Relationship Training

The biomass density of the SpotsNStripes Farm was a little overwhelming to me. It's like Dr. Doolittle turned loose in a panel fencing factory. Open-air pens of goats, dogs, cats, pheasants, tortoises, ponies, horses, donkeys, mules, and multiple species of zebras in a very zoo-like habitat. No open range here. But neither is it a place to casually oogle animals. This is one of the most intensive equine training facilities you will ever find.

Nancy pours her heart into teaching her clinics. She is a non-stop, high energy clinician who never stops reiterating her fundamental message. She is totally accessible to her students and she teaches with a patience and concern towards all. She teaches people pretty much like she teaches animals; and she is very good at it.

Nancy has four fundamental concepts:
1. Habituate or desensitize by moving from an accepted touch or activity to a less accepted touch or activity ("from an A spot, to a B spot")
2. Use the "whoops principle" as in "Whoops, I accidentally touched your B spot".
3. Do it with rhythm.
4. Show the animal you will do it yourself before you ask them to do it (Copycat)

She avoids negative reinforcement and punishment, because she says it just doesn't work on zebras. She finds food reinforcement too risky and ineffective to use as her reward, so she has this "zoo" arranged to limit "herd interactions" in order to use social interaction with herself as the main reward. She seeks to become each of her trainees "Best Friend", that is, more specifically, Dominant Best Friend. We watched the two kinship groups of zebras work out the problem of having a small flake of hay tossed in their pens. The kinship group (herd) always has a strict hierarchy and the female animals each have a best friend who she shares her food with. The stallion had his favorite striped mare. With friendship, privilege is conferred. It is this type of bond that Nancy is focused on.

Male zebras will collaborate to protect their herds and will tolerate their sons remaining in the herd. The father of a young zebra mare will fight the stallion that wants to court her, but only long enough to test him and make sure he is strong enough to defend his daughter adequately. Zebras respond with either total panic or total aggression if they have not been trained to do otherwise. Zebras will kill themselves trying to get away or kill their owners when leaving isn't a better option. She showed us how a bottle-fed baby turns into a disrespectful dangerous animal as it matures (usually about 5 years). She convinced me that I am not the kind of person that should own a zebra. She showed the National Geographic video on zebras to give us an idea of what kind of animal the zebra really is. It's a harsh reality that horse-lovers might not like.

I really enjoyed getting to work with Nancy for three days. She has interns helping her train and I think someone wanting to get a broad background in equine behavior should definitely try to spend some time with her at the ranch. Her techniques are very applicable to all equine training, and with relationship as the primary focus, it comes totally natural to women. She accepts qualified interns and she offers clinics twice a year at the SpotsNStripes Ranch. Do not show up uninvited though, it's not a zoo.

More photos of my experience can be seen here

When it was over, I was glad to get home to my own paddocks where my resplendent but tiny herd lives a relatively vast area. I don't think they missed me as much as I missed them. I tried her recommended head-rubbing protocol (me rubbing my head on them)for rebonding after my absence, but they just looked at me like I was out of my mind (or maybe they were just miffed that I had been gone?).

Homo Caballus: arte ecuestre

Homo Caballus by Peter Bosman ... I posted a response to this website on the ImagineAHorse discussion group.

What a great website!!! The author makes such wonderful case for positive training methods. I was intrigued by the neck rope and will have to try it on my horses and mules.

I like what he said about getting the horse to really be looking to you for leadership. That is one of the things that really interests me currently..... how can you inspire the horse to see you as their safe haven and wise leader? How can you engineer circumstances that naturally give them this perception. One of the things I have tried, with some success is stashing a bucket with feed, out in the landscape, and taking them to it. They know they wouldn't have found it on their own and by the second trip, they are pretty interested in finding out where it is you want to go. All the resistance to leave the paddock and follow your guidance melts away.

As soon as our landscape dries out a bit, I plan to try a new related method. Right now, with a sea of slush, we have been doing a lot of small movement training on the porch or in a stall. They love this and will fight for their turns.... well, we are going to move small movement training to destinations out in the landscape.

In rehabbing these horses, sometimes I feel ashamed that I can't just "cowboy-up" and ride it out, but Peter Bosman's website, with its theme of using your intelligence, gives me a lot of comfort that I'm using a good approach.

Yrs,
Patricia

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!

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.

Taffy, my first horse

Kimberly at I Gallop On has challenged us to tell the tales of our first horses.

My first horse was a 6 month old filly named Taffy. I brought her home to my menangery of goats, pigs, chickens, dogs and cats. We had a little barn the animals lived in and I would go out and spend hours just hanging out with the critters. When the school bus would bring me home, my animals would have broken out of the pen and be standing at the end of the driveway waiting for me.

One day it seemed like it was time to start riding Taffy, so I just got on her. I don't remember it being a problem at all. I was probably pretty hard on my 2 year old filly but she was happy to travel with me. I lived out of my backpack and camped out in the forest or worked on ranches. One time, I was traveling with her and she was too young to ride the distance, so I hitched a ride for us. She had never trailered, but I just asked her to get in the back of the truck with me and away we went.

Later on, I would ride her into town (20 miles). Sometimes I would just use a little kite-string for tack. You could tie her with a thread to a parking meter on a busy street, or put her in hobbles on a grassy lawn. I loved to be riding down the street and encounter kids that wanted to go for a horsey ride. She didn't like to move fast, but she was as reliable as the sun in the sky.

When we would camp out in the forest, I would sleep on the ground in my sleeping bag and my filly would stand over me like a mare does with a foal. The first time I woke up to find myself boxed in by four hooves, I thought it was a little scarey, but after a few minutes I felt perfectly safe and went back to sleep.

In the winter we would find snow banks to jump into. I managed to board her with a big herd of horses between her second and third year. This was really good for her as she had just grown up with humans (me) so she got to learn how to be a horse.

At some point, I thought I needed to go to Alaska. Horses weren't worth much those days, so I took her to the sale barn to sell her. I didn't realize there were any alternatives. I rode her into the ring with no tack and got off and crawled under her. It scared some of the cowboys at the sale, who thought I was taking a big chance. A dude ranch bought her. They got a very good deal at $240 but that was 1972.

What I learned from Taffy is that horses are remarkable kind and gentle animals if they are befriended. I see now, that they are mirrors for human energy. Many people believe that horses are unreliable dangerous critters and it is a vicious circle they fall into. I have watched all of my animals become trustworty and affectionate friends in response to the love I give them.