Close Call

good goin’ george. your horse is lucky to have you. sounds like you are tuned into his special needs and worries. and capable of dealing with it when it comes up. my dad told me to always expect the unexpected. some things never change.

Carl – I do see your point(s) and agree totally that the self-discipline is a great challenge, certainly for me. Can you explain more about what your actions would be with regard to your last statement? Let’s say you go out to hitch and your horse is not willing to stand still – what specifically do you do?

The take home on the previous statement is to always be heads up. I’ve had bad situations/wrecks throughout my life and there will be more in the future – it comes with working horses in the woods, riding, packing, or logging. The trick is being heads up enough to see it coming and being able to get it shut down before it gets out of hand. Jumping sideways due to a flushed grouse isn’t out of hand, being in a position to not get out of the way is…

None of what I said applies to discipline training, only the prey instincts. As Carl so aptly put it, he doesn’t hitch horses that won’t stand still.

It takes alot more time to work horses. Way beyond the normal care is the patience and the training. By far, that is often my greatest fault-needing to get the job done and not taking the time to concentrate on working with the horse …not necessarily working the horse.

I am not that far off on the desensitizing….. I just don’t think that the problem is with the “chaps”, more with the way you approached the horse, or failed to read his response.

It’s not that I just throw stuff on my horse and have them accept it. I approach them with it, read them, let them adjust, approach some more, indicate I am going to put it on them, etc. When they show me they know what I am going to do, and have accepted it, I place it on them…. chaps, or screaming cat…. the item does not matter, what matters is that I have shown them that I have intention, I am willing to let them understand the situation that I am creating, but that I WILL complete my asserted task.

I have done this enough to know that it really doesn’t matter how many times you approach the animal with the item, as much as it matters that there is effective communication between you two. You make your intentions clear, the horse can reject them if he wants, but the reward only comes when the animal stands quietly and accepts your initiative. This can take several times, months, or it may only take once, depending on the animal and the depth of the communication relationship. The reward is that I release them from my intention….and I do that when they are standing quietly with the item on them.

The fundamentals of my interaction with horses is this process over and over…. pressure – release…. expectation – reward, halters, hoes, harnesses, school buses, anything that could affect them is external….. the situation is dealt with the same way every time….. respond calmly, respond attentively, respond completely, or I apply pressure until you do, then I reward through release.

Yes I use this communication to expose my animals to stimuli, I use it to guide them past distractions, but I don’t believe that I need to do that for every possible item or stimuli. That is what I mean about not following desensitizing. I require that my horses look to me for guidance when threatened, by developing a steadfast communication with them, so that if they associate me with a situation that is uncomfortable for them, then they will actually desire the guidance of pressure and release to validate an acceptable response.

As Scott says, I too do no believe that horses are ever bomb proof. Therefore I always try to maintain a superior awareness and understanding of the situations we find ourselves in….. that is superior to them… like a parent, or leader. It is exhausting, and I am not perfect. I have had my share of surprises too.

As far as the standing to be hitched….. for me it doesn’t come down to actually standing, although that is part of it, it comes down to responding appropriately to the command to Whoa. If I have a horse that won’t stand, I am not trying to see how long I can make them stand, I am trying to get the horse to move based on my commands, not on his initiative.

I will drive, whoa, watch the response… if he/she gives me three seconds and then moves, I drive, whoa, 1..2..get-up… drive, whoa….1..2…get-up….drive, whoa, 1..2…3…4…get-up. Never let the horse stop or start without my guidance. Letting the horse stand until they stop moving only reinforces for them that I am disinterested in what they are doing, and if it takes them five minutes to calm down, I have let it be their initiative to calm down, not my leadership.

When I get a horse so that they stop and move on my command, then I start playing with how much time they will stand for me. In this way when they stop and stand on my command, the relaxation they feel upon standing is directly presented by me…..I gave that to them…it is a reward from me….. if they calm down on their own, in the absence of my attention, I don’t get the credit for it.

When I see that they are associating the reward of standing with my command and guidance then I will start to expose them to other stimuli like hooking to logs etc. By that time they already understand that when I ask them to stand they get a reward, so stand is not a task that I am attempting to get them to do, but a reward that they appreciate.

Carl

I remember from training a hunting dog, the best way to get a gun-shy dog is to create a lot of pomp and formality around the exposure. Focusing on the gun sets up body language that the dog picks up on, and then every time the gun comes out he/she will have a preconception about the importance of the gun as apposed to everything else.

The chaps, or anything else, should be used to facilitate the development of communication. The focus should be on the horse, not on the chaps. If every time there is a desensitizing exercise the horse picks up on the changed focus and behavior of the teamster, then they will learn to have a heightened alertness.

Confidence, focused intention on the horse, disregard for the object, and reinforcement of established communication are the basis for my perspective on “desensitizing”.

The only insight I would add to your assumption about “making” the horse stand is that if you want the horse to feel reward when standing, then by using standing as pressure will serve to confuse him. They instinctively feel comfort when standing. They also instinctively feel discomfort when made to move. I really can’t see that there is much effective pressure in trying to make them stand, when to them it is a way to not do anything else. I have had more success with having pressure represent action, and reward represent no action.

The exercise I described of moving them before they move on their own, teaches them that whoa means stand and relax…. not just stop. I have written this in other threads… I think that separating the action of stopping from action of standing is also very confusing for the horse. I use one command, whoa… that means stand…. to stand they must stop, but there are not two intentions…. much easier for them to understand.

Carl

There is an element of not acting ‘right’ that is not easily explained, and it reminds me that it is important to listen to our animals. They have limited ways of communicating and when they are not acting ‘right’, they are telling us they have some concerns about their environment, how they feel, their harness or yoke, it could be any number of things…real or imagined. I can’t offer much insight regarding horses; I know oxen a little better.

Cattle are naturally suspicious of new things, and remarkably observant of their environment. They have a visual orientation and their instinct is to believe what they see, not what they hear. They can recognize me from 1000 ft away by shape and how I move, but if I wear a raincoat that I rarely use, or a new type of hat, I can see that as I approach they are concerned, not 100% convinced of who I am, even as I get close and they can hear my voice.

So their perception of their reality can change just by changing shape. If this was predictable it would be easy to deal with. But sometimes they totally ignore things we consider likely problems, other times they seem to be on edge from things we can’t clearly grasp. Maybe a smell or sounds, or something…. Maybe just an odd convergence of perceptions. It is infrequent, in fact it is quite rare, and this is why it can surprise us.

I agree that we can call them back from this bothersome place, but not always all the way back. Maybe like when you have a bad dream and it just colors the day right from the start. Reading their behavior, recognizing their state of mind, and reacting correctly is important. But it might be a little boastful, or maybe overconfident to think you can fully and correctly interpret, and over-ride, the feeling that is causing them to not act ‘right’. When I think of the times when things went wrong, quite often I remember that there were clues that something was not ‘right’. Things that I noticed but probably did not take seriously enough. I would have seen it coming had I listened a little closer.

In new surroundings they can be easily startled. In familiar surroundings they are suspicious of things that are different. Things that are unfamiliar are a potential threat. It puts them in a heightened state of awareness. When they are not acting ‘right’ I think they are picking up on things that we can’t see, maybe sounds or smells that perhaps stay in the background but prime them for ramping up quickly and unexpectedly to an excitable state of mind. I am not suggesting you avoid doing anything, just listen and respect their effort to communicate. Be prepared to more than match their unusual state of mind.