No escape: small degrees of progress

Another week's gone by and I am still ambivalent about this positive reinforcement thing. One one hand, I think it has solved my worst problems, but I don't know how permanent the solutions are. I've been riding my Wiley Mustang in the half-acre paddock. Last summer he would have been bolting here and there, but now I am just sitting on him bareback practicing our "whoa" protocol which involves one step back to be complete. Would he "whoa" if there were really reason to bolt? I don't know, but at least he is not busy inventing reasons to bolt.

We need wet saddle blankets and lots of miles, but until I have someone to ride with, it has to be training in the paddock.

I started reading a book on Coersion and it's Fallout. It is pretty much of an eye-opener. The author is railing about how coersive culture is and what a waste of life it is to live in a coersive world. When was the last time you got some positive reinforcement yourself?

In the chapter on negative reinforcement, which is how most horses are trained, he talks about the one option that you can't let a animal trained by negative reinforcement have... that is the option for escape. Yep, the Wiley Mustangs problems all stemmed from him learning how to escape training by bolting. Now he doesn't try to escape... nope, these animals now will follow you out to the round pen and wait for their turn. Escape is the last thing on their minds. In that regard, this method of training is really great, but I have to admit I still don't have a horse I can just get on and go anywhere. I don't have a horse that I can aim in some direction and get a nice steady canter. We haven't got that far yet.

I spent 18 months trying different protocol for negative reinforcement and punishment and flooding on this critter.... none of it got me on the critter's back so we have come a long way, I have to keep reminding myself of this.

Yrs,
JRW