Sunday, October 19, 2008

The Tao of Spartacus Jones: Romancin' with Brandy

Next day, Brandy still had her halter on her – but she was wearing it like a necklace.

I didn’t think it feasible to try adjusting it was on her.
She literally wouldn’t stand for that.
So I decided the best thing was just to slip it off of her again.
Took some doing.
Every time she lowered her head down to the grain bucket, the halter slipped down her neck to her ears and she didn’t care much for that. After a few times, I was able to time it right, and caught the crownpiece for her so she could slip out of it.
I positioned the halter in the bucket again and let her eat most of her grain through it. Then I removed it and let her finish up the last nibbles while I touched her jaw and forehead….

Between meals, I keep bringing her apples.
Increasingly, I “hide” the apple so she has to do a lot of close-quarters nuzzling and touching to get it. I offer her touch on her jaw and neck.
Sometimes she accepts it easily.
Sometimes not…

After another time or so with the halter-in-the-bucket set-up, it appeared that we’d reached a plateau. I was beginning to feel quite tempted, at certain moments, to “achieve” getting her halter on her and I don’t want to get sucked into that.
As a change of pace, I backed off for a feeding.
No halter.
Just lots of touch. She seemed all right with that.

While I was trying to figure out what to do next, I happened to run into an old acquaintance of mine -- Don Warner, by name --who’s a damn good horseman and has worked with a lot of young ponies.
I’d been fortunate to have seen his manner with horses a few times and admired it, and we’d had some good talks about the connections between horses and everything else. He’d taught me some basic roping techniques, too and I’d had a chance to try “team roping” at his ranch, where he does quite a lot of it.
Then we’d just sort of lost touch. You know how that goes.

Anyway, it was good – as well as a pleasing piece of synchronicity --- to see him again.
I mentioned Brandy to him and he suggested an approach he’d actually told me about before. I’d even done once it to get a catch rope around a reticent gelding.

It’s a very ju jitsu sort of thing.
If, for example, you want to slam a guy’s face into the bar, you don’t just grab the back of his neck and push. He’ll resist, pushing back and now it’s a wrestling match. Instead,
you grab him by the back of his collar and PULL, as if to pull him backwards off the barstool. His natural reaction is to resist by pulling forward. As soon as he starts to do that, you reverse your pull, going along with his energy and direction, adding your push to it. In a sense, he slams his own face into the bar.
Using your opponent’s own reactive force against him.
Elementary, Watson.

Here’s how Don caught me it applies with horses.
In the case of the reticent gelding, he would tolerate some light touch on his neck. Instead of trying to get a rope around him --from which he’d bolt --- I gently pushed him away from me.
Naturally, he pushed back.
When he did, I yielded away from him.
I did this a couple times.
Then, when he pushed back, I yielded a little, but left my hand in position and when he pushed back, he put his neck right under my hand and toward me so I was almost hugging him around the neck. --- something he’d not have allowed me to do otherwise.
After doing this a few times, I repeated it with the end of the catch rope in my hand, and when he pushed himself under my hand, I just let the rope fall over his neck.
Once we got to that point, he was fine. He allowed me to loop his nose and away we went.

I’m a little chagrinned that I didn’t think of doing something like this with Brandy, because, as with all magic tricks, the solution is obvious, once someone explains it to you.
The next time she and I got together for dinner, I took this tack, capitalizing on her high motivation to eat her grain as an aid, the grain, itself, a huge reinforcement.
And I experimented a little.
If I just reached out, say, to touch her poll, she might shy away. But if I pushed her away first, when she pushed back to reach her grain, she was perfectly all right with that contact.
So we danced this danced through dinner and made appreciable progress, I think. She accepted substantial and sustained touch all around her head and neck and some even down toward her chest.

This feels like a good direction to go in right now.

sj

7 comments:

Tamara Baysinger said...

Interesting technique, and one I haven't used per say, though it appears a variation on my standard gentling method. I like it better than the bribe/tempt with treats method.

While I do sometimes use a bucket of grain to help a horse get over his initial fear of being close to, and touched by, a human, I move past that phase fairly quickly. The horses learn, you see, exactly how far they need to let you go in order to get what they want. Then, your progress plateaus because the horse will come boldly forward to eat...until you try to push past that horse's chosen limit, at which time the horse backs away. Horses are very good at training people. ;-)

A lot of people disagree with me on this point, but I don't believe in feeding treats out of my hand until a horse is well advanced in his training (meaning, under saddle for a good year.) Even then, I hand feed only rarely. Why? Because horses don't see treats like humans do -- as gifts. Instead, an oft-treated horse often comes to view treats as his right. Eventually, when treats are not offered, he demands them...an event which is annoying at best, and dangerous at worst. My humble advice? Think hard about whether you want to train a horse to mug you for treats.

A horse thinks about a human who brings treats as he thought of his mother when he was a foal: FOOD SOURCE. MINE. GIMME. NOW. If the mare refuses, the foal pushes, butts, and nips until he gets what he wants (or, if the mare has reached the time of natural weaning, she forcibly drives him away). I'd rather not get to the point of having to drive my horse away, so I don't treat out-of-hand. (I do feed treats from buckets, sometimes, or take my horses out for hand grazing.)

Anyway, back to the pushing-away technique. I'll be interested to hear more about this. It makes sense to me. Horses naturally move into pressure; it is we who train them to do otherwise. I wonder if you'll eventually move the concept to a larger scale, that is, moving the whole horse away to create a dichotomy between being away from you (means work) vs being with you (means petting and rest). I like this method because the horse always has a choice. My job is to make the right thing easy and the wrong thing hard, to be fair and consistent, and to reward the try.

Brandy is lucky you found her. :-)

Spartacus Jones said...

Thanks, Tamara!
That's a good point about treats/food. I know it's a double-edged sword, to be sure, and a thing that requires meticulous balance.
I think it was the sense of Brandy starting to train me that tipped me off it was time to change.

"My job is to make the right thing easy and the wrong thing hard, to be fair and consistent, and to reward the try."

That really says it!

Thanks for your post.

I think it's ME who's the lucky one. :)

sj

Lori Skoog said...

SJ

You are being tuned in by a lot of people now...isn't it interesting how this whole thing works. I have met so many new people...I read your links, people who read my Journal find people like you and Fe. Now Virginia is reading you, I am reading Hilinda. I'm loving it.
Anyway...glad your back and still working with Brandy. It sounds like things are coming along. As for treats, it's different with every horse. When in a training situation, I don't offer treats, but at the end of the session I have no problem giving the horse a piece of carrot or apple. Not one of the 6 horses here is a pig about it, nor do they nose me to see if I have something. And as you well know, your animals reflect you. If you are calm and sensitive to them, they are the same. I think you get it and feel it.
Lori

Victoria Cummings said...

SJ - You're getting some good advice. "Make the right thing easy and the wrong thing difficult...." that's the Mark Rashid, Ray Hunt, Tom Dorrance philosophy which is what I follow. Those guys are my heroes and everything I do with my horses is influenced by them. Sounds like you and Brandy are ready to start dancing together.

Lori Skoog said...

SJ...I am going to try to start responding on my own posts...left you a message this morning. Thanks for the comments.
Lori

Unknown said...

I was very intesrested in your post. You have acted well trying to understand and beaing patient. That's good.

Spartacus Jones said...

Thank you all for your comments!
Very much appreciated.
:)

sj