Bullseye (the curly gelding I adopted back in March) has been doing great. His main job lately is integrating into my small herd of Bravo and Friday. Which means that he gets to go out on the big pasture with them. And which also means that he needs to still be approachable and halterable/catchable in the pasture. So occasionally I spend time with him in the open pasture, working on haltering, but with no intent to catch him and then leave the pasture.
Most of the time, he does great with this and seems to like the interaction and the alfalfa cubes that come with it. His personality and confidence are continuing to blossom-he's so much less shut down and "hide my head in the fence" compared to a couple months ago.
Some round pen work with Bullseye. To me, "round pen" is a noun, it's not a verb. I sometimes do what looks like what most people would call "roundpenning." But most often, I just use the round pen as a classroom space to work on whatever comes up with the horse.
In this case, I wanted to help Bullseye be more relaxed by trying to influence how he moves in relation to me. In general, he likes to stand straight through his body. He would prefer to not look at me when I stand close to him, and he'd definitely prefer to not bend his neck to look at me sideways and then possibly see me out of two eyes. That's pretty surprising and scary.
So I've been working on various ways to subtly influence him to bend through his body, and hopefully therefore release some tension and feel more relaxed. One of those ways is walking in an arc around towards his tail to create a hindquarter (HQ) yield. When doing this, I'm not *asking* him per se for a HQ yield, just trying to create it by the path I walk around him.
At this stage, it's also important to me that the horse knows how to move away from me in a safe (for me) manner if they get worried. As I start to touch further behind their withers, I want them to do a HQ yield away from me if they get worried. This keeps me in a safer position than if they spin their shoulders away. So I'm planting the seed for that behavior by often doing the sequence of touch then yield.
Side note, Bullseye did have a slip and slide injury (I assume) the last time we had mud and was lame on his left hind. He still has swelling above his left hind fetlock, so I'm sure it's still a bit sore, and this doesn't make the HQ yield away from me on the left any easier for him. However, even before that injury, the HQ yield away from me was difficult, so I don't believe it's solely soreness related.
And also a couple notes about using food with Bullseye. His introverted "I like to feel safe by putting blinders on" personality also shows top in how he take
He may be 32 years old, but Bandyt still has some sweet moves!
His personality is starting to peek through!
A little summation of the first two weeks of working with the new curly mustang (who probably has a name but it's not quite sticking yet). I decided to split my mustang pen with panels so that I could work with each horse individually. Duo-gentling has worked well with the past few "couples" of mustangs to come in. But with these two, I felt it would be best for them, and easier for me, if I temporarily split them.
With curly I've been doing things a little differently than I usually do these days. Usually, I prefer to get enough connection and confidence with a new mustang that they'll stand off of the fence to accept my approach and first touches. I like to be able to draw them a few steps to me, off of the fence, and have them be alert and engaged with me as I approach to touch.
But with curly, although I could get some engagement, he would go into slight freeze mode/shutdown mode as I approached, and he would only tolerate an approach if he was near the fence or tucked into a corner of the pen to feel safe. This is far from ideal. But he was offering to accept my approach, which is much better than what he did the first week or so-running away as soon as I looked at him with any intent. So I decided to work with what he was offering me and go from there.
Of course, although he was hiding on the fence, he was not in complete freeze mode, so I could only do so much before he would boogie out of there. So I had to work very slow and incrementally.
Using the whip to touch him from a distance allowed me to break things down for him--a whip or stick can separate touch from human proximity and therefore make actual first hand touches easier. Touch is scary, a human standing close is scary, so a human standing close and touching you with their hand is doubly scary. And for curly, actually *looking* at a human standing close and trying to touch you is triply scary.
He got a little better each session. And then one day he was mentally present enough to notice wh
Yep, they're young geldings! The play drive is high with these two, especially with the brisk weather :)
It was a lovely moment until my hat brim bit his nose. Will probably take a little while for him to build his confidence back up to be this bold again, but we'll get there :)
I think these two will be fun to work with! We're just in the "nice to meet you" phase, but both seem pretty quiet and good-minded.
and no, they don't have names yet, I'm still stewing on what seems to fit them :)
Made it home with the two new geldings. They seem calm and appropriately cautious. And the curly is SO curly. Excited to get to know them :)
Bravo's winning round in the Ultimate Mountain Trail Challenge at the Rocky Mountain Horse Expo.
It was a challenging course, but actually the hardest thing for Bravo was the people in red shirts in the "cave" at the far end of the arena. It may not look like it but Bravo was having a major crisis about how he needed to stop and stare at them and evaluate if they were really just people or if they were actually bears in red shirts masquerading as people. But he mentally stayed with me enough so that we were able to have a conversation about how the people in the cave were new and weird but it was okay to keep going.
It's hard to express how thankful I am to have a horse like Bravo. He's a 15yo mustang, gathered from Lost Creek, WY. I adopted him as a 4yo in 2013 for the Mustang Million competition, and he has stepped up to the plate every time I've asked something of him over the past 11 years. He's 100% lived up to his name :)
Shasta has been such a nice mare to work with!
I did a quick 5 minute trailer loading session with her yesterday, which was her first time loading in a trailer since getting her from the blm corrals. These clips were from today, about 2 minutes into her second trailer loading session ever.
So proud of Shasta! She packed out her first animal today with zero problems ;)
Just catching the new mustang from the pasture :)
Shasta and I have officially logged our first couple of rides. Short, sweet, and simple. Just little bareback walkabouts in the arena. At first, she wanted to do lots of checking in, looking around at my legs. But the next ride she was much more free and forward, and we walked both directions, worked on avoiding running over the dog, etc.
She's felt great-very relaxed and accepting of me being aboard. Soft to steer and stop off the halter, and nicely responsive to leg. Still lots tbd, but I'm super pleased with how this little mare has been doing!
Up and over's and a little one-sided going forward and stopping from a flex. I like to ride one side first before committing to swinging a leg over because I can easily just step down if the horse gets worried.
So far, Shasta has been doing great with all of her riding prep!
Suede is finally leading, for real, with a rope clipped to his halter. It took quite a while, after his first bad experience with the rope, for him to feel ready to lead again. Although he's still nervous, his reaction control has gotten much better. He's learning that he can move away without bolting, and that he doesn't have to be scared of being scared.
I still have a lot of "stress tests" to do before I lead him out of his pen. But I can finally see light on the horizon that we can soon move beyond this training stage.
I've missed a few updates, so here's a quick catch-up on Shasta. She's doing great! I still have a few things to check off of my pre-ride list, but we're close to actually riding :)
Suede and the Rope, the No Treats Episode
There was a comment on my last Suede and the Rope video that asked "What are you going to do when you do not have treats?" It felt like a gotcha question, with the intent of criticizing food rewards as a training tool. Maybe not so much a question that was really seeking insight and knowledge.
Either way, it's a valid question...a common question, and a common challenge to the use of positive reinforcement.
So I decided to make this video to answer the question. These are the exact same things Suede and I were working on in that previous video, but this time with zero food rewards. No treat pouch, no treats in my pockets.
I'm not a positive reinforcement purist. Most of the time when I'm using food rewards, I'm combining pressure and release (negative reinforcement) with food rewards (positive reinforcement). For me, this is a more realistic way to integrate positive reinforcement into horsemanship.
This combination creates tools that can be used when food rewards aren't available or aren't a good option for some reason. But it also integrates the benefits of food rewards-increased engagement, increased motivation, engagement of the seeking system vs. flight/fight/freeze, and increased fun.
So if you ask "What are you going to do when you do not have treats?" it's kind of like asking "How are you going to hike up that hill without boots?" Well, I can still hike up that hill, but it might look a little different and I might move a little slower. I still have legs and feet that will get me up the hill, even without boots.
A good training foundation will work, even without treats.
Funny thing is, I decided to do a no treats video with Suede as a bit of a cheeky response to that question. But I ended up really liking how relaxed and soft Suede was without using food rewards. One of the downsides to using food rewards is that it can interfere with relaxation and down-regulation. The horse may be "happy excited" about
Not your traditional way to negotiate a little jump, but Shasta makes it her own. She's very tactile with her feet and likes to investigate things with her hooves.
Also, she's cute as a little English pony!
Suede and the Rope, part 4.
Suede is getting better and better with the no-consequences leading, aka leading without the rope actually attached to anything. This is a big deal for him because it was the visual of the rope hanging down from his halter that led to the big fiasco the first time I clipped the lead rope on. By working on this, I can make sure he's ok with the visual of the rope without having to worry about what would happen if it spooked him and he bolted off.
We've also been working on getting comfortable with the rope dragging on the ground. If he happens to spook and bolt and pull the rope out of my hand when I clip the rope on again (fingers crossed that doesn't happen!), then I want him to be better prepared for the dragging rope. Hopefully, he'll be prepared enough so that doesn't happen, but if it does, I want to help prevent another full on panicked run around the pen.
I want to get to the point where I can have the full length of the rope dragging so that it goes behind his hind feet as well, but this is a good start!
