I posted on my blog the other day about my sister's coloured coblet Nemo. He's always been challenging with a very well developed flight instinct - scared or confused = "bye" and you cannot hold him with strength, same with riding. He has come on fantastically in the last few years, the behaviuor that started with him literally not willing to walk a small circle in the school ridden without ducking and diving into a corner has gone, he hacks out with a 13 year old on their own, does PC etc etc and rarely the behaviour surface unless there is a reason behind it - ie he recently hurt himself slightly, not enough to show, but enough to change his behaviour to let us know he needed the physio (clever boy
)
Anyway, out of the blue he has suddenly last week got very scared on a certain part of the walkway down from the fields - unfortunately we have no choice but to use that path as its the only between the field and the stable. He does have a bit of pony monkey brain about him too, so has been known to duck and dive occasionally out of
, so he is always led in a dually that up till now has worked beautifully - until this week!
It got so bad beginning of the week that my sister and niece nearly gave up trying to get him in as he just kept charging off and you CANNOT hold this pony once he decides to go, you could put him in barbed wire and you wouldn't stop him, not helped by the fact the strip is not that wide, so he gets straight forward in front and you cannot get to the side to pull him off the straight line and he knows it. The more pressure applied the faster and further he will run.
Its definitely one particular place on the strip, which is nearer the stables then the field, but he gets near to it and turns tail and runs all the way back to his field. Something has spooked him and he has turned it in his brain into a major issue, but we don’t know what. In the end my sister could only get him in, by my niece having a haynet on her shoulder and Nemo following it down and eating a bit here and there and he was then OK - although my sister did say he looked a bit shut down as if he had to almost switch off to get past the scary place.
He then behaved beautifully on the yard, to be ridden and to be led back up the strip in the same place!! Its really bizarre and giving us a few head scratching moments that's for sure!
Not helped by useless comments from fellow liveries about bullets........
Why is it that a horse/pony puts a hoof out of place, showing natural behaviour IMHO, ie flight instinct and people automatically start having opinions about naughty behaviour, chifneys, bridles (which he easily runs through anyway!) and bullets....!!!
Now I'm really not that enlightened that I wouldn't be prepared to use firmer handling for some horses and some situations, but with this pone its not appropriate and even if it was, its pointless as it absolutely will not work at all, ever! For a start to work with any horse/pony, you kind of need them to be with you! Any remotely strong pressure and Nemo just leaves, end of, the more you do, the more he leaves. We have tried more traditional methods (nothing major heavy or nasty), he can run through a bridle if he feels the need to.
So.......to the point.! After my sister was going into meltdown about it, as she is so worried about his future due to the fact he is likely to be sold end of the summer (small niece gone off riding), I took over and obviuosly decided that the only and most sensible, kindest way to deal with it was clicker combined with very very light pressure/release and advance/retreat work.
Clicker is just so cool isn't it
Day 1 - armed with Daisy's rope halter and longer line (not that the length of line matters that much as he can get away from you in a lunge line - honestly this pony is impossible to hold if he is in full flight bog off mode), I trundled up to the field, thankfully late evening so no audience
It was the first time in the rope halter, although interestingly I feel he has shown he prefers the feel of it to the Dually -he is never overally keen to have the Dually on, doesn't misbehave, but you can sense it - the rope halter he is very happy with. The Dually in my experience is a bit of a dull aid, it doesn't have as much feel as a nice leather head collar and the nose bit does not release at all satisfactorily.
Anyway, we started on a good note, not......he bombed off the down the smaller strip inside his field, that has been fenced off as a walkway to another field, the minute I tried to gently turn him to put the electric back up - cue naughty Chase taking the opportunity to nip past and eat the better grass on the strip!
Nemo couldn't get anywhere major, so I left him down the bottom where he had run to the furthest point
(this was the same day my sister had all the problems earlier, so he was still in flight mode I felt), bundled Chase back in the field with a bit of bribery, where him and his field mate proceeded to gallop and buck along the fence line whilst I went to get Nemo - thanks guys!
But, bless Nemo, I approached quietly, just took up the end of the long lead and stood and waited for him to look at me, click/treated and he soon trundled over and got a further click/treat (its amazing how they remember this stuff - I've only done limited clicker with Nemo when we first had him 2 years ago because he got a bit nippy and it was hard getting him through the mugging stage with the children around handling him as they were younger then).
I spent 10 minutes on the small more confined strip doing light pressure/release - the lightest possible and click/treat and that pony's response was just amazing - he was following my every body movement, halting when I did, turning when I did even sharp turns (which his method of evasion is to set his neck the other way and just turn away from you or whizz round you) - I was so proud of him.
I then risked taking him out of his field and main gate and onto the proper strip down to the field - he again did some beautiful "with me" work on the first half of the strip down to the problem area - lots of advance/retreat, circles, halt, backwards. However, we got down to the "danger zone" where his behaviour presents itself - slightly before the scary zone and he caught me out and bogged off back up the strip.
After a few well chosen swear words under my breathe, deep breathe, deliberately let that tension go and I walked up after him and calmy again just stood a little in fromt of him and asked him to look and then come to me - which he did
20 minutes later of more of the same kind of work, I had him working nicely in circles and turns in the "danger zone" - which happens to be by my field where another path comes up and connects to the main one and is just before the scary part of the path - so what he has also been doing is using the alternative path to bog off down to avoid going to the scary zone.
I therefore spent time circling him in that part of the path and just standing looking at the view chatting to him, all the time click/treating any positive looks or non tension in my direction. He stayed with me through it all, despite obviously being tense and scared by the thought of going to the scary place.
The power of the clicker is amazing!!! I left the session at that point and we trundled quite calmly and happily back to the field. All of this work was done on a loose no pressure line and fnigertip asks for changes in bend/direction or body posture for halts - no pressure, nothing for him to react again, but without the clicker this wouldn't have been possible.
Day 2 - I did the same thing, but got a tiny bit further into the scary zone, he was brilliant - not one single bog off moment, some slight tensing of his neck and a look, but I just dropped any pressure at all and dropped my energy, stopped and verbally asked him to come to me, any slight movement or relaxation and I clicked and he soon got over the moment.
Day 3 yesterday and my niece took Chase down too and made sure he was always there just ahead or beside Nemo for reassurance and with a few stops, circles, advance/retreat and then with me walking backwards in front of Nemo, line completely loose, he walked down past the scary place completely and utterly calmly, totally focussed on what I was asking and his reward and we managed several calm stops in the scary place and me asking for calm steps at a time (I figured the wrong thing to do would be to rush him past the scary place).
So so pleased, early days and I don't expect the behaviour to be eradicated, but he's now back on track after only 3 days. I know for fact that if we had gone the bridle/chifney(never!) route, it may have been a case of being able to bully him down a couple of times, but there would always be a huge risk of him getting free. To me it was a no brainer and hopefully using the clicker we can get him over this little blip - he is the type of pone that once over a fear, he really gets over it - he's a pony of extremes.
He has certainly taught me patience and respect, as you CANNOT use high pressure on this pony to make him do something. I’ve known 17hh big horses that are easier to “make” them stay with you and do something then this pony.
Its funny though as I know the pure clicker guys and the pure NH guys disagree on this, but I find the clicker actually works really nicely with pressure/release techniques for the very fact that you can teach the NH stuff without having to use all that awful high end pressure to get the horse to understand the gentle low level pressure - its actually made me more interested in NH stuff because of this, as I’ve always been put off by the yanking and pressure used by the likes of Parelli and MR (have you SEEN himuse a Dually!!!!) and to me whilst I’m not adverse to upping pressure when need with some horses, I actually thing traditional methods work as well as high end NH stuff, so have veered away from it. With clicker it mostly becomes unnecessary. I don’t think I could ever be a pure clicker/PR trainer, I think using pressure/release helps the horses to understand easier and more quickly, but its a fantastic “Yes” tool!!!
