The past several months have been a journey for Khianna. She went into training last June to be restarted under saddle, but unfortunately, she had some issues with bolting. Andrea put a lot of time into trying to work through these issues, and felt that Khianna’s bolting was a fear-based response that was developing into a learned behavior. She tried a number of different training methods with her, including ground driving. After 60 days of training, Khianna had shown a lot of improvement, but we felt she wasn’t quite ready to be offered for adoption as a rideable horse.
But the stars aligned for Miss Khianna when a new friend came along…looking for a horse to join her family at her lovely Woodinville farm. Khianna moved to her new foster home this past Saturday, and her new foster mom Kitti had this happy update to share:
I spent most of the day visible to her from the pastures or sitting inside her sacrifice area reading a book pretending not to pay any attn to her. About 4:00 I asked her if she wanted to go eat some grass which required putting on her halter. Not so interested but then.…o..k..a..y. Went out to eat grass and took off the lead rope. Stayed there with her for 50 mins while she ate; the minis were on the other side of the fence eating and Bugsy was talking with her. At one point I was going to leave the pasture to get a pooper scooper leaving Speedy in the pasture with her. She didn’t think that was a great idea and tried to follow me out. So I stayed. When it was time to leave she certainly wasn’t enthused but let me gently come up to her and reattach the lead rope and go down to her sacrifice area and stall. Carrots followed.
Tonight she ran in when I called her for dinner; she thinks carrots and apples are the coolest things ever. She is so excited I am reminded not to hand feed and am putting them on her hay. She forages right through the flake to get them all.
I think her willingness to reengage after 26 hours is remarkable. She is a sweetheart. More to follow.
Here are some photos of Khianna meeting her new friends at her new home:
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- Hello Bill!
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- Meeting Dazzle
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- Meeting Dazzle
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- Khianna and Kitti
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- Meeting Bugs Bunny
Awesome story for Khianna!
I second that Khianna is a sweetheart. When dealing with her, note that she’s very intelligent. I think a lot of her skittishness is because she’s learning to trust her environment and the people around her but because she takes in a lot she has a lot to process. Never sell her short. I think that if you push her training, as in really working to get her to get the details right, she’ll enjoy the process and the results of what that brings her.