Moving toward Positive Reinforcement

Yesterday I had no tools to work with Chaco using positive reinforcement. He won't take food from me, he barely understands hay as a food-source. He isn't panic stricken but he has never let a human touch him willingly.

Well, you have to use the tools you have, so I used proximity to me as a pressure to teach him to come to me. I started by sidling up to just the point where he started to look uncomfortable. If his nose turned to me, I stepped away. He quickly learned he could control my proximity by turning his head to me. Meanwhile the gap between us was closing. Each time I came closer when I returned. He grew less anxious because he could control me.

Then I required him to turn his whole body to send me away. I wanted him to face up. He learned it quickly but then we came to an impasse because I was just getting closer anyway even after he sent me away. He trialed some other strategies, how about turning his rump toward me?? I started making noises and darting around with my hands flailing. Clearly facing me head on was more effective.

Next I wanted him to step toward me, but that was too much to ask for at once. It had to be broken down. First ask the head to stretch forward, then the body to shift forward, then the feet have to follow. My goal was to have him touch me of his own free will at liberty in a 30x100ft paddock. We got it done. Twice. Enough for day one.

Now it's day two and I've already had one training session this morning. My goal was to get him to eat out of my hand. He's a smart boy, he remembered how to stretch his nose out to me. But when he did it I put a handful of hay on the ground and moved away.

Now this is where you see the innate behaviors of the wild horse come out. Horses give up their food to the dominant animal, therefor I must not be dominant if I was giving up my food to him. They never give food willingly to each other. So after he realized there was food involved and I had it, he wanted to try pushing me off of it and taking it for himself. He could push, but the food disappeared too. He trialed two small aggressive moves, but they didn't work like he hoped so he quickly came back to reaching his nose out to me in a polite gesture. He took his from the ground for about 10 minutes, one handful at a time, then I held out the hay in my hand and he took it from my hand. One handful was enough for me. I left his breakfast on the ground and went off to a cup of tea.

I have a good thing happening with the hay right now. I have some grass hay at the back of my haystack. My horses mostly get alfalfa, which horses love. It's too rich to feed to Chaco... he's just coming off the of brown dead browse of the Colorado Plateau, so he gets my brownest grass for now. But if I feed alfafa from my hand and grass from the ground, he is going to think the human is a very interesting phenomenon. So the plan is to enter the pen with two kinds of hay for now.

Suddenly I have the requisites to train with positive reinforcement.
Yes!