Spring at Last!
It has been such a long winter. When we could get on the trail or just the hill leading to the river, I took my "Ace Number One" trail horse, Cole. I just worked with Trifecta in the arena. Of all the horses I have ever had, he is the horse that I enjoy arena riding with the most. He barely spooks, (unlike Cole, Cruiser and Ranger,) doesn't go too slow, (unlike Mingo and Dante,) doesn't go too fast, (unlike Cruiser and Cole,) and seldom does anything dangerous like bolting, (unlike Cruiser and Cole.) We do have problems and frustrations, but working them out and succeeding is one of the joys of training. I have also been able to ride him outside a lot in the last month or so. Our current barn has a very large outdoor arena with all-weather footing and great drainage. Mud is minimal in this muddy time of year.
Still, as much as I enjoy riding him in the indoor and outdoor arenas, I am starting to get excited about trail riding with him again. We have only been able to cross the river the last few weeks. I have been taking Cole out with Kevin and Starry. Ellen is still not ready to cross in her head, but I think it will be soon. And then it will be time for Trifecta.
We have been reviewing the "Bus Stop Game." That is where I take him to the end of the driveway, and we watch the cars go by. Sometimes, we will cross the street, walk to the next house, cross the street and come back home. The first day I did that, he was horrible when a car came by, and it discouraged me. Since then, though, he has been better. We don't get a lot of cars when we ride to the trail, and it isn't that far of a ride on the street, but we get enough to make it important that our horses are traffic safe.
Ellen often does this with Dante, too. It is a running joke with us about the driver's reactions to Trifecta versus Dante. With Trifecta'as dazzling blond mane and tail and naturally higher head carriage, we get a lot of people slowing down to look at him and waving. Dante--none at all. Of course, any knowledgeable horse person can recognize how beautiful Dante is, but the general public doesn't know any better and they go all ga-ga over Trifecta.
On one of the warmer days that we had, I decided to lead Tri down to the river. Ellen stayed up at the barn so she could ride Dante without Trifecta distracting him. (One of my most difficult challenges with the little guy is keeping him away from the other horses--particularly his best friend, Dante.)
My biggest problem with Trifecta is that he gets just so very excited about going down the trail. He just loves it so much. He walks fast, his head is up--looking all around and he is so fascinated about everything. All of our horses seem to like to go down the trail, but Trifecta takes it to a whole new level. After a break of many months, I wasn't sure of what to expect from him. I remember that last spring, he was pretty bad the first few trips.
He marched down the driveway with much enthusiasm, as always. My goal was to try to make it as calm an experience as I could. We stopped at the end of the driveway and waited for a few cars to pass to review traffic, but there weren't any. After a minute of standing we proceeded down the street. We only made it a couple of driveways when I saw a car approaching from the front. I decided to stop him in that driveway so we could watch. As it passed, I heard a car coming from behind, so we just stayed put. Once that one passed, I asked him to walk, and he jumped up into the air with glee. We call it "The Lambert Leap." Dante, the full Lambert Morgan, does it all the time on his transitions when he is excited. Trifecta is only half Lambert, so it only happens half the time.
After that one expression of his emotions, he then walked steadily to the trail, so I clicked and treated him. That is one of the great things about having a clicker trained horse. Once you get the behavior you want, you can easily show your horse that that is the best behavior. The hard part is getting the right behavior to start with. Ellen and I have taught our horses the command to put their head down and walk forward on a lead rope and in the saddle. (It backfired with Cole when he morphed the command into doing his silly walk, but it still does settle him down.)
Once we got to the trail, I worked on head down, walk and whoa. We stopped a lot just so Tri could look around. Without all the leaves off the trees, he could see everything, such as the traffic and people on the other side of the river and all the birds and squirrels. I clicked him for his stops and for walking like a gentleman. Sometimes he got a bit too fast, but he did remember our big training success from last year, "control."
For a long time, he had a very hard time just walking down the 2 very steep sections of the hill. He would rush down, out of control. Ellen, who was usually walking next to me, had the idea to use hand signals showing slow, careful steps and saying the word, "control." After he started to understand that, I would ride down the slopes without her and just say the word, and after a while it worked. He learned to control his feet down the slopes instead of letting gravity take over. I am pleased to say, he did very well on the slopes with his control command. To make it easier for him to succeed, I did stop him and re-start 3 times on the first slope and twice on the second to break any momentum he may have been building up.
Once we got to the bottom of the hill, I just let him stand for the longest time to look at things and settle down.
He has always done better going back up the hill than going down the hill, so I knew the biggest challenges were over when we turned around to go home. A few times he walked too fast for me to keep up and a couple times he tried a slow trot. I stopped him a lot to let me catch up, catch my breath and to encourage him to settle down. The trip up was very uneventful, and for that matter, so was the trip down. I just took my time and rewarded him with clicks for doing the right thing. When we got to the street, I let him stand for a while to watch traffic. There was a truck with a small trailer that had some odd machine on it that caused him to take a couple uneasy steps, but he settled down right away after it, and that is important. There were no cars on our walk back to the barn, and he went steadily with his head at a normal level--and of course he got some clicks for it.
Whenever we do something new or review something old like this, I do do a lot of clicking and treating, but I fade it off and replace it with verbal praise and neck rubs--with intermittent clicks and clicks when he does super great. I find clicker training to be the best way to communicate to him when he is doing what I want. The hard part is often just getting that first correct behavior, and with Trifecta, it is often overruled by his general enthusiasm.
But he is a good horse, and when I can bring that good horse out, he is a real joy to ride. Trifecta has the potential to become an outstanding trail horse. Time will tell...
