More Trailer Loading . . .

Yesterday was a bit busy . . .

My day started with a very nice ride on Dawn in the cool morning.  Her lateral work is really coming along - she tells me when I'm getting things right.

Then I had a mid-day music lesson, which requires an hour of driving each way.

Back home, a bit of lunch, then back to the barn.  Both boys got rides.  Pie got a short, relaxed outdoors ride, and Red got a longer ride, both indoors and outdoors.  My vet was there looking at a couple of other horses, and watched Red moving and said he was looking very good.  I occasionally feel a bit of stiffness in the left hind as we warm up, but he's pretty much fully sound now.

Then Red and I had another trailer loading session.  We'll be doing this a couple of days a week until he's a lot more comfortable with the trailer.  He loaded pretty well (to yesterday's standards) from the start, which is about what I expected he would do.  He gets on without a whole lot of pressure, but isn't relaxed at all in the trailer and isn't comfortable staying in for long.  We're already well ahead of where we were last year with his trailer loading, and if I needed him to load in an emergency, we could do it, but it's still nowhere near what I want long term.

Then I started working on what I wanted to accomplish.  One step forwards, one step back, two steps forward, one step back, one step forward, two steps back . . .  We'd practiced ahead of time as we were leading through the indoor, out through the parking lot and up the hill.  We did that a bit on the grass in front of the trailer, and then we went to work.

Since I was asking him to do something new/different/outside his comfort zone, the bracing/evasions came right back. First we had to deal with his evasion of curling his head, neck and body to the right, which results in him throwing his left shoulder towards the trailer and ending up sideways with his head braced away from me.  I just kept the pressure on the lead while getting close to him and then turned his head towards me to the left and did some very small circles to the left before asking again, never taking the pressure off the lead.  When it was a bit better, I simply led him towards the trailer on a fairly loose lead and when he started to veer to his right and throw his body to the left, I just tossed the end of the lead - I love my 10' cotton leads - at his left side behind my back and just kept right on going.  Later in our work, when he'd try to go around the end of the ramp I just asked him to load from there - the ramp angle is so shallow that it's easy for him to step up from the side.

There were also some hissy fits.  He did some running backwards - I just kept the pressure on until he moved forward again.  He went through a stage of flinging himself into the trailer - "all right, you want me in there, I'm going in there pronto" - not what I wanted.  He worked through the hissy fits faster this time, and there was no panicked calling for other horses.

I'm not worried about the pulling backwards and bracing to the side behaviors.  I just keep on asking consistently and calmly for what I want him to do and we get through it.  He does this because he feels under pressure and also because I expect in the past it got him releases and perhaps even stopping the work - it's not that he's scheming, it's just how he was trained in the past to get a release.  Having a 1,200 pound horse pulling, rearing and pushing his shoulder out (in our early days he would even run his body right into you - that doesn't happen anymore because I set boundaries) can be mighty intimidating if you don't know how to handle it.

We got some good one step forward, one step back work on the ramp, with two feet inside the trailer, and also inside the trailer once he was fully in.  The intermediate area - where he's just stepped into the trailer with his hind feet, or taken more than a step backwards from the front - is still a place where he's not comfortable stopping and taking a step back and forward - there's a lip at the back of the trailer where the ramp attaches, so it could be that's a worry for him.

At the very end, after about 45 minutes of work, we got some good one step work at the back and front of the trailer, with a couple of nice, slow back offs, and called it a day.  He's still not at all calm when inside the trailer, but is calmer in its vicinity and on the ramp and with two feet in.  He'll be calmer when he's more confident and when he has more hours practicing. I told him what a fine horse he is, many, many times at each stage of our progress.  We'll do a day or two of trailer loading practice every week until we're done - it'll take a while but we'll get there in the end, and Red working through his fits and making progress with me is a great confidence builder for him.  Over time, as we work and he learns that he can undertake new tasks (without bad things happening if he gets the wrong answer - he's worried about this, still) and make progress together with me, the bad behaviors will decrease and eventually just fall away, as many of his other problem behaviors have.

After I was all done, I unhitched - more of a production with the bumper pull than it was with the gooseneck - I was a bit surprised by this.  The negative of the gooseneck (in addition to its very large size) is having to crawl around in the truck bed to hitch.  The negative of the bumper pull is having to get down on the ground, and also having to deal with the load stabilizer bars - very heavy to handle (about at my load limit due to my history of back trouble) and they also take some strength - the gooseneck required no physical effort at all.  Removing and reinserting the hitch from the back of the truck (so as not to get a ticket while driving around trailerless) also involves weight lifting that's beyond my capabilities - I have to get help with that.  I also find I was spoiled by the handling of my F350 with trailer - very smooth and easy.  The F150 plus bumper pull is a bit more rough - you can feel the trailer and its movements.  Pluses and minuses . . .  I do very much like the interior of the trailer - it's spacious and light and comfortable for the horses.  Pictures coming . . .

Trailer Loading

I picked up the new horse trailer Monday.  It's a Hawk two-horse straight load bumper pull, the Elite model.  It's a very nice trailer, and I already like it a lot.  I ordered it with full back doors plus a ramp, rather than the standard configuration of the ramp being the bottom half of the back door with dutch doors above.  I prefer the configuration I chose, since when you're bending down to handle the ramp, the doors are between your head and the horse's hind feet.  (I forgot to take my camera today, but will try to get some photos tomorrow.)

Today Pie and I, then Red and I, worked on trailer loading.  This trailer is different from my last one - it's a straight load, instead of a slant, and has a ramp instead of a step-up.  One nice feature of the Hawks is that they have a low load bed, so the slope on the ramp is pretty flat, and it has a nice textured rubber surface.  To practice our loading, I put a hay bag up front, opened the escape door on the side I was using - there is a walk through with escape doors at the front of the horse area - and swung the divider over and tied it in place.  Since working on trailer loading can be mighty dangerous - unless and until you teach your horses to send in, you're in a confined space with a might big and perhaps mighty nervous animal.  So I always wear a helmet when working on loading, and if circumstances are particularly dicey I might wear a body protector as well.

Pie, after a moment's hesitation, loaded beautifully twice and even grabbed some hay from the bag on his second load.  He did everything so nicely that I immediately put him away.  The ramp didn't bother him in the slightest, although I don't think he's ever been on a trailer with a ramp before.  In our next loading session, we'll work on duration - having him stand longer before I ask him to back out - and some one foot forward/one step back/one step forward work to be sure he's listening to me and not on autopilot when backing out.  The next step with Pie will be sending him in - I don't think that's going to be a problem at all for him.

Red struggled a bit, as I thought he might.  It's been over 14 months since he's been in a trailer, and the last times he's loaded, Pie has already been on board.  He went through some of the behaviors he used last spring when we were working on loading, but today we're already farther along than where we left off last year.  But there was some stuff to work through before we got to that better place . . .

With a horse like Red who has some trailer loading issues, I don't try sending him in at first - even though he sends well in general - having me with him in the trailer helps give him confidence.  Leading rather than sending helped as well since his behaviors/evasions tend to be attempts to get away from the door of the trailer - he will pull backwards, or try to turn his head and body away from the trailer, throwing his shoulder towards you.  So my first job was to keep him facing the trailer door, and if he pulled backwards, to stay with him, keeping an even pressure on the rope.  All the work we've done on leading helped a lot - I'm able now to pretty easily keep him from popping his shoulder into me or from running past me, although I did have to pay attention.  I also put him in a rope halter so that it was easier to maintain pressure when it was needed.

I focussed on keeping him facing the door, asking him to step forwards, releasing pressure and praising each step and giving him a bigger release - a walk around with a bit of grazing and lots of praise - for significant progress.  He was also still leaving the trailer pretty rapidly at this point.  What I wanted for today was for him to lead nicely into the trailer with minimal pressure and no stops, stand there for a few seconds and then back out slowly at my request.  I thought we could get to that point today.

After a bit, he was loading into the trailer, but it was still pretty sticky - there were lots of stops and starts and it took some pressure to have him take steps forward.  So we just kept on working - I never attempt a loading work session like this unless I can take as much time as it takes.

Then we had our "darkest before the dawn" moment - where things get much worse all of a sudden - I was waiting for it and glad when it appeared - it meant we were close to breaking through to the better place I was looking for.  Red started really acting up - lots of screaming for another horse, any horse, to save him - and there were some dramatic runs backwards with some rearing thrown in for good measure, lots of attempts to move sideways, and the loading progress fell apart.  This meant that I was asking for more that he thought he was going to be asked to do - the "good" loading we'd achieved so far, with some pressure and fits and starts and rapid exits, was about where he'd gotten to with loading last year.  When he got outside his previous comfort zone, he got worried - he got braced and resistant - the prior bad behaviors reappearing.  I knew if we could work through this things would likely suddenly get much better.

The solution was for me to continue asking, patiently, and with as much softness as possible, and to know what I wanted and be willing to keep working until I got it.  So we kept working, and all of a sudden he loaded, staying straight, without any significant pressure and with no balks.  He came all the way to the front of the trailer and extended his head and neck to look out the escape door.  I praised him profusely and hugged him around the neck and shoulders - I was right there, up against the side wall of the trailer.  Then I asked him to back out after less than 10 seconds right before he decided to back out on his own.  And this time he backed out nice and slowly, although he isn't yet waiting for my direction for each step.

Once we got out, we walked all the way around the truck and trailer, sniffing and examining everything.  Then we grazed for a bit.  Then I led him around the back of the trailer and we loaded again, very nicely, and stood for some seconds and then backed out nicely.  Tomorrow we may do some one step forward/one step back work, starting with doing this in the arena so he's got the idea firmly in hand.  I was very proud of him and praised him lavishly.

The things I find most important in this sort of thing are: first, to keep myself focussed on what I do want and ignore/redirect what I don't want - I never punish or "make the horse work" - that's just a distraction from what I'm trying to do and takes our eyes off the ball.  Second, I don't put any negative emotional content into any of this, no matter what the horse does - no anger, frustration, irritation, etc. - the horse is just being a horse - I just praise and give releases for what I want.  That doesn't mean that I don't direct/redirect, sometimes forcefully (but never as a punishment) - getting Red to stay straight took some rope swinging at this shoulder and side and putting quite a bit of pressure on his head to get him to bend towards me instead of away.  And a horse running into or over me is never, ever acceptable - Red knows this from our prior work.  Third, I'm very careful to always give a release, or set it up so the horse gives himself a release, for every try, no matter how small.  For big progress, or changes in attitude, big releases - very big ones - celebrations - are in order.  And don't quit until you're done - persistence and patience are essential - if I'd quit when Red was having his difficult time towards the end of our work - the "darkest before dawn" - that would have confirmed for him that that's how he was to act and that he couldn't do more than he'd done before.  Quitting too soon due to giving up or time pressure are frequent errors people make in this sort of work.  Knowing when to stop and what is a realistic goal for that day, depending on what horse shows up, is also important and is a matter of judgment.

Anyhow, I was delighted with Pie and also delighted with Red and his progress.  Neither boy got a ride today (Dawn did), but that didn't matter - it was a good day's work for all of us.

Auditing a Trail Obstacle Clinic and a Calmer Day

Today I rode all three horses outside, and things were a bit less exciting than yesterday - everyone, including Red, was relaxed but forward and responsive.  It helped that there were no wildly galloping horses or Dementor ponies around . . .  Dawn got an early morning ride, and Red and Pie had rides in the late afternoon.  It was another beautiful day - have to love that.

In the morning, after my ride on Dawn, I audited a clinic at our barn.  There were eight horse/person pairs, and the clinician was someone I've known for a while (Denise Lesnik of Inside Out Horse Training) but have never ridden with.  I have a pretty strict policy of not riding with a clinician unless I've seen them work before, so I audited.  I was the only auditor and was able to stand in the arena and observe different horse/handler pairs work - Denise knows me well enough to know that I could probably manage to stay out of trouble and out of the way.  I also was able to help out by picking up manure for the participants.

There were lots of obstacles - platforms, a car wash (a curtain of plastic strips), a tarp tunnel - one side high enough to walk through without the tarp touching the horse and the other side lower, and various pole/cone combinations, and some barrels and blocks that several people used for side-passing.  All the horse/handler combinations did great - especially one Arabian and his share-boarder - he has a reputation for being a spooky, difficult horse, and he tried his heart out even when he was a bit worried.  The exercises were about helping the handlers be more effective in directing their horses and rewarding the smallest tries, and building confidence between horse and handler.

After the obstacle ground work, Denise worked with one combo on trailer loading - this horse tends to get very nervous and have trouble loading calmly.  It was very instructive to watch and listen to her comments and instructions to the handler - she said that a lot of her business concerns helping people with trailer loading problems.  The timing of releases and the timing/frequency of taking breaks as a bigger reward were of particular interest to me, and she had some good suggestions about dealing with Dawn's tendency to kick while trailering - she suggested she might do better in a box stall/loose set up, which my new trailer will permit.  She said the kicking is likely from anxiety about maintaining her balance.

Then the group mounted up and did more work with the obstacles.  I think everyone had a very good experience.  Although Denise is more classically "natural horsemanship" than I am - she does a lot of groundwork, including lungeing at liberty, seems to pretty much always uses rope halters, and does a fair amount of lateral flexion, none of which I do, I otherwise am in pretty good agreement with everything she does and her attitude towards horses - she looks at things from the horse's point of view and helps their people become more effective while staying soft.  She's particularly good at helping people with their timing - most people are late with their releases and/or miss the horse's small tries, which tends to confuse the horse. If you're looking for a competent and caring trainer west of Chicago, you might want to check her out.

Red Bolts, and Recovers Well

We've been having a lot of beautiful weather - 70s and low 80s - so most of our riding lately has been outside, either in the outdoor arena or in the big pastures.  We all enjoy being out there, so long as the flies aren't too bad, and we appreciate not being confined to our (relatively) small indoor arena.  Pie becomes much more forward out there - it's a blast to trot and canter him around, since he really puts some motor into it.  Red and Dawn also seem happy outside, staying responsive and soft no matter what we do.

There was some excitement at the barn today.  A new boarder (actually an old boarder who came back after several years' absence - I never knew him) decided he was going to make all our lives more interesting.  A whole group of horses and riders were in the outdoor arena, which is several hundred yards away from the barn across a large pasture that is used for the mares' turnout during the day.  The new boarder's mare has been kept in a pen since her arrival, and hasn't been turned out.  As I was bringing Red into the indoor to mount up and then go outside to ride, the other boarder decided it would be a fine time to turn his mare out in the pasture between the barn and the outdoor arena.

Of course, the mare took off like a shot and proceeded to gallop at high speed all over the pasture, including galloping right along the shared fenceline with the outdoor arena.  A number of the horses in the outdoor went crazy - one mare started rearing repeatedly and her rider had to get off.  It's fortunate no one was injured.  Red and I were standing together in the indoor while this was going on, and had a good view of the action - I hadn't mounted up yet. Red's head was high and his eyes were on stalks, but he kept his cool. After the mare ran around for a while, the man caught her and led her out of the pasture.

I mounted Red - he was fine and stood still as usual for mounting - and we headed outdoors to ride.  As we were starting down the hill from the barn, here come two girls leading a pony and a mini back to the barn - they'd been in the outdoor.  For some reason, Red decided that there was something seriously wrong about this picture, even though both the pony and the mini are in his usual turnout herd.  Perhaps it was the girls leading the pony and mini, perhaps it was that the pony and mini didn't belong (in Red's mind - he's big on things being correct) where they were, or perhaps he was still worked up from the mare running around.

In any event, he did a high-speed rollback and bolted at high speed - and when he moves, he really moves - back into the indoor arena.  He only went about 20 feet into the indoor, and only bolted about 75 feet in total, and wasn't hard to stop.  I'd been leaning back a bit while we were going down the hill, so when he spun and bolted I had no trouble staying with him.  There was one horse being lunged in there, and I called out a warning to them as we galloped in.

Horses usually bolt for one of two reasons, or a combination of them.  Either they're getting to a safe distance so they can evaluate a scary situation or object, including a suddenly appearing object that they need time to assess, or they're just emotionally overwhelmed (as when a horse is very herd bound). In Red's case, he was already a bit stressed from the mare's antics, and the pony and mini appearing where he didn't expect them to be caused his circuits to pop.  But I was very pleased that, unlike his earlier bolts with me last spring, he didn't just panic, but stayed at least partly with me - he was no where near as braced and stopped for me fairly easily - his bolts last spring were a lot more challenging and he travelled a lot farther before I was able to get a connection back.  And this time he calmed down right away, and we went right back out on our ride, which was very satisfactory - lots of trotting and cantering around in the pastures.  That was a darn good recovery on his part in my book, and I was pretty pleased with him.  Staying on is also, always, a very good thing . . . I never take this for granted any more . . .

Red Waits, and Dawn and Pie Help Me Bend Right

Pie went in the pen this morning briefly again so I could medicate his eye before he was turned out.  After yesterday, Red had figured out that Pie was going to be in a pen, and instead of going out to the pasture with the other horses, had lingered near the barn to make sure Pie was OK.  When I got there, Red was halfway up the hill, about 50 yards from the barn, where he could watch Pie and call to him from time to time.  When I turned Pie out, they galloped off to the pasture together.

Pie's eye is looking so much better already - this evening it looked almost completely normal, wide open and clear with no sign of any abrasion on the eyeball - that I suspect he didn't scratch his eye but instead bumped his whole eye area hard on something, perhaps his water bucket.  This is supported by the signs of a scrape on his upper eyelid.  I'll keep medicating the eye just in case through the weekend, but it seems things are heading in the right direction.

Yesterday and this morning, Dawn and Pie helped me some more with my lateral work.  All my three horses have tended to move better when tracking left.  When tracking right, stepping under into the corners, and circles and bending, have always been more of a challenge.  We get there, but it's not as easy as tracking/bending left.  Now this isn't because my horses are coincidentally the same, moving more easily when tracking left.  It's because they have the same rider - me.

Riding Pie at the walk yesterday and Dawn at the walk this morning while we did shoulder in and leg yields helped me more clearly see what I need to fix.  When tracking right, or bending right (moving to the left in leg yield), I tend to slightly shorten my right leg and slightly collapse my right hip.  This puts my seat slightly off center, and results in my leaning slightly to the right.  It's no wonder my horses struggle to carry me around right turns or travel with a right bend - they're just trying to support my off-centeredness.  Then I resort to using my hands too much to compensate for my ineffective body position, further blocking their motion.

So I worked on keeping my eyes up, posture open, legs stretching down equally on both sides.  I tried, when shifting from leg yield right to leg yield left and back again - sometimes with a stride or two straight in between, sometime directly from right bend to left bend and back again - to keep my body still and posture straight with no leans or twists, and just change my focal point to our new destination while offering the horse my feel of the hind legs stepping over and under.  Much, much better with both horses.

Less is more . . .

Pie Eye Update and Dawn Works with Me on Lateral

Last night when I went back to the barn, Pie's eye was already looking a bit better - it wasn't fully closed and was a bit less weepy.  More eye meds.  This morning very early I went to the barn and found Pie in his pen - I'd had him put there instead of in turnout so I wouldn't have to walk one half mile out and another half mile back to find him in the pasture.  He greeted me ears up at the gate, clearly wanting to get out and go join his friends.  His eye looked even better - more than half open and nice and clear.  More eye meds and a 500-lb. dose of Banamine later, he was galloping off to join his friends.  We'll keep doing the multiple times a day eye meds through the weekend, and a bit more Banamine tonight and tomorrow, and if he continues to improve I think we'll be OK.

The more I ride, the more I find that my horses are working with me, in the sense of they're training and teaching me, rather than I'm working them.  This makes sense - the more I listen to them, the more they have to tell me.  And the message they give me, almost every time, is the same "less is more" that was the assignment Mark Rashid gave me in June for the year to come.

Dawn worked with me on more walking lateral work this morning.  We did some leg yield and shoulder in.  We ended with leg yield back to and away from the center line, three strides in each direction with an immediate shift to the other direction on the next stride. She taught me that it's no different than our work on circles and corners - all I have to do is change my focus to where we're going now, keep my upper body up and open and offer her the "mental feel" of the hind legs stepping over, carrying our body where we want to go, and making sure to keep offering her the space to move into by "opening the door" with my body.   The net result is forward is maintained and the movement is free and relaxed - no pushing, pulling, twisting or leaning on my part.  Dawn says it's a lot easier to connect with my thought when there isn't all that other stuff going on, and she says it's also a lot easier to move if you're not being held, pushed, blocked or braced against.  (She gets the last word, particularly since she's right!)

New trailer being picked up on Monday . . . :)))

Guiding/Communicating Without Blocking or Bracing, and Poor Pie

All three horses are working very well and meeting every expectation I have for them.  Red will still sometimes brace for a few minutes if he's excited, but we work through that pretty quickly.  Today we had an excellent ride, with some good work in the indoor and then some fine motoring around the pasture, part of the time with another boarder and her horse.  We trotted around a lot together, and Red was just lovely, relaxed and willing to lead or follow.  It's good pre-trail practice for him - my goal for him through the fall is to extend our pasture jaunts - the pastures extend a good half mile from the barn - and ride in company and also work on our trailer loading until he's relaxed and proficient at it.  We'll also start riding out on the lane that leads to our trail head, and take things as far as he's comfortable.  Pie's ready to start trailering out - and the truck and trailer have arrived!  Early next week I pick up the trailer and get the trailer balanced and learn how to hitch a bumper pull with stabilizer bars. (It's an odd thing of my history that I've only ever driven and hitched a gooseneck trailer, never a bumper pull.)

Dawn is also working very well.  This morning we started adding some lateral work back in - just some shoulder-in at the walk this morning.  We've done some of this before, and both boys are ready to do some as well - all three horses already do very nice side pass and turn on the forehand and turn on the haunches.  I find lateral work challenging.  I've learned in my regular, forward, straight work and circles not to move my body hardly at all, but use my focus, energy and intention to guide and direct the horse.  With lateral work, I tend to do too much - too much twisting and/or leaning of my body, too much leg, blocking with my seat, etc., etc.  All this gets in the way of the horse's freely moving where and how I want.  I need to do enough to have the horse understand what I want, but that shouldn't be very much at all, and I need to create openings for the horse to move into and not brace with my aids.  Dawn and I did pretty well this morning - or at least she thought I did pretty well and it's her opinion that matters.  She's a good one to practice this with, as she doesn't put up with any of that nonsense from me and needs only a suggestion, a whisper, of direction to get what I want.  Pie doesn't always yet get what I want right away, and I have to not up the ante but just be calmly, softly clear, and Red tends to overdo things - his tendency to overbend in the head and neck can come back.  So all three horses have a lot to teach me, and I may also go up and take a few lessons with Heather to get her eyes on what I'm doing.

Poor Pie - within a few minutes of my arriving at the barn - he was fine when I got there - he managed to poke himself in the right eye, apparently with a piece of hay from his hay bag.  (This is not necessarily a problem with the hay bag but rather with the way the barn workers put the hay in - they just tend to stuff it in there with bits protruding from the top and sides every which way - if you do it correctly the flakes of hay lie flat inside the bag - I need to keep an eye out for this.) His eye was tightly shut and and tearing profusely, and the eyelids were swelling.  I got some triple eye antibiotic ointment in there, after prying it open to see if there was any obvious injury - there wasn't but he likely has a corneal scratch - and gave him a 1,000 lb. dose of Banamine, some of which he spit out (after holding it in his mouth for quite a while).  I took his hay out of the bag and put it on the stall floor - with one eye not so good I didn't want to risk more injuries. When I left a couple of hours later, the eye looked slightly better - it was partly open and not tearing anymore.   I'll go back later this evening and put in some more eye antibiotic, and do the same tomorrow morning and also give him a 500 lb. dose of Banamine.  If it starts improving, likely no need to call the vet since they'd have me do pretty much what I'm doing now.  If it doesn't improve or gets worse, I'll call the vet.  Poor Pie!