On the High Road

Tomorrow, I am going to get my mustang Jemez Dancing. About two months ago, I made a deal with Billy Hibbler to put 30 rides on him. JD was going alright enough for me here in the yard. I could ride him bareback or even a little bit tackless, but I knew that if I ever took him out and about, he might bolt. We'll as I wrote in the blog when it happened, he did bolt with Billy Hibbler on board. I was riding the energizer-bunny, boltin' Cracker Joe, and Chester, the molester, with John on board, started the whole fiasco by jumping into the brush in a panic.

Okay, so Billy Hibbler had put down my style of training so many times, that maybe I started to believe his style was better. Maybe I believed it when he said he could have the little mustang mare, Rita, gentle in 30 days. It took me 30 days just to get her to let me catch her and lead her with any degree of trust, so when he said she was no challenge for him, she went back home to her owner, Billy. Well, it's two months later and he gave up on the mare and the last time he rode my horse, ol' Jemez bucked like a son-of-a-gun and jumped over the pasture fence. To Billy's credit, he didn't fall off, but I am not feeling like there is the reliable mustang coming home that I hoped for. Infact, I would say he is EXACTLY as unreliable as he was. Only now he bucks instead of bolts.

On the good side, I never have to listen to him bragging on his horse training any more. Sure, he is going to blame it on the weather, but I offered to pay for the gas for him to haul him to lower elevations where there is no snow on the ground.

Jemez is far from a hopeless case; I have plan with a 50% probablilty of changing my buckskin mustang permanently into my loyal horse in the next 24 hours, and I don't even have to start until 10 a.m. tomorrow. The plan is to get Jemez out of the unhappy conditions at Billy's where there is no shelter and all the horses are kept in tiny squalid pens. Billy is going to haul me and my horse to the Carrizo, exactly half way home. Then Jemez and I are going to walk the last 10 miles home. I have some grain packed and I am wearing my hiking boots, not my riding boots. We are going to have a picnic on Ensenada Mesa, drink water from all the biggest ponds on the way, and take photos of the lovely scenery. I'm taking a saddle and my riding helmet, but I suspect that Jemez will just be packing them unused. The ol'gray lead mare will make sure her buckskin friend is safe, not hungry or thirsty, and finds his way back to his herd (where he is the dominant horse). It's bound to be an icy / muddy road in places, I am carrying a stick with a yellow flag to slow down the oil trucks, and we are sure to be tired. Maybe I better pack a change of socks?

I will post photos on Tuesday. You can find a map of the roads on the index page to this website: www.dinetahtrails.com We'll be crossing the Carrizo Creek at Munoz Canyon, heading up Martinez Canyon to Ensenada Mesa, dropping off into Ice Canyon and crossing the bridge to the Largo Canyon School. If you are sitting at a desk reading my blog, well, you can wish you were tagging along because it is sure to be a great adventure. Epic adventure even!

Did someone steal the dynamite?

This morning I haltered the beasts while they were still in their stalls eating breakfast, when they were done they didn't get just turned out into the paddock, but they got offered water and put back. One by one, they came out to the highline again. Same routine, no fireworks from any of the domestics.

The Cisco Kid drank a couple of gallons out of the bucket then allowed himself to be lead to the tree and was promptly secured to the highline. I went over and started messing around with Cracker Joe, just ignoring the mustang except for every once in a while I would go by with a treat. He just stood playing with the rope again. After 10 minutes of fun with Cracker, I decided it was time to raise the heat on the Kid. I took off my long red scarf and started waving it around. I was about 10 feet away to start with and he watched for a while, then started looking sleepy. I moved directly in front of him, waving it from side to side to stimulate both sides of his brain. Pretty soon he was licking and chewing. I held the scarf up to his nose, then started rubbing his face with it. Nothing. I started flipping it around on his back. No big deal. No buck-snorting, no panic, nothing. He looked quite casual. Damn!!! I need a bull whip to start cracking around here!!! What happened to that wacko mustang? Who put this fake mustang in his place??? Well, finally after 20 uneventful minutes on the highline, I unclipped the lead. As if to prove he was no impostor, he spun around on his haunches and lept away. I am looking forward to learning how to ride that spin! It's pretty.

So the fun with Cracker? Well, I tied a couple of slobber straps onto the ends of a lead rope and hooked them to the side rings of his web halter. I sat on his back and asked him to give me his nose around by my knee. The goal was to get the lateral flex from just the raising of the slobber strap. We have a ways to go for that one, but Cracker is a very willing trainee so we had fun.

Billy called from the back of Jemez Dancing - such is the wonder of a cell phone! He said the Wiley Mustang had pulled out all the stops and tried every-which way to get rid of his rider including rubbing him off on the fence. Billy was just sitting on him in the roundpen and not pulling on his head at all. Let'em buck, duck, or bolt, Billy can ride! He used to ride saddle broncs so JD is just a wannabe to him. They rode in the round pen for an hour or so and the report is that JD is coming around. I couldn't tell if that was Billy's pun or not. I requested that he focus on training the Ex-Wiley Mustang to be a pony horse and he said he would start him out ponying the broke horses over at his place before he latches onto any of the broncs.

He also said that Rita was doing well. He was stopping by her corral everytime he passed by and rubbing on her. He tied her up and put a saddle blanket on her. I did notice that he didn't take her halter off.

I have to go to my waitress job tomorrow so they get a day off in the home corral.

Rita and Jemez Dancing head off to Billy's place

Things can change quick out here. Billy Hibbler called up and said he was ready to come get Rita. My hubby called moments later and said he was coming home to go for a mule ride. They got here about the same time. Billy was hauling a little black horse named Troy (because he looked like he could have a Greek army inside of him).

We asked if Billy would like to ride with us; he could ride Jemez Dancing, the sometimes bolting mustang. So we all got saddled up and headed out on the great trail ride. Actually we didn't have a lot of time because the sun was already behind the mountain, so we made a loop around the pond and went down along the Largo. The sand is deep there and it is my favorite place to ride a spooky animal. We followed the sandy bank until the edge turned into forest and we crossed the cottonwood bosque and through some lovely meadows that have yet to be thrashed by the range cattle this year. We turned up through the wormwood and sagebrush and JD tried to get excited about the brush popping. Billy was just riding in a halter but he is a cowboy.

There was something about the light that made the golden mustang look like he was glowing, and he and Billy cut a fine figure. I was thinking of how good they looked together and suddenly I was asking Billy how much he would charge me to take JD home with him and ride him for 30 days. The price was reasonable so I made Billy promise not to turn him into a roping horse and to ride him in a bosal. He said he would only rope off of JD in an emergency, like if he got to the roping arena and realized he didn't have the right horse. He says it makes them really calm.

We emerged from the popping brush on a wide trail and it put us on the big wide sandy Largo road only a mile from the house. We were doing great until a semi truck with a road grader came rattling around the bend. I motioned for them to slow down and they did. These animals live in a paddock next to a road where all kinds of big stuff comes rattling by EVERY DAY, but Chester likes to freak out about big trucks, so he bolted up the cut bank and into the brush. Cracker took about 3 flying leaps past JD and JD saw it was time to ignite the rocket fuel. It was a race between Cracker and JD, but the short legged hinny never had a chance. Billy had a night strap on his saddle and JD ran straight. I was riding an Australian saddle with no nightlatch, so I was fairly apprehensive about the situation. Riding Cracker at a gallop is like riding the side bars on a old fashioned locomotive!! No one fell off and we were all on an adrenaline high for the rest of the ride.

So, when we got back to the yard, we drug a bale of hay into Billy's truck and started loading horses. I already had the halter on Rita, and I snapped on a lead rope. When she arrived at our place, the only way to get her to her pen was pony her off another horse. I wasn't sure she could go all the way with me, but I started walking backwards and asking her to follow. Across the small paddock, through a gate, across the big paddock where the mule tried to nip her neck, through another gate, and into the paddock where the trailer was parked. She did it!!! I was proud of her. She is broke to pony so we used Troy to pull her into the trailer. Then, with Rita and Troy safely tied, we loaded up the still saddled JD and away they went.

JD will come back with the bolt taken out of him. Hopefully he will come back with the skill and discipline it takes to be a pony horse. Billy will do a good job. Maybe he will win some roping jackpots with my boy.

Patricia

No escape: small degrees of progress

Another week's gone by and I am still ambivalent about this positive reinforcement thing. One one hand, I think it has solved my worst problems, but I don't know how permanent the solutions are. I've been riding my Wiley Mustang in the half-acre paddock. Last summer he would have been bolting here and there, but now I am just sitting on him bareback practicing our "whoa" protocol which involves one step back to be complete. Would he "whoa" if there were really reason to bolt? I don't know, but at least he is not busy inventing reasons to bolt.

We need wet saddle blankets and lots of miles, but until I have someone to ride with, it has to be training in the paddock.

I started reading a book on Coersion and it's Fallout. It is pretty much of an eye-opener. The author is railing about how coersive culture is and what a waste of life it is to live in a coersive world. When was the last time you got some positive reinforcement yourself?

In the chapter on negative reinforcement, which is how most horses are trained, he talks about the one option that you can't let a animal trained by negative reinforcement have... that is the option for escape. Yep, the Wiley Mustangs problems all stemmed from him learning how to escape training by bolting. Now he doesn't try to escape... nope, these animals now will follow you out to the round pen and wait for their turn. Escape is the last thing on their minds. In that regard, this method of training is really great, but I have to admit I still don't have a horse I can just get on and go anywhere. I don't have a horse that I can aim in some direction and get a nice steady canter. We haven't got that far yet.

I spent 18 months trying different protocol for negative reinforcement and punishment and flooding on this critter.... none of it got me on the critter's back so we have come a long way, I have to keep reminding myself of this.

Yrs,
JRW