Breakthroughs with Photography

Kayce Cover called me up to ask if I had any photos of doing Bridge & Target with Cisco. You may remember that she came out a few months ago and helped me with him. She took a lot of videos, but she's working on an article for Planet Cheval, and didn't have any thing she could use.

Hmmmm. Of course I never take photos of me working my animals since it is always inconvenient to handle a camera and I have been quite fuzzy about the whole B&T thing, though I use the Bridge part all the time. I just never quite grokked why have a target.

Well.... let me tell you the lightbulb came on when she told me how to proceed with Cracker's Kneeling Act. "Quit pulling his leg!" Hmmm. She said I needed to establish some basic targeting for his body parts. He needs to know what I mean by the words "nose", "knee", "hoof", "ground", and "up". I need to be able to verbally tell him to lift your hoof and put your nose and knee to the ground. I started thinking it would take years, but since I was going to try to photographically capture Cisco doing B&T, I might as well warm up on Cracker. The little hinny had a momentary confusion between lips and nose, then he was putting nose to my "Peace Symbol" target quite consistently. I started pointing to his knees with the target and it only took a moment to get the knee to reach for the target. I opened up the camera to try to capture it, but I couldn't hold up the target for anytime before there was a body part stuck to it (usually nose). We targeted hoof for a few minutes then I gave up for a fresh animal.

Chester volunteered. He must have already known nose, and maybe somewhere in his history someone already taught him knee. You can't photograph it fast enough with a digital camera to get the target finger anywhere but on the mule. We'll work on other body parts later, but I suspect that his anatomical training has been rather extensive, so I put him away.

It was clear I would have to NOT tell Cisco what we were actually doing to start out with if I wanted a photo of fingers and horse reaching for each other. I held my fingers out in target gesture and focused the camera on them. Then I waited for a curious mustang to sniff them. Click!!! Then I spent five minutes teaching him that "target nose" was an easy thing to do. We shifted gears and I pointed the target at his back (problematic) hoof. "Target hoof" He trialed the front foot and finally cocked his back ankle just a tiny bit. Yes! Soon he was fishing that ankle up and swishing it around trying to contact the target. I needed duration to get the photo though, so I started giving him intermediate bridge signals (like saying "almost, almost!") until he was holding it up in contact with my fingers for several seconds. I got out the camera and started shooting each attempt, but with the digital delay most of the shots didn't work. Finally he just cranked up his leg and got a look on his face like "I know you won't be satisfied until you get that photo, so JUST TAKE IT!!!" It was time for a jackpot reward for the boy.

Ah, yes, I am finally figuring out Bridge and Target! It's about time! How much utility is in it is yet to be seen, but the animals love the training. Ms. Paisley knows "target shoulder gee" from "target shoulder haw" as well as nose and knee. She also just about has "nose to ribs" figured out.

Here is Kayce's website address: Synalia.com incase you see how useful this might end up being.