Crossing the River on Dante

Crossing the River on Dante

Horse training is never finished.  It goes on and on.  Sometimes you get a horse doing just what you want--and then your needs change.  Nothing stops us from retraining our horses to meet different circumstances.  That is exactly where Ellen finds herself with Dante.

Ellen has been working on getting him to cross rivers faster.  Here is a little background.  When she first got Dante, he didn’t like crossing rivers, so he tried to do it very, very fast.  One day, he ended up tripping on something, falling and Ellen and Dante ended up taking a bath.  Neither one of them got hurt, but they were both shaken up.  It was a bad scene.

Dante then decided he wasn’t crossing rivers any more.  I worked with him a couple of weeks, and he not only started to cross, but he did it slowly and carefully.  Ellen started riding him, again, but she was nervous.  It was a traumatic experience for her--and she didn’t want to cross rivers, any more, either.

Since we use clicker training, she was the most comfortable asking him to stop often while crossing--and clicking him when she did.  The more nervous she was, (like when the river was higher,) the more she clicked.  It helped them both.  Dante liked hanging out in the river eating carrots.  Ellen felt better because she felt she was in control.  Both of them increased their confidence.

Now, a few years down the road, she got tired of long, drawn-out river crossings.  It was time to remove the crutch.  Instead of clicking him for reaching the top of the bank, the edge of the river, putting his front feet in the water, getting to the middle of the river and getting to the other side, she started to take clicks away.

In her early training, she made a classic clicker training mistake.  She taught him to stop in the river--but not to go in the river.  It caused Dante to stall out--in hopes of getting a click.  It is a good idea, when we use clicker, to train a behavior and then train the opposite behavior.  

Ellen began clicking Dante for walking the way she liked when he was crossing.  Now, he knew he could get a click for stopping or for walking.  

Early on, Dante did some protesting.  He wanted his treats--he thought stopping would get them for him.  Ellen held firm and clicked him for walking.  She gradually removed the clicks--but still praised him.  In just about a month, Dante is a whole different river-crossing horse.  He will now walk right across and a reasonable speed without a single stop.  He seems relaxed, too.

I like it because I am no longer on the other side, waiting for them.  Sometimes, it seemed to take 5 minutes to cross when it should take less than a minute.  Our rides seem faster, too.

Dante hasn’t been doing his business in the river as much, either.  Remember how he would do it and get scared when the plops splashed him?  He is just as likely to do it on land and in the water.  When he does it in the water, he no longer panics.  Everything has worked out so well!