Not a good day with Syd yesterday.
For those who don't know, my place simply has no good place to work on driving. The ground in the mini's paddock is either too unlevel or too soft in pretty much all of it. Most of my property is densely wooded; in the little that isn't, you still can't draw a 30' circle without including at least one tree or building. I can ground-drive, but the turning radius needed for a pony hitched to a cart simply isn't there. So, I feel like I have to work in the neighborhood streets. It's a quiet neighborhood, usually, but it's not their home paddock, so I am working against barn sour/buddy sour issues as well as whatever else I'm focusing on that day.
Yesterday, I wanted to start with simply ground-driving Syd around the block. For starters, she didn't want to go down the driveway; she zigged and zagged and spooked at nothing and did just about everything except lie down in the driveway to avoid moving forward. Not thrilled with the idea I am used to, but this degree of resistance is unusual. But I kept her nose pointed in the right direction, and we got through the gate and onto the road. Several of the trash haulers pick up in our neighborhood on Fridays, so there were a number of trash carts on the roadside; Syd seemed sure that either one of them or a mailbox had developed carnivorous tendencies.
I was only trying to do a small loop - around one block - but on the back side of that loop, a tree company was working in a neighbor's yard. Syd was apprehensive about the truck, the traffic cones, the whole shebang; when the guy 40 feet up in a tree that was a good 60 feet or more from the road fired up his chainsaw, she completely lost it. He apologized, but it wasn't his fault, and I am still trying to work this one out. This is the pony that as a youngster stood watching as my husband used a chainsaw to cut up some trees in the pasture; she was so close, the chips from the saw got caught in her mane. (At the time, we joked that she was trying to learn how to operate it so she could use it on the fence.) So, I have to wonder, what has happened between then and now that has made her so afraid of the sound of a chainsaw that she didn't want to be within half a block of one? She wasn't just startled, she persisted in trying to run away; we made a couple more trips around the block and she strongly resisted going in that direction, and fought to go faster when heading away. (A few days before, she had tried to run away when someone was revving the engine of a car behind their house.) I finally said, "OK, if you are going to be so wiggy about noises, let's get you some noise you can't get away from," and went home and hooked her to the drag. The drag is a length of steel pipe with a larger diameter PVC pipe acting like a roller around it; when pulled on dirt, it makes bumping and clanking sounds, but on the road, it is a
lot noisier. I hate the racket too, but I need her to learn that unpleasant sounds are not going to hurt her, and running away from them simply isn't an option. At home, I can drive her with the drag, but on the road, I led her. She was a whole lot less than thrilled, but we made it around the block (apologies to the neighbors; but I may be trying this with tin cans on strings next).
