Paddy was in a terrible condition when we got him, he was covered in burns where he had been set on fire, he was skinny due to not been fed, his belly was full of worms, his hair was full of lice and his body was battered in scars. On the way home in the horse box all he wanted to do was sleep and we had to keep stopping to wake him up otherwise he would slip under the bar in the wagon. As soon as I got him home and in to our field he slowly mooched over to the grass and glanced back at us not sure what was happening, he was shaking with fright and went to the other end of the field every time we tried to get near him. This happened for over 2 years…
The only way we could catch him was with feed, due to him being starved he loved his food, but he was still really scared when we got close. I tried so many methods to try and get paddy to trust again but nothing worked until one night I saw a live demonstration on Connection Training with Hannah. From that night on I started clicker training paddy. It took a while to initially teach him the first few stages but slowly away I saw paddy coming out of his shell and learning to trust again…
I now believe paddy trusts me 100% he would always be by my side if he could be! He is now 5 years old and loves his daily clicker training lesson! Last week we passed a man who was having a fire in his front garden and he just plodded past, I couldn’t have been more proud of him! If we hadn’t found Connection Training I don’t know where we would be today!
I now clicker train all of my horses, and last year I got another project ‘Little Alf’ who is my mini mini Shetland due to him having dwarfism! I have started to teach Little Alf new tricks and methods to which he loves!
