Hackamore Heaven

Today I put hackamores on the "colts" just to see if I liked them better than bits or halters. They handled slightly better than in the halters. Cisco is really the best at walking-on. Chaco and Sparky kind of get stuck and I don't want to pressure them to walk, they will get it soon enough. With Chaco, I had him chasing me around the pen and running to the mounting bucket for me to hop on his back. I was leaping on them in all kinds of ways. It was a very joyous time for us all.

Cracker and I went for a long ride through the sagebrush, trying to avoid the prickly pears and little chollas. I stop him frequently to encourage him to put his head down and graze, but he is wound too tight to stop long. He seemed much safer than he did on his ride yesterday.

I think part of my problems with my riding animals are from having saddles that don't fit well. The Syd Hill Australian saddles, classy as they are, keep me from getting my leg back as far as I would like. The Wade just doesn't fit the mules at all and it has no where to attach a britchen. I also like to hop off often and the high back on the Wade is not good for that. I'm avoiding the problem, riding the colts bareback, but sooner or later, I will have to get on and really ride. Right now I am thinking that a Specialized Saddle would be just the thing... adjustable all over. Well, that and a Port Lewis pad to see that they really do fit. To upgrade my saddle system I just have to come up with a couple of grand beyond what I need for hay. Hmmm.. I will happily accept any donations!

Just a few more days until our young German cowboy arrives. Stefan is 17 and hopefully he can stick on a horse like a tick. Well, hopefully he will be quite fearless and agile. We'll see.

So Many Mustangs, So Little Time

When she arrived here, I thought Jerri was too frail to make a hand... but, hey, check this out:



That was yesterday. Today she rode him around in the round pen. He is the best of the three we are currently breaking to ride. I hopped up on Sparky a bunch. He is a little too hormonal these days and gets "ideas" too easy. So we did the halter driving exercise whenever he started dropping, and then as a reward he got to stand by the tire that acted as my trampoline to jump on his back. It was a good trick to make me being on his back the reward. Sparky fell for it.

I drove Cisco for 20 minutes before I rode him. I took him in the training pen (with all of our crazy obstacles) with the intent to stick with the exercise until he finally "got it". Well, he started out having already "got it". He just walked around in the pathway of my choice and listened to my gee and haw commands. He backs up and whoas. No fluff today. It was nice. Then he didn't want to end the training session, so I took him to the round pen and we practiced emergency dismounts. He thought it was fun and kept coming back to the fence to pick me up after I leaped off of him. Cisco is a very narrow horse and emergency dismounts are much easier on him than on Jemez Dancing, the broad boy who dominates the hay piles.

My two new books arrived today on riding on the lunge and on yoga for riders. Great books. I will review them on the HinnyWhisperer in a few days after I read them through. Naturally that is what inspired me to get into emergency dismounts.

I hear the Schultz girls might be coming next week for HorseCamp. We have to make a decision about how to get Lightening Bug and Paisley back home. It would be a 40 mile ride across a vast open area of NM. Hmmmm.

Bits, Hooves, and the Mulehood

Jerri and I put some molasses in a bottle and found a headstall to go on the full-cheek snaffle, then we started sequestering our trainees for bitting lessons. Chaco was first. It turns out that he hates molasses. He will not eat a horse cookie with molasses on it, so a bit with molasses was totally unattractive to him. We left him and went to the pen with Sparky. Sparky is in a totally mouthy stage, typical of a 2 year old stallion. He loves molasses and in a few minutes he had the bit in his mouth sucking it clean. After he had the idea that the bit was a good thing, I started shaping him to put his head in the headstall and take the bit in his mouth. I merely held the headstall open in front of him. He figured it out right away. Ten minutes into his training and I felt we had a confirmed positive regard for the bit. Hold a headstall out for him and he will come running.

We went back to Chaco. We offered honey as a molasses alternative, but just on a horse cookie this time. Chaco will not eat sweets at all, so Cracker got the honey coated cookie. I started using the plain cookies to shape him to put his nose in the headstall and take the bit. It took longer because we had to overcome his suspicions that there was still molasses on the bit, but in about 15 minutes he was putting his lips on the bit. That was enough for Day One.

The last one to get bitted was Cisco. He likes molasses and his training went so fast and smoothly that I suspect I must have taught him that last year. He would have also been bitted by one or both of his previous trainers. I was a bit apprehensive that he would have negative perceptions of the bit, but it turned out not to be the case.

Next time, they will get to wear their bits in the stall during the hot part of the day when they would like to just sleep in the shade.

I finished trimming the hooves this morning before it got really hot. Two things of note: 1) Cisco, almost out of the blue, whacked the side of my knee with the side of his hoof. It was a kick but we don't know why, so I sent him around the "round pen" five times each way then invited him back into the grooming area. No more problems. I'm bruised but no big deal. 2) Chester gets his "mulehood" aroused when he is being handled or trained. It interferes with his thinking, but any time there is positive reinforcement going on, the mulehood drops. I was down at his hooves with my grinder somewhat concerned about the tiny flecks of hoof grindings ricocheting off the mulehood, which was in a totally expanded condition. It might sting, I don't know, and mules kick sidewards, so I was concerned. Finally it seemed like Chester's mulehood was irritated without regard to the hoof flecks, so I reached over and moved it to where I could see the end of it. I could see the "bean", so I pushed around it with my gloved hand and the "bean" popped out. Male equids get waxy buildups in a little pouch at the tip of their "mulehood". These things look like fava beans (aka horse beans), which are like super-sized lima beans. I dropped the bean into the dirt, but then Jerri asked to see it so I picked it back up. She wouldn't take it in her bare hand, so I put it on the fence rail where she examined it. Its gray and waxy. Then she knocked it into the dirt and stepped on the edge of it to check its consistency. It squished on her shoe like a wad of gum. She tried to wipe it off on a stick, but managed to step on the rest of it full on. The squished wad stuck tight. There Jerri was totally grossed out with a mule bean stuck to her shoe. It was very very funny.

Tomorrow everyone is going off on other adventures. Jerri, Laura, and Shawn are going to the Little Beaver PowWow and I am going to work at the cafe. Further horse adventures will have to wait until Sunday.

Driving On

Cisco, Chaco and Sparky are in driving school. Right now they are only driving in the ox-pen, but in a few days, they will be ready for the open road. Surprisingly, the best one is Chaco. He turns, backs, and moves his hindquarters on light cues. He walks straight. In contrast, Cisco and Sparky try to second guess me and end up wandering more than following the fence line. I'm not sure how much to force them into line or if I should just take any forward movement as a gift.

We spent quite a few days working on halter driving. Brad Cameron shows it in detail in his Mulemanship I video. It's also the "Dance" in Frank Bell's 7 Step Safety System. Cisco needed the practice, just to get over his fear of ropes. Jerri needed to master being able to get the animals to walk around her. We took our time and got these issues worked out before we attached any driving lines. Cisco's stress was minimized, Jerri can handle the calmer animals.

The animals wear a surcingle and a web-halter. I have considered putting them on the bit at this point. I should, I know, but they aren't doing badly in their halters. Making bitting decisions is always hard for me, even if I know I really only have one full-cheek snaffle to choose from. They need to learn that resistance is futile and the bit will help them come to the conclusion faster. Maybe I will introduce the concept tomorrow with a squeeze bottle of molasses and the bit without any headstall. I think when I get it going the first day I will just lunge them at liberty carrying the bit and headstall, we will practice some flexion in hand, then the second day I will put a tiedown on them and get them to going along with their heads down even with their withers.

Today I ordered Andrew McLean's horse training book: Training the McLean Way. I loved his The Truth about Horses, so I expect this one to be equally good. I will report on it on the Hinnywhisperer Blog. It has to come all the way from Australia. Shipping is $25!!!

Speaking of the Hinnywhisperer and McLean, I started putting assignments up for my students on the Never Stop Learning forum under the Horsemanship discussion. If you would like to join us, just register for the forum and get to reading. The first assignment was reading Everyrider on Leadership, the second is reading McLean on the seven principles of horse training. You can email me your assignments or post them as a discussion on the forum.

This morning, it was the day to tend to the freshly exfoliated hooves (thanks to a few days of rain). I got Sparky, Chaco, and Cracker trimmed. They were all perfectly mannered, quietly standing for the grinder. I must admit that their hooves have never looked better. Very nice natural hoof shape, finally outgrowing the cracked quarters they had developed with my previous farrier.

Finally, just before the evening feeding, I had the students don their helmets and we took a spoon, a round rock, and JD into the round pen. I lunged them around while they tried to maintain enough elasticity to keep the rock in the spoon. They all did great. I took the last ride. JD was obeying my voice commands. My trotting position was only slightly better than theirs. I know what I need to work on. It needs to start with absolute awareness of what my body is doing.

Yrs,
Patricia

Starting Endurance Race Training One Millimeter at a time

My goal with Cisco is to make him an endurance racer. He has the perfect confirmation and temperament. The fact that I am just breaking him to ride at 9 years old is beside the point. You have to start somewhere, so our first mounted training goal was a distance of 1 mm, which is basically lifting his foot up and putting it back in the same spot. When we could do that calmly it was time to move on. Our next goal was 1 cm and every time he stamps his foot at a fly, I think he moves about 1 cm. So our second session of endurance race training was a stomping success.



The 3rd session was a much bigger deal. One meter. That's a long way from the fence or bucket where I got on. How does Cisco know to step out without getting frightened? Well, he knows the meaning of "Walk-on". Tapping on the mustang is not required. With the first step, which he offered as if he was saying "it's about time!", I was euphoric. Sitting on the sweet wild boy with the cool wind blowing gently through the cottonwoods. It's the culmination of a dream really! Three times we got that meter done, I slid off and made a big deal of Mr. Cisco. He knows he is the best horse to ever walk the planet.

This morning we did sets of 10 meters around the stall and started working on directional control. I want him to go where I point, he figured it out right away. I had him turning gee and haw quite casually as if he had done it all his life. We never bothered to pick up the lead rope he had draped over his neck. He wants to please me.

A big thunderstorm left our world all wet yesterday afternoon. After it was all done, I only had a few moments to work with the horses before I had to feed. I went into the round pen with a pocket full of horse cookies and they all crowded around where I climbed up on my pedestal of an overturned feeder. Cisco, JD and Cracker Joe all pressed against the pedestal, awaiting for me to climb on. I climbed up on the broad back of Jemez Dancing and rewarded him handsomely. For a moment I waited to see if Cisco would explode at the sight of a mounted horseperson, as he always did before, but when instead he reached out and asked for a horse cookie, I rewarded him with his favorite flavor.

My goal, at age 55, is to get this mustang trained to ride without sustaining any signficant level of tissue damage. We are taking it slow. He's making a lot of progress. Now I am starting to dream of buying him his own saddle. We have a lot of kilometers to put under it.

Yrs,
Patricia

Show No Fear

Oddly enough, after learning what to do about a rope around his legs, today Cisco showed no signs of his rope phobia. He bit it affectionately a few times, but never once snorted at it or backed up like it was a snake. Will his fear be gone? Maybe.

We took the mustangs walking in the bosque this morning after a very fun ring exercise. We were walking patterns in the training ring that had the horses going different ways and working in specific patterns in a chaos of moving horses. Most of the animals did quite well except for Sparky who was chewing his ropes and dragging along. We thought he might be teething, but we also know he might just be registering his disapproval of the activity. I let the whip swing around my back and tap his rump when ever he started to lag so it wasn't long before he was keeping up with me.

We tried "halter driving" Chaco in the evening. He understood the walking around the handler, but then at the turn where he should be moving his hindquarters away, he wanted to just walk smaller circles. He got frustrated when I didn't accept that answer. He was frumpy about not earning horse cookies. He tried to turn and bolt away, leaping over a pipe rail that was almost 3 feet high, but the fat boy couldn't clear it so he stumbled on it and sent the pipe bouncing. It took me a while to convince him that avoidance wasn't the right answer. We tied him to a post and started asking him to yield his hindquarters. Jerri got tense thinking we were asking too much, I kept taping his haunches with the old antennae I use as a "wand". I tried to just be annoying but not hurtful and he crowded me against the fence pushing his hindquarters toward the pressure. Shawn took the rope and held it against his hindquarters while I continued to tap. He had learned to yield to the pressure of the rope last week, so he finally stepped over. We made a big deal of it, stopping, petting him, giving him a cookie, telling him he got it right. The next step was easy. He had finally figured it out. I untied him and put him back in halter driving mode. He correctly yielded his hinds and we fed him cookies to reward him. Will he remember tomorrow? What if we don't offer cookies as incentives?

Chaco is the kind of horse Klaus Ferdinand Hempfling calls The Fat One. He is lazy and goes his own way. We can keep him motivated by food, but if we are wise, we will get it on a variable reinforcement schedule and keep him working for us. I'm going to print out a random number table to help us get on the variable schedule. I think it will be an improvement in all the animals.

Shawn and I saddled the mules and rode in the yard this morning. The yard has a full scale riding trail, so it's not like what you might have in a normal back yard. It was really exciting for Shawn when Chester headed down a steep slope! I kept hoping Shawn would suddenly figure out how to get some control over his steed, but it finally required Shawn riding Chester in a stall and practicing yielding to the hackamore and one-rein stops. Shawn finally convinced his mule that he might be a novice, but he couldn't be ignored.

It's about time to get back to the driving exercises we segued away from on all this yielding of the hinds activities... something to play with tomorrow.

Post-Holiday Happenings

Cisco, Chaco, and Sparky are on the fast track for driving lessons. As a prerequisite, I wanted to be able to pull them around their back legs (circle away on a long lead rope) before we really drove them. The benefit of that is that they have to be able to respond to their halter cues even when it means going away from the human and it gives them an idea about what to do when the rope comes down along their hindquarters. Sparky and Chaco did fine with this exercise, both of them immediately being able to respond in a sane and rational manner. Cisco, however, had to overcome his fear of rope enough to not panic.

Unlike the others, Cisco has been working on this activity for two years. We broke it down into training blocks and worked on the parts. I have spent more than a year working with getting him to tolerate ropes. He has learned to bite them rather than run from them. He has had the rope flipped all over his body and learned to stand quietly when it was done, but that didn't translate to having the rope moving on him while he was moving himself. For a horse, it's a whole different circumstance.

We started last week teaching him that if we pressed the rope into his haunches, he was to move his hind legs away from the pressure. At first we made the mistake of putting the rope too high on his hip, then once it became apparent that the rope would never be touching him there in driving, then we redid it with the rope lower on his haunches. After he was responding well with that, we tied a rope in a figure eight around his neck and rump, crossing over his back. Then I stood beside him and pulled on the rope going along his haunches to put pressure on the opposite side. He learned to step toward me in response to rope pressure on his haunches. Yesterday I finally hooked the long lead rope to his halter and ran the rope around the far side of the mustang. A little pull on the rope and he came spinning around. As we practiced this dance over and over, he slowed his response down from panic to calmness. He expressed his agitation and excitement by biting the rope between circles. I think he was proud of himself in the end.

This didn't come easy. A year ago I had tried to just put the rope on him and do it without breaking it down. I couldn't get Cisco to stand still to get the rope on, so I had John help me. Suddenly John went flying across the pen and landed half way through the pipe fence, dangling through the rails at his waist. We were very very lucky that he didn't get hurt. This time it was nice to know that I didn't have to put anyone besides myself in jeopardy with an agitated mustang. Besides, he wasn't that agitated after all the other training.

We used to think that perhaps Cisco had been beaten with a rope, but my pet hypothesis now is that he was kept in an area with electric braid rope fencing. This fear permeates almost everything I do with him and slows things way down. For a long time I just kept training him at liberty so we didn't have to mess with ropes, but now that I want to ride him, we have to find a way to cope with the problem. It really seems to help to give him specific responses, like biting it or moving when it touches haunches. When I can ride him and drag a rope calmly, we will have achieved monumental perception modification.

I had my group watch Marv Walker's bonder video then do some round-penning exercises in the morning. Jerri overcame her own fear of lifting Chaco's back legs. Laura gently snapped Jemez Dancing with a rag despite his initial protestations and her fear of "making" him do something. Shawn tried to get Cracker to let him touch his ears, but somehow round-penning a hinny isn't very effective, and after he had tried to convince the long-eared one to submit to him for over 40 minutes, I put a horse cookie in my pocket and called Cracker Joe to come put his ear in my hand.

Next week, we are hoping to have the kids back. Back to summer horse camp... but the Schultz kids now have motorcycles, so I think the motivation to learn to ride horses is going to be very fragile. As long as they are ambivalent about the horses, I doubt that they will find the confidence they need to become horsepeople. It's hard enough with motivated adults.

Horse Taming Central

It's been an intensive week for horse taming with three students here. They had to ratchet themselves into a horseman's state of mind and search for that balance of assertiveness and gentleness that invokes the appropriate level of submission and trust in the equine mind. Last night it really helped them to watch a video by Klaus Ferdinand Hempfling and then part of a video by Brad Cameron. You could not find two more contrasting clinicians, but discussing the differences was a good exercise in thinking things through. Today there was more human self-confidence on display, the animals behaved better, and even the mules had more respect.

We have been testing the six animals on the 100 pt checklist of Behaviors a Horse Should Know. Today we started the Movement section and my reluctance to push my animals into much movement took its toll on their scores. We'll finish the testing and then create a list of training items for each animal. It will help broaden the students experience quite a bit. Just the test itself really opened their eyes to what the animals could and couldn't do and how different each one is.

Chaco has made the most changes in the last week. He lost his aloof demeanor and started acting like a love-starved puppy. He is learning and remembering his lessons. I am not sure what set this in motion except it started when I used the grinder on his hooves and did some yoga on him. Jerri has become totally enamored with him and spends her time playing Chaco training games towards getting him under saddle.

I have been sitting on Cisco. He is calm and likes the job. In a few days we will get back to driving, but for today, we are enjoying the quiet time we spend together in the stall. While I was sitting on him a small herd of elk came broiling up out of the bosque (forest) and swarmed over the road on their way to the pond for a drink. All the other horses went on high alert and snorted around the corral. Cisco turned his head but he didn't move his feet. I slid off and we both went running to the fence to see the elk. He stood with his neck pressed against me watching for more of the shaggy brown critters, then, when the bosque was empty, we went back to our "ride". Cisco is a huggy horse and he will stand with his neck bent around me in a very protective way. I decided that I should ride him barefooted (me) because I was worried that my boots my scrape his back when I am getting on him. I climb up on a feeder and he comes to pick me up (he's 16-2hh). I jump up on his back, swing on, and hold on to the mane. He bobs his head down to where his ears are level with his withers, the signal that he gives to show that he is not afraid and we can proceed. I call it "checking his sanity level". If his head went high, I would slip down and find something else to do. I am debating with myself as to whether or not I want to stand on his back. He'll tell me if its too much.

I'm going on Friday to visit the mares and the donkeys. I hear that the burros have been staying near the corrals, but that the mares have gone deep into the range and are only glimpsed off in the distance. I might bring Paisley home, I don't know. It would be nice to have another saddle horse to work with since we have so much horse training energy on tap right now.