Pick the carrot.
Easy, right?
What about if your sensing equipment was one of these?
It might be less obvious at first, right? But, after you chewed it and tasted it, you would realise if you made an error, wouldn't you? .... Wouldn't you?
Well ... more of that later.
When we arrived, Banjo's owners were leading Banjo out to give him a feed and a brush. Apparently Wart has bonded to him quite a bit now, and follows him when he's led to the gate. He was standing near the gate and as we came up the laneway he was playing "noses" with the 2yo gelding over the fence. But as soon as he saw the car he knew what we were there for and came over for his feed. And the after-feed carrot.
When we went up to the paddock with Orion and Darcie in it, there was a teenaged girl in it trying to catch a horse. Her dad was there seeing how she was getting on. We called our two and they cantered up to the gate. (She never did manage to catch the horse - apparently they had just got it back, it used to be her pony and they heard it was being sent to the sales so they took it instead. And it had always been difficult to catch. They are going back tomorrow with electric fence tape to make a yard to run her into.)
So - Orion and Darcie both came out of the paddock and walked themselves over to their feed spots. Ellie groomed Orion while he was eating, and tacked him up. She is still practising cantering with him, so that's what they did.
I was pleased that we are starting to put the training into everyday use with Darcie. That's what it's all for, really. I wanted her to move her quarters over so I could walk up beside her safely in the confined space, so just stood off behind to one side a bit, tapped my finger in the air, and clucked. She moved the quarter over, so I told her she was good and gave her a rub.
It got quite windy (well, VERY windy) during the feeding and she was a bit toey. We started with LFR 1 and let her get some steam off, then moved to a bit of LFR 2 which is coming along great now. She's starting to rock back on the quarters and move the front end over. Not perfectly and not totally consistently yet but it's all coming along.
The father of the girl was watching, waiting for his daughter to either catch the horse or give up. So it was quite good it was coming along! At one point he said that he liked the way we are gentle with our horses but firm when we need to be. He and his daughter are pretty practical horse people and do mainly rodeo events and are pretty competent with horses, so that was a good thing to hear from him.
At some point during the LFR his daughter came up and they decided they would come back the next day with the tape to catch the horse.
After LFR I did desensitising. I used the stick to rub all over her body. I also swooshed it up and down beside her on each side. A new place on her body was right up between the hind legs and touching her udder area, too. She tucked her tail and crouched a bit at first but then relaxed.
She was still a bit touchy about the face, especially the nose part just below the eyes. When I was rubbing her forehead above the eyes she'd relax and put her head right down. I really do think she'd had a whack on the face and it was sore, and it may still be a bit sore. There was no more blood though. And it was only a tiny smear in her normal clear nasal mucus the other day - any more and I would have been more concerned. I'll just persist with gently touching and rubbing her face until she's back to normal. And for now, I'm rubbing her on the neck with the stick instead of the face - I want to make sure that her face is not sore before I rub it with the stick again.
After the desensitising we did the sending exercise. This also is coming along really well. She's giving me space when coming into the gap, not coming into my space at all, and yielding her quarters nicely. She's also being more relaxed about it - responsive, but not as tense as she was the first time.
Since that was all so good and I didn't spend heaps of time doing it, after a rub we moved on to the first go at circle driving. It's really good the way that it all builds up. This exercise came along really really well. She was a bit unsure and tense at first, but as she figured it out, it all came together. At first I needed to tap behind the wither to bring her up in line with me a bit, but soon she worked out to do it just on the point of the arm, with just the occasional tap to reinforce when needed.
The circles were a bit like eggs at first, or something like that, but the distance and her bend and everything just seemed to fall into place. Particularly on the circle to the left. On the circle to the right, at first she was going with her quarters out a bit, in avoidance due to a bit of stress because she didn't know what we were doing, but as we kept going and she worked it out, the stress reduced and she was getting more in line with the bend of the circle.
The change of direction looked as if it might be a bit tricky but it all flows well and was no problem. I didn't find any trouble with either my coordination or with Darcie's response - her yield of the quarters is getting really sharp and responsive.
In fact pretty well everything she is doing is snappy, she's giving me snappy responses. I think part of that is me, as I tend to drive a horse on the edge a bit, in that I tend to teach it as much as it can take in and expect snappy responses and don't let it slob around. This would be because I've had quite a bit of time in the past having to teach groups of horses as much as I can in as little time as possible, while still ending up with a sane and sensible horse at the end. So I've developed a sense for how much a horse can take and teach things perhaps a bit faster than some other people might do.
I used to do intensive days, giving each horse maybe 20 to 30 minutes of intensive learning, then a couple of hours' break while I teach other horses, and fit in three to four of these intensive lessons in a day, doing things like spending a weekend getting a group of unhandled TB weanlings fully handled including leading at different paces, loading, feet, grooming and so on. There was one TB stud that I worked at for a while, and after I left they would get me back for these intensive sessions to train their new staff in handling the youngsters, and they would also get me in to do the difficult ones, like the one that would attack their handler each time she went in the yard with him. (He turned right around in no time at all - he'd had some forced foot trimming as a foal and needed to learn that people could be predictable and trustworthy, as well as requiring respect.)
Anyway, this needing to get things done effectively in a short time taught me a lot about how much a horse can learn and how fast it can be taken while still keeping everything pleasant and safe. I actually think it's good to give horse a bit of stress in these conditions, in a way that it can find its way out of the stress by doing what the handler wants, like stand still or move this way or that, because some day there will be a stressful situation that is not controlled, and if the horse knows what to do when stressed, instead of exploding or becoming unmanageable, it will know to look to the handler for guidance.
So, after we did circle driving, I did the patting desensitising again, which she tensed up a little at, at first, but then relaxed, and then we did some flexing of the head. She was SO soft flexing to the right. Soft and pretty quick. Not so good to the left. Needed a bit of jerk, jerk to stop her leaning, and a nudge nudge reminder to bring her nose in to her side. But we didn't need to do too much of that and she finished soft and responsive. I need to make sure I remember to do this EVERY DAY.
We gave them both one more scoop of food and while she was tied up eating, I took Xia and Zante for a walk up the laneway. While working Darcie, Xia had been doing her usual circling around, while Zante had mostly been in the car howling that it wan't SAFE to come out with all those hooves out there. She'd run into Darcie's hind legs when Darcie was in the big paddock one day, and copped a hoof in the side. So she knows they can hurt. Much more sensible than Xia - but then Xia is from Kelpie lines that work cattle as well as sheep, so a hoof in the side, or being run over, doesn't put her off at all.
It was so windy and while walking I got that itch in the feet, I had to RUN! So we ran the rest of the way down the laneway, and all the way back again. It must be such a primeval urge, to run in the wind. I know how the horses feel when they do it, I think.
So, then it was time to take them back. Darcie is starting to toss her head when I want to take off the halter so it's wait, wait until it's still and tipped towards me, then start to undo, and stop undoing if she tosses it, and so on, and then a bit of carrot when she does it right.
After we went out I went back with one last piece of carrot for each of them. Ellie gave Orion his, and I gave one to Darcie. And she dropped it. She knew where to look for it and put her nose down and then swept it up again with something in her mouth and crunching - and there on the ground still was the carrot. So WHAT was she crunching? I went in to the paddock and picked up the carrot and went up to her and not until I showed her the carrot did she spit out what was in there - a rock! I'd suspected it was a rock but when it came out all wet and slobbery, that confirmed it. (And yes, the rock in the photo is the very rock - but cleaner, as I washed the dirt off it.)
Ellie and I were laughing at her quite a lot by this time. Darcie actually did check the carrot a bit with her front teeth before taking it into her mouth, so I think she did finally work out that what she had previously was not, in fact, a carrot. But she is such a food driven thing. Maybe she thought it would start to taste like carrot if she just chewed it enough.
No comments:
Post a Comment