Keno had a couple of accidents while at Joyce's. The most serious event involved a tie post which was made from a section of telephone pole. One day Keno pulled pretty hard while bungee tied to the pole. Unfortunately the base was rotten, the pole snapped off and Keno took off cross country at a dead run with the pole dragging behind and launching into Keno's hind legs like a sling shot. She was pretty beaten up by the time things calmed down enough for her to be rescued. Since then she would experience some pretty severe panic attacks which most times caused her to wheel and run backwards.

We had hoped that some "time out" and occasional light workouts would bring her back around but in reality, after a couple of months she hadn't recovered to the same level she was when she left several months ago. It was time to try a more intensive approach. On top of everything else, an event where a latigo failed and a saddle ended up going upside down and hanging from her belly didn't help calm her any.

I was trimming her feet in the round corral when we decided to quit babying her and confront her demons. We took her onto the mats under the barn lean-to and she dealt with getting trimmed just like all the other horses. Sharon took her head and occasionally reinforced her behavior with C/T. We did her front feet, including bringing them forward onto the shoeing stand for dressing off with the rasp. In the past we simply tried to get her pretty close to level. Today she was going to get a balanced trim and we didn't stop until she had perfect breakover and touchdown.

Next we were off to the round corral. Keno had worked up a fear of plastic flags so we worked with one until she would stand for the flag to be waved all around and for her to be rubbed by it from head to tail on both sides. We did a bit of Learn-Learn in this session so Keno was pretty sweaty, and with the dust in the round corral she got pretty dirty. Sharon decided it was time for Keno to experience getting a bath.

It wasn't practical to bring a hose into the round corral, so we filled several water bottles and wet her down with them, starting out gently and working up to where we simply poured the water onto her. She didn't like it at first, but in a little while she figured out that it wasn't so bad after all.

This took care of her body, but the water bottles didn't cut it with her legs and feet. We took her out onto the lawn and ran the hose slowly on her feet. She didn't like this either at first, but Sharon supported her from behind with the flag and we rinsed her off up to where the "bottle water" ended.

Now one session won't be enough to make these concepts really stick, but she can now cope with these situations and after trimming her hind feet in our next session with her, we'll repeat the flag and washing exercises.

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