Walking Backwards Sometimes

It was kind of cold and snowy, but I made myself go out and clean the stalls. Just being out and about turned it into a lovely afternoon. The clouds went south and the wind stopped. I've started putting my muck pile in a new spot. Last winter I wanted to focus on getting the cottonwood park ready for a lawn, so there is 1 years worth of muck piled beneath the forest. When I have the equipment over here, I will cut down the remaining rabbit brush, spread the fertilizer, and plant some grass. The new pile is going to be the winter base for my new round pen. Well, it's not actually a pen, its more like a 20 meter circus ring. Now there is gravel because it was an old school parking lot, so muck might not be a lovely thing in a wet climate, in New Mexico it will be fine for the winter.

Rita seems to have turned a corner. She is now joining up. I can give her a stern look and she will march right up to me. I pet her and give her horse cookies. I think feeding actually trashes the herd-dominance relationship but for her it might be the best thing. One thing I do when I want them to hook on and go with me is if they turn around I stomp my foot lightly as I turn to go back for them, sometimes that alone will get them to turn back. It also seems to help to turn and face them and try to keep them from turning their heads away. They can follow better that way, but it takes total focus as you have to watch them and walk backwards.

So many people have told me that you never look a mustang in the eye. I am skeptical of this. Mustangs look at each other all the time!!! They look at me. I don't look at them a lot, but I do use my eyes with them. I would like to have seven people to help me do an experiment with this. I would put the horse in a square pen made of two panels on each side. The divisions between the panels would be the boundaries of blocks within the pen. Each pen would have four of these blocks. The blocks would be diagonally assigned to two treatments: Everyone look at the horse if it is in a "all-eyes" block, no one look at the horse if it is in the "no-eyes" block, measure the amount of time the horse spends in each kind of block. I bet the horse actually chooses to be looked at as long as they are soft looks. You could have three treatments: intense stare, soft look, and no look. Well, next time I have seven friends and a mustang on hand, I'll give it a try.

When you are looking backwards, the animal seems to get confidence from your focus.