A Banner Day

 

A Banner Day

I might be retired, but Ellen still works.  Fortunately, she works second shift, so we can ride together before she has to go in, but there is never enough time to do everything we want to do.  When she has a vacation day, it is my vacation day, too.

She had a vacation day, and we had so many plans.  First, we wanted to take Cole and Dante on a fun ride.  We rode up to the trails by the show ring.  It was only her second time up there this year and my third.  We both love those trails, but to get there, we have to ride through the Lagoon Trail, and it is so close to the street, that it can make Ellen nervous.  We basically have to go when the conditions are perfect, ideally a weekday and we hit the jackpot on this vacation day.  

It was a totally uneventful ride.  Dante was busy looking at everything, which he feels is best done at a walk, so there wasn't a whole lot of trotting involved.  That turned it into a 2 hour ride, but we weren't in a hurry--we was a vacation day!

When we got back, we planned to take Trifecta across the second river to the trail that he had only been on 3 times before.  I wanted to have Ellen there to walk with me, but I still wanted to get some trotting in, so she drove down to the park and left her car not that far from the second river crossing and started that way on foot.  As it turned out, Kevin got a late start on his Starry ride, so with my trotting, we eventually caught up with him not far from the second river crossing and Ellen and we all continued the ride together.

This is the first time Trifecta has been with Starry on the trail other than a very short ride with him when we first started our trail riding 2 years ago.  I have been reluctant to ride with Starry because Tri walks fast and Starry walks slow.  That normally wouldn't be a big problem, but Starry can be unpredictable, and when a horse gets too far ahead of him, he will just take off, sometimes cantering out of control, to catch up.

The ride was a success.  On the way out, Starry was happy to walk along with Ellen, and Trifecta did his fast walk to the end of the trail.  We waited for them to catch up, and we headed home.  There was only one incident where Starry took off to catch us.  I heard Kevin yell, so I just stopped Tri until everything was under control.  After that, I told Kevin to just let us know if we got too far ahead and we would stop and wait for them.  That is good practice for Trifecta, and most of the time we were stopping before Kevin ever said anything.  It helped that Starry was walking faster than normal to try to keep up.  It turned out to be a very good ride with Starry and Trifecta, and we will do it again in the future without hesitation.  

That only left Henry.

Since it hadn't rained in days, the river was really, really low.  It was time to cross to the other side.

We tried once before.  Henry was doing really good with walking along the edge of the water and dipping his toes in to cross, so some weeks ago, we decided it was time to cross.  It was a disaster.  While he was on the rocks and shale island, he was fine.  His whole body got into the water while still standing on the island.  Unfortunately, after that the river bottom is slippery uneven shale.  When he stepped on the shale, he slipped and panicked, spun around to go back, slipped again and half fell in the water.  It was really terrible, and I was so upset.  Henry was unhurt, so when he seemed calm, I walked him back and forth along the edge a few times, and once turned him to face the other side of the river and urged him to step forward a few steps.  That was very successful, so we called it a day.

As far as I could see, we weren't back to square one, we were in negative territory.  We needed a plan.

We hadn't been doing any clicker training with Henry, because everything had been going so well, that it wasn't necessary.  We were using positive reinforcement, of course--I can't train without it.  Henry was doing very well with praise and wither scratches, but I needed help.  We set up a program to integrate a clicker and treats into his training.  With much discussion, we decided I would use clicker and Ellen would just use praise and scratches.  We made Cole and Dante a little too dependent on clicking, so this way, Henry will be able to work both ways, and when Henry is Ellen's she won't have to use a click at all.  I would continue to ground drive him without it, because it is really inconvenient for driving, and he was already doing so well without it.

I just taught him walk, whoa, back, stand, turn-on-the-forehand and polite treat delivery.  When he was good, it was time to start working with the river again.  We would walk down the hill and stand in the water looking towards the other side.  I would ask him for a step, click, treat and go home.

Each time, I would ask for another step.  I was so happy when he was able to get all his feet in the water.  Finally the day came to ask him to step on the slippery slate, and he did.  By now, I was able to ask him to go a few steps at a time before he would get a click.  Sometimes his feet would slip a little, but he didn't panic.  As the days went by, it got easier and easier to get him further and further in the water.  Ellen would be on shore saying, "That's enough.  Time to turn back."

We finally got to the halfway point, and I slowly turned him and brought him back.  I was clicking for walking well, but now I also started to click him for "whoa."  It is very important to be able to stop your horse when crossing to be able to prevent rushing which brings on slipping and possibly falling.  We have fallen in the river with all of our horses, and it is such a horrible thing to go through.  That is why we cross one at a time, (we had a double fall when Cole fell which scared Starry causing him to fall,) and we teach them to go slow and careful.  Halting breaks up their momentum and gives them time to think.

It was time to cross all the way, and this was the perfect day for it--just like it was the perfect day to take Cole and Dante to the show ring trails and to take Trifecta across the second river crossing.

We led him down the hill, and he was as good as could be.  When we got to the river, he went right in.  I clicked him for it and asked for a few more steps, clicked, a few more steps, clicked and so on until we got to the other side.  Each time I clicked him, he naturally stopped to get his treat, so he never built up any speed.  He seemed surprised to find himself on the other side.  We turned to the left and walked about a minute, turned and headed back to the river.  He was great.

Now, the challenge was getting him back.  I remember when I did this with Cole, he was afraid to go back into the water on the way home.  Tri was really bad with rushing down the bank the first time--well actually the first 25 times.  

Henry walked down the bank like a gentleman.  He stepped into the water without hesitation, too.  Now was the time to teach him to walk quietly on the way home, so I got out some really good treats that Ellen gave me.  We would walk a few steps and then I asked him to stop, I clicked, gave him the treat and proceeded.  We did this all the way across the water to the other side.  Success!!!  An A+ event!

It was a banner day!

The next day, I wanted to do it again because the weather was expected to get rainy, and the low river might be a thing of the past.  For all I know, once it gets low enough, it will be too cold for us to lead him across until spring.  

When I led him out the driveway and down the street, he walked with much enthusiasm.  I am sure he remembered crossing the day before and was excited about doing it again.  He was an angel going down the hill and walked into the water very willingly.  After the first steps in, I no longer clicked him for going forward but for stopping.  We made it to the other side quite easily.  

Once again, I took him to the quiet trail to the left.  We walked about a minute, turned around and went back.  I led him past the river bank and a little down the trail the other way.  We stopped a good distance while we were still in the woods, but we could see the part of the trail that opens up and is right next to a fence, which is right next to the paved all-purpose trail, which is right next to the street.  It is a very busy spot, and we let him observe it from a distance.  He treated the cars as if they were invisible, but he did notice the bikes and watched them with great curiosity.  In the future, we will spend a lot of time by the fence to expose him to all the odd things you can see in the park.

We then turned to go home.  Once again, I got the good treats out and stopped him about 3 times crossing the river.  He was awesome.  Another A+ day!  Next time, we will go back to the small, ordinary treats.  Eventually, the clicks will fade away.  It is so important for the river crossings to be solid because if we can't cross the river, we only have the quarter mile hill to ride.  So, after our bad experience, you can't imagine how happy I am that we solved the problem and are well on the way to having a great river-crossing horse.