Darcy and Doughals blog

[mjffey]

OK, here it is.

The first episode of Darcy's and Doughals blog. I hope I can keep it going. I'll write or progress with the boys.

First up is a little video (3 minutes) from todays training with Doughal. Just double click on it.



Doughal is very head shy. He was that already when we got the boys.
At the moment we are back to square one. Problems with head collar, problem with touching, so it is really back to basic.

As you can see on the movie Frans, my dearest hubby, is sending Doughal away. It took him almost half an hour of sending away before Doughal finally came towards him and followed him. But no touching! Stroking the shoulder OK, but anywhere near his head was not accepted.

We will try to train them every other day. Tomorrow it will be my turn with Darcy. Keep your fingers crossed
An any advise is of course always welcome.

Can't promise a video, as that will all depend on my hubby.
Till next time.

[Elaine]

This could all be rubbish, but I think he's worried about the rope moving, as it looks like that's what caused him to take off the 1st time.

Then when he came up to Franz at the end he had no rope. Don't do this until Sean comes on and has his say as well, but *may* it be worthwhile:

• Not having any sort of rope in your hand for a few sessions when you 'catch' him.
  
  
• When he does get worried, don't chase him further away. Instead do nothing when he walks away. And then maybe just wait till he catches your eye again and then you take a step back to reward him for looking at you again.
  
  
• When the catching without the rope is good (very good, you can rub head & neck), carry the rope again but make it as small and not scary at all as you can - so don't have it swinging around like at the start here. I think he's ok with people, just a bit suspicious of the rope. Again when he gets worried, don't swing rope at him as a punishment. Just let him move his feet if he thinks he has too, wait till he catches you eye again and then step back and draw him back into you.
  
  
  

There could be a bit of a chance if he's scared of rope currently, it moves a bit, he takes off, then rope 'chases' him, you could be teaching him he was right to be scared of the rope cos its coming to get him.

So you're kinda saying 'I'm not scary' then you throw the rope at him and he thinks 'yes you are' then you say again ' no I'm not' then rope gets thrown and he says 'yes you are' etc, and this continues on. This is only true if it's the rope that's freakin' him out.

God bless both of you for your patience though And WHAT A HORSE!!! He is just gorgeous.

Anyway, again, don't do any of the above till Sean comes on and gives his thoughts on it cos he's a lot more experience of this stuff than I do and I've probably got it all ass ways.

[mjffey]

Hi Elaine,

I should maybe have put another movie in front of this. Sending away with the rope is the Monty style. If the horse doesn't want to come to you and backs up, you have to send him away till he comes back out if his own accord. Doughal walked away already when Frans was holding his hand his way to rub him on the neck, and that is when Frans threw the rope towards him. When he started to come towards Frans, Frans walked away from him as a reward. It's not the rope Doughal is scared of, even a hand is scary.

Is that very much different then the NH style?

[mjffey]

Today was Darcy's turn. How did it go?
I don't know really. If I compare it with what we could do before the roller debacle, I think it was terrible. If I see the roller incident as point zero then it went not to bad.

There was never a problem with putting a head collar on, but now he doesn't like it anymore.

I started of with nothing. I just walked around him and let him come to me. Every time he came to me, I said good boy, gave him a stroke and walked away.
I did that for half an hour and then started to stroke his neck. That was ok too. A bit itchi, but ok.

Then I got the head collar and he didn't like that at all. He walked away, turned his bum toward me. I followed him and when I could touch him, I stroked him keeping the head collar in the other hand.
Then I walked away with the head collar over my shoulder and waited till Darcy followed me and sniffed the head collar. I then walked away again.
I repeated this a few times and then started to stroke Darcy with the head collar and carefully laid it over his neck. I left it there for half a minute or so and then removed it. All the time I stroked his neck to give him a good feel.

I repeated this also till he was ok with it.
Then I kept it under his nose and the moment I wanted to put it on, he backed up and walked off.
I tried it three times with the same result every time.

To stop on a positive note, I asked him to back up which he did.
I told him what a good boy he was and left it at that for today.

We are really back to point zero. And he needs the head collar on, because we want the vet to come to have a look at his sarcoid. I think it has to be removed. It is the size of an egg and really looks terrible.

Tomorrow its Doughals day.

[mjffey]

Ok, here’s another session with Darcy and now with two movies.
First movie is Darcy of the lead. Before I started to tape I was already 20 minutes busy with rubbing his neck and head, so what suddenly triggered him when I was taping, no idea. I looked around but couldn’t see anything.




I went straight back to him and he was fine. As you can see, the moment he saw the lead rope he walked off. Instead of waiting for him, I followed him till I was standing in front of him. I then backed him up twice and then could click the lead rope on without any problems.


The second movie starts of with the “I stand here and you see how you move me around” episode. That’s definitely something I need help with. I won’t even show you the HQ yield because that was really a big joke.



The touching with the fake hand went fine. No problem at all.

[mjffey]

A quickie, just to let you know that we had Sean and Anya and Sean's horse Amazon Amber here for four days last weekend. We are still digesting :-) all the information.
It was FANTASTIC and emotional (from my side). Laughing and crying.
It was hard work and long days (especially when you're going shopping at 11PM at Tesco ;-)) and I think that at the end everybody was very tired, but it was well worth it.
We couldn't have done it without Sean and Anya.

Thank you two for all the patience, explanations, examples and guidance.

And a thank you to Amber for letting us practice on her, and not to forget Elvis of course for playing with our dog Monthy.


We are just at the beginning of a long road but we will get there. Watch this space....

[Ozzie the wonder horse]

I'm down here on my laptop in the field, looking forward to hearing how my two buddies up in Mayo got on!

[mjffey]

Hi Ozzie,

hope the weather is better overthere then it is here. Since Sean and Anya left we have a lot of rain and training in the rain is not fun, but we know why we do it, and that keeps us going.
Who knows, maybe you will meet our boys one day.

[mjffey]

OK, here is a movie and some pics as promised. I'll end with a spectacular picture of Doughal.
s44.photobucket.com/albums/f12/mjffey/090718/?action=view¤t=0907181.flv

[Ozzie the wonder horse]

Wow.. I knew you guys were huge but youse are maaaaoooooohhhhhhhssssssssssssssssssive!!! Nice work with the desensitisation Sean.

Oh crap............[Elaine pinches her keyboard back from Ozzie......] They are growing up to be beautiful, but you definitely have your hands full MJ Keep up the progress reports & well done

E.

[ciarafog]

Oh my god those horses are gigantic gulp. Congrats though for doing so well, sean will certainly keep ye pointed in the right direction!

[mjffey]

New pictures of Todays afternoon training session. Looking at the pictures myself, I now see that I stand to far of when doing the driving games. See. If Frans hadn't make the pics I wouldn't have noticed.

I feel so more confident with the boys. Not one single scary feeling.
We are now able to put the halters on in the field. No problem at all. Not even when the boys are standing next to each other.

Today I first worked with Darcy. Dougal couldn't even be bothered following Darcy and me to the trainings field.

Frans and I are working on the first 4 games with the boys.
The Jojo game is for Darcy the biggest problem. Backing up is not to bad. He now steps back at fase 2/3, but coming back is, as you can see from the photo, a struggle.

HQ and FQ is fine in both directions.









After Darcy, it was Doughals turn. I left Darcy in the trainings field and went up to Doughal. Putting the halter on was no problem. I then walked Doughal to the electric fence gate and openend it. Darcy was standing on the other side waiting. I lifted my hand and Darcy stepped back, while I walked with Doughal through the "gate". They didn't even looked at each other. Darcy went to the other field and I could close the gate just like that with Doughal nicely standing next to me.

Doughal is so much lighter to work with.




We can touch them both all over with the carrot stick, although Doughal is more relaxed then Darcy. But the progress is great.



I thought I finish with this one. We named it "One mind"

[mjffey]

Another session with Darcy.

Yesterday was really a bad day. Nothing really worked and I got very frustrated with myself and then of course with poor Darcy so I had to stop.

Today we tried again. It has been raining all night and the training field is a mess so we had to work in the paddock.

It went better then yesterday and I could even pick up one front leg, but to say Hurrah, wow etc... No.

Frans says Darcy is autistic . I don't know about that but what i know is that Darcy's left brain is the size of a pea and his right side is probably the size of an apple .

His off side is OK in the beginning but as soon as I have one porcupine done on that side he keeps turning away from me. It's then very difficult to get on that side.

Another thing is going back wards.
I ask his attention, wiggle my finger. Nothing happens.
I start moving my hand. Darcy does one step. I think, OK, he does one step so I stop wiggling, because that's how I read it in the Parelli booklet.
Darcy thinks "Ha, if I do one step she stops", so he only does one step at a time.
Do I now have to go on with fase 3, or not?
If I shake the rope vigorously he'll keep on walking back, but that isn't the intention is it? I mean, doesn't that make him lazy and waiting for fase 4 all the time?

I'm going to do Doughal now and hopefully he understands me better.

[Ozzie the wonder horse]

I think once he's moving, go back to phase 1, only use phase 2/3/4 if phase 1 doesn't work.

So ideally if you want 4 steps.......

You do phase 1 (no response) phase 2 (no response) phase 3, (horse stars walking backwards), you then go back down to phase 1, horse keeps walking backwards.

Once horse has done 4 steps, you stop.

The idea is to stay at the minimum you have to do. If you need phase 4, ok, but then go straight back to phase 1 again for the next step.

(I think!) Sean or Anya will know better cos they've met the lovely lads, and really I'm just guessing here so take it with a big pinch of salt

Also - make sure they are not confused. If 4 steps back is a BIG thing for them, maybe just ask for 1 or 2. if 4 steps back is very easy for them, but they are just asleep, then you'd approach it a bit differently.

Well done though & stay safe