Separation anxiety

[Piper93]

I have a horse who works very well when her buddies are around but if they leave she gets very anxious/panicked and starts fretting and sweating. I have tried doing ground work with her (she is still a bit green) when they leave but I find it hard to keep her attention on me and keep her calm she is only thinking about the others. I am wondering if anyone has experience with this. Would walking her away from her buddies just to the edge of her comfort zone then standing with her a moment, and returning to her friends to reward her work? Then try to go further each day?

 

[Red-1]

I often find that they work better if they are taken away from the buddies that if the buddies are taken away from them. So maybe start with solo schooling then when the horse is happy with that, return from a hack and go in the school? Get the horse used to splitting up like that initially.

To teach independence I would take the horses to a large field that was slightly dome shaped. Initially we would work in close proximity, like in a collecting ring, but then would work wider and come together again, and gauge it until they would go to the field and work anywhere on the field, including at times out of sight (dome shaped!).

Once splitting up on the field was all OK, I would return from a hack and when we were near home and the horse had a pull towards home, the other horse would go a longer way home, and mine would go straight home. Initially that could be in the last 100 yards, or even that the other horse would walk right past the gates while I went into the gates.

I would then increase the distance where we would split up, until in the end, we could go to the canter/schooling field together, split up and I would do a 1 hour hack home alone, no issues.

For collecting ring practice I would hire an arena and collecting ring and practice horses going into the arena and back again. I would make the collecting ring where the lots of horses were hard work, whereas (as long as they stayed focused) the main arena was nicer and not so much hard work, it was a chill out zone.