We finally did it! I started last year working on getting Rusty to stand on the teeter totter. We haven’t worked on it continuously but often throughout the last year. Having my playground out has helped a lot. It’s always there to play on.
Rusty has no problem getting his front feet on it but following with the hind is always a challenge.
After a bit of the usual struggle he managed though!!
Poppy
I finally remembered to take treats with me to the pasture for Poppy! only the first time this summer 
I wasn’t sure she would remember what we had been working on. Turns out I was the one who couldn’t think of anything to do. In the end we worked on manners and targeting my hand.
Poppy was great. Then the whole herd came to see what was going on. She was starting to get protective of her resources and I was starting to get worried about the bull too close.
Watching this now I see (hear) that my click is way late! I’m going to have to work on that.
The Usual Goings On
Just the horses hanging out in the yard. Nothing going on here.
Showing
I joined NAWD a couple of years ago. (that’s the North American Western Dressage association) I had grand plans.
Nothing ever happened. One of the greatest benefits of it is that you can compete from home with video. Apparently that’s one of the biggest draw backs too.
Without having to get out and go to a show I tend to forget and never get around to doing anything.
I haven’t gotten around to actually doing it yet but so far I am kind of remembering this one. There’s a show coming up soon. I need to go look and see when, that whole just not doing it thing 🙄
I have gotten an arena set up, that I have to put away after every use so people can drive in the driveway. And we have done some practicing.
Here’s our practice run. First go at it. I couldn’t remember the pattern. That’s the long pause in the middle that I fast forwarded through
There’s nothing like a test to find holes in your training and I’ve definitely found places that need work. Mostly stopping. Rusty is NOT interested.
Other than that it was nice to have video.I really thought we had found dead center. Looking back it appears we did not.
Now to get to work! And find out when the show actually happens.
Baby Calves
Not sure which ‘calf’ this video is actually about.
I brought Ghost out to play for her first time yesterday. Not her first time in a long time, although it was that too, but her first time out of the corral. Her first time on my playground. Her first time out and about at liberty.
She did great. All the extra help was a bit much for her. If we keep getting this much ‘help’ she wont be bothered by anything before long!
I wanted to work on getting her onto the bridge but it some became apparent that that was not an option with all the commotion. We stuck to simple things, leading, standing, and manners, with a bit of mat training although I doubt she noticed that part.
Eventually she said she’d had enough and couldn’t handle the exuberance anymore. She spooked then wandered off to graze.
I let her go because she gets to say no when she can’t handle something. The child and I went and played in the mud for awhile then I came back and played with her a little more before forcing her to go back.
Like my horses she is going to need to learn about halters for that going back out to pasture with her friends part.
Sidepassing The L
In my playground I laid out two poles in an L, always a fun toy.
I finally got to play with Harvey over it. This was his first go. Not bad for being so out of practice.
We took it slow and easy, only asking for a couple of steps at a time. Eventually we will build up to doing the entire L fluidly and with only one click and treat at the end.
This is Harvey’s second time sidepassing the L in the playground. First in this direction though. All horses have a preferred side, this is Harvey’s.
We will continue to build on it and eventually be able to perform the whole movement smoothly and with only one click and treat at the end of the L.
Company
We had a visitor over the weekend.
Pattie came clear from Michigan to see us. Well not us exactly. She had a whole list of friends, people who begged to be included as she planned her trip that she is stopping along the way to visit.
Pattie is a fascinating woman. She has traveled the country, and the world even, on her bicycle. On top of that she is a trainer and raises future leader dogs, that’s puppies that are going to grow up to be service dogs. Although she has some horse training experience she is not a horse person. It may be her one failure 😉
Not being a horse trainer didn’t stop us from having lots of training things to talk about. There are very few differences between training dogs and horses and any species for that matter.
Traditional horse trainers are gasping and snorting and coming out of their seats in rebellion at that comment right about now.
With positive reinforcement though it’s true.
We look for the behaviors we want and reward them. Lions are trained the same way as butterflies. Horses the same way as dogs.
And yes, people have trained butterflies. We talked about that in awe while she was here. Also that plants have been and can be trained. If we can train a plant to respond to a stimuli, not sun or water but a cue, then are they really that different from any other living being? Can we really justify eating them but not their animal brethren? What a joy to be able to talk about all these things I ponder regularly with someone else who thinks about the same sort of thing.
I brought out Harvey and turned him over to her. Without a clue as to what we have been working on she went right to it with him. They did great together. I tried to resist filming the whole thing. It did seem rude to make her work with my horse and film it all when she didn’t know the horse and was playing without a particular goal.
She hopped on a fourwheeler, her first time with those, and drove it along to check cows with us.
Then we saddled up and went for a ride. I knew she had worked with a couple of friends horses and assumed there had been riding time involved there too. As I presented her with Smoke I asked how much riding she had done. She said none. That didn’t stop her from hopping right on and figuring it out, just like she had Harvey on the ground and driving the fourwheeler. It was easy to see how she had managed all the other much more impressive challenges that she has conquered in her life. Smart and capable, she just did it. Sadly I didn’t get any pictures.
We had a wonderful ride. I enjoyed it at least. Hope she did too. She did a much better job at riding than many people I know who think they know how to ride.
She spent the night in her tent in our yard. I’m afraid I’m not a very good host. We don’t have room in the house and aren’t used to company.
The next morning she stayed with us for breakfast before heading off to see more people, do more things. We were happy to have her as long as we did. She has more of the world to conquer and we have chores.
Playground
I have a playground!
It’s nothing that wasn’t already here laying scattered about, now it’s contained in one place. Hopefully it is out of the way enough that I wont have to move things anytime soon.
Having all my toys together in one place makes it easier and more likely that I will work on things. That I will remember what things I should work on even 
I have a little teeter totter, a bridge, the roping dummy, the basket ball hoop, posts that I can arrange in any way to play with, right now they are in an L shape, a mounting block, and a place to put the camera!
The tubs also work as storage so I can keep our rubber chicken for playing fetch, the tarp, a target, a ball for basket ball, all sorts of things out there and they wont blow away.
I sped this video up a little so I could leave it all in. Otherwise the video got a bit long.
This was Rusty’s first go at it I let him wander a bit and choose what he wanted to look at.
Rodeo!
There were two shows this weekend. I had planned on making it a really busy weekend and making them both.
The kids refused to even try to ride and were making me insane trying to get them on a horse.
I gave up on that and said that if they didn’t want to I wasn’t going to force them and I would go play with my horse instead.
I really needed that after the maddening attempts at riding with children.
In the end I decided to skip the actual show. With the horses at least. I wasn’t going to miss it altogether just because of these rotten children. I wanted go visit with friends!
Once we got there I wished so badly that we had brought the horses. It was a small relaxed sort of show, not the fancy, strict type that the kids were NOT ready for. They could have done this one.
I got to visit with Andrea a little and talk horse/clicker training while she judged trail. Rebecca was too busy working to be much fun. The horses were all fun to watch and the weather not too hot.
The next day we went to a little kid rodeo. It was also a perfect one for them. This time I had ignored their desires and brought horses.
Even if they didn’t want to ride I could get my horses out and about and used to being in public. Extra training never hurts.
Once I had everyone saddled, I brought ALL the horses, the kids wanted on and to go play!
It’s a great little rodeo. No fuss. No entries. No placing. Just kids out playing on their horses.
A friend of ours met us there and helped with horses and kids. She rode Smoke and ponied Rusty or I rode Rusty and ponied Smoke while we lead kids around. There were goats, kids roping dummies, horses running all over the place, the general chaos that it does horses so good to get used to. They were both great.
Hieldorf had to wait in the trailer. I don’t have enough saddles for everyone and I haven’t spent enough time with him to really mess with him out and about. He stood quietly with no screaming or pawing though. What a good boy.
I did saddle Harvey with some thought to letting my daughter ride him. We ran out of time and didn’t get to see what he was like in the arena first so we didn’t try it. I did get to pony him around though and when it was all over our friend, Taya, got on him and I ponied them around. They were both great. Harvey didn’t bat an eye at anything and Taya was very brave on such a green horse. He didn’t give her any reason not to be though.
After the rodeo there was also a hay scramble? Not sure what it was called but they threw change into a bucket filled with hay and turned the children loose to dig for it. Between that and the treat bags they handed out talk about good positive reinforcement for the children. A perfect way to reward them all for a job well done.
On the way home my children started asking when the next show was! They loved it and wanted to do it again!
Yesterday, small rotten children, the last show was yesterday, that you did not want to go to, remember? 🙄
Oh well, maybe next year 🤣
The Importance Of Kindness
Can you imagine, I know this is going to be hard but bear with me, can you even begin to imagine if we applied our positive reinforcement training to people with the same fervor as we do with our horses?
I’m not talking about TAG teaching or other purposely applied principles of teaching.
Instead, what if in our everyday interactions we remembered that rewards work better than aversives and that kindness is always the answer?
In real life it can be a little easier.
If we have to see a person in person every day we remember to be polite, most of the time. It would be embarrassing to have to look someone in the eye the next day after telling them everything they are doing is wrong.
On a computer we sit in solitude critiquing some stranger online that we will never have to interact with in person so we tell them enthusiastically every little thing they may be doing wrong. We take glee in being catty and mean. Differences that may not make that big of a difference if we knew the person, well, personally become arguments, battles of right vs wrong.
If we did that in horse training we would be earing our horses down and spurring them to a stand still. They might eventually stop bucking but they wouldn’t be convinced our way was right and they wouldn’t want anything to do with us ever again.
Instead, with our horses, we reward the good and ignore the unwanted, knowing that behaviors that are rewarded will be repeated while those that don’t gain anything will fade away.
What if the next time you saw someone being brave enough to share a video on Facebook instead of tearing apart the things that are so dreadfully wrong, or at least not exactly the way you would have done it, you looked for one thing that was good. Even if that is how nice it is that you kept that ride short!
Would the person notice what they are doing that is good? Would they seek more compliments?
The one things that’s guaranteed is that they wont change the things we don’t like because we attack and demean them. Nobodies mind has ever been changed that way. It is far more likely to cause them to dig in and refuse to consider another way. (https://www.psychologytoday.com/…/5-step-recipe-opening-peo…)
People are willing to consider new ideas from people they can relate to. People who are kind and have said nice things.
I’m not saying that we should ignore blatant abuse or starvation.
Not that being mean to those people online will help either. Most rescues will tell you the how hard it is for them, and what great pains they go to, to be polite to a person with starving animals in their pasture in order to get those animals out safely. It works far better than telling them what they really think.
So what do we do when we see wrong? If we never let people know there is another way how will anyone learn better?
Wrongs, real, hurtful wrongs, should be righted. We should fight hard to defend the ones who can’t defend themselves, to speak up for those with no voice.
Helping out at rescues, offering assistance, kindly, teaching, helping, all things done in kindness, might be ways to get started.
Bad mouthing and demeaning others online will never truly help solve any problem.
