And then I messed up....

Image taken from Alexandra Kurland's
Clicker Training Your Horse

Last weekend, I took Lexi to my friend's place for another lesson. She was reluctant to load again, and it may be she'll just be one of these horses who doesn't like to ride in the trailer. I hope as she gains experience she'll become more and more reliable about loading, but for the moment she's still somewhat iffy. Still, I was happy with how a little ground and target work got her in the trailer, and she rode with some restlessness but no explosions out to our destination about 50 minutes away.

Then we got there, and I messed up. I had tied her slightly differently than before, deciding to use a short quick-release trailer tie. When I unhooked it, I didn't do it properly and she ended up getting a bump on the way out of the trailer when her lead rope got caught up. Being Lexi, she panicked, pulled back and fell. Again. The last time it happened she panicked because the butt bar terrified her, but this time it was my fault. I wanted to harangue myself for not making sure everything was perfect, but there's no point, especially with horses. I had to just move forward, knowing I was likely going to have a problem to fix later on.

She got up and I checked her over and then we went for a quiet walk and started some clicker-training "long line" work (I'll explain it in another post), and she was excellent the rest of the day, including a fairly relaxed dressage lesson despite the howling wind and the presence of the ever-terrifying piebald calf and his Great Pyrenees dog best friend.

But then I went to load her. And she said no. And no again. And so an hour later there we were, working on loading in a howling gale while occasional drops of icy rain spat out of an ominous sky. I kept in mind Alexander Kurland's story of her horse, Peregrine, who has never learned to be totally comfortable in a trailer. (I was binge-reading her blog a while ago and I'm pretty sure she was talking about Peregrine when she mentioned a horse whom she always needed to work on the ground a little before asking to enter the trailer. He was never totally comfortable with just walking in.) Anyway, I watched Lexi carefully as I worked to combine the little bit of clicker training I knew with traditional work. Away from the trailer I asked for slow lateral work at a walk and slow trot. Close to the trailer I let her relax. When she put her feet on the ramp, theoretically I could click/treat her to help increase her desire to continue into the trailer, but Lexi won't eat when she's stressed, so I had to move back towards more traditional methods, which was to let her rest on the ramp, and then ask her to back up and go to work when away from the ramp.

Eventually I saw her turn her head towards the trailer every time she passed it, her ears indicating she wanted to be in it. But she could only stay on the ramp (or in the trailer as she gained confidence), a second or two before her anxiety got the better of her. I worked hard to anticipate how long she could tolerate being in the trailer, using Kurland's "Four Second Rule," which says that if the horse can handle something for four seconds, click/treat in three. Since Lexi won't eat when she's stressed, I couldn't really use clicker training to reinforce her, so instead I would simply ask her to back out of the trailer before I thought she was going to leave herself. Once out, we'd do a little slow work, and if she turned her ears towards the trailer, I'd invite her to load. Eventually she was walking all the way in, and finally she stood quietly while I fastened the butt bar. The drive home was quiet, and she unloaded well at the other end.

Clearly I need to work more on all the ground work we're doing, but I feel OK about how things went. Safety and relaxation are my goals. Lexi wasn't relaxed about the trailer at first, but she was safe and not panicky, and our work was slow and quiet, which helped her to maintain her sanity.

I love what Kurland says in the image above, which I took from her book, Clicker Training for Your Horse, an excellent book to jump start your clicker training adventures: "Any time you think you have all the answers, some horse will come along to tell you that you don't. You can never stop learning and evolving. The key to good training is to always be looking for new ideas to add into the mix." I know I used to think teaching horses to load was pretty straightforward. Not with Lexi -- in part because of my own mistakes. But it's a perfect opportunity for growth and new learning.

In gratitude for learning.