IrishMilo
Well-Known Member
I do genuinely believe that there's nothing you can't achieve or at least significantly improve with positive reinforcement. It sounds like you're doing a great job with everything else and this is just one other piece of a puzzle that needs to be worked on.
My horse's diet is 90% treats as reward for doing XYZ. I think it's easy for us to get disheartened about things but when you think about things from their POV... why WOULD they let us go near them with a loud, vibrating machine and do things to them that they don't understand? I would start working on it straight away, 10 minutes twice a day every day. You can start with really really small wins, like just giving him big praise for letting you touch his shoulder with your hand and the clippers in the other. Then his knee, etc. I've done this method with a horse who did the exact same as Ozzy and after a couple of months I could clip him loose.
My horse's diet is 90% treats as reward for doing XYZ. I think it's easy for us to get disheartened about things but when you think about things from their POV... why WOULD they let us go near them with a loud, vibrating machine and do things to them that they don't understand? I would start working on it straight away, 10 minutes twice a day every day. You can start with really really small wins, like just giving him big praise for letting you touch his shoulder with your hand and the clippers in the other. Then his knee, etc. I've done this method with a horse who did the exact same as Ozzy and after a couple of months I could clip him loose.
