Rescuing Rusty

Random horse picture, cause it needed something

I don’t have any pictures. It’s five degrees out and sprinkling snow, my phone doesn’t work well under those conditions. I do, for short periods, I went through the extra effort of putting my coveralls on and was so hot I ended up stripping my gloves off. For half an hour, or there abouts, I fed treats and got my bare hands slobbered over and they were toasty warm.

I sat and thought, for the last couple of days, about the root of the biting issue. We know it wasn’t rottenness, he wasn’t trying to be mean, he’s a horse. I’m all for anthropomorphism, but we need to be realistic about it. Does that seem like an oxymoron?  I don’t think so, horses share many of the same feelings and emotions of people. I have seen them plot revenge and morn a lost friend, so why not try to be mean? Well, I’m not buying it.

So I needed to look for a real cause of the problem. Lack of manners seems pretty obvious. He’s been improving but I’m not of the beat them into submission school, so we enjoy his personality, encourage good behavior and mostly ignore bad (unless it makes me really, really mad, then he gets a little more reaction) and for the most part he’s great. So we’ll put put that way at the bottom, the very base of the cause.

All the horses have been getting fed, it’s cold I think they can use a little extra. That extra and the perceived competition for feed has been causing him a good bit of anxiety. The other two were just across the fence, I walked by him and continued past, without him getting fed! He panicked, how could I do that to him! And he nipped.

So I decided on a plan. The other two went out the gate and I latched it, they each got a pile of feed. Inside the gate I immediately went to work with Rusty. No climbing the fence first, no making him think he was being ignored. I read over at The Clicker Center about how she taught her horse, Robin, to stand with his neck arched and Robin then transferred it to a beautiful collected trot at liberty. The video is well worth watching. It has been a goal ever since. So we worked on it first, got him well stuffed with treats.

Then I climbed the fence. I was watching him closely the whole time, he stood back and watched. The I played cow, he did alright. When we finished that we walked over to check their water, doing the Spanish walk most of the way, going four steps between clicking!! He is doing awesome! Then we worked on standing, quietly, four feet on the ground and neck arched. Sometimes I clicked him as soon as he took the treat I offered near his chest causing him to arch his neck to take the food. He was starting to catch on and tuck his nose nicely.

I escaped out the gate as the others rushed in, it gets a little hairy sometimes. Coyote is THE BOSS there is no questioning his authority. Any who dare are crushed. Even Onna rules over poor little Rusty. I am always in fear of being run over, not on purpose of course but I got spoiled having the boss horse for so long.

It was a great day and well made up for our difficulties the last time. Some days I think I can see the light at the end of the tunnel.

It was pretty nasty, freezing rain followed by wind driven snow and sub zero temps. The kind that gets the animals good and wet before freezing them. I got the barn opened up and led the horses in, a couple of times. I didn’t lock them in, there have been a few, three or four quite a lot for our sparsely populated area, fires in the last month and I couldn’t do it. They chose not to stay, preferring their wind break. Their choice and they were no worse for the storm even if they worried me sick.

As the snow recedes somewhat we have been finding poor little animals that didn’t make it through. A opossum in the horses corral, we didn’t think we had any around here it came as a surprise to find the poor guy. Felt even worse because of their scarcity, they are supposed to eat ticks by the pound and we do have plenty of those. My daughter found a little sparrow, she carried it around for awhile, playing. Slightly disturbing, she was wearing gloves and it was still frozen solid so other than the rather macabre pet choice I thought it was unlikely to do any other harm. After she got tired of it the cat took over, also disturbing.

The cattle were up behind the wind break with lots of feed and the chickens in their coop. The snow blew clean off of the fields it might have provided moisture to. It did make lots of fun snow drifts around the yard that the children are enjoying but mostly was a completely worthless snow storm leaving us as desperate for moisture as we were before.

It has been awhile, I thought I had written something here more recently than that. I did put a video on his facebook page, you can find that >here<

Christmas got busy, I didn’t find time to write. I did get out to work Rusty though. Brief little workouts. He is doing good, mostly. Working on cutting seems to blow his mind, he looses all manners and sense. Any, most, problems are my fault for not realizing or thinking about them and putting in the work to make sure he is minding his manners. Some of our lessons are rushed, the other horses are crowding us, children are running underfoot or it’s SO cold!

He has been crowding my space, nosing the treat bag and nipping at it and any loose clothing. I have been spending some time working on reinforcing him standing back with neck arched and waiting patiently. But not enough apparently.

Yesterday I want out, lured the other two out the gate, and went to get to work with Rusty. As I climbed the fence to work him from the other side on cutting, I felt a sharp pinch on my forearm and realized that he had bit me! My first reaction was fury. I swung the treat bag at him and missed. I tried to whack him with my hand and missed instead hitting the metal fence and nearly breaking my arm. He got the idea that he had done something wrong but mostly seem bewildered.

I managed to get my anger under control. We started over, or started at all, and got down to cutting. I am working hard on emphasizing proper position and rewarding lots for keeping his shoulder even with mine. We did a little trot work, trying to get him to speed out of his turns a little and hurry to catch up with me instead of moseying along.

After a quick work out there I climbed back to his side of the fence, with no incident this time, and we worked on Spanish walk. We have been working on this for so long, the same way, same thing over and over again and still sometimes he acts like he has no clue. But once he started paying attention we worked up to four steps in a row before clicking!! He bowed beautifully and while doing so I noticed he is ready for a trim. So we went back and worked on not bowing when he lifts a foot for me.

He is doing so good for the most part but this bite has set me back quite a bit. I’m not scared in any way, or at all, I just doubt my skills and worry that I’m not doing things right. This type of training is new to me, what right do I have to think I will be able to do it with as little experience as I have and not mess my horse up? I did a very bad job with a few horses training them “normally” before I gained enough experience to do a decent job at it. I only hope I don’t break him.

One thing we are succeeding at! Teaching him to go out AROUND the wing fence. Amazingly difficult, they all get stuck in the corner, on the other side of it, next to the gate. I click him every time as he rounds the end.

Yes, zero. Or there about, it’s cold outside! But it’s supposed to get colder tomorrow they are forecasting a high of five below with the wind howling.

I went out this evening to check on the horses, make sure they realize they can get up to the barn, they might not be able to find these things without help 😉 I took along cake for everybody, a little extra to go with the free choice hay to help keep them warm. Cake is cattle feed in big pellets, handy to feed horses and use as a reward when it’s broken up a little smaller. Once out I decided to brush the snow off their backs and we all hung out for awhile. Here in the yard, behind the wind breaks, it wasn’t miserably cold. The world was in shades of black and white. I could see the cattle, brought into the corrals for extra shelter and ease of feeding. Spots of black against the white snow, their backs covered in it, thick winter coats not letting enough heat through to melt it.

I stepped outside the fence to feed the horses. I will often just say Rusty’s name and click him when he looks at me, I say we’re loading the clicker, reinforcing his responding to his name. In reality, well, who knows, I’ll stick with my theory. But we had been doing that a few times already and I wanted him to work for it a little. I gave the other two each a piece of cake, they’re big and take some chewing, that bought me time to ask Rusty to back and turn with me, a quarter of a turn. Then the other two were done chewing and looking for more. And repeat.

I was asking for so little and with a barrier so he couldn’t stand on top of me. I keep reading about making the lesson micro, thin slicing them so the criteria is so minute that the horse can understand easily and is rewarded constantly. Every time I think I understand the basics I get shown what a complete beginner I am. He has been acting grouchy about the training we’ve been doing and I knew I was messing something up. But I could not figure out what. I thought I was breaking it down, everything we were working on was something we had already covered, mostly. Walking next to me, stopping, turning with me was new but he knew everything else we were just adding one extra thing. I needed to keep the lesson short and sweet, but every time I taped a lesson I was surprised to see at least fifteen minutes of video. I was not getting things right.

Tonight, one small step back and a turn in one direction only, he was happy. I managed to keep it short, the freezing cold coupled with running out of cake insured that. I finally found our micro.

I was shopping at Walmart a while back, always as much of a social excursion as a shopping trip, and ran into a lady I hadn’t talked to for years. I was glad to see her, we had been friends but lost touch. Years ago I started her big beautiful horse, Debo. He’s a Paso Andalusian cross, black, with lots of hair and even more personality. He’s one of the horses I look back on and wish I had been doing clicker training when I worked with. It would have suited him perfectly.

The first thing she said to me was that she wanted her horse, Debo, to learn to bow. I was a bit taken aback. Did she somehow know that I was teaching my horse that exact somewhat obscure and unusual thing? That was a pretty big coincidence. But, no, she hadn’t somehow stumbled across Rusty’s blog it really was that big of a coincidence.

It wasn’t until after Thanksgiving that we were able to get together and play with Debo. He was just as friendly and in your face as ever, so much like Rusty in so many ways. The two of them have spent the last decade!??? (how has it been that long?) trail riding happily together and he’s mostly a very good boy. Unfortunately he comes with one major flaw, he’s too tall! His owner is somewhat challenged in the height department 😉 and has a bit of trouble reaching the stirrup. Debo knows how to step over to a mounting block, or whatever is handy, but out on the trail often nothing is handy.

We decided that a bow is nice and might work great but for a shorter term goal parking out would help her get a couple of inches advantage. I really wanted to do some clicker training. Debo can be very pushy and, as I mentioned, in your face. He is not fed treats by hand. It was a small problem. We compromised and rewarded with a good scratch following the click. He did pretty good, he is a smart boy after all. By the end of the day he was moving his feet forward when asked and we started on a foundation for a bow.

A couple of weeks later I made it back, it is winter and the week in between was COLD and a little snowy. Debo was as good as ever. Without being able to hand feed him or give treats we worked with loose hay in a bucket. With a food reward, Debo likes food he is a wee bit rotund, he was stretching out very nicely by the end of the day. A few more days like that and he’ll have it down I think. The bow we will keep working on. He offered lots the first try but needs more practice on the basics, lifting his foot and backing with a light touch to the chest. Not that he doesn’t do both beautifully, they just need fine tuned specifically for this exercise. The first day the farrier was coming out later, I had to be sure to put things back the way they were so he didn’t offer to “bow” when asked to pick his feet up. I would have been in big trouble for that!

I sat my long term goal for the course by Hippologic to be teaching Rusty to be a cutting horse. Is there a right way to say that? Teaching Rusty to cut sounds so… vague. Cut what? I’m just not sure of the proper terminology here. I will have to ask my friends that cut. (There it is again, cut what? Meat? Flowers? Have got to get this figured out. )

The first day we went back and studied up and turns on the hindquarters. It was completely gone, I know we hadn’t worked on them for awhile but I thought he would remember a little. Once unburried he was able to do them again, technique needed work though.

The next time I got to work him, a few days later, we worked a line. Working on walk, whoa, back and turn. All things that he knows and we have worked on but putting them together for the first time. In clicker training terminology it would be called chaining, I believe. It was just a few minutes and he was sticky, but it was his first time and asking a lot at once.

Now today we did it again. I put it first because it’s hard for him, lots of thinking, and I’ve read that hard things become more pleasant when they are regularly followed by easy fun things. All he want’s to do right now is paw and offer Spanish walk so I thought we would do that after. We started our line again. I walked beside him, stopped, click, back, click, turn, click, then walk off again. Same at the other end, whoa, click, back, click, turn, click. I noticed he was wanting to walk out of his turns so, not wanting to discourage that I started feeding his reward at a walk. It makes things more interesting, someday I will probably loose a finger, but worked beautifully.

Before I knew it he was stopping, backing and turning beside me before I clicked and rewarded him. We even added some trot work! He did great. Now we need to perfect his position if I am the cow he needs to keep his shoulder next to me. He is doing some chasing, instead of staying next to me. Need to continue to work on, smooth out and add consistency to the whole chain. Eventually we can add speed, I did a little trotting today and I suppose it doesn’t hurt to go a little faster already getting from end to end but at the ends I need to make sure we are getting good quality stops and turns before I try to get him to go faster through them.

All in all I am very proud of the little pony, who is not so little anymore. I can’t believe how much he has grown since last winter!He is starting to look more and more like his beautiful, cow horse ancestors.

We did work on Spanish walk a little. He did beautifully, he offered about six steps in a row. Clicking after every two steps. But then he started looking at something on the ground to his left with his neck all cocked and on tip toes. I never could tell what the problem was and it was still there after we moved forward a few steps. He worried me a little since I couldn’t see a thing there for him to be worried about.

As I turned him out we worked more on stop and back just to reinforce and to keep his front feet on the ground. It’s going get cold this week, which is saying a lot since my fingers were froze stiff inside my glove by the time we got through, but I hope to work him tomorrow at least. Hopefully he will continue to make huge leaps like this.

I’ve been enjoying the course on planning and goal setting by Hippologic. She asked us to think about a short term goal and a long term goal. I decided to work on the Spanish walk as my short term, and am already seeing some improvement. For long term I stuck with the goal I had from the beginning, even before Rusty came along, I wanted a good cutting horse.

Right now I am not even trying to ride Rusty, there is simply not enough child free time. Ground work I can do with children running underfoot. O have put some thought into how I can train Rusty to target a flag/ cutting dummie but have mostly put it to the back burner. Having to write it down as a goal and list things we can work on on our path to that goal forced me to really think about how to reach it. Kind of the point of the exercise 😉

Things that we need to work on to achieve the goal (listed on the Goal page I added, at the top by the title or here if you are interested) were easy and interesting, to me at least. Most of the things on the list involved ground work. So we got started. If he is going to work properly he needs to turn beautifully on his hindquarters. We had worked on this in the past but hadn’t touched it for a very long time. He had nearly forgotten completely. Once the move is perfected I want to move the cue to one I can give standing in front of him. Then he can learn to target me, or as my husband mentioned, a cutting dummie would be a better idea. I realize that completely but am somewhat lacking in one. He offered to build it for me!

All in all we had a great lesson starting, again, on turns on the hindquarters. We worked on following a target to start getting him away from me to lunge, kind of. Plus it is a start for our cattle work. Then we did a quick once over of Spanish walk and bowing. It was a 15 or so minute lesson in the 15 or so degree weather and i was ready to go in and get warmed up by the time we were done!

My phone says 12, I always forget that we have a thermometer, it says 10, and the wind is blowing. But I couldn’t resist besides the horses have been running to the gate begging for more cake every time we set foot out the door so Rusty was up here and ready.

I’ve been enjoying the (free!) course from Hippologic and went through the effort to write down my goals as she encourages, and the steps in how to get there. With them written down and a new video freshly watched I was full of ideas and enthusiasm to try them.

The theory is great, the reality is a little trickier. Not that it didn’t work, I think we made some pretty good progress, it’s just that Rusty is, well, Rusty. He is an interesting horse, I’m kind of glad not to be starting him the “normal” way. Not that I think he would be bad, but. I’m to old for hair raising rides like I remember taking on Coyote way back when.

He was very enthusiastic and energetic.

He wanted FOOD. He wanted FOOD NOW! I was wearing gloves on already chilled fingers, I had to find a cookie and get it to him before his head exploded. He was offering increasingly robust paws, we got the height I was hoping for. They were definitely paws not a walking step and not usually on the foot I was asking for. And we had been making such good progress on that 🙁

I wasn’t sure if I should reward him for a very good step? Or hold out because it wasn’t what I was asking for. I held out. He was doing all this while standing on top of me and I kept dropping cookies as he dove at them frantically with teeth bared. There was no way I was going under his feet to pick them up. Unfortunately I have just read an article about how we should make our training criteria so easy for the horse that they have a 98% success rate. So if he’s getting frustrated and pawing out of frustration thus causing me to wait even longer before rewarding that means I am doing it wrong. But how would I have made that easier? It was something he knew, we work on it regularly. Maybe it wasn’t me making it too hard but him being worked up from the cold and wind?

I’m not saying it was a bad lesson, that we didn’t accomplish anything. I think we did actually. He achieved some pretty good forward while giving nice high steps, kind of. He gave good, deep, long bows. I felt safe asking, even in this miserable cold weather because we were working in the old garden plot and the ground was nicely tilled.

Mostly, maybe, I learned that sometimes it might be best to skip the lesson and stay inside.

I can’t get enough. I want more, more, more! For as much as I crave knowledge, I am pretty bad at seeking it out. On one hand I signed up for a course Hippologic is offering on recording and working towards goals in training our horses. It’s only to the third, fourth? day and I am loving it. So I do make an attempt at learning what the heck I’m doing, even if most of the time I seem to wing it.

On the other hand, here I’ve been trying to teach Rusty the Spanish walk for months now, other horses not as dedicatedly but still trying for years now, and never once did it occur to me to get instructions. How block headed is that? I honestly never thought of it. I tend to think I can do it, whatever it may be. Finding out how doesn’t seem necessary. My biggest draw back in training horses is… me.

In the course a video was mentioned on training the Spanish walk and I went to find it. I watched a couple, finished demonstrations and one giving directions. It was fascinating. We are on the right track but the pointers in the video were things I had never thought of. Seeking instruction might be helpful, maybe I don’t know everything. Whodda thought it.

I also said I was trying to get pictures of Rusty being awesome. This is what I got instead. That is one hard horse to get pictures of.

I said from the beginning that our problem with Spanish walk was all me. I had a total mental block. I seem to be recovering! It started with me learning how to ask him to step each front foot forward alongside me. He has that down pretty good. We’ve been using a target to get more height.

Today I asked for two steps before clicking. Starting with the leg he prefers to offer and clicking on the leg that’s harder for him. In the process of this it occurred to me, major breakthrough and duh moment, to pull forward on the lead a little as he paws so he steps down in the middle of the paw making it a big step instead of a paw!

I don’t know why it never occurred to me in my quest to add forward to his pawing. Maybe partially that I so seldom touch the lead. He works almost all the time at liberty. It also helps to hold the lead and encourage him to keep his head up while we are working on it. He wants to touch the target with his nose and be down there looking all the time.

Now he is giving a couple of steps that actually step forward! I can’t wait to go play again! Of course there are no pictures. There never is of anything cool, and it’s hard to do while holding a camera.

Also I got the best present from my husband, carpet squares! It seems like a little thing, and he says they wont work as my Christmas present but I love them and we are having lots of fun with them. I am enjoying imagining all the things we can do with them, in the mean time here is a little of what he is doing.

Also, also working on putting his head down. A simple thing he learned long ago, but with a twist. Trying to see how far away I can go with him staying on his mat (carpet square) and lowering his head on cue. We did it a little in the yard yesterday, grass worked nicely as his reward.

Still doing the painting. It’s too cold for real paint now, we’ll have to get out technique perfected for spring painting.