Distractions Don't Stop Me

I train even when I don't blog and lately I have been called into work as a waitress outside of my normal shifts so I have had to set writing aside. Jerri and I don't stop training though. The last three days have been more foot handling and now all my critters have nice mustang rolls shaped with an angle grinder. Three of the mustangs had hooves never handled by the farrier before, so we had a lot of training. Positive reinforcement is nice, yes, but it took a good measure of round-penning to get the job done. In the round pen protocol, when the animal does not cooperate, you ask him/her to get hooves moving around the pen, five times this way, and back five laps, then turn, turn, turn, until you get a head-down calm movement, and a look your way. If the animal won't look at you, you have to keep turning back and forth randomly until it does. Sometimes it seems endless, but then suddenly, the animal looks and you turn your back to the animal and let go of all the tension of your body. You stand and let the animal process the event. The animal will usually come up and stand beside you, and the resistance is over (unless it arises again and you just repeat the cycle).

Cisco and Chaco took some round-penning, but in the end I was able to grind on each of their hooves while they stood at liberty. The lesson ended calmly in each case.

Right now I have three horsemanship/riding students. Jerri and Laura each have experience with animals. When I went into my waitress job, I left instructions to catch all 6 animals, tie them in the small shady pen, brush them, clean their hooves, and spray them with fly spray. They managed to get the more tractable animals done except for the back hooves which were too scary on general principle. They couldn't catch Cisco at all. Chaco blew them off by leaping away from their hold on him with a baling string (no halter) every time they tried to squirt him. No animals actually got tied, or if they did, they were tied in a way they could break free in an emergency. It was a good way to test the students basic horsemanship awareness without being there. We now have specific things to work on.