This is Fanta. I've known Fanta before because he was owned by one of our previous grooms at
the sanctuary and lived in a field close by. He was sold to a lovely home who had sent
him off to be brought on. Unfortunately, the organisation he was sent to was incredibly
dominant and pushed him with the use of whips. Luckily, the organisation took videos of this and
the owner had him removed instantly. The lady who you can see is Heather. She has done a great job
in bringing him back from his ordeal. She came to the sanctuary to ask for my help and here we are.
Okay so we have Fanta here. So tell me a little bit about Fanta. How can I help you?
I went to see Fanta with Teresa when he was next door to Mane Chance and we walked
into the field with Ellie and he put his ears up from the other side and just walked over
and then as we walked away, he trotted behind us and he is how I would describe, a labrador. Yeah.
You know, a horse version of a labrador and if he had the chance to get upstairs
he'd be fighting for a place on the bed with the dogs, you know, that's happening. Theresa, she
couldn't ride that day so I rode him for her and at the end of trying him, I said yeah, I think
he's the horse for you Teresa but he is still very green and he needs a little bit of work. She
was going back to France for the Summer and she did a bit of research and she found out about *edited out*.
Ideally, she, I think she would have liked me to have taken him but
I just haven't got time for my own horses, let alone another one so we sent him to *edited out*
and then it turned out that it wasn't the place that we were expecting it to be.
Theresa alerted me to the fact that she'd seen a bit of video. She was worried that he wasn't,
that he was napping, that he wasn't the nice, safe horse that we'd seen. I then, I don't do Facebook
or anything but I traveled back through a few of the videos and thought wow, this is not what he
needs and I don't know what that woman was up to and I just said we need to get him out there quick
and then luckily, Teresa's had him flu vaccinated so he was due another flu vaccine
and the vet went to see him and picked up that he had a bad eye and then the women wouldn't let
us move him because she didn't want that to be held against her. So we eventually got him moved
a few weeks ago and he came back here and the lady, I didn't go and pick him up,
it was tactically better to send a professional person over there because I was a bit too involved
so when she brought him back, she said she had really sweet little horses, everything that she
said, I don't know whether it's anything or nothing but I went to hang the hay net up in the lorry and
he flinched quite severely and I said well, that, I said, he wasn't like that when he went and
and that's what he was like the first couple of days wasn't he Sue? You know, if I went up
just to clip the head collar rope onto the lead right onto the shoulder, he would spook
and the first night I turned him out with the head collar on and he just stood and
looked at me and I was like this isn't the horse that we tried and he was very-
He's very frustrated. Yeah. This biting is just a lot of tension in the
jaw. I mean that, I mean, I know he's after food and stuff but that sign there is a lot of
things to let go of. Yes, yeah, he is so much better than he was. Now if I go out this morning,
I went out into the field and he actually called to me. He came trotting over whereas mine
stayed there and then because I called him they galloped over. We don't want to be left out now.
And so he is coming back and we're riding him, just trying to teach him. We're not going
to try and train him into dressage but, you know, he needs to know to go right, left, stop,
you know, there's a road, stop, you know, all that sort of thing, which he's very quick to learn.
He's had his feet done, he's had to have the vet back for his eye
and his walk, in riding him, his walk is his worst pace but that was always the case when
I trialled him as well. His trot and his counter are nice but he is very stilted in the walk so that's
why I just wanted to get him checked out on that front to check what's going on
and he's really come on. He's gained in confidence,
he gets on well with mine. Mine are a bit of a set herd and Frankie likes it, Frank is my herd leader
and as long as Frankie likes him, the others like him.
So he can smell something that's in my coat. Yeah. You get to use reward training with him because he
would respond so quickly to it! He does doesn't he? Yeah, I'm just going to put that there.
I mean, the other thing that we found when I got him back here I do stretches with all of mine
and I did that with his and the first time he could stretch to about here. Now, he can actually
come right the way round and I was a little bit he was very one-sided when we tried that and he's much much better. How
can I help you? You're talking about walking pace. When I, I don't think I could probably trot him
in hand. Okay. Is that because he's strong? He's gonna pull you? No, he just doesn't go anywhere
and that was the worrying thing when he first came here because he was like
I don't know what's going on, I don't know what you want from me and he just froze and that's why
I came out quite quickly because I didn't want that to sort of like develop into anything more.
I can lead him with Frankie but the first time I tried to lead him with another horse, he
just stopped and wouldn't move and then it was, you know, you've got one horse that's
wanting to go out into the field and then another one that's going I can't cope with this, I don't
know what's expected of me, I don't know what to do. Well, watching that video because I did watch
it so I offered my services to come and see you because obviously, he has been one of
our horses. I haven't had a lot of interaction with him because there's another
25 horses up there and yes, when I saw that he'd been pushed far too hard, far too quickly and
bless him, he had no understanding whatsoever- Of what was being asked. No and, you know, so
if you've not got clear communication and you're you're communicating in that way, it's very, very
hard and it's interesting because he's, right now, he's showing me a lot of frustration and
he's all over me like a rash so we're gonna have to calm all of that down first and
I think from today it would be really nice to get him moving forward. Yeah. It's a shame because what
happened is he obviously went out with the other horses, which is exactly what he needs to build his
confidence on a leading just on the ground until he can go in front and actually look
forward and not check out where his mates are all the time but unfortunately, they took him out
and then they moved him away. I saw that. And there was lots of, so what that materialises
is that he would have probably lost his confidence going out with others because he actually feels
that something bad is going to happen. Yes, I saw that and thought immediately
that, you know, it's because he was going away from the other horses and when I tried him
he was kept on his own. When we first rode him with Ellie, as I rode him, I could see that he
was pulling towards the other horses that were in the field and I could tell that that might
have been something that could have developed in to something.
At the end of the day, we have to build his confidence so he's okay on his own.
Hacking out, the first thing I did here was I hacked him out, we have a little
around the block as we call it, you know, you go to the top of the hill, left and right, back home. I
rode him on his own the first time just to see what he was like and he was absolutely fine. We saw
cyclists, walkers, a few cars, we don't have a lot of traffic up here and he saw a motorbike and he
was like okay, I can take all of this in and I was expecting him to have some spooks and so, you know,
and I wanted to see what his true colours were like and I was like this is not the
horse in the video at all, you know, and then I took him out with, Sue rode him because
Sue's riding him while he's here just to do a bit of schooling with him
and I rode Stella and we put him in front, we put him behind, we put him to the side. To begin with
on the side, he was a little bit oh, I'm not sure about you because you're top horse but he
was fine and he did everything that was asked. Oh that's right, we came around a
corner where we turned to go down a hill and there was a dog, suddenly started barking, it was like
and he was like oh that's cool and Stella who is, she's bomb proof, she went and I went oh my
God because it made me jump, I hadn't seen it. So on that front, he's absolutely bomb
proof and he's done everything that's asked and now, you know, and he has improved a great deal.
He just needs a little bit of consideration that's all. Exactly.