Wednesday, May 9, 2018

Training Weekend, Part 2 (4/15/18)

When I got back to the training grounds on Sunday, the horses on either side of Skeeter were being pulled from their pens and she was getting anxious. For a horse who normally doesn't give a hoot about other horses, she was pretty certain she was going to die if she was left while her neighbors went away. But that's okay, because I "rescued" her and she was more than happy to go to the trailer and get tacked up.

There was a lot on the schedule, and I had a brief thought of riding, but dismissed it. We started the weekend on the ground and the training was just going to get more intense, so I decided to stay on the ground. Skeeter got lots of practice standing tied in different locations, which was so good for her. She stands tied now like an old broke horse. Well, most of the time.

Part of the desensitizing planned for Sunday was 'exotic animals', which maybe weren't so exotic, but more 'what they'll see while patrolling the fair grounds'. The night before, Skeeter had already met the mini horse who freaked her the eff out. Skeets jumped like a spider had touched her when she saw the mini the first time. It blew her ever-loving mind (which I found hilarious).

I helped set up the pens in the arena for the animals and got to handle an alpaca for the first time. I guess I expected that they'd have hooves like horses, but their feet are the things nightmares are made of. Holy crap, they could disembowel a person if they wanted to.

Those are big ole nope toes for me.  *from Google images
Luckily, the alpacas weren't set on disemboweling me or the other posse member trying to move them and they went pretty well. We then moved a goat, sheep, and the mini into the other temporary pen, with enough room for people to ride (or lead) their horses around. Despite sleeping just a few stalls down from the mini, Skeets still had to snort and blow at it, while the mini completely ignored her.

She finally quit snorting and blowing, but was still perplexed.
She was so focused on the mini, that she completely ignored the sheep and goat. They did not exist in her world, so I'm fairly certain there was no desensitizing acquired with the other two animals, though I tried to point them out to her.

Having shared space with alpacas at the lodge last year, she wasn't too terribly interested in them, but politely introduced herself at my request.

After seeing the 'exotics' we headed to the other end of the arena to play with other things: the tarp, raincoats, noise makers, etc. We've done a good job of torturing desensitizing the horses at home, so there wasn't much that was hard for her, until we got to the tambourine. I know it's completely my fault we haven't done much with noise makers, because I don't like noise. If I don't like noise, then why on earth would I buy my horses noisy toys? That was a big old fail on my part. The tambourine was not her favorite thing, so I spent a lot of time shaking it around her head, on each side of her neck, rubbing her body with it, until she stopped moving.

When she could stand still, I tried again, but this time over her head. She did not like that a whole lot, but quickly calmed down and stood in one spot. I figured that was plenty of work and moved on to the smoke bombs and flares.

She did okay with them - hated the smell of each - but the smoke in the air and fizzy sound of the flare didn't seem to bother her. She did move away from the smell every time the breeze (yes, just a gentle breeze, not gale force winds!) shifted, but there was nothing panicky about her moving away - it was just obvious that she'd rather not be breathing that stuff thankyouverymuch.

We have an amazing obstacle course at the training center: teeter-totters, bridges, shower curtains, a tire hill, and a bunch of other cool things to play on. When it was our turn to go over, the trainer who had ponied Skeeter yesterday offered to pony her through the water crossing and I jumped at the chance. I wanted to make Skeets cross it, because it's much deeper than the creek at Mom's place and figured I could drive her through it, but getting ponied was much better.

Day two of being ponied went much smoother

With the successful crossing of the water, I took her back and we went to work on other things. I drove her across the bridges without any problem and started her on the teeter-totter. She's not afraid of it, but is also smart enough to know that all she has to do is step to the side to get off. We have two teeter-totters, so she got to go over them again and again and again until she quit trying to step off, then I turned her around and made her to them from the high side a couple of times.

Besides the water crossing, the obstacle I was most looking forward to was the tarp-covered mattress. I watched horses struggle with it last year, when I was working ground support, and wanted to see how Skeets would do. I wish I'd had a free hand to video it, but she did pretty well. It took a couple of attempts to get her to cross it each direction. When I first asked her to step up on it, she thought it was just a tarp, which is no big deal, but the squishiness of the mattress was a surprise and she wasn't entirely pleased. We crossed it in both directions multiple times until she stepped up without hesitation.

The 'shower curtain' and the other obstacles were simple in comparison. She wasn't thrilled with being driven through the long strips of material she couldn't see  through, but she went anyway. We still had a bit of time in our training rotation, so we practiced dragging a tiger.

Not afraid at all.
 After a quick working lunch, it was back to the arena for gun desensitizing. We have hunters nea.rby, so the sound of rifles and shotguns doesn't bother the horses, but they're not fond of pistols. I've shot into the manure pile on occasion, but the horses have been free to run around their pen, I've never had any of the "confined" in a halter.

Skeets did really well for the most part. There was some jumping initially, but she never tried to bolt or pull away. Eventually, the jumping slowed to flinching. I allowed her to keep moving her feet, but she slowed to a stop on her own. She stood nicely, without even flinching, while the trainers finished up. Well, we thought they'd finished up. They'd gone through 30-40 rounds and most of the horses were doing great. Skeets and I thought they were done, but it turns out they were just reloading for round two.

Round two was just too much for Skeeter. We'd reached a great stopping point, but then the stimulus started up again and that was it. She was d-o-n-e. I made her stay in the arena until round two was done, then we went back to the trailer. It was easy to decide that it was time to go home. I'd asked a ton of her, and she'd done an amazing job, but she was done and we needed to head home.

Knowing she was ready to just shut down, I wasn't sure how well she'd load, so I asked a couple of the trainers to help me load her. She loaded surprisingly well, in under ten minutes, without a fight (but with some granola bars and a final treat of black oil sunflower seeds), and we headed home.

The rest of the posse still had a couple of hours' worth of training, and I felt bad about leaving, but I got over it pretty quickly.

While, we won't be certified to ride this year, I'm unbelievably proud of Skeeter.

Monday, May 7, 2018

Training Weekend, Part 1 (4/14/18)

A few weekends ago, Skeeter and I had Posse training. I've been working many long hours, and haven't had any time to work with her, so Mom and Bill have been helping me out. I had hoped to get her loaded on the trailer on Friday, just as a dry run, but Wyoming moved down here to Colorado and brought its wind. The wind just wouldn't let up, and we decided not to try to load her. The wind had all of the horses riled up and we decided it just wasn't worth the fight.

Unfortunately, the wind didn't let up, so on Saturday morning, I figured I'd try to load her, but didn't have any real hope that she'd get in the trailer. Jay came out and helped - it took about half an hour and half a box of oat 'n honey granola bar bribes, but she got in the trailer without a fight. There was hesitation, and there was a lot of getting halfway in, but we didn't fight or get frustrated with each other. Under normal circumstances, I'd call it a win, but considering the way the wind was blowing, I felt like we won a gold medal.

We pulled into training five minutes before it was to start and were met by one of the trainers, who advised us of a change of plans because of the wind. It wasn't a big change of plans, but I had the option to leave Skeets in the trailer, leave her tied to the trailer, or move her to her pen while we had our meeting at a different location. I opted to leave her in the trailer. I knew she wouldn't like it, but at least she'd be safe. I put her hay net in the trailer with her and went to the meeting.

Leaving her in the trailer was the safest option, but her least favorite. By the time we were done with our meeting, she had worked herself into a tizzy and I decided that between the howling wind and her crankiness, we'd do our training on the ground. We've got time - I'm not planning on this volunteer job being a short-time gig - so I'm not in a rush to get us certified as a team. When we do get certified, I want us to be rock freaking solid.

We joined the rest of the posse in the arena for warm-up and then everyone headed over to a different arena, which has three tall walls (really the stadium seating) to block the wind. One of the trainers offered to pony Skeeter over to the arena, and I jumped at the opportunity. The other arena is maybe a half a mile away from our training arena, and there's a concrete bridge that the horses have to cross. I could have walked her across, but partnering her up with a steady eddy horse just made sense.

Skeets was unimpressed with having to learn to be ponied, but the horse ponying her was even less unimpressed with her antics and just ignored her. Eventually, my black mare got with the program enough to be ponied through drill practice.

I'm so thankful that the trainer offered and was willing to work with Skeeter, who was ... distracted ... by everything going on. If the only training we got in on Saturday was the first two hours, it was so worth it. Luckily, there was still a day and a half of training to go.

At lunch time, I tied her to the trailer with her hay bag and went to the meeting room for our working lunch. Skeets was okay when I left her at the trailer, but apparently a box blew by and she lost her mind. That was pretty much my worst nightmare, but since I was already in the meeting room a quarter mile away, she had to deal with two "strangers" calming her down. She didn't get away from the trailer, thankfully, and did calm down pretty quickly.

After lunch, it was back to the other arena. There was some set-up that needed to be done, so Skeeter got left with a new "uncle" until her pony horse was ready.

This is one tired pony, but we still had hours to go.
Training after lunch got way more intense by adding in toys and a cop car. We've done a LOT of desensitizing with the Mustangeers. A LOT. One of my favorite things is to think of ways to torture the horses, so after a rough morning, Skeeter shone when it was time for the desensitizing portion of training. Umbrellas, tarps, giant soccer ball ... she just looked at all of those and said, "bring it".

But the sirens - those gave her pause. We just don't have many sirens out where we live, so she jumped a bit when they first started, but within minutes was fine. She circled the car both directions, touched it all over (I'm glad I didn't have to wash all of the horse prints off of the car at the end of the day), followed it as it drove around the arena and led it. (Of course, it wasn't just her doing this, it was the entire mounted unit, about 40 horse/rider combinations.)

We'd had a big day by the time we called it quits and I settled Skeeter into her room for the night.

Most of the posse members stayed at the arena in their LQ trailers or travel trailers, but since I don't have either, I went home. After her blow up at lunch, it was hard for me to leave her in a stall with other people to look after her, but I knew she was as tired as I was. Maybe more so.

Throughout the day, the wind never let up.




That much wind is exhausting even when you're not trying to learn new things; the combination of the two wore us plum out, and we still had another day of training to go.