Inspiration
Christening the Ring
Blitz and Boomer take a visit to Iron Horse Farm
Yesterday my mom and I trailered out two ponies (Blitz and Boomer) to our new farm, Iron Horse Farm. We plan to move the horses in this coming weekend, but we just couldn’t wait any longer to try out the ring (we’ve gone for so long without one its like a brand new toy). So we practiced some of our games for an upcoming show we have on Saturday. I then introduced Blitz and Boomer to the new Tuff Ball that I had purchased for them. Anyway I won’t go into much detail about it – because you can see for yourself by watching the videos below. Its funny even though Blitz and Boomer have the same father, and they are both left brained horses, they both reacted differently to seeing the ball for the first time. Blitz was very nervous about it and Boomer walked right up to it and began biting and kicking it.
-KD
www.ponypaintings.com
My Buddy Nitro
Dressage Rally with Nitro 2002
So I feel like I’ve completed an entire day and its only 11am! While my parents are away at my brother’s graduation in North Carolina I’m in charge of our many animals. My parent’s dog, Trooper, is staying with me, I also have to feed the cat at their house, and of course the 9 horses we are in charge of. On top of that my retired dressage horse, Nitro, now has an abscess in his hoof. Poor guy is hobbling around on 3 legs. So last night after working a 10 hour day at my shop (I own a custom picture framing shop) I drove out to the barn to check on him. Seeing that his condition hadn’t improved I scheduled a farrier visit for today. So I woke up really early, loaded up all the dogs, helped my hobbling husband (he broke his foot on tuesday) to the car and headed for the barn. I began soaking and removing Nitro’s poultice for the farrier – and when he arrived I took on the task of holding Nitro still. Now Nitro is a 16.3 hand Thoroughbred/Conemarra/Welsh cross – yes he should of been a pony as his mother was 13 hands, today I found myself wishing he was. Nitro, although much improved, at 23 years old is a pain in the butt to keep still for the farrier. We have been battling this issue (along with his fear of cows) for 10 years now, but if you saw him when I brought him home I think you would be VERY surprised how far he’s come. He has no respect for personal space and he has no problem barreling through anything that stands in his way. Needless to say I got clocked in the face several times by his massive head which resulted in a fat lip.
Nitro at USDF Young Rider Championships
Anyway, after an hour of chipping away at his foot still no relief was found, so we opted to wrap his foot back up and wait for whatever is in there to work its way out on its own. So poor Nitro is still hobbling around on 3 legs. By this time its getting close to the time I need to open up my shop. So I quickly feed and turn out some of the horses (one of our co-op people was supposed to feed instead of me). I load up the dogs again and head back to my apartment, quickly change then its off to feed the cat at my parents. And amazingly with 5 minutes to spare I unlock the door to the shop. Now here I sit writing this post, utterly exhausted, when I really should be framing something. So thats been my day so far – and I just have to do it all over again as I’m scheduled to feed the horses tonight too. I’m tired just thinking about it – the things we do for our horses. 🙂
USDF Young Rider Championships
So aside from that, the real thing I wanted to talk about today was Nitro. Now I usually write about “The Trick Ponies of Chincoteague” but dealing with Nitro today got me thinking about his story. So here goes. When my parents bought Nitro for me I was 13 (I’m now 25). I had sprouted long long legs and outgrew my childhood pony, Oopsie Daisy (whom I had up until last year when he passed away). So my parents decided it was time I got a bigger horse as I had become extremely interested in Dressage. After many attempted purchases (one horse I had on trial flipped me over backwards when I tightened the girth) we finally found Nitro. He was up for sale at a dealers barn – and while I hesitate to purchase from dealers, I had been looking for almost 2 years and there was just something different about Nitro. This 16.3 hand grey was built like a tank, but his eyes were so gentle and kind. My parents purchased Nitro to a tune of $6,000 thinking he had been to events and kinda knew his way around the block. Later we were to learn that he had only had one owner (who had him foaled by her pony mare) and he pretty much did nothing his whole life besides be a “pasture pet” and then he was sent to the dealer to be sold at 14 years of age.
Nitro makes a great Super Hero for USDF Pas De Deux
Now your probably wondering why we didn’t try to find this out before we bought him – and well its because he was well behaved and seemed to know a lot of things and we trusted the dealer. Big mistake, because about 30 days into having him he went all split personality (we now believe he was under the influence of a 30 day tranquilizer). Nitro began having panic attacks, kicking out at fences and people when I rode him, spinning, sweating bullets, and simply walking on top of anything that got in his way, this included me. Some his background began to emerge – he has these dents in his neck which we were told happened when a bunch of geldings broke into Nitro’s field and attached him – who knows if thats true, but I sorta think it is because he’s always had issues passing horses he didn’t know in warm-up arenas. But the fact is (other than being tranquilized and taken to a new home, and being attacked by horses) we didn’t really believe he was abused, or had a horrible home in the past. So really – why was he so crazed?
To this day I’m still really not sure. I wish I had discovered clicker training back then, it probably would of helped me a ton. But I began working with a very nice trainer who believed in natural horsemanship, if it wasn’t for her I don’t think I could have fixed Nitro. Many a times throughout the process of retraining Nitro my parents threatened to sell him, they thought he was too dangerous for me. I can’t even count how many times he knocked me down in the barn only to run back to the pasture. But somehow I managed to evade my parents attempt to sell Nitro, and honestly if it wasn’t for him I wouldn’t be the rider I am today, he taught me how to ride through anything (in a confident and humane manner I might add). My biggest hurdle with Nitro was getting him to trust me – and not letting him push my buttons to the point of frustration. So in my lessons I began working on the ground with him teaching him to “follow me” – I guess looking back now it was probably very similar to the “join up” method so many trainers use today. To this day Nitro will follow me at liberty over jumps, through obstacles, at the trot and even canter – its our own special game we like to play. So for probably 3 years I spent working on the basics, I’m not going to go too far into it, because honestly I always write way too much in these posts. But in the end I produced a calmer horse, that I could control and even though he occasionally had panic attacks – I could gently calm him down again. Nitro went on to take me through 2nd level Dressage, we earned reserve champion at the USDF Young Rider Championships, and in 2006 he took me through my C-2 Rating in Pony Club. This was a HUGE accomplishment because jumping was a big contributor to Nitro’s panic attacks (luckily for him I loved Dressage). But being asked to complete a cross country course as well as a stadium course to pass the rating was very hard for Nitro. I probably spent several days just getting him to take one very very small step down jump in the woods. But he did it, maybe not with flying colors, but he atleast made it through.
I actually did try to clicker train Nitro in 2007, he was nearing retirement then, but I decided it would be fun to try to get him to target a big yellow ball. He sort of understood, but I truly believe he has ADHD, I could not keep his focus for more than a minute. But being 23 years old and after 10 years of working hard for me, I think he’s earned his retirement, so I wasn’t going to push the clicker training. When my family makes our big move to Iron Horse Farm in a week (yippee!) I may start up with the clicker training again on Nitro. By then we will have a more adequate working area, the place we occupy right now is really not conducive to working with a VERY big horse that is sort of set in his ways.
So thats Nitro’s story (well the shortened version), he was a huge part in teaching me how to train horses, I think he may have been my toughest case (Minnow comes a close second – but being 1/2 Nitro’s size he was a bit more manageable). And as a short side note, Nitro came with the original name Royalty’s Pal and I’m sure you can guess why I renamed him Nitro (Niatross is his show name). 🙂
-KD
www.ponypaintings.com
Rope Riding
I’m hugely addicted to the website Etsy.com, I used it a ton when I was planning my wedding last year – its a great resource for any and all handmade things. Much like Ebay, Etsy is meant as an outlet for artists to sell their handmade items to the world. They even have a section where you can request handmade things and other artists can bid for the chance to create your dream item. As I hit my usual website searches tonight (craigs list for a 3 horse bumperpull trailer, ebay for playfood for Minnow’s act, and Etsy for Chincoteague Pony items) I came across some pretty neat handmade tack on Etsy. Someone has listed an handmade Indial Bosal that is soooo similar to the bitless bridle I am currently using at 1/4 of the cost ($16.00). I bet it works just as well too! Just had to share it with everyone! Enjoy!
-KD
www.ponypaintings.com
HorseFlix
Ok, so I admit I’ve been sort of M.I.A. from my blog the last few days, but I have a very good excuse! I’ve spent the weekend (my weekend counts a 1/2 day saturday thru monday since I hold hours at my shop on saturday from 10-4 and I’m closed sunday and monday) at my family’s new horse farm, Iron Horse Farm. Unfortunately it rained all weekend so while our plan was to finish the fence building we instead hung fixtures and worked on electrical stuff.
But anyway – on to the real topic of this post, HorseFlix. I stumbled across this website that is very very intriguing. Apparently it is very similar to the popular Netflix, which my husband and I use to the fullest as we are huge movie buffs, but instead you can rent horse movies and instructional dvds. The website says plans start at $9.99 a month and it looks like you have 21 days to keep and watch the movie before it needs to be mailed back. This is a neat idea if like me you are a visual learner and really enjoy watching instructional dvds on horse training. As someone mentioned in a blog I came across:
Most training and instructional DVDs cost big bucks and it’s often hard to know before hand if you’re going to end up liking it or not (much less whether you’re going to want to watch it multiple times). I usually end up not buying DVDs that I’d like to watch just because I’m unwilling to invest $50 in a DVD that I might not even end up liking.
The other neat thing is that I found lots of the parelli videos on there – and I personally know how much those parelli dvds can cost, renting them would be much more cost effective. And if you need to go back and review something simply just rent the video again. I might just have to try out horsefilix, perhaps I could get a few friends to go in on it and we can all have “horse movie nights” – maybe I’ll even get my local pony club involved. I just might have to hid this from my husband though, he probably won’t like the idea that I’m taking up valuable netflix time for horse videos. 🙂
-KD
www.ponypaintings.com
Clicker Training Community
Today I stumbled across a yahoo group for clicker training horses. And as if I don’t have enough e-mail already – I joined the group. I was surprised to see that this group is over 10 years old and currently has 3,098 members. Wow! Thats a lot of clicker trainers.
Gotta love a good pony roll. Chincoteague Minnow
Upon skimming some of the most recent messages I have found that this group may end up being a great wealth of untapped knowledge. People are posting videos of training their horses, asking questions and finding answers, and even discussing new techniques.
There are zillions of messages I could comb through, but one in particular caught my eye today.
I’m not sure when to click when riding. I’ve realized I started a habit
of doing it like this. Theres all kinds of little bits and pieces I
want to reinforce but what I’ve been doing is little behavior chains.
For example: Go forward, soften to the bit, move your shoulder away,
follow the rein, step your hips over to stop. Click! Each piece is being
rewarded by the release of pressure and the click comes at the end.
Each piece has been reinforced with the clicker individually in earlier
sessions. I’m wondering if I should avoid clicking for the completion
of each behavior chain. It seems she will start to think the thing I
really want her to do is stop if I always click at the end. Maybe not,
I don’t know??
I spent a good year clicker training Minnow to keep moving when I vaulted off.
As I mentioned before I don’t proclaim to be any sort of expert on clicker training – I consider myself a hobbyist and I do it for the pure enjoyment and to make learning a better experience for me and my horses. That being said – as I’ve admitted before – I really haven’t read any clicker training books. I’m not really a “book” learner, I would much rather learn from life experiences, the occasional article/video online, or watching demos. So when I read this question it hit home because I have been contemplating the same thing lately – when is the right time to click when riding? Now I could of gone out and bought every book off the shelf to find the answer, but personally I think its better to find what works for me and my horses. I’ve been experimenting with it myself on Boomer (Chesapeake Boomerang) and I think I’ve discovered that its different for every horse/rider combo and every task at hand. I think for Boomer it was important in the beginning to click and reward him for small simple things, like moving away from my leg pressure even the slightest, but now as he is understanding the concept better he’s not going to get rewarded until he leg yields completely to the rail like I wanted. And as we continue his training I may be racing him through a set of poles and as I ask him to yield to my leg pressure by each pole – he won’t get rewarded until he completes the entire pattern being completely responsive to my leg pressure.
Minnow moving away from leg pressure as we round the bucket.
Who knows if I’m doing it the “correct way” – but is there really a correct way? I mean isn’t training an animal about creating a language that you and that animal can understand? So what if I do it the total opposite of the way its meant to be done – if I can get to the end result that I wanted in a positive way then I think its a success. Thats what I think is so great about clicker training. There doesn’t seem to be a “this is the way its supposed to be done” method in my opinion, its about utilizing a simple “click” to take the place of a “your right” and how you get to the end result is completely up to the trainer – there is no one right way.
-KD
www.ponypaintings.com
P.S. you may notice that I accompany all of my posts with videos and/or photos – this is for all you visual learners like me out there. I don’t think I could read anything unless it had a picture 🙂 enjoy!
