose any respect he had and did not hesitate to run over myself, and someone else. Even when I got to the under saddle part, he STILL almost ran me down. Now that he has gotten to the point where he accepts the bags near him/touching him, I can safely continue to desensitize him to the bags, and many more things.

After having a horrible short ride with him (due to him being super spooky and high strung), I decided to go all out and put him in the round pen, and tie bags all over his saddle. But, the BO said it would be best to start him off with just loading his stall with bags. So that's what we did. He fliiiiippppppeeeddd out. Running around the stall like a chicken with his head cut off. He eventually calmed down, and started to get used to the bags. The next day we got more bags and hung them all around the stall. Of course, he flipped out again. Every time I walked by the stall I would shake a bag until he would stand there quietly, then I would stop. The bags stayed like that until today, when I took them all out.

Today when I got him out, I put him in the round pen and saddled him. I started off by putting one bag tied to the horn. He still freaked out when I picked up the bag and approached him with it. He acts decent when the bags are on the ground (in the stall, not in the open.. he still doesn't like that), hanging near him, or now even on him. But, if they're being handled by a human.. he acts like they'll eat him.

Anyways, I kept adding bags on one by one in different spots. I eventually had about 3-4 on the seat/horn/sides of the saddle, on the front of the breast collar, and this other plastic stuff situated over his neck/by his face, and over his butt. He got pretty worked up, but calmed down after a while.

I left him in the round pen for maybe an hour. Then I put the lead rope on him, picked up a bag that had somehow come off, and started doing what I would normally do to desensitize him to it. He actually didn't do too bad, and after about 10-15 minutes I was able to rub the bag all over him (except the face- that will be tomorrow) without him moving. I figured that was a good place to stop, un-tacked him, hosed him down, and put him away for the night.

We have A LOT more work to do, but we've made a lot of progress within the past week.. so I'm optimistic about it!

These are from Tuesday, when he only had a few bags in the stall.. he was so cute. He didn't want to touch the bags, but wanted the treat so he stretched allllll of the way out.