What about a Training Journal?

This blog has not quite been ever used as my daily training journal... though I have tried lots of iterations of paper journals... everything from pocket sized index cards to spiral binders. I don't write in them for more than two or three days. I don't start with a plan and proceed as an experiment, though I want to. This is a big mistake, in my opinion. Training horses for me should be more like chemistry lab than just making it up as I go along. That's at least what I tell myself. So with that in mind, I am just going to surrender to this blog as a training journal and see if I can't kill two birds with one stone.

First you are going to need some updating on the horse situation. The donkeys and the mares have been sent out to pasture for the summer. The paddocks are full of mustangs and mules: two mules, four 'stangs. Two of the 'stangs are rehabbers (Jemez Dancing and Cisco Kid), two are recent captures (Sparky and Chaco). The mules are our saddle mules we like to take out for Sunday drives.

Right now I have a training assistant/sidekick. Her name is Jeri and she is really just a tiny slip of a person. She gets into it almost as much as I do even if any of the animals could drag her around like there was nothing on the end of the leadrope. The interesting part is that she does Reike on the animals while they are in process, especially if there is something worrying them. Since I have been training them all to let me trim their hooves with an angle grinder, they've had something that might be worth worrying about. I think the Reike helps them stay relaxed. It's kind of weird to have someone standing on the edge of the pen sending positive energy to the animal from a distance, but I think they get a sleepy look while she is doing it and get more tense when she leaves.

Hey, all of the animals, including the mares and donkeys have learned to stand and let me grind!!! I think there is less torquing their hooves around when you set your hand tools aside and pick up the flap-disk grinder. It kind of smells like a dentist grinding some old enamel out of your mouth. I think there is something pleasant about the vibration on their hooves. They like it. I would not have believed it before, but I swear they like it.

This morning we started the training session with JD. We are going to turn him into Jeri's riding horse, but she hasn't ridden much in the last 30 years. We have to take it slow. We put him on the lunge line, got him to let her get a leg up to his back (he preferred she get on on the right side), and then worked on the cues and body language for "whoa". I managed the lunge and videoed her going round and round. We are going to analyze them to see if we can tell the difference between when we got crisp military halts and where we got mushy slowdowns. Then I hopped up and rode him tackless for a few laps. He is crisp for me. We will continue to work on her riding based on what we see in the video.



Second animal was Cisco. He is learning to be driven now. Donna and I worked with him a bit last spring, but never got a finished drive out of him. So Jeri and I reviewed Linda Tellington-Jones driving lessons and proceeded accordingly. The steps are first to have the "driver" loop a long line around the animals neck and get the animal desensitized to having the driver walk along side, and then farther behind, while being led by the "handler". I was the driver, Jeri was the handler. It wasn't long before I could be on either side and stop him with a steady pull on the neck loop. The next step is to teach him that when we touch the rope to one of his hips, he is to move the hip away from the rope. We only started that in each direction, being satisfied with baby tries. In the next session, we will require full cross-over steps in response to the rope being placed against his hip. This is another very good thing with Cisco since he is deathly fearful of ropes. He will then know what to do if one touches him (other than bite it.) Funny story.. on the way to the training pen, I had the driving rope sitting on a plastic chair. We stopped to get the rope and Cisco bit into it, and pulled it out of the chair. This scared him, so he went scooting backward with the rope still clenched in his teeth. It scooted along like a snake, but as he came to the end of his leadrope (which I was holding) he stopped and snorted at the rope instead of just bolting off. Wow! That was good for him.

The final animal of the morning was Sparky. Sparky is the last animal to have to learn how to let his grind his hooves. He never even flinched. He tried to mug Jeri for the horse cookies and almost totally ignored the person grinding his hooves off! I finally had to get her out of the pen and round pen him for a little respect. The stupid game of taking back his hoof was suddenly over and we had no more problems. Sparky is learning the driving lessons too. We did quite a bit of it when Raquel was here for Summer Horse Training Camp. Getting back to driving is his next step.

The geldings and stallions are all in one herd now that the mares are gone. JD is dominant, Cisco is second. Chaco, then Sparky, then Cracker, and finally Chester. I always watch this dominance in action while I am tossing out the flakes of hay. In one of the recent horse magazines in on my bedstand is an article about a scientific study that showed horses learn by observing the horse higher than them in the hierarchy. This means Cisco can learn from JD, but no one will learn from Chester. I think it might be wise, if I am expecting bad behavior from a dominant animal, to take them where the rest of the herd can't observe.

It was hot after lunch, so I caught Chester and took him to the garden hose for a wash down. He might have liked it, but he is a mule, so he can't let me know. I let him go out on the road since there hasn't been hardly any traffic and he promptly rolled his nice wet coat into the road dust. I am not really training Chester ... my interaction with him is more like providing him an enriched environment to keep him mentally stimulated. He's a nerd of the first degree.

One mule lead to another, so Cracker Joe came in for his workout. He might be the most trained, but he is also the most likely to panic for no reason. I took him into my "grooming parlor" on the front porch and sprayed him for flies... for some reason they always like white animals more. I'm using Permectrin and it seems to kind of work. The gnats are worse than the flies though and for that I have mixed up some shortening and catnip extract. Shortening or lard alone will deter the gnats, but I think the catnip adds to it. It gets rubbed around the eyes. I thought about saddling him and decided I didn't want to so instead we stopped by the "cookie jar" where I filled a pocket. In the shade of a cottonwood tree we practiced our cha-cha steps. It helped him to be on a lead line. I wanted him to echo my foot position. If I stepped toward him, he should step back on the same foot. If I stepped away, he should step toward me on the same foot and he should hold his position. He tried out all possible permutations of stepping for the first 10 minutes, then started to get the echo-ing idea. When I thought we had the back and forward down, I suddenly stepped sidewards and he stepped out to the side like he had been trained to do it. Going to his left (my right) was easy. We cha-cha'ed to the right until we came to a fence. Time to cha-cha in the other direction. The fence helped him get the idea of going the other way, but going to his right was much harder for him.

This, as simple as it sounds, represents a big improvement for him. I had been working with him at liberty and he was too random. We got frustrated with each other this spring and quit working on it. I think getting back on the lead will really help. He likes it more now too since it builds his confidence when he does it right and earns his cookies.. We can continue to work on it when we feel too lazy to throw on the saddle. I have a little saddle project going though. I bought a stopwatch that will record laps. The goal is to be able to ride around the pond at a very fast walk or a very slow canter. His fast walk has already sped up with this training. We have yet to try the canter since we've only done it once. Next time I will record the lap time to this blog.

Once Cracker had been put back in the paddock, there was only Chaco Bay left. He came to me to have his halter put on. He starts drooling when he thinks about being trained. We stopped by the porch for some brushing and I picked up the bottle of fly spray.... hmmm. This mustang has never seen a spray bottle... hmmm. I put two squirts on his chest and rewarded him for standing still, then we went out to the shadiest area we could find. It won't be long until I start riding him so I decided to start lateral flexion training. I stood next to him with one arm over his back and the lead rope clipped to a side ring of the halter. A gentle pull on the halter and a long wait finally resulted in his neck bending and his nose coming around. First in the haw direction, then in the gee direction, but by the end of the session his nose was coming around easily either way though I would like it to come farther next time we study lateral flexion. He is due to start his driving lessions to catch up with Sparky and Cisco next week.

My plan is to print these posts out and keep them in a three right binder. Hey, it's not exactly a training journal, but I think it will work.