The Ozzy Diaries

From your post Nancy (if this isn’t how it happened and the post writing got muddled, then what I’m going to say will be irrelevant)

“Sometimes, before giving him his feed, I ask him to step back and he'll step back no problem.
Today I gave him his feed and he looked a little grumpy. I asked him to step back, he then went ears flat back and refused to move..”

From his point of view, ‘the way it’s always been done before’ is you ask for him to step back, then give the food and he steps forward to have it (reward maybe seen in his mind).
To then that day you give him food (reward), and then ask for him to step back, is not what you’ve taught him, ‘not the way it’s done’ - and he got (over the top) annoyed and aggressive.

Evidently it’s a full-out extreme reaction to commands and rewards being ‘done in the wrong order than before’ - but it does show he’s the type that will learn ‘a method’ and it completely throws him when that method isn’t followed always, as taught.
And unfortunately due to him being historically aggressive with food, explains to a degree why he became so aggressive.
Whenever you’ve put food down before after asking for a step back, he’s been allowed to step forward and have it. This ‘flipped script’ of asking for step back after food is given, potentially flipped his brain.

My gelding is a bit similar with a militant-style learning brain. He’s not aggressive like Ozzy because it’s not at meal times, but in any training, he’s so keen to figure out what I’m asking. Gets very pleased when he gets it. Will then demonstrate his learning with super-fast compliance. But if I were to change any bit about what he’s learnt, he gets in a fizz, ears back, agitation…”this isn’t how we do it” reaction to an established ‘ask’.
Now, if my gelding had a history of harsh training before me, he would likely then bite me, to back me off him when he gets it ‘wrong’ for fear of whips or whatever triggered him before. But as that’s not his history, he’s just mildly annoyed/frustrated because he seems to prefer strict routine and has a militant learning style mild.
With him strict consistency keeps us both in good spirits, yet with my mare, she’s not bothered one jot if I get ‘asks’ wrong, or the order of things, she’s flexible/tolerant/easy.

Although my mare sank her teeth into me when I first got her!…but that was with a foal at foot, and she was scared protecting a foal without her herd she had before, and new home changes etc. lots of reasons for her aggressive behaviour back then due to fear mainly. I was pulling open a hay flake in front of them eating from the floor, like many times before, and bend half down to spread the hay for her and foal and she just launched forward into my shoulder, fast and hard. I shot upright and instinctively raised my arms, clapped hard, yelled “no! Back! back! back!” While stomping forward into her space, while she backed up speedily at my reaction. Then lead her to the food again, stood in front, she was chill, I left, and she never did use her teeth on me again. But she was a sweet mare before, these were unusual circumstances for her, she was stressed.

It’s so horrible to have set-backs like this, and you’re both doing remarkably with Ozzy, bringing him so far along. Obviously repeated biting aggression needs serious thought about future plans, without hesitation, if a horse cannot learn, it’s problematic to even be able to care for it without risk. You don’t sound you’re there yet, but if any understanding can be got from the incident to understand his particular personality and reactions, and managed to be lessening over time, you never know, he may well be a real softy eventually.

Once I get scared and confidence burst, I don’t like being around them, they sense my nerves. My OH’s calm relaxed no matter what happens energy, has helped me several times!
I hope you heal quickly and confidence returns soon. Hugs xx
 
I know my posts have been negative about him but I do in acknowledge in this post that he is in the best place with OP and he’s a lucky horse.

I am biased as I have had the responsibility of running yards and thinking about staff. But OP and her husband aren’t numpties and have clearly been thinking about the risk and how to mitigate things so I take my hat off to you.
 
Tiddlypom said:
Well said, misst.

The keyboard experts are busy upping their self proclaimed horse wrangling skills while trying to guilt trip NK into believing that she is not adequately dealing with this unpredictably difficult and aggressive horse.

Lunging over a fence to savage a human is not normal horse behaviour, no matter how difficult the horse’s past. What would have happened if the fence hadn’t been there to back him off? Follow through for the kill?

This horse has already had a second chance when NK took him on. He should not get a third if NK and her OH decide that they no longer feel safe around him and want him gone.
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Quite.

Giving much advice on handling beyond 'keep yourself safe' in situations like this seems fraught with potential problems. Only 2 people on this forum have met Ozzy, only 1 is familiar with the current setup and how he is on a D2D basis. Carrying and using a stick or a pipe will back off most horses but not all, and who would want to be some distance from A&E if he is one of the horses who will up the ante. Equally who would want to be the person who gives advice that gets someone injured or worse. We are all just people on the internet at this point.
 
Is the surfaced road or lane that runs alongside your field where the gateway is private or public?

You wouldn’t want members of the public walking past and maybe stopping to give them a carrot over the fence. Now he’s shown his colours.

If the public can walk right past the fence then I suggest an inner electric fence to keep the horses back and a safe distance away from the boundary fence and gate.
 
Tiddlypom said:
Is the surfaced road or lane that runs alongside your field where the gateway is private or public?

You wouldn’t want members of the public walking past and maybe stopping to give them a carrot over the fence. Now he’s shown his colours.

If the public can walk right past the fence then I suggest an inner electric fence to keep the horses back and a safe distance away from the boundary fence and gate.
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It's a private road, there's no access to members of the public.

Since Monday night, he has gone back to how he was before the incident. He will stroll up to me calmly when we're poo shifting around the haybell. I wouldn't say I'm thrilled about this at the moment but he is showing zero signs of aggression, probably because there is no food involved. To me, this reinforces the idea that Ozzy saw me as another horse when he attacked me. In the early days he would attack AJ and then be ultra friendly with him a few minutes later when food was no longer part of the equation. (This does not in any way make it more acceptable and he must learn to respect me as a person and not treat me like a horse.)

At one time no-one could be anywhere near Ozzy when he had a haynet. But they all stand calmly around the haybell. Obviously we don't stroke/pat/mess with any of them when they are eating their hay, but there is no sign of aggression.
When we put a new bale in, we do require them to be out of the way. It's difficult enough to be manouvering a big round bale down the track and into the field without three horses trying to get to it. So we have a large water pistol which works a treat - so well, infact, that all we have to do now is show them the water pistol and they will turn and walk off into the field until the new bale is installed.
 
Burnttoast said:
Quite.

Giving much advice on handling beyond 'keep yourself safe' in situations like this seems fraught with potential problems. Only 2 people on this forum have met Ozzy, only 1 is familiar with the current setup and how he is on a D2D basis. Carrying and using a stick or a pipe will back off most horses but not all, and who would want to be some distance from A&E if he is one of the horses who will up the ante. Equally who would want to be the person who gives advice that gets someone injured or worse. We are all just people on the internet at this point.
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Some very good points here.
It's difficult to understand the set up we have without actually seeing it, so people are giving advice, in good faith, based on partial knowledge.
We've tried to work with Ozzy without using physical punishment and overall it's been OK. We don't like whipping, beating, smacking or punching horses. OH now carries a schooling whip when feeding, he's not had to use it so far but he says he would certainly use it if Ozzy showed signs of aggression. We hope this isn't needed, but as some have pointed out, horses hurt each other, the initial victim either runs off or retaliates. If Ozzy is heading towards last chance saloon and being physically firm (if needed) would make the difference, it would, I feel be justified.
I watched him feed Ozzy today and it was just like things used to be prior to Monday. Ozzy walks to his feeding station and OH puts in the bucket. Tonight OH clipped the bucket to the fence so he couldn't turn it over; this was all fine, but OH is on high alert just in case.

If you saw Ozzy 99% of the time, including when he is ridden out, you'd think 'what a nice mannered cob.' It's not like he's dancing around in the middle of the road, bolting off, rearing up on the pavements, kicking dents into cars - and I've seen all of this when we used to live in Lancs and a local rider took out her super-wired horse on hacks around the streets. She would shout for people to get out of the way - looking back, it was incredibly dangerous! (But apparently it was worth it because the horse in question was a "great competition prospect"...)

If Ozzy wasn't so good in traffic and well-behaved generally on the roads, we might view things differently. If he was all-round risky in every situation, I think that Monday would have been the last straw. But now isn't the time to make any sort of irreversible decision. It might come to that, but for now we're working on eliminating the bad stuff, which will definitely be easier once the weather improves and the daylight increases.
 
Tiddlypom said:
Well said, misst.

The keyboard experts are busy upping their self proclaimed horse wrangling skills while trying to guilt trip NK into believing that she is not adequately dealing with this unpredictably difficult and aggressive horse.

Lunging over a fence to savage a human is not normal horse behaviour, no matter how difficult the horse’s past. What would have happened if the fence hadn’t been there to back him off? Follow through for the kill?

This horse has already had a second chance when NK took him on. He should not get a third if NK and her OH decide that they no longer feel safe around him and want him gone.
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Exactly, NK hardly asked him to do something particularly taxing, merely move backwards for his dinner, a basic respectful act. Maybe some pinned ears may have been acceptable, but to lunge at her and sink his teeth through her padded coat, thats blinking rude. I had a Welsh D and he would always stand politely to the side when I entered his stable with his dinner, and waited politely for me to tip it into his manger. I can't abide rude horses, especially them mugging you for food

All these excuses for him about coming between a cob and his food, is he entitled to be less polite because he's a cob?

Imagine if the fence hadn't been there. What if NK had been in the field with him, and ended up on the floor, possibly knocked out? The area she's in sounds very remote, how quickly could emergency services have got to her if she'd needed help, this is perhaps another factor to consider when deciding what to do with him long term

Horses are too big to be allowed to ride roughshod over people, thats when people get hurt. As said, NK was hardly asking him to do anything horrendous, merely go backwards before giving him his dinner. He didnt just pin his ears he launched at her and bit her, hard.

I agree with Clodagh, that his card would well and truly be marked.

Its again showing that Jasmine, who was much more novicy, was right to feel out of her depth with him

NK and OH he is very lucky to have you both as owners
 
Crazy_cat_lady said:
All these excuses for him about coming between a cob and his food, is he entitled to be less polite because he's a cob?
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Nobody at all has minimised this behaviour as "impolite".

Describing it accurately as resource guarding is not excusing it. It is explaining the behaviour. If someone spoke about a dog resource guarding, you would take it seriously. Dogs bite. Dogs hurt people. Yes some dogs are PTS but by and large resource guarding needs to be managed by understanding triggers and using preventative measures. Just because it is a horse doesn't turn the same behaviour into disrespect or impoliteness or taking the piss or whatever.
 
Crazy_cat_lady said:
All these excuses for him about coming between a cob and his food, is he entitled to be less polite because he's a cob?
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what does being a cob have to do with it? A young horse I bought did exactly the same. Got him home, put him in a stable and went in with his feed and he flew at me, more or less that same behaviour as Ozzy. . Not a cob, he was an arab who grew up to be my arab stallion. . Totally lunged at me to savage me and would happily have gone in for the kill as Tiddlypom put it to get his food. He had never been taught. The facts of life were soon explained to him :D:D:D Problem solved with no great drama.

so can be any breed or type of horse.
 
Tiddlypom said:
Well said, misst.

The keyboard experts are busy upping their self proclaimed horse wrangling skills while trying to guilt trip NK into believing that she is not adequately dealing with this unpredictably difficult and aggressive horse.

Lunging over a fence to savage a human is not normal horse behaviour, no matter how difficult the horse’s past. What would have happened if the fence hadn’t been there to back him off? Follow through for the kill?

This horse has already had a second chance when NK took him on. He should not get a third if NK and her OH decide that they no longer feel safe around him and want him gone.
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somewhat over dramatic I think. Follow through for the kill??? really.

he is a horse, not a toy, not a machine. Horses can be unpredictable, any of them.

"unpredictably difficult and aggressive' no actually he wanted his grub and surely if you are feeding any horse you would take care to avoid putting yourself at risk. I am surprised you don't recognise the cause of his behaviour in this incident and the steps to take to avoid it in future.
 
@Nancykitt hope you’re feeling a bit better.

At the end of the day you can only do what you can do. It’s fairly common for people with limited facilities or in locations that make consistent work impossible to turn their horses away for the worst of winter and I don’t think many people with no stables, no arena and gale force winds would continue to try and work a horse they knew was completely rock solid nvm one that is less so.

I think taking steps to ensure everyone is safe and that the situation that seemed to trigger him isn’t replicated whilst you get through the rest of winter (ie OH dealing with feeding him and having schooling whip if needed) sounds like the most sensible thing you can do with the resources available.

Then see where things are at when the better weather arrives and there is the ability to work him more consistently and ask more of him.

The Welsh I used to have used to try and pin you in the corner of the stable when I first got him & I definitely had some near misses with his back legs (used to do wall of death booting every wall when stressed) and for maybe just under a year it wasn’t particularly safe to have him loose in the stable with you if you didn’t want him turning his arse on you, he had to be tied up (his whole demeanour would change when you put a head collar on oddly). He could also be very grumpy around food ( although not on the level of grabbing you over the fence he did threaten me in the stable in the early days… I don’t know what he’d have done if I’d pushed him rather than left him alone). He also used to be a bit of a pain if not in consistent work. (It would be like a total reset had been done on any recently made progress if he had more than a couple of days off)

Over a period of several years (& via a few yard moves, rehab and complete overhaul of a lot of things and me getting better at reading him) I stopped having to tie him up / could do “normal” things like mucking out, grooming, tacking up with him loose (he did actually still kick me occasionally usually as a pain response), he got a lot more relaxed around feed (although went too far the other way after PPID and sometimes had to be hand fed / have his bucket held up for him) and he became a horse you could pick up and drop a lot more (he’d perhaps still be slightly fresh after time off but nothing on the same level of stupidity and hysterics, he’d be in the same “place “ you left him and he stopped caring about being in a strict routine). There was no one specific “magic” thing that fixed everything (& he was still v quirky), just a slow building of lots of tiny changes over time. He was not as extreme as Ozzy although he was hard to love at times in the beginning!

I had a lot more support than you have where you are and I still found it hard going and had a lot of moments where I doubted myself for carrying on with him and lots of moments where I needed someone to push me to take the next step out of the comfort zone. Looking back it was worth it & I’d do it all again. I hope you & your OH get to look back in a few years and feel the same xxx (but no shame if not as he’s obviously thrown things at you that you weren’t expecting and that would make some really well respected and experienced posters decide not to continue if he were theirs)
 
I had an incident with my horse on Tuesday at bringing in time like you I've ended up a bit sore.

Do you think the weather being shit has caused his thought process to regress. Perhaps in past winters food hasn't been so much in supply to he's had to fight for whatever there is and he just thought here we go again, she's not having it - no excuse I know. Who knows what goes on in their heads. Like I say I had an incident with Ishela on Tuesday and now we're back to normal. The weather was crap on Tuesday here too maybe she was just sick of it too - I know I was.

What I really wanted to say is whatever happens and whatever you decide to do don't ever think it's not been a happy ending for Ozzy.
 
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I would think that at some points in his past Ozzie has had to fight for his food and had times of going hungry. Thats not the case now. However he wont have forgot that. His past will effect his future. This is not to excuse his behaviour but it does explain it. Would feeding a calmer help? Other than that I think you are doing all you can with the lack of a stable. feed him and leave him is really all you can do. Once he has his food its his and leave him with it. I think you are standing by him and giving him a chance. He clearly is not a easy horse and you will always need to keep your wits about you when dealing with him. I respect you for giving him the chance and not jumping in to pts straight away.
 
That must have been very frightening. I hope you are ok and feeling better.

Im going to look at this from a slightly different angle. His food aggression may not be as a result of having to fight for his food. It could just be his personality. An example for you. our lead mare determines who eats first, which is her, then the 2nd mare comes along and shes allowed. IF the youngsters are being a pain and unruly both mares will make sure they wait for their hay/feed. When they are being polite the youngsters get to eat. Lead mares yearling son has tried to copy this behaviour in the past with the other horses. But gets put firmly in his place, he now knows the boundaries. So, if hes been allowed to grow up in a herd without grown ups to install manners i could easily see how this can happen.
To me, the dangerous thing is , hes treating you like hed treat another horse. From a safety perspective that is absolutely not on. The size he is, he could do some damage.

My homebred 3yo had a tragic accident last year and was in significant pain, it changed his personality. At over 17.2 and partbred draught i said if i ever thought he couldnt cope i would do the right thing. The day he pinned his full sister ( who adored) to a wall, and then went for me was the day i made that decision. Life is too short to be putting yourself in danger. Im very sad about the decision, but dont regret it for one minute. Im not saying you need to put him to sleep, but please do set some lines in the sand. Above all keep yourself ( and others ) safe.
 
Sandstone1 said:
I would think that at some points in his past Ozzie has had to fight for his food and had times of going hungry. Thats not the case now. However he wont have forgot that. His past will effect his future.
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I've given this a lot of thought over the past few days!
I've scoured the net and found out some bits and pieces on Ozzy's past.
He was an 'unexpected arrival.' A cute, 'pink pony foal' that may well have been spoilt and was not sufficiently aware of boundaries. He stayed in the same home from birth to 6.
At 6 he went to live in Wales, where he was backed and ridden. Videos suggest that this went OK and was starting to gain experience as a ridden horse. His owner seems to do well with him.
But his education didn't continue and he was turned out over winter with no work at all. There are no photos of Ozzy with any other horses, he's on his own in a field on several pics. (I know that the owner kept at least one Section A stallion for showing so it's unlikely that Ozzy would be sharing a field with that pony). Food may well have been scarce and this would have made him super-protective.
So it's perfectly possible that the first time he was ridden - for the best part of a year - was when he went to the dealer.
And we all know what happened to Ozzy from that point. It's not the best start for any horse. Hence he is a very green 8 year old with 'issues'.

Compare this to my Connie Finn, who was bred in Ireland from good lines, backed at 4, hunted with th Galway Blazers at 5, professionally schooled, exported, competed, hunted with the Wynstay and sold from Emily Gilruth's yard (she told me that 'if he was 16 hands he'd never be leaving this yard'). I bought a perfectly mannered, beautifully schooled 8 year old who gave us 12 amazing years and never put a foot wrong. Finn had everything going for him. Ozzy didn't. And it will take longer than 8 months to put things right.

So another way of looking at it is that he's not done too badly in many respects, given his life so far - and, as OH says, he could still make a good little cob for hacking, which is all we want.

Having said this, we're still on high alert, taking no chances - and any repeat of the sort of aggression we saw on Monday will lead to some hard decisions.

We put out a new bale in the haybell today and he was really well behaved, which is encouraging. EP is due on Saturday, we'll see how he is.
 
It sounds like a combination of being a spoilt foal, being kept alone at some points while young with no horses to put him in his place and possibly a lack of food may be why he is like he is.
 
Sandstone1 said:
It sounds like a combination of being a spoilt foal, being kept alone at some points while young with no horses to put him in his place and possibly a lack of food may be why he is like he is.
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Absolutely!

Young horses need boundaries. I got AJ as a 4 year old and it was obvious from day 1 that he'd been brought up 'firm and fair'. Always had excellent manners, he understands that humans are not to be treated like other horses. (Quite honestly, the way he 'plays' with the others at times is a bit worrying!)

Snoopy's food aggression wasn't going to be sorted quickly, but in other respects he benefited greatly from being put in his place by the more senior herd members.

If Ozzy wasn't taught about boundaries and didn't have other horses around to put him in his place, he'd find some situations very challenging. Again, it doesn't make it right. But if we're going to find a solution, having the background info is helpful. We could see through the initial groundwork that he improved a lot once he started to understand boundaries.

It's also got me thinking about how long it takes us to really get to know a horse.
With Finn, I'd say around 4 months as he was uncomplicated. Similar with AJ.
With Snoopy took longer, partly because he was our first and we were green too.
With Ozzy it could take literally a couple of years. I certainly don't feel that I truly know him after 8 months.
 
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