When I first got The Pony he was very wary and did not appreciate being prodded and poked. Although he has always enjoyed being groomed, he had limits on how much he would tolerate touches in certain places, such as his ears.
Touching his ears, even briefly, resulted in him pulling away sharply and glaring “DON’T touch my ears!”
“I’m being gentle…”
“Don’t. Touch.”
So apart from a quick swipe with a soft brush, The Pony’s ears were a No Zone. Also, to be fair to The Pony, I had accidentally got water inside one of his ears twice whilst hosing him down. I blame him for not standing still, yet I’m sure he blames me for putting the hose near his ear in the first place!
However, I am determined and also like my pets to be safe to handle by vets. If anything happened to his ears, how would we treat them?! So I began introducing The Pony to a Health Check – this involves checking key, sensitive parts of his body that he may naturally want to protect. I taught The Kitten the same checks in the first weeks I had him, so he knows no different.
The Health Check – Ears, Eyes, Nose, Mouth, ‘Willy’, Bottom. Ideally in that order, to reduce the chance of accidentally spreading any natural flora to places that may not appreciate it.
Since these checks begin with Ears, The Pony was not impressed. To begin with I did not push the matter – I ran a hand over The Pony’s ears firmly, but gently, until he had enough. The rest of the checks were easy – apparently it was only his ears that were a No Zone.
I repeated these checks at least once a week, and over time The Pony tolerated more touching on his ears.
Then the moment of turn-around happened. About 9 months after I first met The Pony, he suddenly began communicating with me differently. He was asking me for things. Observing me. Reading me. During one of our Health Checks I was able to rub the insides of his ears with my fingers and he leaned in for more.
“Itchy ears!”
“You want me to scratch them?”
“Itchy ears!”
I got a clean towel and rubbed the inside of an ear with the towel over my finger.
“YES! ITCHY EARS!” The Pony leaned into the rub, as I carefully ‘scratched’ the itch using my towel covered finger. He leaned into it as hard as he could, his eyes rolled, his third eyelid appearing and if he was a dog, a back leg would have been kicking.
Eventually, I had to stop. The weight of his head pushing down into my hand was very heavy!
“Was that good?”
“Yes, good!”
“You want me to do the other one?” I offered, towelled finger to his other ear.
“Yes, itchy ear!” And the other ear got the same treatment.
In that moment I realised that much of The Pony’s discomfort was from unfamiliarity. When we first met we were strangers – although The Pony is friendly to everyone, he still has boundaries and needed to build trust with me and his new herd. It took 9 months, but he now understood that I was his friend, and I was there for him, to take care of him.
And now The Pony knew, that if he had an itchy ear, he could ask me to scratch it for him.