Phase 2 | Loshenka Makeover 2024

The wild horse, now named Strike - due to how she’d strike out at others - had quite severe food aggression. This could be anything from grass, treats and even their main forage ; hay. She would attack other horses and sometimes even people if they were in the same area as her while she was eating. Sydney had some experience with this in the past alongside other issues so thankfully did have a rough plan with how he would go ahead with her training. He also had a partner that sometimes the mares would favour, so she would be on standby if he needed.

In the first couple of weeks the mare was settling, her handler Sydney had a variety of vet testing done to ensure she wasnt suffering from anything internal that could be causing these behaviours and thankfully nothing was found. So, despite the constant aggression towards her food, Sydney decided it was better to push through with more training and introducing others around her. He had obviously included the more elder horses who would be able to put Strike in her place and teach her the behaviour that Sydney was seeking. For the first couple of weeks she was with those, and to be honest, a lot of the hard work put in was by them really. But it still wasn’t enough, so todays session was just the two of them. 

A couple of days ago Sydney had been told that Strike was kicked out of her herd by the other horses and restricted with food as a youngster and this led to her obsession over any scraps that she could get her hooves on. She would get aggressive if any other horses came over to her while she ate and had been seen getting into fights over even small things such as twigs and berries. She understandably didn’t want to be left in the same position that she was beforehand. With this new found piece of history, Sydney tried his best to work with it and make her feel like she wasn’t going to get shoved out the way again and there would be more than enough food to go around for everyone. He wanted to start in a smaller area such as the barn to guarantee that there was a space between them so he wouldn’t get injured if Strike had any negative reactions - this would turn out to be the smartest idea..! Although the mare looked sweet (and was when it came to the majority of other things) she behaved almost the complete opposite when food was involved. 

To start off with, Sydney just hand-fed Strike some of her usual dinner such as grains and cubes, he would pause between each handful so she knew that more food would be brought out after a little break. This was going well although she was kicking the stable door occasionally between breaks. Once Sydney thought she had made enough progress with this stage, after about an hour, he brought one of the other horses in to the barn next to her and ensured it had some hay. Sydney repeated the previous step with the breaks, but used hay this time so Strike had the same thing as the horse next to her. She would have to deal with the little breaks, but knew that she would get some hay as well afterwards. She wasn’t happy with this to start with and striked out to try and bite Sydney during one of the pauses.

After a couple of hours, a little progress was made. Sydney didn’t want to push it with Strike today and turned her back out into her own pasture. He gave her a few treats which she took nicely while another horse was next to her in the field opposite. He felt like this was a really big step and gave her a lot of praise before he left. Sydney uses a lot of positive reinforcement for his horses and really prefers this over a lot of other methods. He’s glad she ended up with him as some people can be quite forceful and thats the last thing that would have helped Strike.

In the evening, Sydney went back to the drawing board to revisit some ideas and hopefully get a variety of new ones to work with over the next few days. He posted on some local forums asking for advice, did a bit of research through other peoples experience and what they had successes with. After a couple of hours of this, he had some new things to work on and was excited for the following days with Strike.

The next morning, Sydney awoke at 5am to do the horses early feeds and noticed Strike wasn’t in her usual spot. He walked around the field a little incase she was hidden behind a tree but again, she wasn’t there. Thankfully the entire area was enclosed so she wouldn’t have gone far, but this is the last thing he needed to do. He got the rest of the horses fed first and then focused on finding the houdini horse…

After twenty minutes of searching, he found Strike in the hay barn eating all their hay… Sydney isn’t really sure why he didn’t search this area first as its almost obvious this would be where she’d run to. He slipped the halter on her - being cautious if she snapped out at him - and walked her around the barn while he was doing his morning chores for a couple of hours. He knew there would be a risk of colic and wanted to do his best to avoid that. Once he was finished, he moved Strike into the bigger pasture with some of the horses she was already familiar with. Sydney knew he’d have to keep an extra eye on her today but didn’t mind. 

In the afternoon when the temperature had cooled and the risk of colic had lessened, he went back out to do some more work with her. He had some treats, some oats and a positive attitude!

Sydney had a couple of treats in his hand and held them out, waiting for Strike to have a softened expression and relaxed ears before releasing them. If she didn’t, he’d move back a step and give her a moment before trying again. He did this a few times before switching over to the oats. Strike seemed to of got the idea and her ears perked forwards before she took the food from Sydney. 

This little session went really well and she had shown no aggression towards her field mates when they had come over, being curious about what was going on. Sydney also gave them a few treats the same time as he did with Strike and although she had her ears pinned, she didnt try strike out or act aggressive and Sydney took that as a win! He ended the afternoon on a good note and gave her a groom over while she ate her pile of hay. He ensured there was multiple bundles of hay spotted around the field so they had options during the evening and no issues would arise. Strike looked happy and content as Sydney left her, excited for the future ahead with this wonderful mare.