Late start to the training day last night, so I only managed to play with Filly. I started with some refresher training of all the yields. It is very easy to forget to return to theses basic exercises from time to time, but they are important.
Horses determine dominance in the herd by their ability to control the motion of others, therefore by controlling Fillys' basic movements I am reasserting my dominance over her. To be fair the yields were very good, even the hind quarter porcupine. This still results in some irritated tail swishing, but at least there is less tendency for her to porcupine me back with her teeth !
We then moved onto the scary travelling cone game, but this caused very few problems, even when I jerked the cone towards her. As a result I decided to replace the cone with a folded up tarpaulin.
This was very very scary to start with, but I just kept walking calmly with focus until she relaxed, and then walked some more. This was not intended to be a flooding procedure, but approach and retreat. In the event she got sufficiently scared immediately and tried to run away that I had no choice but to flood her. If I had stopped the training at the point she tried to depart I would have taught her that running away was the correct response to get the tarpaulin to stop moving. Not the desired behaviour at all. Fortunately, as always, I was using a 22 foot line so she could do all her antics at a save distance. When she did come back into the stick to me position and appeared calm we stopped and had a long break. Thus she was given comfort when she did the right thing. A few more goes at this and she was walking around pretty calmly next to me. It bought home to me however how quickly one has to think and adapt to circumstances, if I had not switched tactics it would have taken a long time to get over my initial mistake.
Now just because it was OK at walk does not mean it would be OK at trot so I started jogging. I needed the exercise anyway as my leg is starting to heal after the embarrassing mounting block episode ! This put a whole new level of pressure on. She would trot along but with me in zone 4, but not in the desired zone 2. Not a comfortable feeling to be that close to her hind legs when she was a bit scared. This time we did manage to do the approach and retreat method of drawing the tarp up to her and then letting it fall behind. After about 10 or 15 minutes she calmed down enough to give me a rest.
I then moved onto mounting block training at which she is getting really really good. She happily lets me position her next to the block now and is rewarded by a long back scratch on her opposite side. I'm still desensitising her to having me lean over her. I know we have done loads of this in the past all the way up to me lying over her, but with the bad hind foot I don't want to put weight on her at the moment so this is the next best thing to keep the backing training going.
We then had a most enjoyable roll in the dirt. I put her at liberty whilst I tidied up the toys and she immediately went to roll. I followed her to the normal rolling area and crouched down next to her as she rolled. Then approaching (cautiously as the legs flail around a lot as she rolls) I started to rub all over her side and belly which she seemed to really enjoy. These moments of touching her while she is lying down are very important to me. It takes a lot of trust on her part to allow a predator to approach and rub her whilst she is so vulnerable. My current aim is to get her to let me sit on her whilst she is on the ground. Who knows we may be able to use this as a mounting method eventually. One can have dreams !!
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