Ruby stands next to Cilla in the paddock

26 July 2024

Ruby's Recovery - Part Five

It’s now a month since Ruby arrived at Redwings – hasn’t the time flown? If you haven’t heard Ruby’s story yet, and how she came to need Redwings’ help, you can read it here.

Ruby has truly settled into life at Redwings. Her paddock is next to our feed barn and maintenance barn, so she has a front row seat to the comings and goings of Redwings!

Her early morning feeds continue, and this week another lovely bunch of colleagues across Redwings have volunteered to come in early and feed her. Lisa, Brian and Michelle, from our Fundraising team, have been added to the rota of people who are getting out of bed before dawn to make sure she gets her milk!

On the subject of Ruby’s feeds, we must say a massive thank you to everyone who supported Ruby, after this blog explained the costs of her feeds. You donated over £1,000 towards the costs of her regular feeding. Of course, this included the milk powder, but the costs of Ruby’s care also include the time and expertise of our team who (amongst many other things!) monitor her weight, calculate her nutritional needs and deliver her round-the-clock care. Thanks to your support, Ruby’s life has completely changed for the better.

Training continues

Ruby also continues to get more and more comfortable with humans and is loving her scratches and interactions with our Behaviour team.

Her trainer Catherine works with Ruby daily, and this week has been reintroducing Ruby to a headcollar. Wearing a headcollar will be crucial as Ruby gets older, so we can hold her for her routine care, and lead her safely.

First Ruby needs to be happy just having the headcollar put on and taken off. Then a completely new phase of learning will be for her to understand that we can ask her, with the lightest pulls on a lead rope, for what we would like her to do, such as walk on, stop or turn. Ruby doesn’t yet know any of this, and we don’t want her to fear the headcollar because we just hang on to it until she stops struggling.

Using positive reinforcement means that Ruby first has a go at doing what we would like her to do, and Catherine has a number of tricks up her sleeve to set things up so Ruby easily chooses the thing we would like. Everything is done in small steps. The secret to positive reinforcement training is to offer a reward as soon as Ruby shows anything like the behaviour we are looking for.

In practice (having been along to watch one of her training sessions), it looks a lot like this:

Catherine offers the headcollar for Ruby to investigate. When she does, Catherine rewards her with scratches (her favourite thing!). Her training sessions continue like this, and when Ruby puts her nose through the headcollar she gets more scratches. Catherine has worked with Ruby like this and can now fasten it over Ruby’s head – and yes you guessed it, Ruby gets more scratches! Working in steps like this means Ruby welcomes wearing the headcollar, and of course it is a fantastic foundation for the rest of her training. Every step is taken at her pace, with lots of rewarding scratches, and the results are clear to see – her confidence is blossoming!

First Ruby puts her nose in the headcollar.

Then, Catherine can fasten it over her head, rewarding her with scratches.

Cilla continues to be a star!

With Cilla’s help, Ruby is also set up for success to discover all the things in her paddock, as she is doing a fantastic job of modelling all the key horsey behaviours so Ruby can learn ‘the basics’ of being a horse. With her calm and gentle nature, Cilla has won herself an army of fans here at Hapton HQ. Ruby might be the star of this blog, but Cilla is definitely a star in her own right!