My Icelandic gelding, Andi, is 4 now, and time for his training to begin. I have clicker trained him since I got him at 11 months, and the clicker is a wonderful tool. But Andi was still jumpy, overreactive, and when I tried to lunge him, he would take off as fast as he could. At this point, he was too afraid to pay attention to the clicker. Besides that, he wasn't exhibiting any calm behavior TO click.
As some of you may know, I follow the methods of Clinton Anderson. Like him or not, I find him easy to learn from, and especially like that he takes untrained horses to show you common reactions the horse will have when learning. I re-watched his Desensitizing DVD (received from his "No Worries" Club) where he took an embryo reciepient mare who would have gone to slaughter were it not for the reciepient mare industry. After watching this mare go backwards so fast that she drug Clinton around like a water skier, then 10 minutes later to a calm horse, I realized Andi wasn't any more or less jumpy and overreactive than any other horse. I just had to see it thru. What I realized that taking away the scary "thing" before the horse was standing still and calm, made for an even jumpier, scared horse. DUH!! So, I went water ski-ing with Andi! And after that initial breakthru, he is a much calmer horse that takes new desensitizing items in a calmer stride. I am also combining Clinton's methods with the clicker and Andi is progressing fast. And instead of him trying to avoid me when I go get him, he meets me at the gate when he sees me get all my scarey things together. Did I have my doubts this would work with Andi as I was skiing across the round pen? You betcha! But I had trust and faith in the expert who has made a fortune training horses and training people to train their horses. You just got to stick to it and be thorough. Clinton says the biggest mistake people make with their horses is not being thorough enough. So my sensitive, jumpy, overreactive Icelandic is not doing anything breed specific - he was just being a horse! Susan in NV Happy High Desert Trails Susan in NV Nevermore Ranch http://users.oasisol.com/nevermore/ ____________________________________________________________________________________Ready for the edge of your seat? Check out tonight's top picks on Yahoo! TV. http://tv.yahoo.com/
