To rush could be fatal.

We haven't let the snow and slush stop us, we are just moving slower, working hard to avoid slipping around. Not only the critters, but me as well. You just don't want to have to make any quick moves when you are on snow, slush or mud. Like picking up the mustangs back legs.... one false move and he will slip, bolting away, and I will have my spectacles splat in the icy mud at best. No... we have to just make sure that we don't get into trouble. If a person did crash and burn on a winter's afternoon and lay unconscious in the snow until someone decided to rescue them.... well, at least I have an epitaph picked out for my headstone.

Cisco and I are doing well though. I've spent the time flicking and flapping things over his body, tossing the rope, rubbing him with a stick, and singing holiday mustang songs until he sighs and lets his lower lip hang loose. I put him in the tiny roundpen and gave him a choice: would you like to give me your right hind foot and get this cookie, or would you like to circle the round pen ten times each way? He chose circling about three times and then figured out he might as well just eat cookies. Today we worked on lateral movements of the hindquarters. I had his lead looped around a fence post, hoping he would pull and yeild just a tiny bit. I started tapping his back girth area. At first he was worried and he tried pulling back just a bit, then he stepped forward. That was our starting point and I rewarded him. From just stepping at all, our criteria level rose to stepping sidewards with either hind foot, them to stepping sidewards with the hind foot nearest me. He crossed over a couple of times (the ultimate goal in hindquarter lateral movements) but I didn't have that as the bar on this first day. You have to slow down in this kind of weather. To rush could be fatal.

I was using some horsetreats that smell like apples and are about the size of a slice of apple. They are entirely too big. One day I took a bunch into the woodshop and bandsawed them into quarters, which made perfect treats. A good training treat should be about 1 cubic centimeter. Smaller than a grape, bigger than most raisins. I have thought about writing to Purina and asking them to manufacture such things, but that letter remains unwritten. The dog likes the apple flavored treats too. She was sitting on the horse feeder, which I had turned upside down in the center of the roundpen and supervising. She says bigger treats would be better, especially elk flavored ones.

If you read my blog often, you will notice that I seem to sea-saw around in the development of the mustang as a tame horse. Somedays I proceed as if I was going to be riding him next week and somedays I just dwell on the basics of the basic. In my opinion, you can never overdo the basics. If they don't have perfect stable manners, there is room to seek perfecion. If you can't get them to relax when you ask, you still have work to do. If they don't yeild in the direction indicated, it would be suicide to think you should ride them. If you can't tie them they aren't trained to any degree. Cisco and I have work to do. We are focusing on the desensitization side of horsetraining and every session, no matter what it seems like we are doing, we are really forming a bond of trust.

After this week, I will have some old office projects finally off my desk and I can start to really focus on equine training. My goal is to have Tobiah, Paisley, and Cracker ready to sell, should I need to let them go. Tobiah just has to have some work on yeilding to rein and leg cues, Cracker is going to get some trick training, and Paisley needs to work on driving and overcoming herd-attachment. It's going to be a fun winter.