Читать книгу Finding the Missed Path. The Art of Restarting Horses онлайн

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He needed, and I believe even wanted, to get close enough to me to smell me, but was just too scared. That was why I wanted to see what he would do if we turned him loose in this big pen. Did he run aimlessly around the pen, never settling anywhere specific? Or, would he find a place in the pen where he felt relatively safe, and if he did, would he keep going back to it? In our case he had chosen the latter, which was good for us and would, we hoped, work to our advantage.

The gelding had abandoned then returned to almost the exact same spot in the pen on numerous occasions by now. It was not only a “safe” spot for him, but it had also become part of a pattern. It didn’t really matter how many times he left it, where he went or how far away, he always returned to that same spot. And that was the piece of information we really needed to know for what we would be doing next.

I moved from my spot in the middle of the arena and walked slowly toward the southwest corner—the corner opposite where he was. As expected, almost as soon as I began moving he took off for the north end of the arena. When he did, I turned and went directly to the spot he had just vacated. The arena fence was built from metal panels, and once I reached the place where he had been standing, I rubbed my hands on the metal rails of the panel more or less at his head height.