Weaning

Almost 6 months old! We are weaning Banjo this week. So far all has gone well.

Banjo Whiz

Here is a video about Banjo Whiz, my filly's sire:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=teO6vwuHPCI&feature=youtube_gdata_player

Major update

It's been a fast and furious month and a half since my last update. We've been back home to visit a few times and while that has slowed progress with Banjo some, we are nearly to the end of the foal training method.

One of the biggest pieces of news in the past month is that one of the barns at the boarding facility burned down late one night. It was the barn in the background of the pics in the previous post. It couldn't have been closer. One horse was lost in the blaze as she refused to leave her stall. The barn manager was able to move my mare and filly out of their stall to one further away from the blaze, fire trucks and chaos. The pen they normally stay in was just the width of a one lane gravel road away from the burning barn. The barn manager was able to lead my mare out by her fly mask and the filly came right along behind. She expressed her gratitude for my having such well behaved horses who seemed to know that she was there to help them. I am so thankful for the method and for the time spent working with my mare and filly up to this point. They used the thinking side of their brains in such a terrifying ordeal. I can't imagine the heat and smoke from the barn just a few yards away. I am extremely thankful to Tracy for moving them to safety and extremely thankful to Clinton Anderson for his method that has helped to develop such respectful and trusting partners, even in a one month old filly.

So for Banjo, she has been introduced to everything in the foal training series and we are spending a few last days refining a few things. She backs, leads, will stand at the tie ring, lets me slap the ground with high energy around her without moving, has had her feet trimmed, been wormed, etc all without much fuss. We will spend these last two sessions refining the last few things she has learned and then she gets to just be a horse for awhile. I am so pleased with her progress and I have probably learned as much as she has. I have found that I have gotten the best results when I am patient and use lighter pressure than I realize is necessary sometimes. She learns so fast and wants to be good. In reflection, the days we have had trouble is usually do to too much pressure/intensity on my part or rushing things. When I realized we were about to the end, I pushed too much one night and had a whole pile of trouble. It felt like one of our worst training sessions. The next night I went out with the attitude that I would use less pressure (I have a tendency to nag a bit and then get frustrated and go a little overboard). She is pretty sensitive and responds best to a slight increase of pressure. It was like night and day and felt so much better to get the results I had hoped for.

3 weeks old-more progress

We had a good weekend and introduced some new stuff to Banjo. She had three days off last week due to some evening conflicts so we got caught up this weekend. I taught her some new exercises, here is the list:

•yield the hindquarters off of driving pressure
•yield the hindquarters and spiral out (a leading exercise)
•yield the forequarters off of driving pressure
•desensitizing to the lead rope
•turn and draw

We introduced driving pressure to get Banjo to move away. At the beginning we used steady pressure where I would touch, press, push, then dig (increasing pressure in increments when she would ignore it) to get her to move away. Now that she is not fearful, we can introduce driving pressure. A little one would probably be quite fearful of driving pressure in the beginning so we use steady pressure. As they get older, they are more likely to lean into steady pressure, but they can't lean into driving pressure very easily. The point is to make them uncomfortable for doing the wrong thing (i.e. not moving) and then to immediately release the pressure when you get the desired response. So when I taught her to yield her hindquarters off of driving pressure, I start out by twirling the end of the lead rope at her hindquarters. I increase the pressure if she doesn't respond by lightly letting the end of the rope tap her. If she still doesn't respond then I let it tap her harder and so forth. At the point it makes her uncomfortable she will move away. I start with light pressure every time so that eventually she will learn to respond to a very slight cue. As she learns the exercises I can begin to refine them by asking her with light pressure and then tell her with firmer pressure-as in please? No? Well move NOW. As they are just learning it's is important to let them find the answer by gradually increasing the pressure as I described above. She got the hang of yhq pretty quickly and it is taking more time to get her to yield her forequarters correctly. I need to look and see if David has filmed that one so hopefully I can see something that I can fix so that my cues are more clear.

Yielding the hindquarters and then spiraling out is a leading exercise designed to get the horse to move their feet in a yield and then when they have yielded 360 degrees then you lead them out in a circle. She did okay at this and we have made progress each day (Friday, Saturday, and Sunday). A lot of times they will follow you easily but when you pull on the lead rope and they feel pressure behind their ears they will resist. As they are walking on the circle behind you, you pick up the slack and pull and see if they will come off of it without resisting. I definitely want to go back and review the DVD again to see how Clinton progresses from this exercise to pulling on the lead rope from a standstill. His filly has problems with this progression and I want to refresh my memory so that we can make some more progress on this.

I also introduced desensitizing her with the lead rope...throwing the end of it all over her back and legs wanting her to stand and relax...accepting it without moving. I have tried this three times now on both sides of her body and really saw progress the third time. She naturally wants to move away from it sometimes. She is definitely not too overreactive though so that is helpful!

The final exercise we introduced is turn and draw. Essentially I stand in front of her, toss the lead rope over her neck, and then pull the end around her butt. With let's say my left hand on the lead rope up by the halter, my right hand is on the lead rope that is around her butt. Then I step back, release my left hand, and begin to lightly pull with my right hand. As she feels the pressure on the halter, she will turn her head away and then spin away from me and then complete the circle, facing me. I back up as she is turning and then ask her to come up to me as she completes the turn. She got the hang of this really fast yesterday. Exciting!!!

So I plan to review these things and improve her leading today and tomorrow and see how all that is going before I teach her anything new.

Here are some pics from the weekend:

Moving ahead

We had a good night tonight. I put the lead line on her halter for the first time after we reviewed a few of the basic exercises. She has gotten much better at yielding her hindquarters off of steady pressure. I can touch her lightly and get her to yield...we even had our first 360 degree yield tonight. Yielding the forequarter off of steady pressure seems to need a little more work. Back to leading for the first time with the halter... I reviewed leading with the long line around her neck and the butt rope and she did very well with that so we moved on. She did fairly well and got a little confused a few times. She reared up once trying to figure out how to get rid of the pressure behind her ears and fell over. She was fine-just a little dusty. After that we introduced yielding the hindquarters off o driving pressure and she did really well. It will be fun to build on what we started and she seems fairly sensitive. She caught on pretty quick without too much increase in the pressure. We will review these lessons tomorrow and see if we are ready to move on.

We moved Banjo and my mare out of the foaling stall and into a small dry lot with a small shade cover today. This is great as Banjo has more room to run around and play. I'm glad to get them out of the stall and into some fresh air.

Here's Banjo enjoying a new scratching spot. :)

Changes

We have had a few really good sessions the past few days. Banjo has made some great progress and we have improved a number of the exercises. She has been easier to catch and very curious. She has gotten over some of her fear and doesn't run off like she did at first. That being said, she will now probably begin to test her limits and see what she can get away with. She will see if she can get me to move my feet and test it to see if she can be more dominant than me. :)
We had two great lessons in a row in the stall working through the exercises. Much less resistance and I was doing better about having a purpose to each thing we worked on. We have been reviewing exercises and then adding one new one. That is all we usually have time for in the evenings. As she gets better and more responsive to an exercise we drop it out of the review or just visit it when we need it. For example, she really has the hang of backing off of pressure from the string around her neck. So instead of making that part of our review, I test it when I need her to back up or if she has moved too far past me during one of the other exercises.

Last night we worked with Banjo in the round pen for the first time. She was easy to catch in the stall and so we did a couple things in there and then lead her over with her mama to the round pen. We reviewed a few things and it was great having a little more space. We have been working on leading in a figure 8 so we could practice turning to the left and right and that was getting harder to do in the stall. She had some resistance that we needed to work through and the round pen gave me enough space to move her feet more effectively. To lead her in a figure 8, I have one rope looped around her hindquarters and one around her neck. I pull the butt rope and ask her to move forward. The neck string is used for direction.
The last exercise for the night was a new one. It's another step towards teaching her to lead... This time the long line goes around her neck and I stand off to one side and pull lightly. The goal is to get her to step to me and face me. When she steps to me she gets slack in the rope and a release of pressure as her reward. Its a good transition to the halter as a lot of horses will resist when they feel something pull behind their ears for the first time. Hopefully a repeat of this lesson tonight will go well too.

Making progress

We've worked on groundwork with Banjo for a week now with one day off. Not only has she learned a lot so have I. I've been able to adjust and improve my technique to help get the desired result. We've been able to overcome some resistance and kicking out and are starting to replace it with respect without fear. Thus said we are starting to accomplish more and get better results each session.

Here is a list of the things we've worked on up to this point:
Catching her
Desensitizing her body/face to touch
Yielding her hindquarters
Backing up
Yielding her forequarters
Leading her with a butt rope
Leading figure 8's
Coming off string pressure on her neck
Haltering

When she understands an exercise, we review it the next day and then start working to improve it a little each time. My goal is to get her to move away light pressure until I stop asking her. So in the beginning we look for one step. Then when we get one step we try to get a little lighter and start asking for two steps and so forth. She has made so much progress and I am so excited. Don't get me wrong, we had some struggles! There were a few one that I wanted to toss the lead rope and felt like I wasn't cut out for this. But then with faith, an attitude adjustment, and a little persistence, we make some strides and have a breakthrough. I've seen a big change in her attitude as well. She hasn't kicked out at all and is much more responsive. She had improved the most at yielding the forequarters and still need some improvement at yield the hindquarters. She is also doing much better at leading with the butt rope. I am looking forward to making more progress with her this week.

We have been working with her in the stall still. We tried to work her in a small pen in front of her stall one evening this past week but it was very windy and there were quite a few other distractions. Now that we have made some good progress I think we will try working with her in the round pen. We will see what this week will bring! :)