Rewarding the Smallest Try

My husband has brought it to my attention that I have recently started mimicking the deep outward breath, sigh-of-relief, that we look for our in horses to show that they are relaxing or at least attempting to self de-stress. And so I am, and this blog begins with a deep-chortling-one!

I have just returned home from a two hour visit with Cherokee, this being the first visit back to truly interact with him since the strained events with his trainer and boarder of last week, one week ago today... and my first interaction with the trainer alone, since my husband and I's visit and discussion with her about her disapproval of Parelli methods just two days ago.

I drove the long route out to her place adding a much needed additional five minutes to the twenty minute drive to her home and boarding facility.  I had a plan, but it was a Parelli plan and I was feeling stressed and nervous knowing that I would be under her scrutiny, even if it was just out-of-the-corner-of-her-eye watchfulness.

I had emailed her letting her know that I wanted to just come out and spend some time with Cherokee in the big field he is always turned out in when I arrive. I wanted to spend some non-demanding time with him, and give him a chance to just be curious about me, or to totally ignore me and let me be curious about him... whichever way it would go, it would be right.  Now, please note this paragraph's opening sentence, "... in the big field he is always turned out in when I arrive."  As I came up the drive he was not in the field. A rescue Arabian mare was there instead.  Drats! I hadn't really devise a plan B (well I had but it hadn't included him 'not' being in the field), but fine ... okay, I could still spend non-demanding time with him, right? 

I parked and walked to the stall area where the trainer had her back to me (horse language is all around us), bent over spraying off some equipment with a hose.   I came around, as carefully and wide as I'd come around a known-to-be-mean mare's ass, and said, "hello" as I reach her.  She stood up and stopped spraying and told me that Cherokee was in the back paddock, that I could take him out, take off his blanket and turn him out into the field.  Okay, no problem.  When I got to him he was already anxious to go, pacing me as I gathered up his halter and lead rope and looking for the gate.

This is 10:30am by the way and based on my previous visits she feeds any of the horses still stalled or paddocked at this time or just before, I saw no evidence that he had just been fed and based on his behavior I could tell already I was going to have my hands full.  He did not disapoint.  I got the halter on, he was eager, but managing the gate which needed to open inwards towards he and I was a bit challenging ... she had told me that she does not 'over train' horses to back up as compared to Parelli (one of her many misconceptions)... all I could think of in the moment was how great it would be if I could just 'wiggle' the rope at him and get him to step back so I could manage him, myself and the gate assuring a safe distance and manuvering for all involved.

The trainer had arrived on the scene at this point and I was determined. There's ... no time like the present ... I lifted the rope with a finger and waggled, he came toward me, I said, "back!" and gave the rope a good snake wiggle.  That was all it took no higher phase needed. He look surprised but complied and stepped back with three good sized steps. Perfect!  No comment from the trainer-peanut gallery.  We moved forward out of the gate and he was high headed. So we had to do a full circle doh-see-doh then I asked him to bring his head down, he calmed fairly well. But, all that effort was about to be all for not ... because as we walked around the corner he (and I) noticed that she had left both the turn out field gate and the arena gate open meaning he had a straight shot to the very place he wanted to be. I knew that we were just about to start to do the tango! As I was searching my guts for strength the trainer said, "Oh, I left the gates open for you so you didn't have to try and wrangle them with him,"  Did I actually say, "thanks?" I think I did.

Well I'll short story our trip to the filed for you... but I will tell you that it took about ten minutes to get there and not because he was dragging me around but because every time he'd try to pull towards the gate(s) I would turn him away and we'd walk in the opposite direction. Then turn back to the gate, stop, stare longingly at the gate then take a few steps toward it, when he'd loose composure again we'd do the same only I'd walk him back away from the gate even further so when we turned around the gate was even further away than before... eventually he got the message and we got there safely.  So after all of that I really did mean, "thank you," to her for setting that situation up.  It wasn't what I had in mind for just getting to see him first thing, but hey any opportunity right and he and I got to have a moment of understanding each other.

I sent him away from me after getting into the field before he could leave me of his own accord just to make sure he knew that we both had the same idea.  I went up to the car thinking I'd get my bucket that I was going to 'sit' on, based on my original plan for hanging out with him in the field but then realized that he was hungry and this was going to be a different game and I wasn't really going to be able to compete for curiosity over hunger. So I grabbed some carrots instead and headed back to the field.  I found a sunny spot with the fence behind me to just observe from. I sat there for about twenty minutes, just as I suspected no curiosity just furious grazing. I got up and decided I was going to walk the perimeter, not going to pay any attention to him, I was more interested in the fence line than what he was doing.  Once around the big field I found a closer spot to sit down at to where he was eating. I looked away at trees and birds, and then I heard it... he was grazing toward me... I didn't look at him, I actually turned my body away from him, and he 'walked up' ... That was it! I got '1', my goal was to get '3' approaches that were entirely his idea.... Over the course of another ten or fifteen minutes I got my other two and once he hooked on from a distance and started to follow me but lost it, that was okay too.

Happy with that total success I meandered up to the gate and left the field. I went and asked the trainer if I could bring him into the arena to tie him and groom him, (she always had me groom him before cross tied in the stable and I knew that's not how we'd be doing it at home so I wanted a chance to work with him this way) she agreed and yes, I knew this was going to be problematic, but ... it wasn't about getting him groomed it was about having some close up interaction to see just how much work there was to be done with standing and space issues... Well, I quickly figured out that he had absolutely no respect for turning his hindquarters away in fact, he would purposefully swing his hindquarters 'at me' and nothing I could do would catch his attention to 'not go there'... so I know exactly what game we're going to be playing at home! "hide-your-hiney" here we come! 

When he wasn't busy trying to squish me between himself (zone 3,4 &5) and the fence he would start pawing. So I would rub his leg and then ask him to pick it up and I'll hold hit up for a bit, finally the pawing stopped. The last behavioral issue I want to log here is his extreme mouthiness. I mentioned I had brought carrots for him, and he was very eager for them, but he is very uncoordinated with his mouth control so it's really easy to get bitten by him (and he's a clothes puller).  I had a particularly hard carrot and snapped the tip off and made him drop his head to get it, holding it a little tightly in my grasp so that he had to better coordinate his lips/teeth to get it. Then I had him do two slow flexion streches (near the shoulders for two more pieces both still with making him work his lips/teeth to grasp with focus versus just 'snapping it').  The trainer caught site of this and came over with a bag of treats saying, "I'm not going to tell you want to do, but he's mouthy because someone has given him too many hand treats and it's led to him biting, but do what you want to."  I took the treats and thanked her. Perfect! I put a few in my pocket and showed him one and ask him to 'move off' me, and square up for some more grooming, the message did not compute!  I waved at his hindquarters and pointed to the spot where I wanted his nose and since he thought I had a treat in that hand he complied. I gave him a good boy and then treated him between his front legs (lol, very non-coordiated) So the rest of grooming was a short session and mostly all about giving me something I ask for so I could give him something (treat and praise) and then when he was standing fairly still I called the session over.

After I stalled and fed him and was standing out side his stall watching him eat the trainer came over and asked, "So, what are you going to do about his mouthiness with Parelli?"  I was sooooo glad she asked this question, it was the first question she'd ever bother to actually ask me.  I explained to her that our other horse came to us with similar mouthiness issues though with more 'bite' to him than Cherokee has thus far displayed and we what we had learned through Parelli to at least 'try' which thankfully ended up being a near-miracle cure was to 'over mouth him' (what I call it anyway)... If he wanted to bite the brush then we would make sure he got some fun quality time with chewing on the brush bristles or handle, or the rubber curry, and most importantly we got him 'skilled' in lip/teeth control. We helped him learn to use his lips more than his teeth, we gave him the palm of our hands to suckle on... The mouth became a 'happy place' of contact instead of a reason to get smacked (had to even explain this to one of our vets who's a little smack-happy on the mouthing and showed him that Sundance was no longer a bite)r, but man-o-man he's got some talented lips!  She had no comment, but she actually looked for a brief instant as if she might blink her eyes and lick her lips.