Rebuilding Cassidy’s confidence

Cassidy, 12, has lived at Woods Farm since 2015 where his groom Ami Isaacson has worked with him to help him overcome his anxiety.

With a tailor-made behaviour training plan, Cassidy started to make great progress, but his nervous character made it difficult for him to trust people and he was often anxious about what he was being asked to do.

The underlying cause of Cassidy’s anxious nature was unknown, so our Behaviour and Veterinary teams worked together to understand him a little better.

When Cassidy began suffering from chronic intermittent diarrhoea, our vets recommended a scan to check his intestines at our specialist donkey hospital at Brookfield Farm.

Ami’s patience and work with Cassidy created a great foundation to start building his trust in people and gave us the building blocks to continue working with him.

Given the relatively tight time frame and the fact that Cassidy tended to ‘freeze’, our teams needed to carry out extra work quickly to make him comfortable travelling to an unfamiliar environment and remain calm during the veterinary examination, without feeling overwhelmed.

With the guidance of our Behaviour team and Ami’s support, a tailor-made training plan was put in place to build Cassidy’s confidence around leading and loading, as well as being handled by vets and their equipment.

The training included leading him over different surfaces, past novel objects and near multiple people to replicate what he might experience while at the hospital.

As part of the training, and to ensure he would not be nervous around the equipment used in the hospital, his grooms even recreated the scanner he would encounter.

Using a large bale of shavings wrapped in white plastic to represent the machine – plus a sweat scraper as the hand scanner – Cassidy was introduced to these items gradually, and with Ami giving him reassuring scratches he soon became relaxed around them.

Before the day of travel, Cassidy was also introduced to the horsebox that would take him to the hospital so he could become familiar with it.

Our donkeys are always accompanied by a bonded companion when visiting the hospital, but as Cassidy was a single donkey and not closely bonded to any others, he was supported by another single donkey from his herd called Brownie.

Brownie became a familiar friend for Cassidy both during training and during his trip to the hospital, giving him the confidence he needed to step outside of his comfort zones.

On the day, both donkeys loaded into the horsebox without a hitch and made the trip to Brookfield. Cassidy led calmly into the hospital with Brownie, where he stood to have his scan and then loaded calmly again to travel back to his herd at Woods on the same day. It was a successful trip for Cassidy and his handlers.

Fortunately, the scan showed that Cassidy’s intestines appeared normal and healthy, and Veterinary Surgeon Curtis Goding was able to rule out a number of possible serious diseases.

Ami explained: “Since we did the extra training, he’s so much better – before, he’d only come to me, but now he’s started going to other people too.

“I still do a little bit with him to keep up the progress, and we go for walks so he can forage at the hedges or nibble some grass.”

Cassidy is not back to full health yet, and we are working to understand the cause of his chronic diarrhoea, which may require further trips to the hospital, but this is a great start.

Thanks to Ami’s dedication and patience, plus the support of colleagues in the Behaviour team, Cassidy will be much more comfortable making any future visits to our donkey hospital to ensure he receives the best care from our Veterinary team.