Learning new stuff. Horse and me.

Today I learned some things.

1. It's best to teach things before you need them.
2. The rope halter helps with this stuff.
3. It really is worth it to not quit too soon.

And the story.

It's been a few days since doing horse stuff. I've been trying to get some of my work done and also having a few little health issues. Today though I went to visit a friend I'd not seen for a while. And got home and had a rest and thought about working and said stuff it, let's go up see the horses.

So Ellie and I went up.

First we drove into the big paddock and looked for Wart. Xia and Cedar ran with the car. They had a good run because we drove around a fair bit. Eventually we saw Wart and Banjo the Clydie coming down through the trees towards the dam.

I called Wart and he saw the car and started following it. Trotted then cantered. Funny boy. We beat him to the gate and parked the car in the laneway, then slung his feed bin from the fence as usual. He enjoyed eating and the attention, and I gave him a bit of a groom and checked his feet.

I think he's maybe not quite so fat which is good. Probably he's moving around more.

Then we went up to the other paddock for Orion and Darcie. Ellie stood on my car and spotted them (they were a little over the hill). I called them and they came up fast! So did all the other horses. Our two REALLY WANTED to come out. They were trying to get past the others to get to the gate. So we put their headcollars on and took them out.

While Wart's weight is heading in the right direction, Orion's is going the opposite way. We need to think about what to do about that. Maybe we need to find him a diet paddock for a little while.

Darcie was fighting for her back legs a bit when I was cleaning her feet out. The near hind most of all. So I put the rope around it and just held it up - if she put pressure on it I kept the pressure up - sometimes she was able to get it down (horses are stronger than people) but I kept up the pressure and would get it up again. After a bit she stopped pulling at it and I let her put her foot down. So we played with that for a bit until I could get her foot up with the rope and just hold it up with her holding it there gently. Then I cleaned her foot out.

After the horses ate, Ellie popped onto Orion bareback with his headcollar and a leadrope as reins. I rode a lot like that when I was her age. :)

We went for a little walk down the laneway. Darcie didn't want to walk in a patch of wet ground. I started to do a little work with her and it ended up being a training session in the sending exercise. Except I didn't have the stick and string with me, so I used a loop of lead rope instead of it. And the area was not very large. So it was a bit too much pressure too soon. Hence me learning lesson one. Teach a thing before you need it. And don't use it under higher pressure situations until it's taught. It got her confused and a bit hyped but nothing we can't overcome and there won't be any lasting problems from it.

Anyway we kept up our walk. She was wanting to walk too close to me a bit too much rather than walk over things she didn't want to walk over, so I can see we need to keep going with these exercises to keep her out of my space.

When we finished walking I thought we'd train the sending exercise properly, but she was still a bit confused and amped over it, so we did lunging for respect stage 1 for a bit and got that working OK. Then we moved on to stage two. It was not going great. And I learned my lesson 2. After I switched from the nylon to the rope halter, she was responding much more easily to my bumps on the lead rope to stop her running forwards instead of turning.

My lesson 3 was a part of that too. I was really puffed because I was working as well as Darcie. And Darcie was getting sweaty and blowing. I did some desensitising with the rope and was thinking about stopping because things were coming along OK although not as good as I would have liked. And then I remembered "if they have the energy to get it wrong, they have the energy to get it right". And "don't give up too soon".

So I switched Darcie to the rope halter and we went back to it. And she responded better. And I was getting my body movement right and she was watching me more and starting to understand what my different movements meant. One type of movement for stage two - put weight back onto the quarters and turn the shoulders across, and another type of movement for stage one - turn the hindquarters out and stop with the head facing in. Once we got some nice consistent responses we stopped there. At first she had been coming in too close to me on the turn, but she did start to get some nice roll-back movement at the end.

So even though we didn't keep going all that much longer, we had kept going long enough to get some of the right sort of responses for the exercise. And finish feeling like some stuff was achieved.

Although we were not quite done. I finished on some desensitising. We did plastic bag on stick. She was pretty good except she didn't want it touching her front legs at first, but soon got over that. I did neck, body, legs. Then we did "follow the plastic bag while it goes from side to side, then bounces around in front of you, then whizzes around and around overhead". I walked backwards and she followed - walking towards the retreating plastic bag helps her to feel more brave about it. You could see her feeling more comfortable and getting closer to it.

After that the plastic bag on the stick was rubbed all over her body, including up near her ears, and around her head. She didn't like it under her jaw at first but then was OK.

While I was moving it around her head I found she didn't like it moving past her eye. So I whizzed it up and down past her eye and she backed up from it a bit, and I kept up the rhythm, and she stopped, and I kept it going up and down, and after some time she dropped her head and I stopped the bag. So we did a bit more of that on that side, and moved to the other side, again looking for signs of relaxation - a sigh, the head dropping a little. She didn't run backwards from it this time.

Well we were done then. Darcie was very sweaty. I spent some time just rubbing around her head, which she enjoyed.

I took her into the paddock. She tossed her head around a bit when I was starting to undo her halter. I'm not sure if she was trying to get it off, or if she was rubbing her head on my hands. Could have been either. But we need to have a "taking halter off" behaviour, so I asked her to tip her head around to me with her neck flexed while I did it. I'll see if that's a good one.

Another thing I learned was to have treats in my pocket when letting go. I like when they hang out for a bit after being let go. Usually we go over to the car, get something for them, and then go back and give it to them. But Orion had already been let go and was further down the paddock, and Darcie left to go to him after I went out of the paddock. If I'd had something with me I would have been able to give it to her before she left.

So. Horse learned things. I learned things. All good.