It's pertinent to my day with Rei because Reina is impatient, impatient, impatient. Goodness. Let me explain!
But before I do that... look! I took a picture of Reina's pretty new toes. Not bad, eh?
Anyways - I think I mentioned she was moved to a new paddock a little further away? This is it!
Lookit how pretty and green!
So, I go to catch her and we snuggle as per usual. I'm trying to figure out what I want to do today because I wanted to trail ride, but Chi isn't around, sooo... that means, what, arena work? Meh. Definitely wasn't in the mood for that. So I was plotting.
Nice butt!
We walk towards the barn and Reina stops short about a stride or two out from the concrete. Sigh. I was kinda expecting this, but I was hoping it wouldn't be the case. She... doesn't want to walk into her stall. Maaaan. Okay. So I take a deep breath and put on some patience and start clicking for small tries and steps forward.
After a few minutes, we get up on the concrete. Yay!! Lots of pets and love. Once she got up on the concrete, she became unstuck and would walk towards the stall. Another yay! She wouldn't go in though. So I let her explore and encourage tries and anything that said "I'm thinking about this stall, perhaps even going into it."
Once her body language stopped screaming "OMGAWD STALL!", I was able to resume my previous ritual - if you don't want to go into the stall, we're going to trot around and stuff! Two or three rounds of trotting had her walking into the stall again. Peppermint! Oh, she liked that. We went out and back in twice more to ensure she'd be okay, and then I brushed her off and tacked her up.
Oh. While I was doing all this, she had an epiphany that she could like... crib. What!? All this time she'd barely even tried since I got her the collar, and now she's up to no good again! This is her up to no good:
Doesn't she just look guilty? She's so bad at being sneaky.
It was weird. As fast as the switch went on, it went off again once she'd been tacked up. She knew she wasn't supposed to be cribbing, 'cause she kept eyeing me nervously and all I had to do was say "'ey!" and she'd stop trying. But in any case... after a few minutes of this she just... stopped. It was weird. But nice.
Me? Crib? What're you talkin' about??
And we were off! Last time I went to mount up, she wiggled around and tried to walk off. But this time, I mounted from one of the plastic chairs she likes to nose so well, and once I was up she took a step, but stayed in place so she could sniff the chair. Ha! Outsmarted! Click and treat! I bet she didn't even know she was being taught to stand still. ;)
So... I decide that we're going to brave the giant field with a sand track around it. It's behind Nick's house, and I figure that Rei and I could use some training together in big, open spaces with just us around. It's one thing to follow roads and a trail, or to walk around a ring in circles, but big open spaces... that's some kinda trust right there. So, off we go!
This is the field! To the left of the fence, with all the grass and trees!
She walks out really well. I'm shocked. And proud. She's listening and staying steered in the direction I want to go. But... omgasp! Shock! Spooky thing! A great chance for a lesson - I click her for being a good girl and walking up to it. When she touches it, even more clicks!! Soon, it's not scary anymore. We walk right on past it like it never had teeth at all.
Don't wanna look at scary horse-eating monster.
Did I hear a click? Are you bribing me to be brave?
Oh. Well. In that case, I think I will touch it, tyvm! Treat now?
We also walk up next to a paddock with other horses. Reina wants to say hi; I tell her that's unacceptable and she's working, so we should keep going regardless of the new neighbor to the right. She listens! Yay!
She doesn't even start when the horses in the other paddock run to catch up to us once we've walked on a bit. She stands, and listens, and is tense, but she doesn't go anywhere and certainly doesn't act silly about it. What a good, smart girl!
About halfway around the curve, we meet another nemesis: a giant log! I want to jump it, but Reina wants to run away from it. We repeat what we did with the first fire-breathing monster, and she ends up walking up to it and dropping her head to nose at it. Good girl! I try to get her to walk over it, but this confuses her. I don't think she's ever been asked to jump anything before, so I drop it, as I don't want to make her scared of it again.
Instead, I walk around to a smaller portion of the same log and we trot over it. She barely looks twice at it. Yay! Good girl! Lots of pets and a click and a treat.
By this time, we're on the stretch of the loop pointed towards "home," "barn," and "dinner." She starts getting wiggly, like she was before I taught her how to listen to me. She doesn't want to stand still; she hops, turns around, nods her head like she's lost her mind, and wiggles her front leg like she's having a seizure. (It's like the OCD version of pawing... oh Reina, you're so special.) I'm like, oh goodness! What happened? Are you scared? Calm down. So I start clicking her for standing and being calm. This doesn't seem to help like it usually does.
Hm... not scared. Okay. Are you hurt? We walk. She walks fine; more energetic and bouncy than usual, her head up higher. I stop her. More wiggles. This confuses me. She hops and is very persistent in her wiggles! Hmm. I think some more; she was perfectly fine on the other stretch away from the barn... did she just start hurting now? Is it a bug? I check her butt; it's flyless. Hmmmm!
So we keep walking around, back to the other half of the loop, and she relaxes and stretches down again and is generally unconcerned by anything. Lots of clicks and treats to encourage this behavior!
We get to a gate at the far end of the loop, and she's like, "ooooomg, snoooooooort, a gate!!" Just like that. So we stop and have more "touch-the-scary-thing" lessons. She ends up poking the fence (my cribber... scared of a fence?? Oh brother!) and scares herself when she touches it, jumps just a bit. She gets a treat and lots of pets for being so brave about the horse-eating monster of a fence. She touches it again, realizes it really isn't going to eat her, and is suddenly fine! Dork. We walk on.
There. I touched it and the one on the ground. Happy?
Can we go now!?
When we get around to the log, she starts in on the wiggles again. Okay, I know it's not pain, now - pain doesn't reoccur on a certain half of the loop we're walking. I'm suspicious now. She's not scared; she doesn't mind the log or anything, and there's nothing inparticular I can find.
Then it hits me.
We're pointed home. Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhh!
She's impatient!
This changes things. I start waiting for her to be calm before I let us walk again. She starts being annoyed when I click, because it means she has to stop. Tough, girlie! I click, stop her, wait until she's standing calmly, give her the treat, pet her and tell her she's a good horse. Wait until she stands quietly again. Then, and only then, are we allowed to continue our journey.
We do this for a bit, and then we hit the other half of the loop headed away from home. She relaxes immediately once I ensure her that we are not headed home. Theory has been validated. I turn towards home, since it's getting dark and we've made good progress today.
Suddenly, she's wiggly and crazy again. Okay, not crazy, but.. um... energetic?
I go back to being patient. I basically sit out whatever she wants to throw at me to try to intimidate me into/convince me to starting home again. This takes a LOT of patience. She's almost as stubborn as she is impatient; this means that sometimes I'll have to wait for her to stand for a full minute before she'll catch on to the fact that her little fits of frenzied emotion aren't affecting me. This bothers her. But they start to get less frequent and less violent. She has one that's especially bad - almost a hop-buck thing, very small, but worse than just wiggles - and then kind of... gives up. She still wiggles, but she stops turning around 180 degrees; instead, she nods her head like she's half-insane and starts to OCD-paw, and then stands. So... essentially, progress! Yay!
By the time we get within a few paces of the barn, she's gotten it: no forward unless you can stand patiently. She still nods, or yaaaaaaawns (to tell me that she very much does not approve of my boring, stupid, stubborn behavior!), but she's taking her treats politely and is protesting much more quietly.
So... note to self! Work on patience!! She's not like this on trail rides at all, even when she knows we're going home... so, this is very odd indeed! But that's okay. Even her fits are much more manageable since I first got her; she never actually started hopping (except that one time) and she always listened even though she was upset at me - she'd turn, go forward, and back up on cue, and when I asked her to stop doing something she started without me, she'd stop. (Like, she'd stop walking when I told her to.)
Overall, not bad. Not bad at all! No spooks at all this time, whereas last time she kept looking and snorting at dirt piles. Yes, dirt piles. I thought it was weird, too.
She's gotten oh-so-much better. I'm very proud of her.
I had her walk all the way up onto the concrete in front of her stall before getting off of her; and she waltzed right into her stall with barely a look at it! Yay!! I think she was looking for her dinner, but I don't care. That's progress right there.
I rinsed her off and she was happy that she got to drink out of the hose (silly goose). She went right back into her stall again without any trouble at all. Then I fed her (and she was very polite about it), and turned her back out again.
I think the biggest challenge for me today was staying patient and waiting her out instead of reacting and having it escalate her tantrums. She's like a little kid sometimes, I swear. A smart, stubborn, 17.1 hand two-year-old. lol! But I did really well; I did get upset once or twice (this was in probably an hour of riding, though!), but I didn't do any lasting damage and was able to take a deep breath and go back to my happy place before I made matters worse. All I did was make her back up, and once I yelled. I feel bad about that, but I'm not perfect, and I am trying. Fighting with her for several minutes at a time doing nothing but standing there takes a lot out of my patience reserve.
I'm working on it, though. Just like she has to work on her patience! So... that's why the title of the post is named that - because we both had to work on patience today!
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