A Tale of Poe – Part 2
In which an horse learns how to throw a dinner party—in a manner of speaking!
–
It was August, six months after we’d arrived at Via Nova, that we got down to brass tacks working on helping Poe understand trailering using our Positive Reinforcement toolkit. Since Poe had been in the program since December, he had a pretty solid list of learned behaviors, and he loved to (capital B!) Behave. One of the most exciting things about my horse is his enthusiasm to perform what he understands – which comes with the flip side of having a hard time when he DOESN’T understand. Remember what I told you in Part 1 about trailering him over here? Right.
When I had asked Poe to get on the trailer and he refused, it was kind of like expecting someone who’d never diced an onion to throw a big dinner party.
So, we had to break down trailer loading into some pretty simple pieces that he could maneuver; I wanted to set him up for flexing his problem-solving muscle without feeling overwhelmed or trapped. This involved a lot of work before even opening up the trailer.
We stepped on raised platforms, balanced across a seesaw, walked under arches, and squeezed through chutes so he could get comfortable with a lot of the aspects of trailer loading without being forced on or stuck inside. I used our liberty leading skills to help him navigate these obstacles; he knows really well how to walk beside me, so we changed the criteria of walking beside me to include walking beside me on a raised platform, then through a tight space, and so on.
You can watch this video of our Supervising Trainer Jasmine working with her horse Leia on liberty leading onto a seesaw and across a long bridge. This is the kind of skill I needed to teach Poe
When I had asked Poe to get on the trailer and he refused (see Part 1), it was kind of like expecting someone who’d never diced an onion to throw a big dinner party. Now I understand it’s my job as his trainer to break a big goal down into its component tasks, then help him accomplish each one. Teach him how to grip a chef’s knife, if you will, before I expect him cook dinner for twelve.
In early August, after he’d mastered these skills away from the trailer, I began liberty leading Poe onto the trailer itself. Liberty leading means he is simply following me, he has no halter or anything to “persuade” him to stay with me. He can choose to follow me as far as he feels comfortable. I knew he had a tendency to leave when he felt overwhelmed, so I would back him up immediately after he got on the ramp, so that I was in charge of when he removed himself.
This went great until it became clear that he wasn’t going to stretch his comfort zone if he didn’t have to. He would get on the trailer, but he wasn’t willing to stay there on his own.
Could we have tied him up inside to prevent him backing out? Of course. But Poe was telling us something important. Because he was at liberty, he could communicate, and we were listening. He was telling us that he had the skills to load, but not the confidence.
Follow Clara and Poe in A Tale of Poe – Part 3
Or return to Part 1
Series: "A Tale of Poe"
In which Clara and her young gelding take a journey—or maybe not?