Baker training session 26 - more clippers

Yesterday's session with Baker was probably the hardest one yet.  I worked with him for about 40 minutes.  It started well enough - he walked up to me and I put the halter on.  I led him to the tree, and he was fabulous!  I only had to tell him "walk on" 3 times, and each time took very little encouragement.  For the most part, he was walking at my side just like a horse is supposed to.  I tied him to the tree, groomed him, flysprayed him and picked his feet.  Then came the hard part.  I turned on the clippers.  He didn't react for a while.  I let him hear them, then I started to rub them all over his body, staying away from his neck at first.  He still didn't react.  Then I started to move up his neck and chest slowly.  He still didn't react.  I waited for him to give signs of relaxation - licking and chewing, lowering his head and softening his eyes.  He gave me all that, so I moved on to touch the clippers to the side of his jaw.  Then he reacted!  He spent a lot of time pulling back and fighting, trying to get away from the clippers.  I tried very hard to stick with him, and succeeded for the most part.  A couple of times he moved quick enough that he managed to get rid of me.  When that would happen, I would calmly take a hold of his halter and calmly reapply the clippers to his jaw and start again.  All I really did with the clippers on his jaw was just to hold them against him, keeping contact, while they were running.  There are so many things that are scary about this to a horse - the noise, the vibration and the unknown.  Will it hurt?  Will it attack me?  Will it bite me?  My primary job right now is to keep things as positive as I can by rewarding him when I get the reaction that I want - his relaxation, and by just staying my course when he fights and fusses.  I don't get mad at him for fighting - it's his natural reaction after all.  I just stay with him until I get the appropriate reaction.  I reward him by removing the clippers from his jaw, and if I get a really good reaction, I will even turn them off for a few seconds before moving to the other side to start all over again.  I repeated this over and over until he was offering me the reaction more readily and more often.  It took a while, but hopefully this lesson will stick with him in a positive way.  Once I had gotten to this point, I decided to quit for the day.  I decided not to work on the trot sets today since he had had a long and tough lesson already.  I wanted to keep the rest of his tasks as easy as possible.  So, we walked back towards Fiona and practiced several halts. He walked perfectly and halted fairly well, just a little fussiness, but fairly obedient.  When we got close enough, he was all ready to put his head down, but he was just a little too fussy about it, so I waited until he had relaxed and was being more patient.  Then I set him free!  He seemed a little pensive when I went to visit him later that day.  Maybe he's thinking that the clippers aren't that bad, maybe he's thinking about a new way to avoid that lesson the next time, maybe he was just daydreaming . . .