Vacuuming the Mustangs in Largo Canyon

Well, Clay said he was mighty impressed by me getting ol' Cisco to stand still for a little shop-vac action. First I got Cisco to stand near the vac, which I had sitting in a chair near the paddock. Cisco was at liberty in our two acre yard and I told him he could run away any time he got scared of what we were doing. Then we started targeting the vacuum hose to different parts of his body. I held the hose and he pressed his body parts into it.... nose, shoulder, hips. He was controlling the contact, not me, so he never got scared. Then Clay came out and I asked him to operate the vacuum switch while we went and stood 50 feet away. Little by little we moved closer and closer to the humming vacuum. He never seemed to be too worried about it. Then we went back to targeting the now-sucking hose line. No problem. The mustang was vacuumed and even seemed to enjoy the sensation of the air flowing through his fur.

I don't think Mr. Cowboy Way is going to switch over to training with a bag of horse treats, though.

He did pretty good himself. He saddled and rode Jemez Dancing. They cut a fine western figure out there in the big paddock. Jemez Dancing is short backed and moves in a very elegant and collected manner. Clay wore his big black Texas cowboy hat. He had to work a little bit, but Clay goes easy on them so there was no traumatic moments. Later, though, when I was trying to vacuum JD, Clay walked up and JD jumped away and stood snorting at Clay until Clay hunkered down and I asked JD to target Clay. I held my fingers in a v-sign right behind Clays head while he was looking at JD. JD must have thought it was funny, as he relaxed and came in to eat the dried cranberries Clay was offering him.

In the afternoon, Clay snuck out while I was busy and saddled Ms. Paisley. He stepped up on her and she gave every indication of being ready and willing to just change status from bronc to saddle horse. He didn't move her much, just unsaddled her. Tomorrow we will start moving her around, but I want her on a leadrope and one person on the ground.... Clay could ride her out if she decided to buck (he is a former bronc-rider) but I think keeping her from ever considering the possibility is the best approach.

In the late afternoon, I took Cracker Joe back out to the big paddock. Clay and Paisley had thrown my white sewer-pipe jump out of the square-round pen, so instead of pulling it back in, Cracker and I worked in the big paddock. There was a corner where the square round pen was, so we targeted this corner from a new perspective... namely the outside of the pen. Then we turned and walked to another corner of the paddock..... somewhere we had never worked. I got about six feet from the corner post, pointed to it and told Cracker to "target corner". He walked right in and put his nose on the corner post. Why do I find this amazing?... Cracker had to understand the geometrical concept of a corner to do it. "Corner" means something to the little hinny.

Speaking of Hinnys, I launched a new website The Hinny Whisperer. It will have a blog, the bookstore, and a forum on it. It is all up and running although the forum is not in its final state of formatting. The blog will be a review of stuff I want to talk about (critique) from the web. The forum is all about training equids. If Experiments in Equine Training is of interest to you, I think you will enjoy the forum. Be sure to check out todays blog posting about the Zebra Whisperer, Nancy Nunke. She is holding a zebra training clinic in May that promises to be an incredible learning experience. I am hoping to find the money to go.

Horse As Teacher

There are eight stories of true life lessons via the equine master. They fit together well and remind of how much there is to learn and then to remember. The off-topic posts (also eight of them) contain a few real gems and surprises. Finally, I have appended a special category for Cowboy Tales. Enjoy them all!

Horse As Teacher

Nancy presents Soundness is in The Heart at the Sean Project. I begged Nancy to post for the Carnival, and she submitted late, but read her blog and you will know why I thought it worth begging.

Kimberly presents What Horses Teach Us: Reclaiming our Freedom on IGallopOn.com.... another thing I begged her to let me post. Kimberly is one of my heroes.... she has quite a few YouTube videos of learning to vault. It takes a lot of bravery to post a video of yourself trying to jump up on a practice horse.

Jerri Gillean presents Learning Horses: Failure posted at Learning Horses. This post gets to the heart of the issue, if you don't try, risking failure, you can't succeed. Jerri comes clean about her own trials and tribulations along the road to wisdom.

Lynda Polk presents The day that Starman failed to take the hint posted at Hoofbeats. Here you will find a story of being tested to the outermost limits of endurance. I bet to this day, she is still just a bit saddlesore from that ride! Will the effort be worthwhile, or was it a ride in vain? Find out on Hoofbeats.

Donna presents Life Lessons from the Barn posted at A Velvet Cage. This essay reminds us of things that we have all learned but we all forget. You are a true horsewoman when you don't forget them.

Kathy presents Training Lessons posted at Of Horses and Art. Kathy shows wisdom when she realizes she is over her head, and learns a valuable lesson about letting go.

MiKael Caillier presents The Best Laid Plans of Mice and Men and an Arabian Horse Breeder. posted at MiKael's Mania - Arabian Horses. Breeding plans for a newly purchased mare seemed simple enough. But adding a pregnant horse (due in six weeks) to an established broodmare band wasn't the only hurdle that needed to be considered.

Doug Emerson presents Rushing Works Best In Football posted at Don't Look Back. If you take Doug's words to heart and put them to practice, a lot of problems disappear.

Patricia Barlow-Irick (that's me!) presents Meditation on the Riddles of Equine Training posted at Experiments in Training Equines. My equines are Zen masters and offer me many lessons.

General Horse Blog

Sierra Lynch presents What To Do After A Bee Stings Your Horse. And The One Thing You Should Never Do. posted at Horse IQ. You want Sierra as a traveling companion because she always has a good idea of what to do in an emergency. It sounds pretty casual on her blog this time; you just sort of find a bee sting on your horse. In my experience, if you are riding and the bees start attacking, you know it and you are lucky to ride it out to safety... especially in these days of killer bees!!! Well, her advice is good for your horse or your kids.

Esther Garvi presents Advice from the Nigerien race track posted at Ishtar News. An amazing story of cultural habits that our western minds find incomprehensible. I can't help but wonder about this.... these horses are engaged in competition. If this practice was harmful to the horses, wouldn't an owner who didn't do it have a competitive advantage? What is the reinforcement that makes these people do what to us seems so wrong? Clearly we need to question our own assumptions. I would like to see a study of this phenomenon.

Dora Renee' Wilkerson presents Knitting, horses, and my family.: 02/04/07 posted at Knitting, horses, and my family.. Dora is a girl after my own heart.... the most sincere form of recycling going on here. No reason to throw those baling twines out any more. Lots of photos and clear directions. Dora has lots of other fiber works patterns, so its a fun website to browse.

Kerri-Jo Stewart presents To bit or not to bit? posted at Golden Dreams - Our Akhal-Tekes. This is an informative collection of information about bitting as, Kerri-Jo tries to figure out what's best for her equine partner.

L presents The Math of Breeding posted at Me & Mira (& Other Grammar Airers). L dispenses with the sentimental stuff and says, "Okay, how many horses should be breeders?" It's up to everyone to do the right thing. Something to think about.

MiKael Caillier presents Some Basics About Twin Arabian Foals posted at MiKael's Mania - Arabian Horses.With all the interest in equine twins, you'd think there would be a lot of information out there. Searching the web it seems the facts about twins in horses are only included as sprinklings here and there, so here's a compilation of the basics.

Defrost Indoors presents two postings: Starving horses were part of an unusual breeding program posted at Bridlepath and Urban legends « Bridlepath posted at Bridlepath.

Special Lonesome Cowboy Stories Section

Clay West, Americas most lost and lonesome cowboy, presents: Adios Harley Cotton. We Barely Knew You on House of Clay. Well, at least, the horse survived.

That concludes this edition. Submit your blog article to the next edition ofhorse lover's blog carnival using our carnival submission form.Past posts and future hosts can be found on ourblog carnival index page.

Technorati tags:horse lover's blog carnival, blog carnival.

Wanted: Tales of Innovation

The blog carnival on this site is coming up in less than a week now...

If you have spent any amount of time with the equine you know that there are many times that things go much differently than planned. Equines have a way of teaching us what we need to know. This carnival is dedicated to the times when equines have taught US a thing or two. Let's celebrate our failures, big and small. Let's celebrate the times when things have gone right against all odds. You are of course welcome to submit even if you have a post that doesn't relate to the topic. Just put your submission under the "general" category.

Word of warning to you bloggers. I am going to celebrate your Tales of Innovation and I am going to just report the Other stuff.... in other words, tell me a tale of trying anything and you and I will be best of friends. And we don't care if it was a success or a failure; we will savor it either way. Hey, I don't even care if you actually tried it, as long as you thought about trying it.

Here is the submission link:
http://blogcarnival.com/bc/submit_951.html

Be sure it is the horse lovers blog carnival in the box.

Horse Blog Carnival

At Experiments in Equine Training, we recognize that we are not the only ones to experiment with innovation. We are not the only ones to fail, despite our best intentions..... with this in mind....

We invite you to share your trials and tribulations, unexpected sucesses, dismal failures and things gone horribly wrong with the rest of the world on the 5th Horse Blog Carnival. Submissions are due by February 28th. A link will be provided for submissions on the 20th, until then, keep trying new things.

The Horse Bloggers carnival is organized by HorseApproved.com.

HorseBloggers.Com

Halt-at-X has created a lovely horse blog registry that may supersede my long list of horse blogs. It requires blogger participation (unlike my list)so it can grow in ways that mine never will. If you have a blog, head on over and get registered.

HORSEBLOGGERS.COM

Mona, at HorseApproved.com pointed out that the URL wasn't working... it was a plural bloggerS. Thanks, Mona!!!

Five things you don't know about me

1. I live in a very interesting and unusual place.
2. I am part Cherokee and Blackfoot.
3. I'm an expert in thistle taxonomy
4. I'm interested in childhood grief.
5. My life is like an open book


Okay, I responded to LearningHorses with these revelations of the soul. I may delete this posting in a few weeks just to maintain plausible deniability. I think I will tag Coppertop and Andrea

Towards the goals

Writing down those goals yesterday made it easy to know what to do today. Before lunch, I started out with Paisley and Cracker. I put the surcingle on Paisley, ran some lines to the side rings of her halter and started driving her around. There are some big feed troughs scattered around the lot. I put a hand full of grain in one while she was still tied up, then drove her to it. At first it was very hard for her to go straight and I to keep correcting her with tugs on the lines with "gee" and "haw" commands, but she finally arrived at the first trough where she found her reward.

I am not sure how much slack to keep in the reins. On one hand, a little guidance might help her, on the other hand, I would like the default direction to always be straight ahead. While she was eating, I would run to another feeder and put in the grain. We drove around the small pen and then out into the yard. I was mostly hopping through fences to put grain in feeders that were close as the crow flies, but required walking around things and through gates. She started getting the idea quickly. After about 6 trough stops we were done. She was hopping we would go again when I pulled off her tack and told her what a good girl she is.

Cracker was leaning up against the fence in his best "The Fonz" imitation, when I called him to come out of the pen. He trotted around to the gate and we hurried to get him haltered before Chester (the Molester) got there to bug us. Once out of the gate, I curried the mud off and we headed to the sandpile. Cracker is getting to where he really loves to be brushed, he will stand quietly and glaze over, but when you head to the sandpile, he knows there is a game afoot. His eyes get big and he is rarin' to go.

It wasn't the leading game we sometimes play, it was the learn to lay down game. I picked up a foot and put a tiny bit of down-and-backwards pressure on the halter. When he rocked back on his other foot just a twinge, I released him and rewarded him. It took a pocket full of horsecookies to get his rocking back to almost put his foot I was holding down to the ground. I am sure I will have him bowing the next time we work on it as he almost did it several times, but I stopped him short of touching the ground. I may not actually train him to lay down. The intent is to make it really easy to get on him, so we might just go for a kneel. That might keep my saddles cleaner. I have to decide on that later.

This post is a test of the new JustBlogIt add-on to my Firefox browser. If it works with the new Blogger, I will be pleased as it has not been easy to log on and post lately.

This afternoon, I hope to get Mr. Cisco to wear the surcingle. I haven't had it on him because I didn't have a long enough girth, but I pulled one off an Australian saddle that will fit the biggest of the big. I will try to take a picture and post it here.

Oh, one other thing. I had Chica sitting on Tobiah and then on Soloman. You can see where were are going with this.....

Yrs,
Patricia

Comments Enabled for All

Thanks to Janey Loree Fisher at Mustangs N' Cowboys for the email pointing out that my comment settings need some adjustment!! It's been fixed now, so your comments will be most appreciated.

Yrs,
Patricia

Connecting Horse Blogs

Everyone has been growing their blogrolls in the Blogging Equestrosphere. I propose that we form an unofficial association and agree not to copy too much from each other (instead post a trailer and a link so we can share readers).

I was playing around with the Seal Generator today and came up with this:


We could generalize on the idea so it doesn't exclude people who would hesitate to call themselves a trainer. I tried to get some code for a blogroll link randomizer so we could have something like a non-commercial webring. I don't know, this is just an idea.

Horse Blogs of Note

There are some really nice blogs on horsetraining out there. I started finding them yesterday while I was trying to figure out how to get more traffic on this blog.

Here is my favorite (currently): Bridle Path

Yrs,
Patricia