Baker training session 29 - backing up, and more clippers

I worked with Baker for about 25 minutes today.  He came right up to me to be haltered, but then he was a little fussy, trying to push my hand, so I had to reprimand him not to touch me and to maintain a fair amount of space between us.  It is very important that you always insist that your horse (big or small, older or younger) ALWAYS maintain an appropriate distance from you and not enter your personal space.  It is especially important for a colt who has the potential to be a stallion.  The last thing you want is a 1500 pound stallion pushing you around because you have told him in the past that it's ok to be in your space.  When working with young horses, always ask yourself "is this something I would allow a larger horse to do?"  Anyway, after we established appropriate manners, I led him to the tree.  He was a little more resistant to lead at the walk today than he has been in the past.  I had to use more whip than I have had to recently, and I had to use it more often.  Once we got there, I tied him, groomed him, flysprayed him and picked out his feet.  All of that went really well.  Then I turned on the clippers.  He went right for them with his muzzle and tried to play with them.  I allowed him to touch them as much as he wanted, especially since he was very comfortable with that.  In fact, he stood the quietest when I was clipping his muzzle.  If I stopped and pulled the clippers away, he fidgeted around, trying to touch the clippers, and as soon as I started clipping his muzzle, he stood still and relaxed.  This is definitely not a typical reaction for a young horse to have!  Once I had let him play a little, I moved the clippers to clip the under part of his face most adjacent to his muzzle.  He didn't like that spot as much, but his reaction wasn't too bad.  He was a bit jerky, like it startled him each time I started to touch him with the clippers, and at first I was just leaving the clippers against him, hoping he would get used to the feel and settle down.  That didn't seem to work, so I started to make three clipping passes, and as long as he stood still and didn't jerk his head away, I would stop for a second, praise him, scratch his withers, and then go in for another three passes.  He seemed to handle the short spurts of the clippers better than when I just left the clippers on him.  It really goes either way with things like this.  Either they do better when you keep the clippers on them, and they have a chance to get used to them, or they do better if you do short spurts.  Once I had done that several times on both sides, I decided to quit at that for today.  He definitely seems to do better once he has had a day or two to think about the work.  I will definitely come back to that the next time though, and hopefully, it will be easier because he has realized that nothing is hurting him.  So, I untied him and started to walk back towards Fiona.  He actually walked quite politely for the most part.  A few times he would get a little ahead of me, so I would ask him to halt.  I also started to teach him to back up.  To do this, I applied pressure on his halter (which transferred to his nose) in a backwards direction, towards his chest.  At the same time, I used the command "back", and I also tapped his chest with the butt end of the whip.  As soon as I would get one step back, I would release the pressure and praise and scratch him.  He picked this up pretty quickly.  We did several walk/halt/back transitions on our way back to Fiona.  Once we got closer, I added in the trot sets.  I did need to use a little whip to get him going today, but he stayed right by my side for the entirety of the trot sets - no bolting ahead of me.  I added in the walk/halt/back transitions as well.  Once we had done a few of those, I took his halter off.  I didn't even have to ask him to lower his head, he did that as soon as I had the halter unbuckled!  He also hung out with me a little after I released him.  Usually he hurries back to Fiona, but he seemed very relaxed today, and really seemed to understand what was being asked of him!