Going Home

I’ve been working with the (full grown) team that we purchased this winter. They perform pretty amazingly on the ground, but have some quirks when working. I think a bit of this is just their conditioning.

These guys seem to experience the “homeward bound effect” a lot more severely than other animals that I’ve worked with. They’ll work at a nice, mellow pace going in one direction in a field, but try to sprint and lunge through the last 50 feet when they’re going the other way. Just this morning, the nigh ox was the big culprit. When I stopped him about 60 ft away from the end of the row, he actually pawed the earth in anticipation of what he was about to do.

I’ve tried battling it out with them, making them stop every 5-10 feet, but winning can be a little ugly, and I wonder if I’m just making them associate the end of the row with stress, which might make the problem worse.

Some things I’ve tried:
-Always ending work sessions after going in the “right” direction.
-Never resting them at the wrong end of the field- waiting until they’ve gone a little in the right direction and settled down, before giving them a break, so they learn that breaks come when the work at a steady pace, not when the reach some specific location.

Anyone have ideas of how to deal with this?

Thanks