Sucker punch to the gut

 About a week before Christmas, Pyro landed himself firmly on the Naughty List.

This creature.

That's a very flippant way of saying he bit me. 

I had met my younger sibling at my barn that morning to introduce them to Nova (who was a delight). As we walked back up the hill, we cut through Pyro's pasture to say hello. We greeted him, but he was being a little nosy, so I asked him to yield his shoulder away from us like I've done a thousand times before. However, instead of stepping away as he normally would, he whipped around faster than a snake and grabbed my arm. It wasn't hard enough to leave a mark, and he let go immediately, but W. T. F.?!

I got a well-timed correction in, Pyro wandered off to get a drink, and I politely asked my sibling to please exit the pasture. I retrieved my rope halter, caught Pyro, and proceeded to do groundwork with him in the dry lot until he would respectfully yield to me. 

While he would move his feet where I wanted, he still looked a bit resentful.

Upon unhaltering him, he took off with a sassy head toss to bother the other geldings, not wanting to be anywhere near me. Since I didn't want to leave him on that note, I proceeded to work with him at liberty until I could approach him and have him stand still or yield away from me depending on which I was asking for. 

I walked back into the barn feeling a little shell shocked. Where had this come from? It felt so out of the blue since I thought the work we all had been doing with him since the clinic with Kate had made an impact. All I had seen and heard was good behavior from him. This was a sucker punch to the gut. 

I had ridden him in the week prior, and he was super.

It turns out, he had bitten two of the other boarders in the month leading up to this, and I hadn't been informed because they didn't want to burden me. Once was a similar situation to mine (asking him to move in the pasture), and the other when they were picking up his empty hay pillow in his stall to refill it. So, this behavior wasn't an isolated incident, but an escalation of a behavior he had gotten away with more than once. While this is incredibly frustrating, I can't change the past. So, what the heck do I do going forward?

After a solid anxiety spiral, I contacted Kate who met me the next day for a virtual lesson. We did a lot of brainstorming, then she watched me do some groundwork with Pyro to see if she could find any obvious holes in my training (there weren't any). From my description, she saw his behavior as a pecking order challenge.

With help from her and others, here is what I have going forward:

1. Rule out pain.
• While I anticipate that this issue is at least partly, if not all, behavioral, I want to give him the benefit of the doubt and make sure he's not in pain, especially since the biting behavior has exhibited so sporadically. 
• The two biggest suspects, if it IS pain related, are neck pain or ulcers. I'll be working with my vet(s) to rule them out. 
• He tends to hold a lot of tension from poll to withers. 
• Even though his feed/environment shouldn't put him at a high risk of ulcers, he HAS exhibited tummy troubles in the past. 
• He had his teeth floated the day after our lesson, and while he needed it to remove some restrictions, it did not eradicate the behavior. Yes that's right, he has snapped at (without making contact) one of the boarders since then when she asked him to move in paddock.
2. Enforce Pyro's new rule for life: He does not get to approach people. 
• This is my method for keeping the other boarders safe. If he's close enough to reach out and touch with a dressage whip, he's too close. Since we all have different levels of experience, comfort, timing, etc., this is the best way I can prevent future bites. Hopefully, I'll get him to the point where he can be trustworthy when others approach him, but he needs to be self contained. 
• The best precursor I've been able to identify leading up to bites is Pyro pushing into a human's space, so this nips that behavior in the bud. 
3. Keep him in work.
• I'll be the first to admit that I hadn't worked him as much as I'd liked. Nova's arrival, my own health issues, and winter weather impacted his usual workload. While I was hoping to enjoy a bit of a "winter break" around the holidays, it may be that Pyro's not the type of horse that can go without work. 
• Kate is supplying me with mentally challenging exercises what will help me work his brain on days I don't feel well enough to physically work hard. 
• Since he bit me, he has gotten some form of work every single day (when I wasn't out of town to visit family), even if it was as simple as yielding him very precisely around his stall. 

Photos of his stall enrichment taken just a couple hours before he bit me.

Neither of us love the switch to day turnout in the winter, but I do my best to keep hay in front of him all night and give him things to do in his stall.

Dental day

I had the opportunity to work him at liberty in the "dry" lot one evening when I had the p.m. shift and he was being a jerk about coming in for dinner. Eventually, he was able to walk in quietly when I asked him to go in his stall...

...He was sweaty and still a little angsty afterward.

This has weighed on me a lot over the holidays. I've shed a lot of tears as I've worried whether I can safely keep Pyro in a boarding situation where he is handled by many other people of differing skill levels. Jen, bless her, has been quick to assuage my fears, confirming I'm a "lifer" at Windsor and reassuring me we'll figure something out. We've run through a lot of different logistical options, some feasible, some not, but for now we're keeping him where he is. 

Still frame from one of our recent rides

I want to be able to enjoy the horse I've poured 6 years of blood, sweat, and tears into, but let me tell ya, right now he is not fun. My trust in him is damaged, and it's exhausting to constantly uphold the strict boundaries he apparently needs right now (and is frequently testing). 

Tuned in at the end of one of our groundwork sessions at liberty in the dry lot. 

My husband suggested that I set a reminder on my calendar for 3 months from now to check back in with myself on whether this has improved... and I think I'm going to do that. It should give me enough time to rule out health issues and put 90 days of regular work on him. If I'm still unable to find joy in working with him by that point, and he's unable to cope with the boarding situation, then it may be time for us to part ways. I hate even typing that, but I'm trying very hard to be realistic. Until then, I'm going to do my very best for him. Time will tell.