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The Alexander Menagerie -- March 2007

Adventure for Guinevere

My friend Kalisa keeps her horses at a really terrific barn. Well, supposedly it's terrific. Kalisa raves non-stop about it, and although I haven't been there, I trust her opinion. I have chatted on the phone with the barn manager, and she's awesome -- and very interested in clicker training to boot.

Well, I found out that the board rate at this barn is extremely reasonable, and they have two openings in April. So I've decided to move Guin there next week. Moving her will be, I hope, a win-win for everyone. I'm not afraid to ride her, and Kalisa (and her daughter Kyra and the trainer, Monica) will be there for me to go trail riding with on a regular basis. And this will give Kyra a green horse to play with as she develops her training skills.

Man, I wish I had an extra grand a month. I'd put the whole crew there! It will be wonderful to have facilities like an indoor arena and trails again.

I'm really looking forward to this. I need to order hay tomorrow that, hopefully, will be delivered before she arrives. Monica is arranging for the barn owner to transport Guin early in the week, after Guin and the other horses get their annual vaccinations. I need to go out and dig out my tack and clean it, and scrounge up grooming supplies to take with me. I'd love to give her a bath before she goes over, but I don't think that's going to happen. At least I can use a shedding blade on her and try to get rid of some of that hair! I wish I had a working set of clippers, but mine died. Ugh.

Tomorrow Jay and I are tackling the fence. We're going to hit the fence store when it opens tomorrow morning, and we're not quitting until that fence keeps Rowan where she's supposed to be!!! (Famous last words. Sigh. Really, she has turned into a nightmare.)

Friday, March 30, 2007

Fence? What fence?

We don't have a fence on the property that can contain Miss Rowan at this point. I have thee- and four-strand hot-wire tape. Something isn't working, so it isn't hot, and Rowan knows it. So she just crosses from pasture to pasture as she wishes. Most of the time she doesn't even mess up the fence! It absolutely confounds the other horses, who just can't understand why she gets to be somewhere they're not.

Today was a beautiful warm day, and when I got home in the afternoon, I thought I'd let the horses out in the back pasture for a couple of hours. The deer had brought down some of the fence, so first I took the dogs for a run and tightened the fencelines. The horses weren't at all pleased that the dogs went out and they didn't. So they stood at the gate and shook it, and when that didn't work, whinnied plaintively. (It was really quite cute.)

Well, apparently Rowan got tired of waiting. When I got back, she was out of the dry lot, grazing in an area between the dry lot and the first pasture. I let the other horses out, and they took off at a gallop for the back pasture. Rowan was quite annoyed that she wasn't able to reach them, so I finally got to see her fence technique in action. She leans down to the next to last strand, lifts it with her nose, and then somehow jumps through without catching a single foot in the bottom strand (or without damaging the fence).

Tighten the lines, you say? Done that. Daily. It doesn't even slow her down. She just stretches the tape.

Well, I left them in the field and went to Monroe to meet Jay for dinner. While there, we stopped at the Farm and Feed store and picked up various and sundry parts for the electric fence. We absolutely MUST get it hot on Saturday. Rowan has been very good about not wandering too far afield on these little foreys, but I just can't count on that. When I woke up this morning, she was grazing in the front yard!!!

Oh, an extra little tidbit... When I called the horses in for dinner, Miss Princess actually cantered in! That's amazing. She usually just race walks, even when the other horses are galloping around. She must be feeling really good. Her farrier had an assistant last week, and I asked him what breed he thought she might be. Without even knowing she was gaited, he guessed Tennessee Walker. Certainly makes sense!

Thursday, March 29, 2007

Training Rowan to tie, part duex

It's been a while since the weather has been nice enough to do much with Rowan, but I got out for a few minutes today and gave her another tying lesson. She was pretty emotional from the moment I tied her. I used the Aussie tie ring, put the lead rope through just once, and moved to the other side of the fence. My plan at this point is to reinforce her for standing still, and not for just loosening the rope. I don't want her to learn that she can tighten and then loosen the rope to "make" me treat her.

She really had a hard time standing still. She paced and turned a lot. However, she was good with the rope, untangling it from her face and immediately loosening it when it got taut. Just a couple of times did she truly try to pull back and get away. Those times, when she released, I offered her reinforcement. She was frustrated, and she did a bit of rearing. I didn't worry about it for the most part -- she has to work through the emotional stuff and figure out that being tied isn't such a torturous thing. One time, however, she got the rope over her poll, and then reared and twisted, and if I hadn't released the rope. she'd have gone over backwards. Fortunately, she came down forward and didn't pull the rope completely out of the tie ring, so she never actually got loose.

That stunt scared her a bit, I think, because after that I got a lot of opportunities to treat her for standing still, and we were able to quit on a high note. I called Leslie afterwards, and she said I was doing it right, more or less. She suggested that I teach her that pressure on her poll is a cue to drop her head, so she won't hurt herself in a panic if she gets the rope over her head.

Sunday, March 25, 2007

Teaching Rowan to tie

I haven't written in a while, but I did have a session a few days after the last one. I was planning to repeat that lesson, but Rowan was really ancy. So I decided instead to just work on standing quietly while tied. I had two criteria. If she stood quietly, I would count to some number, and then click and reinforce. If she pulled back, I would click the instant she put slack in the rope.

One time she lowered her head and got the rope over her poll. When she stood up, it didn't scare her, but she did pull back until she pulled the rope free of the Aussie tie ring. Oops. That's not a lesson I want her to learn. Next lesson I'll use the long rope and secure it in a way that makes it more difficult to slide.

One thing I really like about this filly is that nothing scares her. Not really. New things are interesting to her. She just rarely spooks at anything.

After that session, the weather turned bad. Nine and a half inches of snow bad. And then rain. We've had a couple of days where the weather was nice, and I should have worked her but didn't. I'll get back on the ball again -- promise.

Friday, March 9, 2007

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