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

To rush could be fatal.

We haven't let the snow and slush stop us, we are just moving slower, working hard to avoid slipping around. Not only the critters, but me as well. You just don't want to have to make any quick moves when you are on snow, slush or mud. Like picking up the mustangs back legs.... one false move and he will slip, bolting away, and I will have my spectacles splat in the icy mud at best. No... we have to just make sure that we don't get into trouble. If a person did crash and burn on a winter's afternoon and lay unconscious in the snow until someone decided to rescue them.... well, at least I have an epitaph picked out for my headstone.

Cisco and I are doing well though. I've spent the time flicking and flapping things over his body, tossing the rope, rubbing him with a stick, and singing holiday mustang songs until he sighs and lets his lower lip hang loose. I put him in the tiny roundpen and gave him a choice: would you like to give me your right hind foot and get this cookie, or would you like to circle the round pen ten times each way? He chose circling about three times and then figured out he might as well just eat cookies. Today we worked on lateral movements of the hindquarters. I had his lead looped around a fence post, hoping he would pull and yeild just a tiny bit. I started tapping his back girth area. At first he was worried and he tried pulling back just a bit, then he stepped forward. That was our starting point and I rewarded him. From just stepping at all, our criteria level rose to stepping sidewards with either hind foot, them to stepping sidewards with the hind foot nearest me. He crossed over a couple of times (the ultimate goal in hindquarter lateral movements) but I didn't have that as the bar on this first day. You have to slow down in this kind of weather. To rush could be fatal.

I was using some horsetreats that smell like apples and are about the size of a slice of apple. They are entirely too big. One day I took a bunch into the woodshop and bandsawed them into quarters, which made perfect treats. A good training treat should be about 1 cubic centimeter. Smaller than a grape, bigger than most raisins. I have thought about writing to Purina and asking them to manufacture such things, but that letter remains unwritten. The dog likes the apple flavored treats too. She was sitting on the horse feeder, which I had turned upside down in the center of the roundpen and supervising. She says bigger treats would be better, especially elk flavored ones.

If you read my blog often, you will notice that I seem to sea-saw around in the development of the mustang as a tame horse. Somedays I proceed as if I was going to be riding him next week and somedays I just dwell on the basics of the basic. In my opinion, you can never overdo the basics. If they don't have perfect stable manners, there is room to seek perfecion. If you can't get them to relax when you ask, you still have work to do. If they don't yeild in the direction indicated, it would be suicide to think you should ride them. If you can't tie them they aren't trained to any degree. Cisco and I have work to do. We are focusing on the desensitization side of horsetraining and every session, no matter what it seems like we are doing, we are really forming a bond of trust.

After this week, I will have some old office projects finally off my desk and I can start to really focus on equine training. My goal is to have Tobiah, Paisley, and Cracker ready to sell, should I need to let them go. Tobiah just has to have some work on yeilding to rein and leg cues, Cracker is going to get some trick training, and Paisley needs to work on driving and overcoming herd-attachment. It's going to be a fun winter.