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Posted by Loren NC on 9/12/2007, 8:04 pm We have our zebras wear halters all the time. Okay, so I have heard all the objections. This isn't about that issue, but that piece of the story is essential to understanding the rest of the story. For those of you who are new to this board, we have two female Grant's that we have had for nine years. For ease of story telling, they are Ziggy and Zelda. Ziggy has needed to have her halter changed for some time now. They get stiff and grungy and start rubbing raw spots on the head if they are worn too long. Also for those of you new to this board, we have handled our zebras only to the extent of brushing, haltering and leading them, so they are not real keen on us trying other activities on them. Our approach to changing the halter is to thread the lead rope through the nose band of the new halter, get it in place and buckled and then unbuckle and slide the old halter off. The last time we tried it on Ziggy, she backed away and backed away until she backed into a trailer I have parked in the corral. That suprised her and she leaped forward and ran right over me. When my headache ended several days later, I decided I would have to approach the problem more intelligently the next time. Today was the next time. We put Ziggy in the stall with the doors closed. It wasn't much effort to get the halter up over her nose and she barely moved when my wife passed the head strap over her neck to me and then came around and buckled it. No pain, no panic, no frustration. With that success, I decided it was a good time to address the halter issue with Zelda. Zelda ripped the front of her face off in January 2006, and has not worn a halter since then. Prior to her accident, I had worked with her a lot to get her used to the idea of me putting on and removing a halter. But that was two years ago. Today I decided to approach getting another halter on her by using clicker training. It had worked well on her once before, so that seemed like a sensible thing to do. It took her five or ten minutes to remember that the click means there is food coming, but as soon as she remembered that, thing started to move right along. My intention for today was ONLY to get her used to the idea of me having the halter in my hand and close to her face. However, the clicker approach was working so well, that I started having her reach through the halter to get the grain out of my hand. After pulling it clear up onto her nose a couple of times, I saw no reason not to just move ahead and see what happened, so I passed the head strap over to my wife on the other side. She buckled it while Zelda ate grain from my hand and Zelda never even backed away. With the halter in place, I decided it would be a good time to see if Zelda remembered anything about leading. Remember that it has been at least two years since Zelda has been led. I snapped a rope on her, clucked to her and gave the rope a tug. She followed right behind me! We only went a few steps in the corral when I stopped her, stepped in front of her and told her "Back!" She backed right up! Needless to say I was delighted! We have known from the beginning that zebras are intelligent and have good memories. Now I have proven that the memories are long lasting ones.
166.82.136.177
If there are many of the "old" participants of this board lurking on the sidelines, this post will no doubt bring about some objections, but I will take my chances on that for the benefit of making a point about zebra memory.
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