Tues., May 15, 2018

Mikey: took my old dressage whip with the tennis ball stuck on its end and played with fluttering it against his pastern to try to influence him to keep his front leg raised for longer than a half of a second to my request of “up.”  He kept reading this as if it was a fly and would stomp down.  I then took off the tennis ball and merely rested the tip end of the whip against his pastern and sort of lightly pulsed it against his pastern and he got better.  I got some diplomatic, slow leg raises and at times I was able to mightily reward him (give him 2 treats at a time rather than one…which is called “jack pots.”)  It was raining when I was working with him but we stayed under the tree in his paddock and he was fine. Also re-worked with him on 1. putting his head down to my lightly resting my hand on the upper crest of his neck (he was pretty good once again with this) and 2. backing to my request.  As usual, much use of clicks and treats throughout.  He was an eager student.

Plato: Walked him for 12 min. in his paddock and also did some yielding of his quarters for suppling.

Duchess: because it was wet out in their paddock I did not want to fully lunge her in case she slipped so I instead worked on some ground work with her. I opted to teach her how to yield her forehand to a light touch. She did not know how to do this so we worked on it consistently. Fascinating to see her process this info.  What I did was have a halter on her…Stand at her side and using (alternating) at first my finger pressure…and also a light tap with the butt end of the whip on the flat of her shoulder…I had to show her all I wanted her to do was take a tiny sideways step with her forehand…. I rewarded her with a treat once she clearly got it.  Note: I am NOT using clicker with the other three horses because I want to make sure they don’t get confused as they won’t be handled with clicker methods out in their normal lives.  She shook her head at times…she also backed up a few steps at times and she also balked sometimes…but I would gently bring her back to the same spot and we’d have a go again. I suspect on Fri. when I come back out she will have gotten an even clearer picture of what I was after as I will revisit this again with her. Also…in the end…after I’d played with Lily a bit…I went back to Duchess and she was better about taking a sideways step (got a treat, too).

Lily: When I first entered their pasture, both Sunni and Lily came up to me and Lily came right up to me and stood in front of me.  I went to stroke the side of her neck and she took off. I then did Duchess first and after that wanted to just apply some Swat to the fly area under her belly…and around the base of her eyes.  However, Lily started running away from me. I stayed calm…merely talked to her but I was not good this day about keeping my mind clear…After about 8 minutes she allowed me to approach her and all I did was lightly wrap my lead rope (no halter) around the back of her neck and used that to ask her to stand still while I very gently rubbed some swat on the rough patch of skin under her belly (a lot of flies were there). She allowed me to also gently dot some Swat in a semi circle under her eyes.  Because I did not use a halter on her there was NO issue about getting the darn thing off of her as all I needed to do was slip the lead rope off of her neck (I did not knot it or fully encircle it on her…all I did was use it to contain her so I could doctor her beginnings of a summer sore).  This gave me an idea, though, of when I begin teaching her to lower her head to take any head gear off of her…that I may begin the process in a similar manner (use of a lead rope simply on her neck so there is no big deal about trying to take any halter or bridle off of her head…). Next challenge: teach her how to lower her head upon command.