Donut and the Not-So-Evil-As-It-Used-To-Be Water

Shortly after I brought Donut home, I was surprised to discover how she felt about water coming out of a hose.  As a horse who lived outside 24/7 and drank from a creek and used trees for shelter, I expected her to be pretty blase about being hosed off.  As it turned out, she was the opposite.  She reacted to any water that wasn't from nature as if she was a vampire being sprayed by Holy Water.  Whether it was coming out of a spray bottle, a hose, or even a damp sponge, she would try to run away or kick at the water.  I discovered she has incredible accuracy with her hind feet as she kicked the spray bottle I was holding many times.  (although she never kicked me)

I tried several approaches, ranging from desensitization techniques to something closer to CAT-H.  I tried different locations.  I incorporated food.  I even forced her to stand once because I really, really needed to treat a wound.

She is still uncomfortable with me putting wet things like ointment on her legs, although she is doing better about her body.  I am still plugging away on that particular issue.

We have had some good progress with the hose, though.  I had initially been trying to work with her in the indoor wash stall, but I realized that she may be quite sensitive to sound.  And between the water splattering on the floor and walls, the sound of the water coming out of the nozzle, and the echo created by a large barn with a concrete floor, I thought it could be that was too much for her brain to handle.  

So I moved her outside to the parking area and used the long barn hose to reach out there.  I worked with her using a technique I'd seen Warwick Schiller use on a horse that he was trying to get used to being hosed off.  I had a little success with that.  I was basically letting her walk around as she needed to and following with the hose that had a small trickle of water coming out.  If she stopped, I turned off the water.  Then, once she was stopping, I would wait for her to look at me before I turned off the water.

But that particular location was problematic. It got a lot of traffic from people coming in and out of the barn and then I found myself interrupted or having to explain what I was doing.  And I was making a wet mess on the bluestone.  Then winter set in, and I didn't really feel like hosing Donut with cold water was very fair.

So I waited for a few months until nice weather started periodically showing up.  And I got the idea to use the outdoor wash area instead.  The outdoor area is a concrete pad surrounded by grass and it is a little more out of the way.  Plus, it has a long hose that I could use so Donut could move around if she felt like she needed to.

I started out by letting her graze while spraying her legs.  If she moved around, I kept the water on her legs.  If she stopped, I took the water off.  I didn't have a nozzle on the hose to reduce the amount of noise she was hearing and that seemed to help too.  It only took a couple of sessions before she would stand to have her front legs hosed off.  It took another couple of sessions before she would allow water on her hind legs.  Then I started asking her to stand on the grass without eating while I hosed her legs off.  Finally, I introduced her to the concrete pad and asked her to stand there while I used the hose.

After what is probably about 8 sessions of just 2-3 minutes over the course of several weeks, she can walk on the concrete pad and stand while I hose off all four legs.  She isn't perfectly still yet, and she does still pick up her hind feet at first.  But she is so much quieter about the process, and I can, in fact, run water over all four legs pretty thoroughly.

In terms of next steps, I am hoping to improve her confidence and get her to the point where having her legs hosed off is really no big deal.  Then I will probably try adding a sprayer nozzle to the hose to see how she tolerates that.  If that works OK after a few sessions, I plan to try putting shampoo on one leg and see if I can start working on getting it clean.  Once she tolerates washing and rinsing of one leg, I'll gradually add additional legs until all four legs can be thoroughly cleaned.  Then I'll move on to other body parts.

If you are interested in seeing how I work with Donut, I've got a 3-minute video of our most recent session from last Friday.  It was very much unplanned, so I'm not wearing appropriate barn clothes or shoes and my 8-year-old daughter is the one taking the video, so it's not the best quality.  But at least you can see how I handle it when she moves around or reacts to having water on her hind legs.  You'll see that if she lifts her leg up, I keep the water on the leg until she puts it down and then I take the water away for a few seconds to let her know that was what I was looking for.  Then I come back to the leg again to test her response.  I hose her hind legs off several times to help her understand the process.

She does move around a little more than she has been the last couple of sessions.  But it was windy that day and the barn has been building a new manure dumping area.  Given that there were lots of new things right around the wash area, including plastic that was blowing, I thought Donut did pretty well.

This area is next to the wash area in the video.  As you can see, it is full of Objects That Are Scary.

Here is the video of the full session:

As the weather gets warmer, I'm planning to work on hosing Donut's legs a little more frequently.  So (cross fingers) hopefully it won't be too long before I can start tackling all the dirt that has been building up for almost two years!  But, I'm also mindful of the foundation I am laying.  I'm expecting to have Donut for her whole life, which will probably be another 25+ years.  Even if it takes me another year to convince her to stand quietly while getting a bath, I still get another 25 years to enjoy the results of that effort.  On the other hand, if I rush her now, I get to spend 25 years wishing that she would stand more quietly or that bathing wasn't such a chore.  So the time and effort seems worth it to me.