Yesterday evening we forgot to latch the pasture gate and Chrome managed to open it (probably rubbing his head on it). When we went outside we found them by the driveway in the front yard. I almost freaked out because we live so close to the road, but I kept my cool, grabbed a rope and some sugar and headed out there. Chrome let me walk right up to him and put the rope around his neck. He balked once, but otherwise led well. I put him in his stall and went back for Zeppelin. As soon as Zep saw me coming (with a feed bucket) he hightailed it around me and ran back into the pasture. I was so surprised I just laughed, closed the pasture gate and let Chrome out of his stall. Glad it ended so well. :) I'm very careful to latch the gate now.
Today I decided to work on fly spraying Chrome because they are driving him crazy and as far as I know he's never been done before, except for one time last week and he hated it! I decided to try using clicker training. I don't know how well it went and I'm worried I might have been doing it wrong, because I was clicking any time I sprayed regardless of his reaction, so I'm worried I might have been rewarding him for being jumpy. I also didn't have an empty spray bottle, so I couldn't practice with just water (I'm going to get one today so we can try again and not waste expensive fly spray). When I realized I was moving too fast and rewarding his squirrely behavior I took a step back and broke it down further. I didn't want to just randomly spray fly spray all over the place so I started on his mane and only did a half pump. It went well after that, but he was stressed so I didn't push it too far. I'm going to try again with water so I can start further away and slowly build up to actually spraying him. This will be good desensitization for the bath I hope to give him soon too. :) Wish us luck!
P.S. Don't forget the watch the video I posted earlier. I put it up under yesterday's date even though I did it today because I just ran out of time yesterday to edit it. Let me know what you think. Oh and it's kind of long. Sorry.
Well done with the fly spray, I find I jump a bit too far sometimes as well, but you realsied really quickly and were able to break it down more, great job :)
ReplyDeleteI had a break out today too. Only I didn't leavea gate open, Abby just walked through the fence. Happens at least once a spring!
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