Meditation on the Riddles of Equine Training

At my last posting, I was quite optimistic about progress with the critters. All my equine buddies were going out and about into the vast wilderness with out a bit of worry and the bridge was just an interesting landmark.

Then on Friday, the situation deteriorated with a visit from the farrier, a man you have met before on my blog, Billy Hibbler. Billy is a really good guy, but he drinks a lot of Mountain Dew so he's wired up about 20 notches higher than me. He was the former owner of Cracker Joe and the recent trainer for Jemez Dancing. The animals hate him. All of the animals!!!! So suddenly Billy arrives and no one can be caught. They fidget, kick, balk, shy and generally act cranky. My pride in them gets scratched and dented. Then Cisco bolts out of hand and runs around the corral in such a frenzy that we think he is going through a pipe fence. Now, understand, Billy never speaks mean to them or threatens them, he just is a fast moving cowboy. He thinks that I never train my animals.

Animals can sense peoples energy, I am quite sure of it, then they all sense each others energy. Jemez Dancing was probably the one who first really responded to the smell of wired-up-cowboy and as herd leader it infected all the others. Danger was in the air; run for your lives!!!

Okay, I consoled myself, it's just a Billy thing, when he is gone and forgotten they will be back to being good. On Sunday John, my hubby, came home and we took the mules out for a ride. The perception of the bridge as mere landmark was gone and the trolls living under it must have been back. John and Chester, his mule, are totally bonded. Chester loves John. There is no fear there. Chester and Cracker were real dips about the bridge, but failure wasn't an option, so eventually we had a nice ride beyond it and up Ice Canyon until we reached the semi-permafrost zone and decided to turn around. I was really sad to see that the memory of all of our walks across the bridge last week had made no impression.

Today I started a new project with my animals that involved recording their physical dimensions. It meant tape measures on their bodies. Hmmm....

Over the weekend, Clay West, also known as America's Most Lonesome Cowboy, returned to work on his cowboy novels, so I now have some expert horse-wrangler help at hand. Clay grew up on a ranch where the horsetraining was progressive enough to include Ray Hunt clinics. He has been speaking Natural Horsemanship since the day he was born, but his heart is into being a novelist, so we provide him a place to work and he gives me a couple hours of help everyday. We stepped out this morning, clipboards, pens, tape measure and paste wormer in hand for my new project. Eight equines to work through; one by one they were brought to the work area and convinced that tape measures are harmless tools used by humans to pet equines.

The donkeys were passive, the mules were interested, and the horses were most likely to be shy. Anticipating real trouble from Cisco, the new mustang, we saved him until last and took a coffee break before we caught him up. It was with some feelings of trepidation that I set down my cup and headed back to the corral. Tape measures are yellow and make funny noises. They move in a springy erratic manner. They may or may not eat horseflesh for breakfast, no one knows.

I started out with a training session. We targeted the tape measure. Touch with your nose, touch with your jaw, touch with your ears, touch with you shoulder. Then I started just randomly holding it across his body parts and rewarding him for standing still. After five minutes of training, we started the process. Eighteen measurements... we worked from the head back. Around his nose, across his brow, along his face, around his neck, down his mane, around his barrel, across his shoulder, along the length of his body, from hip to hip, along his back. I didn't think we could do the final measurement.... flank to flank around the rump for britchen length. I fully expected him to take flight at the first touch of the tape to his rump, but I rubbed the brown rump with my hand then the tape, then Clay read the measurement as I pulled it into place at the other flank... no fireworks at all, he just looked at me to see if he had earned a cookie.

We were also recording the equine behavior as we went. Cisco was more in the passive behavioral profile exhibited by donkeys than in the wiggly horse category. He always hides his dynamite when I am expecting a big explosion.

So what did I learn from all this? Hmmm, it's really kind of a zen question that will require some kind of long meditation. The most obvious lesson though, is if you think you are doing well, you are probably about to have everyone blow up, and if you are waiting for them to explode, they are going to fall asleep unless you give them a horse cookie.