Worming success

Yesterday Coriander got paste wormed without even having a halter on his head!

I have been very unhappy with how stressful worming my horses has been in the past: they'd throw their heads up and shake their muzzles away from me up above my head. Then, when I finally managed to get the paste in their mouths they'd either rear or jump away from me. It was horrible.

So this time I decided to do it completely different. First I threw the due date right out the door and gave myself a two week window to get them wormed in. Second I just took the tube of wormer into their stalls and played the "can I touch you" game with it. I started at the shoulder and eventually moved up their necks, to their jaws and finally next to their lips. After I got to this point I switched to the "good" treats and asked them to let me put the tip of the tube in their mouth.

Gwen is currently still stuck at this point, she's in heat right now so she's feeling more testy than usual.

My boy, with the motivation of the "good" treats (he loves his licorice), started consistently letting me put the tube in his mouth until I just took the opportunity and squeezed it in. He didn't throw his head, rear, or jump. He mouthed it for a while and then looked at me for more treats- which I gave him. He got quite the jackpot for that.

The cost? Four days and lots of treats.

The result? Completely stress free worming. Priceless!

Gems from Alois

"[Their are] two methods -- and all their consequences -- with which to obtain services from a horse. On one side there is the unconditional subjection by force and punishment with which the rider may reach his goal more quickly but only if he has a good-natured creature with no tendency to fight. This kind of education, however, will undermine the individual character of the animal and result in obedience out of fear. The brilliance of such a horse will be lost and he will be indifferent towards man or even hostile. If on the other hand the training of the horse is based on kindness, calmness, and ample reward as well as understanding for his personality, the result will be happy obedience on the part of the horse and pleasure in his work. It may take a little longer to obtain progress than with the other method but there will never be that ugly fight between man and animal. The charm and brilliance of the horse will be maintained,even enhanced, and preserved until his old age."

"My Horses, My Teachers"

-- Alois Podhajsky

Clicker training lesson

One of the ladies I met at the clicker training clinic gives lessons so I asked her to come out yesterday morning to work with Gwen and me. Her name is Kate; here she is at the clinic with a 5 year old gelding that she picked up after he was abandoned at a boarding barn.

I like this picture because you can tell that she's smiling, which is pretty good since that gelding was being a bit of a handful. Kate and one of her other horses, Lucky, have been so successful with clicker training that they've been featured in at least one Alexandra Kurland book. Kate told me Lucky's story and there were a lot of parallels to my time with Gwen. Lucky was half-wild, aggressive and completely unruly under saddle. In fact he tossed her off the first time she rode him and broke her ankle. Now Lucky is a shining example of how well-behaved and cooperative a clicker trained horse can be. Between her success with her difficult horse and her cheery disposition, I knew that she was just the person I needed to help me with Gwen.

We worked on leading first, adding in some backing before I gave her a treat to make Gwen concentrate on her balance (and stop surging ahead of me after I stopped). We did a little fine-tuning of my rope mechanics, mainly to make sure I didn't put more tension on the rope than I needed. I have been unconsciously holding onto the rope under the snap, putting weight on the rope that Gwen could learn to ignore, making it harder to get her to respond to the lightest cues. We finished up with Kate giving me pointers on how to build duration with Gwen's head lowering.

For me the best part of the lesson was seeing my one-person mare working so nicely with Kate when she took the lead to do demonstrations. Kate was also quite impressed with how soft Gwen was being and how smart she is. That made me feel really good about all the hard work we've put in together. We're going to try to meet up bi-weekly from now on, doing more with leading and eventually adding in lateral work. Kate has also agreed to be my ground person when I try to start Gwen under saddle again in a few months. Whoohoo!

Today I lunged Coriander for the first time since March. The gimpy foot held up! I'm starting him out nice and easy again, 8 minutes of walking and 2 minutes of trotting. I want to try getting into the saddle again in a week or two and I want to make sure he's gotten any naughtiness out first. Poor boy is mega stiff going to the right, he actually threw in a buck going in that direction. I see circles in his future.

After I brought him in I took Gwen out to practice what we'd done with Kate. Note to self: When working with Gwen after taking her brother out, begin with head lowering. I tried it the other way and she was way too worked up for it. She did eventually calm down and started automatically backing up when I put the treat out, good for her!

Plan for tomorrow: more of the same. Plus, physical therapy for me starts tomorrow, I'm dying to get the range of motion back in my ankle.

Early summer diversion

How Gwen learned to stop worrying and love the flymask

Here were the quarters today in the pasture, don't they look snazzy in their flymasks?

As usual, the flymask was a complete non-issue for Coriander and a life-ending matter for Miss Gwenevere. She was pretty sure that flymask was going to kill her. I had two options for getting it on her: I could have put her halter on and wrestled that mask onto her face, hoping that she'd figure out it wouldn't hurt her; or I could use clicker training.

I knew that if I wrestled her for it she'd probably fear the flymask forever and I'd always have issues getting it on her head. Since this was not a viable option in my mind, I chose the clicker training route. It took three days of playing "can I touch you with this" before she'd let me put the mask on her and velcro it shut, but it was completely worth it. Now I can just walk in her stall and put the flymask on, lickety-split. Flymasks will (hopefully) never worry her again.

As I was working with Gwen on this, Grey Horse Matters put up a post called "Dusty Rides Again." She wrote about how she avoids fighting with her mare over fear issues because respect and trust are never earned through bullying and force. That post felt particularly timely for me, since I was using clicker training to gently work my girl through a fear issue. Head on over to her blog and check it out, it's worth the read.

Flip video cameras have a learning curve...

For the record I do not recommend clicker training two horses at once while trying to take video.

I also do not recommend playing this video with sound. Heck, I don't really recommend watching it at all. I have no idea why I'm posting this. Maybe somebody will get a kick out of it.

This is Coriander's first day getting clicked and reinforced for walking over poles. As you can see, he's pretty smart. Or just really food motivated. Either one.

Gwen's getting extra reinforcement for choosing to walk over that pole all by herself without any prompting from me. She did it again without hesitation but I had already turned the camera off.

Post-op

What a relief it is to no longer have these screws in my leg.

I'm a little (lot) sore today at the incision sites where they took them out, BUT the inside of my ankle doesn't hurt at all. Mega improvement. Hopefully the surface pain will go away in a few days and then I'll be all set to start building some muscle back up.

In not so good news, Coriander has a hole in his hoof. Can you see it down there?

Aaargh! Until I can get somebody out to take a look at it I'm not turning him out on rocky pasture. Instead they get to run around in the ring.

He looks pretty happy though, don't you think?