Tuesday, May 22, 2012

Building Trust

Working with Amigo has consumed at least three hours of my day this past week -- usually an hour in the early morning, and another two after dinner. Spending that much time together allows me to build a unique relationship with this horse, who has never trusted a human before. To clarify, he's also never had reason to need to trust a human, or even to have a relationship with one. He ran with his herd; humans were peripheral to his real life. Only when gathered did he interact with people, and in those cases, he worked to protect himself.

There are several ways I am building trust between Amigo and me:
* The most basic way is by feeding him enough food; Amigo has discovered that he likes grain!  He is still not a healthy weight, although we can see a positive change.  Some trainers would not feed as much as I am; a weakened horse is not as likely to buck, and is therefore easier to "break." However, those horses are never truly gentle, because they never have a foundation of trust that allows them to develop a working partnership with humans.

* Each time Amigo encounters a new obstacle, sight, sound, feeling, I am giving him time to think about it and process it. For example, one evening I spent nearly an hour leading him around our enclosed yard and onto our wooden deck. The sound of his hooves hitting the wooden boards was not something Amigo had encountered before; he needed time to  smell the boards, to place his feet, to hear the "clop." I kept firm pressure on the lead line, communicating through it what I expected him to do, but I never forced or used violence to accomplish that. Instead, I released the pressure any time he made a move in the direction I wanted him to go -- it was therefore a dance between pressure and release, the release becoming Amigo's reward. Once he had stepped up onto the deck, I further rewarded him with physical contact and words; then we repeated the exercise over and over, gradually increasing the difficulty. 

* Amigo's day has begun to take on a shape that he remembers.  We start with round pen work in the early morning; I have been able this week to saddle him, and so after we work, he stands in the barn, saddled, while he eats his grain.  Standing in a stall exposes him to all types of new stimuli, from baby kittens darting between his feet, to dogs barking, to people walking in and out.  While we people attempt to use soft voices and no startling movements, the animals do not.  Amigo is therefore being desensitized to sights and sounds that do resemble the unexpected things that can happen when I eventually ride him outside a pen.  This desensitization, plus the structure of a daily routine that is becoming familiar, help Amigo to learn that the world here is not such a scary place.


* Besides developing a partnership with me, Amigo is learning to rely on the mare I use to train him. She is calm enough that he can look to her for reassurance; yet, as in the wild, she will nip at him when he is not behaving as he should.  This type of relationship is undoubtedly quite familiar to Amigo, even if the mare isn't.
  


It may seem that I am spending a lot of time working with this horse before actually attempting to ride him; that will come.  I believe the foundation of trust is critical, and so I believe this time is well-spent.  If this were a domestically-raised horse, accustomed to human interaction and the sights and sounds of the human world, I could move at a much faster pace.  I don't want to frighten this horse, nor over-stimulate his mind. Fear teaches nothing -- for horse or human.  The horse will still respect me, but his respect will not be based on fear of my punishments. By taking the time Amigo needs to learn to trust me and this new world, I am giving him the ability to become a gentle, useful, working horse.  I am giving him a chance.

Friday, May 18, 2012

Making a Friend

Every journey has setbacks, and the first one came right away: when I picked up the mustang in Colorado, I discovered that he hadn't been fed well and had lost nearly 200 pounds from his weight in December, when footage was taped for the DVD. I almost turned him down, and even looked at a replacement pen of other geldings. In the end, I took him home with me.  He is a black gelding with white markings; I am concerned about how quickly he will gain the weight back, but when he does, he will be a beautiful horse.

So, I have to earn this mustang's trust in a very basic way - by providing him ample food and water at all times. Some guys will deprive a horse in order to wear it down; but this teaches it nothing. Any time a trainer creates an atmosphere of fear for the animal, he/she is opening the way to a fight down the road. Starvation is a fear, at our most basic animal level. 

Once our mustang ate his fill through the night Saturday, it was time for introductions. Early Sunday morning, I entered the round pen where the mustang was corraled, knelt down in the sand, and remained motionless there. It was all I could do to stay still! The gelding circled and circled, finally coming up and sniffing my shoulder before again running away. It was a small, but incredibly significant, moment: up until this point, the gelding had not initiated any contact with a human being, but rather had stayed as far away as possible through the various gathers and videotaping.  Now, he approached a human out of simple curiosity; a huge step away from avoiding humans based on fear.

Later that morning, I began halter-breaking the mustang.  I do this differently than some people:  it's a long time before I actually put a halter on the horse's head. Instead, I approached the gelding while I was on another horse and worked on teaching the gelding how to move its feet before ever touching its head. 

The presence of another horse is very important.  Horses are herd animals, and learn from one another how to behave. This horse, being raised in the wild, has learned from its herd how to avoid human contact, how to protect itself, how to flee from perceived danger.  Now, I am using a reliable saddle horse to teach the mustang how to work with a human, how to accept new, scary objects such as ropes and saddles, how to move in a purposeful, controlled way.  The older horse, a mare I trained six years ago, will be a mentor to the mustang. I'll use her as much as possible with the mustang so that he begins to look to her for reassurance when he is afraid.

While I am not going to go step-by-step through the halter-training procedure, there are several points I should highlight:
* I begin by working the horse from the back of my saddle horse, moving the gelding around to get it to begin to cross over on its front feet and pivot on a hind foot.  This is not a new movement for the gelding, but I am building an association between a certain kind of pressure and that movement -- teaching it to move its feet in response to cues from me.
* Later I move to using a rope, while still horseback, to again teach response to pressure. I work on getting the gelding to cross his hind foot under him because that movement will be important as we progress.
* The next step is roping the gelding around the neck.  It's important to use a lariat with a steel honda, one that will immediately release when the horse gives to pressure. At this point, there is a lot of teaching that pressure and release response. 
* Once I have the mustang giving to pressure, I work to persuade him to approach my horse. Then I begin gradually touching him - first just a brush on the muzzle, then further up his head. At the end of approximately fifteen minutes of touching, I can rub between and above his eyes.   Again, this is a huge turning point:  in the wild, if something happens to a horse's eyes, it will go blind, so its instinct is to always protect its eyes.  For this mustang to finally allow me to touch that upper part of his head means that he is letting go of his instinctive response in order to learn a different one. 


By the end of approximately two hours' time, I have the mustang leading on a halter rope. We've moved from me initially following him around on my horse, him attempting to get away from us, to him following me and my saddle horse, allowing us to lead him.  This horse has spent his whole life learning to protect himself; now he has to let that go and allow someone else to protect him. That's not an easy thing to do, for animals or humans. This horse needs a friend. 

I remove his BLM neck tag, the one he's worn since his first gather, probably as a two-year-old colt.  He is no longer a wild mustang; he's a part of our family now. We name him Amigo. Later that evening, I am able to lead him outside the round pen, out into the meadows of the ranch we manage.  It's been an incredible, very satisfying first day on the trail.




Embarking on the Journey

Welcome to "Trail to Texas," a blog about our first attempt at competing in the Extreme Mustang Makeover.  Several parts of that sentence require explanation:

* The blog is titled "Trail to Texas" because that is what this journey is -- a trail from adopting a 5-year-old mustang gelding; to welcoming him to our home; to training him; to, hopefully, competing in a three-day event in Fort Worth, Texas in September.  The blog's title also reflects the fact that the ranch Shawn manages, and where the mustang has found a home, lies on the historic Texas Trail in northeastern Wyoming -- rough country along the Little Powder River through which millions of cattle were trailed from Texas to Montana in the days of open range. Our family has lived on this ranch for almost seven years.

* "Our first attempt" refers to two firsts.  For Shawn, this is his first effort to gentle a mustang and train it to an advanced reining level in such a short time -- approximately 100 days. He has trained two other mustangs before, so he has some experience with their mentality and comfort level; they are different than domestically-raised horses!  For Darcy, it is her first attempt to write about Shawn's training techniques in detail. While Shawn has trained many horses, and Darcy has written many words, neither has taken on an endeavor quite like this before.  For ease of reading the blog, Darcy will write the entries in Shawn's voice.

 * The Extreme Mustang Makeover challenge is a test of both horse training skills and horsemanship.  There are several competitions around the country through the summer, but the largest competition will take place, as stated, in Fort Worth in mid-September.  Because this blog is intended to be about Shawn's personal training experience, we won't delve into the rules and requirements very often.  If you are interested in more specific details about the competition, you can visit http://www.extrememustangmakeover.com/.




 While we would love to set an ambitious goal of writing this blog daily, just as Shawn will be working with the mustang daily, we know already that this won't happen!  Our intention is to write about the crucial turning points on this particular mustang's journey, and specifically to highlight the training techniques that work and don't work. Anyone who has worked with horses to any extent already knows the truth of what I'm about to say:  training a horse well requires establishing a relationship of trust, and that is a spiritual, sacred encounter. Underlying any technical knowledge of horse training must be an understanding of the animal's mind and heart -- a "horse-man-ship" that not everyone has. Where appropriate, we will talk about this spiritual relationship in this blog as well. 

There have already been several critical happenings on this journey that we will just summarize here:
* mid-January, 2012:  Shawn applied to be a trainer/adopter of a mustang and was approved in early February.
* mid-February, 2012: We received a DVD showing footage of all the mustangs available for adoption and the Fort Worth competition. After hours of viewing the horses, Shawn narrowed his selection down to eight, looking primarily for good size and conformation, and a calm disposition.
* March 31, 2012: We viewed the televised auction of the mustangs available for adoption and called in a phone bid on our choice, lot 37.  Success!
* May 11, 2012: Shawn traveled to Canon City, CO; the next morning, he picked up our mustang and drove the nine hours back home to Wyoming. 

A few more details about us that might help you understand this work:  we have been married for 20 years, and we are the parents of six children - five girls and one boy.  You may find their names mentioned here.  For over ten years, we have been raising registered Quarter Horses; Shawn has 30 years' experience training.  In our business, Shawn does the training and orchestrates the breeding program; Darcy gives input about the breeding, but mostly handles the paperwork and marketing. As stated, Shawn is a ranch manager; this is the fifth ranch he has worked on since we were married. Darcy once worked as a teacher, but has been a teen librarian for six years now; she also writes nonfiction, including two other blogs.

Thank you for taking time to follow our journey on this blog!  We hope to end up in Fort Worth, but even if we don't, we know this will be a life-changing endeavor.  We are humbled that you want to share it with us.