I found a new way of feeding the horses their beet mash this weekend. They used to scare the living daylights out of me with the way they come at me with such enthusiasm when I'm coming out of the tack room into their shelter with the bowl of beets; they like to start eating from it even before I have put the bowl down. This is something that we definately need to work on with training but that's going to take a while. According to our friend and trainer clicker training should work well for this but I still don't wrap my head around how that works to keep a critter away from you.
The other day though they left their bowl in a very convenient spot for me to dish out their beets in the shelter where I could turn my back to them and they couldn't get at the beets although I had 2 horses very interested in what I was doing. A couple of slaps on the nose each with the spatula and they seem to have gotten the message to give me some space since the last couple of days they've minded their manners and given me the space I need when dishing out their beets.
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yes they do do learn and pretty well at least our horses who of course being ours are specail horses
ReplyDelete"I still don't wrap my head around how that works to keep a critter away from you. "
ReplyDeleteIt's definitely possible, but it does take some time and practice to teach!
A good way is to teach the horses to station--teaching them to go somewhere and stay.
Here's a few good blog posts about teaching horses to station:
http://bookendsfarm.blogspot.com/2009/10/advanced-targeting.html
http://bookendsfarm.blogspot.com/2009/11/advanced-targeting-2.html
http://bookendsfarm.blogspot.com/2009/11/my-lessons-from-advanced-targeting-so.html
cheers,
Mary
http://stalecheerios.com/blog