The Fading Trot

The Fading Trot

Typically, when I go out trail riding with Kevin and Ellen and I ride in the lead, I will get far ahead of them.  When I pass people up, I warn them that two more horses are coming--and I often say, "I have the fast horse."

Starry can go just as fast as Cole, but if Kevin decides to stay with Ellen, it is because he wants to take it easy.  Starry isn't the slow horse--Dante is.

There is nothing wrong with slow horses.  I had one myself.  Mingo was one of the slowest.  At least Dante will walk sort of fast--and he has a great ground-covering canter.  It is only his trot that tends to be too slow.

The way I made up for lost ground with Mingo is by trotting wherever possible.  The other horses might walk--for whatever reason--but we kept trotting.  When they trotted, I often cantered Mingo to keep up.  

The last few years, Dante has become a big dawdler.  If Ellen wanted to trot a section of the trail, he often stopped long before she got to the end.  Then, she has to struggle to get him trotting again.  In the meantime, she lost a lot of ground.  We spend a lot of time waiting for her, and she spends a lot of time riding alone.  She gets frustrated, and Dante just keeps getting worse.  She calls it her "fading trot."  He just goes slower and slower, and then he is walking.

Another thing that Dante does if we are trotting, and Cole is in the lead, is as soon as Cole stops, Dante wants to stop, too.  The problem is that Cole could be 100 feet ahead when this happens.

Ellen admits that she probably caused much of the problem.  With all her anxieties, she often felt relieved when he stopped, so she just let him.  Another possibility is sitting-trot fatigue.  She is still trying to master a sitting trot.  The problem with Dante is that he is so slow and incredibly smooth, that it can be very hard to post.  She tends to get tired after a while, and when her body quits working, Dante may be sensing her fatigue.  He is a very sensitive horse.

Remember, I ride the fast horse.  I don't see most of what is going on, and I always assumed that Dante was stopping when Ellen asked him to.  I didn't realize that Dante was running the show.

The other day, she was lamenting about her difficulties.  I then told her what I would do if I was her.

We try to train with positive reinforcement as much as we can.  Clicker training has been a marvelous success for us, but sometimes it isn't the best tool in the toolbox.  When Cole tries to eat branches on the side of the trail as we pass them by, I can't see how clicking him will stop him from it.  I tap him on the neck with the whip.  After a few times, he no longer tries very hard.  If I branch happens to be right by his mouth, he can't resist, but the rest of them he only looks at. 

Ellen said that when she would gently try to keep Dante going with her seat and legs, he just ignored it.

I told her that when she feels him slowing down, to tap him with the whip.  It doesn't have to be very hard--just hard enough for him to know it.  If he still stops, at that point she should use the whip again, but harder than the first time.

Really, this isn't rocket science at all.  Ellen could have figured it out for herself, but she is one of the gentlest people I know.  Using a whip on Dante is a hard thing for her to do.  I basically gave her permission.

To be effective with something like this, it is important to be consistent.  Horses love consistency.  They want to be able to predict the future, and uncertainty is stressful for them.  If Ellen was not going to allow him to do a fading trot, she can't let him do it sometimes and surprise him with a whip tap other times.  Consistency is very important in all horse training.

The next day, we went out for a ride.  Remember, I am in the front, so I didn't observe much of this.  Here is what Ellen told me happened.

The first couple times Dante tried to fade, he ended up stopping even though Ellen tried her new system.  That was it for the rest of the ride.  He still tried to slow down, but a light tap of the whip got him going before he stopped.  He tried to fade in all the usual places where he is in the habit of stopping.  He tried when Cole stopped trotting.  He tried randomly, too, but he never stopped again.

Since we are clicker trainers, Ellen also spent some time clicking him when he kept going.  Of course, that meant he stopped to get his treat, but it did show him that he was doing the correct thing.

After a while, he didn't just keep going, but he offered his "arena trot."  

It was weird.  Every time I looked back, Dante was trotting.

Dante learned the lesson on the very first day.  We were awestruck.  It is hard to break bad habits.  It got me wondering, maybe Dante didn't want to stop but did it out of habit, or like Ellen said, he stopped because he felt her getting tired--or maybe both?  Could it be that he always wanted to keep going because he wanted to get back to us?  Did he stop because he thought Ellen wanted him to?

The next ride was even better.  He never stopped on his own at all.  When he tried to fade, Ellen was able to keep him going with her legs.  The whip was no longer necessary.  She continued to click him when he kept going, but only now and then.  He continued to give her his lovely show trot.  She said he seemed more responsive to her legs in general.  I think he is now paying more attention to her to see what she wants.

My old horse, Cruiser, was our energizer bunny.  He kept going and going.  He was never tired.  We now have a new one, and his name is Dante.  He is just a slower bunny, but he keeps going and going.