Show No Fear

Oddly enough, after learning what to do about a rope around his legs, today Cisco showed no signs of his rope phobia. He bit it affectionately a few times, but never once snorted at it or backed up like it was a snake. Will his fear be gone? Maybe.

We took the mustangs walking in the bosque this morning after a very fun ring exercise. We were walking patterns in the training ring that had the horses going different ways and working in specific patterns in a chaos of moving horses. Most of the animals did quite well except for Sparky who was chewing his ropes and dragging along. We thought he might be teething, but we also know he might just be registering his disapproval of the activity. I let the whip swing around my back and tap his rump when ever he started to lag so it wasn't long before he was keeping up with me.

We tried "halter driving" Chaco in the evening. He understood the walking around the handler, but then at the turn where he should be moving his hindquarters away, he wanted to just walk smaller circles. He got frustrated when I didn't accept that answer. He was frumpy about not earning horse cookies. He tried to turn and bolt away, leaping over a pipe rail that was almost 3 feet high, but the fat boy couldn't clear it so he stumbled on it and sent the pipe bouncing. It took me a while to convince him that avoidance wasn't the right answer. We tied him to a post and started asking him to yield his hindquarters. Jerri got tense thinking we were asking too much, I kept taping his haunches with the old antennae I use as a "wand". I tried to just be annoying but not hurtful and he crowded me against the fence pushing his hindquarters toward the pressure. Shawn took the rope and held it against his hindquarters while I continued to tap. He had learned to yield to the pressure of the rope last week, so he finally stepped over. We made a big deal of it, stopping, petting him, giving him a cookie, telling him he got it right. The next step was easy. He had finally figured it out. I untied him and put him back in halter driving mode. He correctly yielded his hinds and we fed him cookies to reward him. Will he remember tomorrow? What if we don't offer cookies as incentives?

Chaco is the kind of horse Klaus Ferdinand Hempfling calls The Fat One. He is lazy and goes his own way. We can keep him motivated by food, but if we are wise, we will get it on a variable reinforcement schedule and keep him working for us. I'm going to print out a random number table to help us get on the variable schedule. I think it will be an improvement in all the animals.

Shawn and I saddled the mules and rode in the yard this morning. The yard has a full scale riding trail, so it's not like what you might have in a normal back yard. It was really exciting for Shawn when Chester headed down a steep slope! I kept hoping Shawn would suddenly figure out how to get some control over his steed, but it finally required Shawn riding Chester in a stall and practicing yielding to the hackamore and one-rein stops. Shawn finally convinced his mule that he might be a novice, but he couldn't be ignored.

It's about time to get back to the driving exercises we segued away from on all this yielding of the hinds activities... something to play with tomorrow.