Last week I welcomed Blue Cross Swift to my little herd. She’ll be a temporary visitor as another step on her way to a happier and more secure future.
It all began a couple of weeks ago, the result of online collaboration helped along by social media. One of my colleagues, Lisa Ashton of EquiCoach works with Blue Cross, providing staff with training and coaching in applying modern, evidence based horse training methods. She’d been helping the team train Swift to be more positive towards people and to cooperate with handling using reward based techniques via clicker training. Lisa shared Swift’s story with her Facebook group, Coffee with Horse Lovers. The story was that Swift really needed a home where her new people would avoid pressure to coerce Swift and would use positive reinforcement to encourage her cooperation.
The story was given even more power by another colleague, also my long term friend and mutual support in the world of horses, Helen Spence at Helen Spence Horse Sense. Helen joined Swift’s story in November when she was hosted by Blue Cross for workshops exploring her ‘Golden Triangle’ of horse behaviour, exploring the interaction between emotions, behaviour and training, adding another layer to the work of the Blue Cross team and further underlying the importance of protecting and promoting Swift’s emotional life. Swift definitely needed a home with low human expectation, and space to grow. So the social media machine redoubled its efforts, I stepped in and Horse and Hound wrote all about it!
So last week Swift arrived, so ably handled by her lovely, dedicated groom, Ann who showed me how she had trained Swift so I can offer familiar signals to her even though the rest of me is clearly unfamiliar. We turned her out in one half of the field so she could see the others and them, her. Then later on I turned Penny in with her so she could begin to make a bond and feel safe.
Let the next chapter begin!