Bridge to the Future

Posted at October 9, 2009 // Clicker Training

Blitz on the bridge with my mom

Just had to share a few photos of Blitz today. A few days ago Blitz mastered the “Bridge”. Its just a simple walking bridge that by dad had built for the horses and for part of our skillathon. Blitz has always been a bit cautious when it comes to strange objects – as most horses would be. But in the last few weeks he’s really changed. I think he’s finally made a connection with my mom (who now owns and rides him). They have been working together since I sold Blitz to my mom in September 2008.

In the past year Blitz has taken to our clicker training method tremendously. From the very beginning I knew he was a food oriented horse (thats part of the reason I bought him). In fact, Blitz loves food so much that I think it helps his ability to learn skills faster.

In the beginning we struggled with keeping him from mugging us for food, as well as warding off his aggressive attitude in an effort to get his reward. We spent a long time working on keeping his ears forward when we work with him, and teaching him that grabbing for food would not get him anything. He has improved with this greatly, but he still tends to get a little aggressive when other horses get too close to “his” food. Funny because he’s not the “head horse”. Minnow is. And what is odd about that is that Minnow is the LEAST aggressive when it comes to the food – he would patiently wait his turn for a treat no matter how long I make him wait. I really don’t know how Minnow ended up as the boss pony. Before Blitz and Boomer he was always the lowest horse in the herd. But somehow when the two youngsters came along he took on the role of leader – a nice leader. I never see him kick or bite – and I’m really not sure how he bosses the other two around – he just does.

bridge Anyway so back to the bridge. It took Blitz 2 days to get up enough courage to walk on the bridge. 2 days is a tremendous achievement for my mom too, because she has struggled with being patient with Blitz. My mom is a recently converted clicker trainer. I’ve been using the clicker since 2005 but my mom was always just happy to watch me work with the ponies and my clicker system. It wasn’t until 6 months ago that I really convinced her that it was the right tool for working with Blitz. See she hasn’t really had a horse of her own for several years. The last horse she had was her home-bred Throughbred Cross who passed away in 2002. Since then she just rode my sister and mine’s hand me down horses or exercised ours while we were in school – no real “training” involved. So taking the leap into owning a horse again was a big change for my mom.

bridge I watched as she struggled to work with Blitz in her traditional methods. I knew from the beginning it wasn’t the path for Blitz. So I would work with clicker training Blitz on the ground, and occasionally I would ride him. Finally one day after my mom was getting frustrated with Blitz’s desire to jig home after our cross country runs I convinced her to try the clicker on him. After we galloped the horses up a big hill I told her to ask Blitz to stand. When he stopped moving his feet I had her click and reward him. Instantly Blitz relaxed and became a completely different horse. Thats all it took to convince my mom that clicker training was something special – I thought it was cute that she told everyone she talked to that this clicker made her jigging horse walk quietly home. I think it was her aha moment.

So to see my mom patiently take her time and allow Blitz to choose when he was ready for the bridge was really neat. My mom is not one to take her time and wait for the horse (and she will admit this)- this is partially due to the way she was trained to ride. She grew up through the old school pony club teachings (as did I but I chose to take it with a grain of salt) and she spend much of her youth galloping race horses. Racetracks especially have a go go go mentality – which my mom developed as well. Makes me proud to see that she is finally breaking free from this, and I love seeing her being able to take her time now and enjoy learning with Blitz.

I can’t wait to see what the future brings for both of them. I knew Blitz was a special pony from the beginning – thats why I brought him home.

-Kd
www.ponypaintings.com