All excellent, experienced advice to take to heart above. Fairness, education, empathy, attention to detail and consistency will always produce the best results.
I would pick out partoow's comment about perfume again, though. I'll admit it doesn't come up much since most people I know who work in barns don't cover themselves in scent for work, but I did once see a real drama at a grading due to it. The owner of one stallion what sitting next to me, wearing so much scent I actually commented on whether she thought that was wise around stallions (huh?). During the finale when all the young stallions came back in in hand and they announced marks etc. she went down to handle her horse (whom she regularly worked with and even rode a bit at home) because her rider was handling another. You could literally see the stallion inhaling deeply, getting more and more excited, while she stood watching the festivities, oblivious. Next thing, he's on his hind end, everything out, rumbling away! Of course the colts around him started to react and the whole situation came very close to disaster in the space of about a minute. Luckily the stallion's regular rider was on the job, hollered at one of his people to take the horse he had and ran over to grab the now very excited boy.
Afterwards he was grumbling about the "silly woman" but I did point out HE was the one with all the specialised knowledge and perhaps he might have mentioned that little fact to her, although I doubt it ever entered his mind.
I had a very "studdy" gelding who definitely reacted to women's scents on occasion. We never had a problem but he did once freak out some strange woman walking by by stuffing his nose in her neck and inhaling deeply!
Edited by TarrSteps (14/10/2008 10:23)
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