Outward Bound: Day 3

Today I noticed a great improvement in all the animals. No one really objected to the bridge or got nervous about big trucks. They all were quite eager to see where the destination was. I rode Tobiah and Cracker Joe the last hundred yards, and I put my foot in the stirrup on Jemez Dancing.

Chester was the first one to go and we tried working on an oil well pad in a little dead end canyon. It was a fantastic place, but three peregrin falcons flew in and registered their disapproval.... well, yes, that would be their nest on the cliff above us, so we left and I didn't take anyone back to that spot.

One of the things that has everyone leading very nicely is that I have this exercise for them where we are walking along and I say "ready" then on the next step, I bend my knees just a little and say "Whoa" as I stop (Check Klaus Ferdinand Hempfling about the body language). If they stop immediately and take one step back, they get a reward. My animals follow on a very soft feel and stop the instant I say "whoa". We practice this A LOT. I want that whoa/stop so deeply in their brains, that it will be totally automatic if we ever really need it in a bad situation.

Trip Report: The High Road

We got up at 4 a.m. and fed the horses so I could get to Navajo City with John. We arrived there about 6 and I had a few hours to kill before I could bother Billy about taking me to the Carrizo, so I spent some time trying to get a different printer hooked up to the credit card machine. Then Debbie, the waitress, casually mentioned that Billy and Vicky called early this morning on their way to town to go to the dentist on kind of an emergency basis.

This is when I knew things could go south without me and my mustang actually going south. I was a tish aggravated.

At about 9:30 a.m. the day was starting to warm up and it didn't bode well for road texture. There is 2 feet of snow out there in various states of packing, but the predicted high was 50°F. The best I could hope for was slop. I told John I should just call it off and he advised me to just be patient.

Finally Billy showed up and we headed to his place to hook on the trailer and saddle the mustang. I knew the moment I saw JD that I had no need to pack the helmet or his hackamore.... he was tense and worried, his head went up a foot when ever Billy came near. All the calmness I had worked into him was gone.

By the time the trailer was ready to load, the roads were turning to slop so we started in on the General American road and only went three miles before I suggested Billy just turn around and I would go from there. JD unloaded nice enough, and we started off on our trip. There were two penalties to a late start... I couldn't get hauled as far as I wanted and the road was a total mess.

But it was a lovely day. Before too many hours we were about to reach the Carrizo Creek, when I slipped on a patch of ice and landed on my side. JD panicked and jumped free of me. He started running south, but quickly turned and ran through a snow covered slope to get around me and head north. I watched him gallop out of sight with the saddle slipping to one side and the things falling out of the saddle bags.

I found the dry socks on a snow bank. I couldn't find the burrito or my extra rope. The grain stayed in the saddle bag. My coat stayed tied on as well.

A truck drove into view. A typical oil field truck hauling a trailer load of portable toilets. I stopped it and asked the driver if he had seen the mustang. Oh, yes, about a mile up the road. Then the nice man volunteered to turn around and take me to the horse. I was thinking about the poopy symbolism of it all, when we saw the mustang standing in a snowy sagebrush field. I got out and thanked the driver then went to see if Jemez would let me catch him. The lead rope had frayed in the run and become a giant snowball seed, so JD had a bowling ball sized chunk of snow tangled around his feet. He couldn't really do much about it, so I loosened the girth and pulled the saddle back straight. This fiasco set us back about an hour.

I decided that it wasn't safe to have my coat on the mustang, so I started carrying it. I had been sweating with it tied to the mustang, so now it was really miserable with my down jacket draped over one arm. The road was so sloppy that I couldn't help but have wet cuffs on my pants. I started getting worried when it was 2 o'clock and I was not yet at the Carrizo.

I called John back at the cafe. Our cell phone connection was bad, but I finally made him understand that I was in trouble and needed him to plan to come looking for me after work. Good hubby that he is, he made arrangements to get out of there early, and he headed home to take care of the other animals and make me a thermos of hot tea. The toilet-hauler came back by and offered me food: chicken wings to share with the dog and an apple turnover to share with the horse. He said he was worried about me. JD and I stopped at the Carrizo where a spring is burbling out from under the ice and creating this magical looking little pool. A peregrin falcon flew into a nearby tree and watched us walk by. I thought it was a good omen. Just knowing that John would be there sooner or later, lightened my heart a great deal.

At about 4:30, I entered Martinez canyon and two of the sloppiest miles on the whole road. The good thing was that the sun had already set in the canyon so we cooled down and things started gradually to ice up. At five, we had gained enough elevation that we were in the snow and the going was easier.

I would say that JD went through several mental states on the way. When we left he was in a good mood and enjoying my company, but after I fell down, I could no longer be trusted in his estimation. He didn't really want to follow me, but he had no idea how to get anywhere they would be serving alfalfa. He turned into a sluggard, following but on as much leadrope as I would allow. Then by sunset, he seemed to have reconciled with the epic journey and just got into following mode.

It was a stunning sunset, with Venus and Mercury on the horizon, the indigo blue sky giving way to a starry heaven where the milky way lit up the snowscape. As long as we were in open land with snow, we had plenty of light. John came rolling into the picture with a box of hay, a bucket of water, a thermos of tea and a burrito. I was so glad to see him, though his bumper was so muddy I had to put a plastic bag on it to sit.... I hadn't sat since I got out of Billys truck so my legs appreciated the rest. It didn't last long though, I knew everything would start to hurt if I didn't keep moving. The lead rope had frozen into a funny shape.

In the dark, I tried to keep right at the interface between ice and mud, so that I could keep the traction of a little frozen dirt. The mud made inky lines down the snowy roadway. JD would just follow in my footsteps since to stray too far from that meant slipping around.

What was kind of funny about this was that Andy Becks daily horse news message yesterday said "you should take a flash light when you go riding." I considered packing on, but it seemed so pointless at the time. By the time we were ready to go down Ice Canyon, I really wished we had.

John was driving one mile segments then waiting for us to catch up, but when we got to Ice Canyon, I asked him to just go really slow and let us follow in the light. That was working out pretty well until John started using the dog, Chica, to determine if we were close. Chica had no problem just running along side the vehicle, so they disappeared down the canyon for a while. Ice Canyon was icy and JD was the one doing the slipping this time, I thought he was learning to snowboard on his big fat hooves. Finally we caught up with John and Chica and asked if they could follow us in the vehicle instead. The head lights behind us doubled our rate of speed and it wasn't long before the lights of our house could be seen glowing in the canyon below.

Jemez Dancing started suspecting that we were actually in familiar territory as we entered Largo Canyon. No more pulling on the leadrope... he was keen to move out. We crossed the bridge and the three big dogs came out to escort us through the gate. JD started neighing to his old family and the herd just about crushed the pipe fence trying to reach him with their noses.

He is separated from them in the Ox Pen, with his own hay and water. I think he will be very very content to be home. Billy told JD before we left there that he was one lucky horse to not be going to the sale barn. I think the episode wasn't so lucky for JD but it did one thing for me... it gave me confidence that the reason that traditional horse training hadn't worked for me with JD was not that I had lost my skill, but rather that traditional horse training just doesn't work with that kind of horse. Billy, I am sure, did his best and then got very depressed that the trainee wasn't coming around as promised. He couldn't finish JD out because he was stymied by his inability to connect with this horse.

We are set back three months of training in addition to the two months JD has been over at Billy's , but now I have confidence that we can quickly change the equine attitude with some positive reinforcement. I have confidence that the only way is the slow way. This experience was lucky for me, despite the blisters on my heels and the fact that I probably am going to be very sore tomorrow. I really feel like I learned something.

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!

More thoughts on walking backwards

Today I let Rita run with the herd. She got to leave her 30x100ft paddock and go into the 2 acre paddock system where the others were horsing around. She has been lonely in her small yard, so this was an exciting time for her. Right away Cracker and Chester came to greet her. Chester did not attack, which was my biggest worry, but Rita and Cracker Joe formed a cute little unit. He wanted to mount her and she wanted to follow him around. He is only slightly bigger than her and since they were/are both former residents of the Billy Hibbler Horse Training Ranch, I thought they might be a support group for each other.

When it was time to get them into their personal pens/stalls for dinner, I decided I had to get more organized than usual. I closed the gates and shut them into the common paddock, then I went to each stall and put the hay in. They were waiting just outside the stall gates when I was done, so I let them in, one by one, into their personal space to where Rita was the only one left in the paddock. I think I will adopt this method as it is more controlled than my normal procedure, which is to feed them in order of dominance so they will be in the right stalls at the end.

At the point where Rita was the last horse standing, I had a real challenge on my hand. We had about 100 meters to get to her paddock gate. I had taken the time during the afternoon to get her and Cracker to come up to me for treats, so she wasn't panicked when I called her to me. I started walking backwards and drawing her attention back to me if she looked like she was loosing focus. Twice she started to turn, but I called her name and she kept on coming. At the end she was trotting to come to the gate because she figured out what we were doing.

Klaus Ferdinand Hempfling walks backwards He walks backwards a lot according to his book, "Dancing with Horses". He says their first trips out of the paddock should be done with the trainer walking backwards. I have seen no one else advocate this useful practice in print. The Dancing with Horses book is truely inspirational and has a lot of good information. The down side of Hempfling is that he had only been working with horses for two years when he wrote that book and he dashed it off in a very short time. He must have been inspired by the Goddess of Horsetraining though as it is wonderful. I did not care for his second book nearly as much. I would love to attend one of his clinics or even host one here, but he says that a USA visa is problematic so he would only do clinics in Mexico or Canada. I bet he knows a lot more than just about walking backwards.

Yrs,
Patricia