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Apr. 21st, 2005 08:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
which_chickJudging from other events, it would appear that my aunt DL reads my LJ and is less than pleased with what I write.
*sigh*
I don't encourage my family to read my LJ, though some of them do. I don't lie about the fact that I have one and I don't lie about where it is on the internet. This is for the family that silently reads my LJ and then gets offended: If the things I write here offend you, quit reading the fucking thing. This is not rocket science.
Also, for persons of a shepherdly bent, check the flock. :)
In other news, I loaded Mezcal on the horse trailer today, and that went quite well. She'd given us a spot of bullshit about it last weekend so La asked me to see about fine-tuning her trailer-loading clue this week. I was going to do that yesterday but there was a round bale on the horse trailer and hence no room for a horse on the horse trailer. Instead of telling you how Mezcal's adventure in trailer-loading went, I spent (please to be conjuring the image of the title sequence from Ichi the Killer here, for the proper sense of the word spent) yesterday's post whipping my aunt DL into a frenzy. Oops.
I got the plastic sack on Taku for the second day in a row. That was very encouraging -- she is coming along right nicely. I still think she's freaking brilliiant, for a horse. She's mastered the basics of rope work and refines quickly to air-cues. It could be that I'm better at it now than I was when I started with Nick -- it's taken me three years to get Nick to air-cues but it took me all of a week to get Taku to air-cues. I don't think Nick is that much more stupid than Taku is, so probably I've gotten a little better over time.
The thing is that training horses is a cooperative effort. Both the human and the horse have to work at doing better. Mostly, the horses will try pretty hard as long as they figure that their trying is going to do some good. If they think you're dead to their efforts, they won't try very hard for you. It's because of this that a more responsive trainer can produce a more responsive horse.
Another thing that took me ages to get straight in my head is that you can't get a horse to respond quickly by asking quickly or loudly. That's not how it works. You get a horse to respond quickly by releasing a cue quickly once you get the desired response. Speed is something that you work up to, over time, and that's okay. You'll learn to be a better releaser as your horse learns to be a better, quicker responder. If it's your first or only horse to be working on this with, you and the horse are going to have to progress together. You can't get better out of the horse until YOU are better. If that's not bad enough, the really annoying part about this state of affairs is that you are going to be the slow one in this partnership.
Yes, really.
It's okay if you don't believe me on this, but you're going to be the slow one.
*sigh*
I don't encourage my family to read my LJ, though some of them do. I don't lie about the fact that I have one and I don't lie about where it is on the internet. This is for the family that silently reads my LJ and then gets offended: If the things I write here offend you, quit reading the fucking thing. This is not rocket science.
Also, for persons of a shepherdly bent, check the flock. :)
In other news, I loaded Mezcal on the horse trailer today, and that went quite well. She'd given us a spot of bullshit about it last weekend so La asked me to see about fine-tuning her trailer-loading clue this week. I was going to do that yesterday but there was a round bale on the horse trailer and hence no room for a horse on the horse trailer. Instead of telling you how Mezcal's adventure in trailer-loading went, I spent (please to be conjuring the image of the title sequence from Ichi the Killer here, for the proper sense of the word spent) yesterday's post whipping my aunt DL into a frenzy. Oops.
I got the plastic sack on Taku for the second day in a row. That was very encouraging -- she is coming along right nicely. I still think she's freaking brilliiant, for a horse. She's mastered the basics of rope work and refines quickly to air-cues. It could be that I'm better at it now than I was when I started with Nick -- it's taken me three years to get Nick to air-cues but it took me all of a week to get Taku to air-cues. I don't think Nick is that much more stupid than Taku is, so probably I've gotten a little better over time.
The thing is that training horses is a cooperative effort. Both the human and the horse have to work at doing better. Mostly, the horses will try pretty hard as long as they figure that their trying is going to do some good. If they think you're dead to their efforts, they won't try very hard for you. It's because of this that a more responsive trainer can produce a more responsive horse.
Another thing that took me ages to get straight in my head is that you can't get a horse to respond quickly by asking quickly or loudly. That's not how it works. You get a horse to respond quickly by releasing a cue quickly once you get the desired response. Speed is something that you work up to, over time, and that's okay. You'll learn to be a better releaser as your horse learns to be a better, quicker responder. If it's your first or only horse to be working on this with, you and the horse are going to have to progress together. You can't get better out of the horse until YOU are better. If that's not bad enough, the really annoying part about this state of affairs is that you are going to be the slow one in this partnership.
Yes, really.
It's okay if you don't believe me on this, but you're going to be the slow one.
