#training updates

Mary- I will never take for granted again how lucky I am to have a horse that is not only pretty. but smart too, because it's apparently rarer than I thought lol. Mary has been on the back burner for bit, since she's at home and no one other than me really has to handle her, she's just been chilling and I haven't done any formal work with her other than just playing around every now and then. I would like to restart her, essentially just working through a check list and see if we can reestablish and solidify our foundation. I think her foundation is pretty good already and it won't be a long process, but I just want to make sure everything is properly done so it doesn't come back and bite us later. I'm also using an actually clicker this time, instead of just a mouth sound, in hopes of again formalizing it a bit and getting better consistency. I use to be embarrassed to use the clicker at boarding barns because its so stigmatized and I didn't want Mary treated differently because of it 🙃 Now that she's at home I don't have to work about it.

The goal is to get through on ground cooperative care behaviors, then move to in hand lateral work and strengthening exercises, and eventually move to under saddle work. I really don't ride Mary anymore because frankly she doesn't like it, so I'd like to get her going really well in hand and then see if we can make under saddle work fun for her again. Her aversion to riding is mostly based in soundness issues, I believe, as she's always struggled on and off with her EPM damage. Her feet have been looking much better since I moved her home, so I'm hoping between that and enough ground work, we can work out her soreness and muscle weakness to get her comfortable enough for light riding.

So yeah, not a ton of changes with my original plan with Mary, just now going to try and make myself to do it consistently. Upside of clicker sessions is that they can be super short but still impactful, and since Mary is literally right there, it's a lot easier for me to squeeze out 10 minutes a day to work with her.

The alpacas- These gals a bit of different ballgame. The ultimate goal with these two are to: 1) get them halter broke 2) make shearing less stressful and 3) establish low stress cooperative care. One of the big challenges I've run into with them is that there's a lot of mandatory handling that has previously been aversive to them so they already have negative associations, but it's not stuff I can stop doing. Alpacas are very susceptible to a certain type of worm carried by deer, to the point where if the average temp is above 80F (which it is in my climate is May to November) they need an ivermectin injection every ~30 days. So the girls have no choice right now but to be "grabbed and stabbed" once a month, which obviously is going to just damage the trust relationship more and more. This is the big thing I want to make cooperative for them, if the injections can eventually be low stress, it would make all our lives easier.

Alpacas suffer from the same thing mini horses often do, where because of their size, they can be manhandled into doing things against their will without a huge danger to the handlers. So there's not really been a push with selective breeding for temperament or to domesticate them more, because it's not as important as coat quality etc. My gals are both older, so they've had years and years of baggage with humans to contend with. This is no shade to the farm they came from, they were treated fairly there and were loved and cared for, but they were treated like standard livestock, which doesn't prioritize the animals emotions and choice in matters.

Another alpaca challenge is that they are soo codependent. I could probably work with Sweets on her own as long as she can see her friends, but I will never (at least at this stage) be able to work Sara on her own. She would be so stressed about not being able to freely get back to her friends that we would never reach a level of relaxation. Learned that hard way when I separated her out to give her wormer, and even with the food dish right next to the fence where Mary and Sweets were literally a foot away, she got so panicked at not being able to freely get to them she broke a gate 🙃 I hope to eventually get her settled enough that it's not a big deal, but alpacas are super herd bound by nature, so that may never change, it just may be her base personality. So I will need to figure out how to work with them simultaneously. Mary I can kick out to the pasture, the alpacas and her are fine being separated, as long as it's not like hours, and just work with the alpacas, which is a win because she likes to hog the attention.

My girls are at pretty different places in their journey too.

Sara- she like, really does not like people right now. She's incredibly fearful and anxious about me. She pops over threshold quickly, and is so sensitive to any movement from me. She will occasionally get close to me when she doesn't think I'm paying attention to her, especially if Mary is close by, but will usually run if it looks like I'm moving towards her at all. The injections have not been great so far, the strategy we've had to employ is basically restricting her to smaller area with two people, and using her running from one person to drive her into the reach of the other. Not ideal, and definitely not helping her comfort level.

I'm going to use Shawna's strategy she recommends for the untouchable horse, because that's where Sara is at. The main idea of this is to give the animal back the control of the situation, so that they can build confidence in their safety. Some key aspects involve choice, so I need to do this in an area where Sara can freely come and go. It will completely fall apart if Sara can't freely leave, the whole point is to get Sara empowered in her decisions and prove to her that nothing bad will happen to her regardless if she stays or goes. Once I can get Sara to eat in a relaxed manner in the general area of me, I'll slowly start moving her food dish closer and closer to me, then get her to to the point where she can start taking food from my hand, and then eventually start seeking me out in a "feed and retreat" strategy. None of this will be using the clicker, and I'm not trying to get a specific behavior, I'm trying to take advantage of classical conditioning and rewire her brain from thinking humans are scary to humans are chill. Once we get her able to be consistently handled, then we can move on to working with the clicker to start target training and haltering and all that fun stuff.