A Fun Ride

A Fun Ride 

My sister, Ellen, and I took Cole and Dante out for a ride together.  We each had our little goals, but the mail goal was just to enjoy ourselves.

I wanted to do more cantering than I have been doing this summer.  There is one part of the trail that I used to let him gallop.  It was a lot of fun, but he got into some bad habits--and that prevented me from being able to canter with other horses, there.  I miss cantering!  There are other places I can canter where he doesn't get out of control, but this is the best section of the trail for it.

The last few times I tried cantering here, he had very faulty brakes.  I wanted to re-install his brakes as well as slow him down a little.

Dante is all right with us going on ahead of him.  Ellen canters, too, but much slower.  She wanted to get Dante to canter from a walk instead of a trot.

She also wanted to work with him on the second river crossing.  The last time he crossed towards home, something startled him and he took off up the river bank.  She wanted to make sure he would quietly walk up it, instead.

What wonderful cantering we had!  Ellen got a couple good walk/canter transitions.  I was able to stop and re-start Cole 3 times.  Each time, I clicked him and gave him a carrot.  Consequently, each time he got better.  The hard part about clicker training is waiting for the correct behavior to click.  Once you get that, it gets easy quite quickly.

We crossed over the river to the other side.  At the bottom of the hill, there were a bunch of high school kids with their coach.  They were running up and down the hill.  As soon as they saw us, they were told to stop and let us through.  We love it when the coaches are there to help us out!  Once the kids learn it, they never need to be told, again.  

We trotted the next section of trail.  At one point, Dante spooked for no reason and went cantering off for a few strides.  Ellen is a big believer, (and I agree with her,) that all horses need to be cantered on the trail for times like this.  She never lost her seat, and when she told Dante to trot, he did, because that is what he  has been trained for.

When we got to the last section of trail, we opted to just walk.  It is out in the open and fairly close to the street.  There are a lot of noisy trucks that go down the street.  Whenever a bad one would rumble by, we would stop the horses.   If they stood well, we would sometimes click them and give them a carrot as a reward.  

There was a time in our lives where we would have just ridden through and hoped for the best.  It is nice that now we don't have to if we don't want to.  In fact, when the horses see a noisy vehicle, they aren't afraid--they are hoping they will get a click.

We turned around and headed home.  When we got to the river, Dante ended up doing one of his best river crossings there--ever!  Ellen was so thrilled.  When she learn that she needed to keep laser focus on the task of crossing the river, he sure did improve.  Other than the incident on the previous ride, he just keeps getting better.

We did some trotting, and Dante tried cantering, again!  Ellen easily brought him back to a trot.

There was one part of the trail that is in a very thickly wooded area.  We aren't too far from the street, but we can't see it.  The trail is also fairly narrow.  We heard a really loud piece of machinery.  We didn't know what it was, but we are guessing that it was a mower--it sounded awful.  I saw Dante's head go up in fear.  Just as I yelled to Ellen to turn him around--she decided to turn him around, too.  I stopped Cole.  He seemed fine, but Dante looked terrified.

(It is good to turn a frightened horse away from the direction of home--also, Cole was blocking the trail so he was less likely to bolt the other way.)

The machine slowed down a little and was a bit quieter.  As Dante stood there, I could see his eyes softening.  The panic was being replaced with hope--that if he stood still, he would get a click and a treat!

The machine started back up and both horses stood like statues.  And, of course, they got a click and a treat.

The rest of the ride was uneventful and just plain fun.  We met all of our goals of the day--particularly the part about having fun.