Day 7: Day of Rest/Rolling (:

Miss Lucy, just like Aztec, has decided that I am not so bad.  She leads like a normal horse and is fairly easy to halter.  She also did really well for the Purina guy, so she got a free day as well. 

Lucy LOVES to roll, so I wet down the round pen I work them in since it was worse than the Dust Bowl.  I opened the gate, and in the girls went.  And Lucy rolled.  And rolled.  And rolled.  She'd go down, roll a good bit, get up , walk a few feet, and drop again.  It was pretty cute to watch. (:

Lucy's freeze brand

Shaking off all the dust

From wild to willing in 120 days <3

Day 6: Touching and Leading

Miss Lucy decided that today she liked me.  She let me walk right up to her and clip the lead on.  (I think she might be a bit bipolar, since yesterday she wouldn't let me in her pen without going bonkers!  But I'll take what I can get.)

Since she gave me the OK to play, I asked her to let me touch her shoulder, just like I did with Aztec.  She did fine.  Let me waltz right up and pet her all over.  No problem today.  After that was (thankfully) uneventful, I lead her to the round pen.  And guess who decided that leading was okay today?  Oh, Lucy Goosey....

She led like a champ.  I worked her more closely than I did Az.  Lucy is a bit more pushy, so I needed to keep her close enough to me that she wouldn't run me over or drag me.  So I grabbed her like you teach a little kid to lead a horse.  I put my right hand about four inches under the clip, and I just started walking.  I kissed to her, and Lucy followed.  When I stopped, she kept going, so I dropped my hand over the lead.  That stopped her, and she backed off of the pressure that was now on her head.  And ta-da!  I now have a horsey that leads without a fuss.

I'm a little leary of tomorrow though.  I kind of wonder if her episode yesterday is going to be like one of those not-so-good Ion Television episodes of Criminal Minds.  The one episode you don't want to see plays over and over and over.  I'm really hoping this isn't the case, that she just needed to test how trustable I am.  Hopefully she got her answer and we can move on and up from here. 

Day 5: Back to the Start

Well, Lucy decided that she didn't like domestication, so she ran around for forty minutes without so much as glancing at me.  I went out to work with her and her sister, and she was first in the round pen.  The moment I set foot in the pen, she took off in mindless circles.  She wouldn't stop.  For anything.  She ran so hard I thought she was going to hurt herself.  I finally had to just open the door and let her out. 

I don't know what I did wrong or where I messed up, but tomorrow I'm going to start her over.  Go out there like she's never been touched before and work that way.  Last night, we ended on what I thought was a good note.  Obviously something I did incorrectly stuck with her and carried over to today.  So my plan for her tomorrow morning is to do the same thing I did with Aztec yesterday: advance and retreat.  We are going to add some baby steps in there to see if that is the issue. 

I thought she could handle the work I've done with her.  Obviously I was incorrect in this assumption.  I guess she needed a few more steps in there to get her confidence up a bit more.  But I'm not worried.  She is (or seems) very intelligent, so she should be easy to figure out.  I needed to take my own advice:  don't worry about other people's progress.  I kind of got worked up that other youth trainers are already so far ahead of us, that I forgot to stop and listen to what my horses are telling me.  I wish I videoed my sessions with Lucy, because I'd be willing to bet myself that somewhere in there, ever so subtle, she was telling me she wasn't ready to move on.  But I pushed her because I wasn't listening to her...
I just hope she forgiving.  I'm still learning as well, so hopefully my girl won't hold that against me too much. 

xx Shell

Day 4: Leading, Disengaging, and Fly Spray

Didn't work Lucy very long today, maybe thirty minutes.  Now that she will let me walk up to her and touch her, I feel like a lot of pressure has been lifted off of me, therefore I should take some off of her.  So we just kind of played around this evening.  We fine tuned her leading skills, and I led her all over her pen and then into the barn.  She caught on fairly quickly that when my feet move and I'm facing front, she should follow suit.  She also figured out that if I am facing her and slightly forward, she needs to back out of my space a bit.  That she just picked up out of nowhere, but I was pleased that she was paying that much attention to my body.  Just saves me having to teach her that respect lesson later on. 

Disengaging her hindquaters proved a bit more of a challenge, but not like an Aztec challenge.  More like, a simple challenge (how about that oxymoron!).  I started by moving out from her shoulder sideways to the right (worked that side first).  Then I crouched really low, exagerating my body movements as to prevent confusion (after she masters the skill, I will become more subtle).  But I crouched and took a step towards her hind end.  When she didn't move, I continued the movement, but I begin swinging the end of the lead.  I got progressively quicker in my swinging until she moved her hip.  The first time I didn't have to swat her.  She moved away.  So I let her chill with my back to her, taking away any pressure that she felt.  Then I repeated the steps:  step, swing, swing harder, pop. 

The second time I had to pop her with the end.  She bounced around on her heels until she faced me, and she dropped her head and chewed.   I got what I wanted, so I turned immediately around, giving her space and time to relax and process what she had just learned.  I repeated disengaging her right twice more before I did the same work on the left.  So after four times on each side, I let that lesson be over. 

Then I broke out the fly spray because the knats and horse flies were driving her nuts.  I let her smell the yellow bottle, and she nibbled at it a bit.  When she was sure it wasn't alive and/or going to eat her, she let me spray her legs and under belly where all of the bugs were grouping.  She seemed relieved at this.  Never gave me an ounce of trouble!  She's turning out to be more like Chey than I thought after the first time with her.  She's not afraid, and awfully sure of herself.

I went to Stockdale's this afternoon before I worked her, and bought a peppermint scented Jolly Ball.  Aztec was terrified of it, but Lucy pranced right up to it, sniffed it, then pawed it around.  She kept looking up at me (I guess to see if I was watching her being silly).  She played with the new toy for a few minutes, and was so confident in herself.  She's so willing to try something new, and nothing really spooks her.  Which thrills me to no end!  She's also started eating feed, so clicker training will begin in a few days.  I had to put maple syrup over her feed yesterday, and she lured by the sweet scent to test it.  Now she's eating straight sweet feed minus the syrup.  (:

xx Shell

Day 3: Haltering and Leading

Lucy is turning out to be my favorite, and I really don't like picking favorites.  But she pretty much perfect.  She's got the perfect blend of attitude and willingness and curiousity that makes training a joy.  Like today.  I got her in the stall area so I could touch her easily, and she came up and sniffed me all over.  I showed her the brush (which we covered yesterday), and she started biting it with her teeth, not afraid of it or trying to kill it, just showing me that she can pick it up and chunk it across the pen.  It was absolutely adorable!  And after I brushed her down, I started trying to find her "itchy spot."  Every horse has a certain spot on his body that he just loves to have scratched, so I rubbed around Lucy's shoulder area and under her neck until I found a spot right in the center of her chest that she really REALLY liked having scratched.  We sat there for a good five mintutes, me scratching her and her moving her head lower and lower to the ground.  She also likes having her ears scratched with my finger nails.

After our scratch and chill session, I decided to try haltering again.  So I walked up to her, slipped the halter on, and that was that.  Not fuss or scene.  She remembered exactly what happened yesterday, and she was good with it.  Then I took the halter back off and walked to the round pen with her following me at liberty.  I worked on moving her feet, since she's got this thing where she wants me to move around her instead of her moving around me (i.e. if she's blocking the stall door, it's not a her problem, but a crazy two-legged problem.  Luce axpects me to walk all the way around her instead of her taking two steps to the right...  love her!).  So I did that thing where I look her directly in the eye and face my shoulders square on her.  She was a little sticky at first, but I put the rope back on the end of my lunge stick and tossed it behind her to encourage her to move forward and around.  Once she took off, I took the stick away and only reintroduced it when she began ignoring my body encouragements.  She ran around well after she figured things out a bit. 

She's not quite as herd-centered as Aztec is, but she still focused much of her attention on the horses out in the pasture instead of staying with me.  I thought about how to correct this, but then I decided that with her, anyway, this issue will eventually resolve itself once she and I have that mutual respect and relationship. 

Once I was satisfied with her moving out, I put her back in the stall pen and haltered her once more.  Then I added pressure to the halter, not a lot of pressure, but enough to encourage movement.  Lucy is very much an into pressure horse.  So when I put pressure on the halter and it pulls at her poll, she moved back.  She backed into the wall and bounced forward in shock, so I rewarded her forward motion with the release of the pressure.  We played that game a few moments, and then I had  her leading.  She's not an expert yet, but she's well on her way.  (:
                
             xx Shell

Day 2: Touching, Brushing, and Haltering

Lucy pleasantly surprised me today.  She was much calmer, as I expected she would be.  Yesterday was just her first day home, so the new sights, sounds, and smells freaked her out, and with her sister running around like a nut, she was a little frazzled.  But today she was very mellow and gentle.  She easily let me push her into a small work area (the middle of the closed off barn).  She seemed to enjoy being away from Aztec.  Poor girl.  Her sister is constantly pushing up beside her, trying to be as close as she can.  Lucy is definitely the more mature one. 

So after I got her in the work area, I began using my lunge stick to touch her back.  The pen is just big enough that Lucy can walk all the way around it with me still being able to keep the end of the stick touching her back.  That way she can't run completely away from the touch, but decide that if she stands still, the pressure goes away.  Which is exactly what happened.  I would place the stick on her back almost to her withers, and when Lucy stopped walking around, I removed the stick and I turned my back to her.  ((turning my back is like my turning my "flank" to her.  It lets the horse know that I am not pressuring her to stay away, but that she is free to move about or even come in to me.  It would be like a mare that has been keeping an unruly colt away from the herd in "time out".  The mare would keep her shoulders square on him and her eye on his, telling him that he is not allowed back in the group until he pays for his troubles.  Then, when the colt asks for permission to join back in, the mare would either pressure him again, or turn her flank to him, telling him that he can come back.))

After a few times of this, Lucy came up to my shoulder and nipped at my t-shirt.  Then I turned back around a rubbed her again with the stick, but this time I worked my hand up beside the stick.  That way she had what she had become comfortable with -- the touch of the stick-- and something new and potentially scary --the feel of my hand rubbing her.  Using the stick was comforting to her while I touched her with my hand, so I did that for a short bit, then I slowly took the stick away.  Lucy was very receptive to this. 

I did halter her after about twenty or so minutes of me walking circles around her rubbing.  I didn't ask anything of her, just that she let me touch the halter to her face a few times then actually put it on completely.  She took to that very well, so I left that alone.  And I brushed her.  Let me just tell you, the key to Lucy's heart is a brush.  For the first time to be brushed in her life, she seemed to love it!  She almost fell asleep letting me curry off the dried mud that was on her from pickup.  (:

Overall, I am very pleased with Lucy.  I'm looking forward to seeing what all she will give me when I ask her to start working. 

Here are a few pics from yesterday after pickup:

First touch <3

Playing with my friend's umbrella. 

Day 1: Coming Home and Settling In

Today was a really good day for Lucy.  We got her and her sister home, and she took to the pen nicely.  She was reasonably calm when we got her unloaded, the complete opposite of Aztec's Warrior.  She stayed connected at the hip to Aztec for most of the day, until I decided to try to separate them in order to work with them.  Lucy, unlike her sister, took well to me touching her.  I started out using my orange lunge stick as an extension of my arm, and then I slowly moved on to rubbing her with my hand.  She was completely cool with me after several hours of being out with her. 

I love how tall Lucy is!  She's huge.  Every bit as big as Molly or Sahara (two of my QH mares).  Once she has a bath and gets the rest of her fuzz off, she's going to be stunning. 

She's a bit more stand-offish than Aztec is, a lot less needy.  That's why I'm thinking that she is going to actually have a mind of her own once she figures out that I'm not going to eat her or anything to that extreme.  I'm really looking forward to clicker training her, though.  She seems very intelligent, so I think (hope) that she will pick it up fairly quickly.  My goal for the next week is to have her halter broke and brushing.  We shall see.  (:

Always,

xx Shell