Here Taser is bolting as a result of me putting the plastic bag on his saddle. What was not shown is that I was playing all the seven games with him while I was wearing a plastic bag around my neck. He was okay with this up until this point.

It was my ultimate goal to work to the point where Taser could tolerate having the plastic bag on his back in place of me. A month back, I was on Taser’s back and he got frightened by something and he bolted with me same as in the video. This scared me tremendously to the point that I grabbed onto the railing so I could get off before I found out how he could get me off.

It was relieving to see him work through this fear without someone on his back and with instead a horses worst nightmare, the plastic bag, attached to him on the saddle. After allowing him to run around a few times so he could understand that he could not escape his fear and would have to eventually face it, I chose to help him by bringing him to a stop.

From there, I brought in more stimuli such as the plastic bag on the end of the wand to play the “Catching Game”. It was my thought that by bringing his attention to something else, he would somewhat forget about the “danger” on his back. This worked. He took the step forward that was asked of him, then I proceeded to pet him bringing the plastic bag wand with me.

Now that I was able to approach him, I went back to the “Friendly Game” exercise bringing him back to comfort. He was now tolerating both being touched by a moving plastic bag on various parts of his body while wearing a stationary one on his back. Awesome work Taser! Progress every step.

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