KBR Training Case Study"Hope"A Virginia Range "Comstock" Horse |
Hope in her pen in Nevada
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Hope, known in the Virginia Range as Miss W6 for her "W6" freezemark
has a rather sordid history. She was adopted with another horse three
years ago in Nevada. Later that winter the VRWPA got a call to investigate
a dead horse and an abandoned horse in a corral. Hope was abandoned in a remote
corral with no feed or water. The other horse had apparently hung himself,
possibly in a failed attempt to be loaded into a trailer. VRWPA volunteers had
to pack water and feed to Hope until they could get a trailer through the snow
to remove her.
In the VRWPA corral she paced incessantly. One night someone, possibly her original adopters who had dropped out of sight, released her from the corral. It is believed that she rejoined the wild herds as she was picked up a couple of years later by state authorities. LRTC agreed to take in Hope at the Learning Center at KBR. Our objective is to gentle her and find a suitable adopter. This case study starts with her first full day after arriving. Day 1 Hope and her Comstock companion, "Blue," settled in fairly well but they both seemed very edgy when people would were moving around nearby. We waited until the place was quiet and worked with Hope using Quiet Hour approaches and the Bamboo Pole Method. Hope was quite restless when left alone and got downright wound up when someone entered her pen, but once she got focused she really tracked in on the person in the pen with her. She was very curious about the bamboo pole and the human that was attached to it. Although she was still definitely very wild and startled easily, within a few minutes of first contact she seemed to be really interested in human touch and she could be approached and touched repeatedly. |
First night here
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First contact
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She wants to check out the pole
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