More Trail Rides

More Trail Rides

We had 2 more trail rides.  Though I wanted to do a bunch of consecutive trail rides--the weather just didn't want to cooperate.  After each ride, we would get a lot of rain, and I would have to wait for the river to go back down before we could do it again.  Also, we are only doing them when Ellen doesn't have to go to work, so that limits us, too.

The river crossing on our second trail ride went better than the first.  Trifecta was happy to walk along, slowly, with Ellen when we crossed the river.  Everything was going so well that Ellen and I had the same thought--we would try a little trotting.  This was way ahead of the schedule I had in my head, but I wanted to see where he was at.  We got to a great spot for trotting, so I mentioned it to Ellen--and she said she was just thinking of it herself.  If we both think of it, it has to be a good idea.

We both thought we would do it the same way we originally started trotting Cole on the trail--which is the same way that we worked on slowing Trifecta on the steep slopes on the hill.  I made him stand and wait while Ellen went up the trail, and I then asked him to trot to her.

I didn't know what to expect.  When we did it with Cole, he was rather scary.  He went fast and big and Ellen had to be very brave to stand her ground.  (That is how we taught him hand signals to stop.)  I asked Trifecta to trot, and he acted just like he was in the arena.  He gave me a moderate, smooth trot and readily stopped right in front of Ellen.  It wasn't scary at all.  We only did it once.  My real goal was to ride all the way to the next river crossing.  He had never gone that far before, and it would make the ride about 3 miles round trip.  

Once we get past Willow Bend, the trail is well away from the street and very easy to ride.  It went great except for all the mosquitoes.  In fact, the whole ride went great.  We made it home with no problems.

Ride #3

We had a new plan for our third ride.  Based on our success trotting, we decided that that would be our goal.

We got back to the good section of trail, and I told Ellen to walk up ahead.  We waited until she turned around and trotted to her.  Trifecta stopped when I asked him to, and we clicked and treated him-and then we repeated it a number of times until we got to Willow Bend.  We then turned around and went back to the beginning of the stretch of trail.  Each time, she went further away from us.  Each time, he traveled a little faster.  

We repeated the exercise.  This time, he got measurably faster and once he even broke into a canter!  I didn't make a big deal about it, but since I didn't ask him for it, he didn't get clicked.  (This is also the way we introduced cantering on trail with Cole--so it will probably be in his future.)  We were getting towards Willow Bend, so I told Ellen I wanted to go on my own.  At first, Trifecta didn't want to leave her, but once he got going, he was wonderful.  I asked him to stop and clicked him for it.  We then turned and walked towards Ellen.  

I told her I wanted to do a much longer stretch on my own, so we went back to the mud puddle, turned around and trotted away from her.  Once again, he was great, but as we neared the spot where we previously stopped, he surged to get there.  Since that wasn't the lesson I wanted him to learn, I kept him going past that spot and told him to stop in a different spot.  You have to be careful with clicker training that you don't teach them the wrong thing.  It is such a powerful tool.  I didn't want him to learn to rush to a certain spot to get a treat.  I wanted him to learn to keep going and stop when I tell him.

It was all such a total success!  Instead of continuing on to the second river crossing, I told Ellen that we did enough for the day and we went home.  The rest of the ride was wonderfully uneventful.  I believe I have a terrific horse!