There is a temporary hiatus in bloggery while I wait for some progress with Ace to tell you about, but it's slow in coming at the moment. He persists in trying to tell me how dangerous the barrels are that have always been where they are now and have never been dangerous until a month ago when we started to do a lot more transitions and more difficult work.
Radar was extremely keen (to the point of being overexcited :-) at the farm ride today, probably his last big blast before the opening meet in just over a week.
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I was still resisting any notion of changing seasons. Mention of opening meets makes that nigh impossible.
ReplyDeleteSorry! I won't mention that the leaves are turning here :-)
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Could be he is now associating the barrels with being corrected. My Russell was like that. Hit him once at a cross country fence when I thought he was about to refuse and the next time we competed, I couldn't get anywhere near that fence. He was like that if I corrected him at a spooky thing too. Took a long time to get him accept whatever it was that had triggered a big battle.
ReplyDeleteMaybe put some treats on the barrels to associate them with something nice. Let him eat them. You might add some kind of soothing sound or neck scratch with your fingers as he does. Then use that physical signal every time he starts to react to something.
I'm not a clicker trainer, by any means, but some of the principles do make sense with getting a horse to give you a good response when things are going pear shaped.
Horse brains are wired differently than ours, that's for sure.
Already tried the food thing Jean.
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