A day in the life…..

[Carl Russell]

Almost got beat at my own game yesterday…… Had the team with the green mare on a good stick of pine…. she’s very responsive, and has a great work ethic, but once there’s a load behind her she has a hard time standing….. I decide to test her by taking the saw and cutting a few limbs, and shorting it by cutting the last log off…. now it’s a long uphill skid… the whole way… with sharp corners and narrow trail… and it was a good stick, so I was thinking that it would be quite a work out if they started to go without me…. so I ran the saw, and reiterated a few whoas over my shoulder…. but… then they started while I was trimming one last branch… about 30 feet from the cart…. they got faster, and I hollered whoa, but to no avail…. so I said “run away with that you F@#$ers”…. and it looked like I was going to be able to catch up until they went over a bump and the chain to that big log slipped out of the hook…. away they went, and it was no catching up….. until they veered just slightly off the trail and Ted went down in a pile in the deep snow…. just long enough for me to step onto the cart as he threw himself back to his feet, and off they went…. about 15 feet with me driving them up onto the trail where I calmly said “whoa”, to which they stopped dead in their tracks… caught our breath, swung’em around and went back to rehitch…. no worse the wear, and I think, unfazed, but they got a shorter leash the rest of the day….. 😯

[Howie]

When you HOLLERED whoa they knew you couldn’t enforce it.
When you CALMLY said whoa they knew you could enforce it.

[Donn Hewes]

Thanks Carl, That is a good example of the complexity of teaching horses to stand. We build their ability over time by expecting a little more each time. Some times we over shoot. I am glad no one was hurt.

I find with time I am developing more and more little places to stand as a habit. Maybe I am just getting slower! Just after harnessing I go ten feet out side the barn and stop and drop the lines while I go back and close a door and put up a wire. This little trick has proven to be a very nice way to remind horses of their most important skill, “to stand”. They are standing in the barn yard looking out, where they gona’ go?

Just for other folks who might be reading (I think Carl already knows this!) If I think I can reach the lines on a team or animal that is starting to move, I will go fast for the lines with out saying a word. Then say whoa when I get them in my hands. For green horse that has started to move, your whoa as you are heading for the lines will often just help them accelerate.

Keep it up Carl, and I will talk to you soon, Donn

[dominiquer60]

Reading the story, I was looking forward to hearing how far they got with that log, it was a good set up for them to fail at a runway, darn bump. I am glad that the snow got the best of them without harm to anyone, though I am guessing that you broke a sweat Carl 🙂

I think that teaching a animal to stand patiently is one of the most difficult yet most rewarding things that we can ask of them. I realize that whoa means whoa, if they are in motion they should stop and if they are standing and threatening to move they should keep still. The whoa “stop motion” is one of the first behaviors that we teach our animals, but the whoa “please wait patiently” takes some time and a certain level of maturity to reach the results that we want. I am not suggesting that whoa has different meanings, but rather that what we expect over the course of an animals working life when we say “whoa” evolves. From a pause in movement during that first leading lesson, to please stand here and wait patiently while I fix/saw/grab xyz.

Thanks for sharing your experience working on fine tuning that whoa.

[carl ny]

Must be something with people named Carl.LOL I had almost the same thing happen yesterday. My son and I were skidding out firewood, we ere hooking a chain on a hung-up tree when the girls started to move. I yelled “WHOA” and they kept going,my son calmly said “whoa” and they stopped. His horses and calm voice. I always seem to have a loud voice in an emergency but I’m working on it. In normal work I usually have a calm voice around the horses,it’s only in emergencies that I get excited and have that loud voice.

carl ny

[Carl Russell]

Well she came to me a free horse having run away for he previous two owners. She has been very responsive and responsible, so I was getting a bit skeptical, so I pushed the limits. The funny thing was that I just didn’t expect that log to let go, but I had a strong intuition that it was the right time to test her.

I personally do not have two whoas. I believe that whoa means stand, and that I believe is part of the problem. She has never had that level of expectation. She is so ambitious, I think she has been conditioned to go when hooked, because her previous handlers lacked the discipline. She doesn’t trust me enough yet to let me determine when she starts, and for how long she stands waiting for me to determine that.

I need more functionality than what I have been getting, and in order to get that I need an honest appraisal of where we are at, so pushing the envelope is one of the ways I find these things out. Giving her some freedom to show me where her mind goes in these situations is more informing than destructive…… And thankfully my miscalculation about the log didn’t end up worse.

Today will be a new day for her…..

Thanks, Carl

[Carl Russell]

The voice thing is an interesting aside. I was a bit frustrated by the incessant creeping, so I suspect I shouted as much from that as from believing it was going to stop them. When I see a horse running away, my reaction is to stop using whoa and shift to recovery mode. A running horse that is having whoa yelled at it is being taught to run while whoa is being yelled at it.

The other day, I just shut up when I saw that it was hopeless, dropped the saw and started trotting up the trail. The calmness in my voice is a condition that I have practiced for years. In the midst of that kind of confusion we need our animals to believe that we are the constant. So even though things were out of my control for a few minutes, as soon as I saw an opportunity to regain it, is inserted myself calmly.

And I want to add that as I approached them off the trail, and recognizing that they were recovering, I was god damn glad that I was looking at a Barden Cart to just easily step onto, with a bar to hold onto, and my lines secure. The recovery transition was so smooth and seamless that I really think the situation never materialized into anything. They had some momentary confusion, but because of how things worked out the message that really came home to them is that I am there guiding them, and the following 3 hours went smoothly.

Can you imagine trying to climb onto a high cart, or trying to pick up lines that were wrapped around thrashing horses’ legs? Even a team loose with traces, heel chains, and evener all tangled under them would have made the situation much worse than it was.

Humility is key, and I know it was a near miss, but I tend to cover a lot of bases, and while I am letting this sink in, I am also taking note of the tools that I brought to bear that gave me the opportunity to recover.

Carl

[Carl Russell]

I just read Donn’s excellent coverage of standing horses, and thought it would be useful to put this situation in context.

This mare stands very well…. In general. She has passed all of my general ground rules. Stands to have her feet worked on. Stands loose at the barn door to be unharnessed. Stands at whoa… Out the barn door, in the woods when I’m hitching the logs, or anytime before I have hitched to, or tested a log. On the landing she will take a step when asked to advance the cart and whoa on voice alone.

Her problem is that as soon as she has weight behind her she gets fidgety, anxious, and ambitious. This in my mind is not a standing issue per se. This has more to do with working, line pressure, and teamster expectations. Her previous conditioning was on soft and inarticulate lines. No distinction between contact and release. She was hooked and then allowed to drag the weight under her own objective. She is a horse that is not used to stopping when pulling. She does not know how to manage her energy, and she does not quite understand that she can trust me to do that for her.

What I have been working on is building that trust. She has been learning that I never expect her to go until she is ready to stop. She is learning that she has the power to easily move whatever I hook her to. Over time she will learn the difference between contact and release. She will understand that she only needs to move weigh when there is contact on the lines, under my control. It will take time, but this is actually only accomplish able through work, as that is where the conditioning occurred, and there are so many aspects that can only be recreated and tested during working situations.

Like I wrote before she has been, we have been, doing very well…. But in my mind there has been a lingering question about where her point of no return is. Having been informed about the crashes from previous owners I have been waiting for the other shoe to drop. I have had so much success with her, I was questioning the reality that was forming. This lingering need to start on her own when hitched needed to be understood better for me to move beyond it.

That is why I started this with ALMOST got beat by my own game. I was skirting the edge of safety, but I purposefully wanted to see this in action. As it turned out… It was a foolish choice on my part because of the failure of the log hitch….. But on the whole I did get what I wanted.

I now have a clear picture of the horse I am working with….. And the recovery of that day has kept me in control….. And I am grateful for the convergence of opportunity that allowed that to happen for me.

Carl

😆

[dominiquer60]

I just realized that I never clicked send a couple days ago.

I know that you don’t have two whoas Carl, I didn’t mean to imply that. I was trying to show that we may have different expectations of how an animal responds to whoa, largely based on training level. We expect them to stop once they have learned the command, but how long they remain stopped before they take the initiative to move again can be variable, so our expectations change as a working relationship evolves. We don’t know what they are capable of unless we test them some.

I once ran beind my team after I gave them a chance to stand and wait, they ended up in that swampy patch at the bottom of the trail below Kristen’s pastures. We were all up to knees in mud and no way out but backing the cart out of that muck. It took a lot of cussing to get them out but since then we have evolved and they will wait outside while I fetch bales up in the loft. The same whoa just different expectations and results after 3 years together.

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