It’s deer hunting season, and today on a trail ride we ran across fresh entrails from dressed deer.  Of course, Montana spooked and would have nothing to do with them.  Cedar walked right up to them like it was no big deal.  I tell you, Cedar is worth his weight in gold.

A few months ago, Elizabeth ran across a dead animal while riding Montana, and spent quite a while (over 1 hour?) using Clinton Anderson groundwork techniques, similar to Parelli’s squeeze game.  It didn’t work.  My experience with my two high-strung horses is that the strong Clinton Anderson techniques don’t seem to work well, as they upset the horse even more.

Today, I instead kept Montana very calm and used very gentle approach/retreat methods.  We spent about a half hour, and Montana was able to at least approach the pile of guts, whereas originally he spooked about 10 feet away at the smell.

On the way back home, we ran into another fresh pile of entrails and Montana was able to go right up to them and sniff them.

It’s amazing at the number of things on a trail ride horses can be scared of.  A bomb-proof trail horse (like Cedar) is really tough to find.