On Wednesday, I worked with Baker for about 18 minutes. I started out by changing out his halter. He has gotten quite a bit bigger since I first put his suckling halter on, and now he has graduated to a regular, weanling halter (it looks just like a regular horse halter, but much smaller). His first halter was made of leather, and made to be left on him all the time so that he was easier to catch. This new halter is made of nylon. Nylon halters without breakaway straps should never be left on a horse. Horses are very good at getting themselves caught on things, and if the halter can't break, then something else will. Now that Baker comes up to me so willingly, and is so easy to catch, I don't need to leave a halter on him all the time. So, this one will be coming off when I am done working with him each time. Once I had his halters switched around, I worked on leading him to the "tying tree". I reverted back to using a butt rope while leading him because he has not really progressed as I would have liked him to. It still takes a lot of pressure and coaxing to get him to take a step forward, and then it's usually only a step or two at a time. With the butt rope back on, he moved forward much more willingly and with more steps all at once. I will only use the butt rope to help him understand to move forward when he feels pressure on his poll. Once he gets the hang of that a little better, then I will go back to leading him without the butt rope. You will find that often, you have to take some steps backward in order to go forward again. It's not a big deal, it's just the way training (and life) sometimes goes. Once I got him to the tree, I looped the lunge line through the ring, and held him while I did other stuff. The first thing I did was to fly spray him. He did struggle quite a bit at first, but once he understood that the fly spray wasn't going to hurt him, and that he wasn't going to get anywhere by pulling on the rope, he quit. He never really tried to pull away again after that. Anytime he stopped pulling, I verbally praised him and rubbed on him. He is quick to learn what to do to get all the positive feedback! After the flyspray, I spent the rest of the time brushing and grooming him. I also picked up all four feet and tapped on them. He stood perfectly still for everything else. Once we were done, I led him back to Fiona and practiced a halt. That was tough, since he really wanted to get to her, but he finally stood quietly. As I went to take his halter off, I asked him to put his head down. If you put pressure, with your hand, on the horse's poll (right behind his ears), then the horse should lower his head. This makes all kinds of things much easier to do - put on and take off a halter or bridle, clip the bridle path, clip the ears, etc. This will be especially necessary, since Baker will probably be quite tall, and I am quite short ☺! Of course, you first have to teach a horse to lower their head when they feel the pressure, so yesterday was his first lesson on this. It's very simple - I apply pressure, with my hand, to his poll until he drops his head (even an inch). Then I immediately remove my hand completely from his poll. For now, I will settle for him just dropping his head a tiny bit just once. Eventually, I will ask him again, always releasing after he responds to each request, until he gets as low as I want. In addition, when he lowered his head yesterday, I removed the halter. So, he gets a bonus reward! Now that I am taking his halter on and off, I will never remove it without first asking him to lower his head. In fact, I don't remove ANY horse's halter without first asking them to lower their head. I am always reinforcing this idea with all horses I work with. The video in the blog today is just a little snippet of Baker and Fiona running around in the field. We were moving their hay hut around, so they got a little startled and excited. An excited trot is usually a pretty fancy trot! Enjoy!
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