I'm back!

Well I haven't posted in awhile because basically I haven't seen much of Red. My Auntie and Dad have been going out to see him and feed them (bless their souls) because I have been very busy and tired. I went to Aussie last weekend for a thing with my work which was lots of fun and a few other things made me unable to go out but now I will get back into my normal routine.

I went out this morning, and I started to clicker train Red. I'm not going to go into clicker training because it would make this a extremely long post but you can read about it here . Basically you ask the horse to do something good and when they do it the click is the reward but you reinforce it with a treat. After a lot of training you can just give a click as a reward for good behaviour.

So I started that with Red today. Some people believe in 'charging the clicker' which means you start off by clicking then rewarding, clicking then rewarding etc until the horse gets that a click means a treat. I did it another way. I held up a cone and when he sniffed it, I clicked, then treated. Everytime he touched the cone with his nose, I clicked and treated. I think he kind of got it. He would touch the cone on purpose a couple of times but other times it kinda looked like it was an accident. But its supposed to take a few sessions till they really get it anyway so I'm not too worried. I also did a bit of lunging. There was a big crew of workers who were doing something on the PC land (which is also council land) who were watching me do it, and thankfully Red was responding very well to my cues! Hes such a good boy.

So anyway I'll keep you updated on our Clicker Training process. Hopefully he'll become a pro at it. I also did a quick training session with Red and the float. He always takes about 10 mins to get on because hes a stubborn old man that doesn't want to leave his nice paddocks. So I just lead him part way up the ramp, and when he was standing nice and calmly I gave him a click and a treat and then we just stood there some more. Hopefully he'll get the idea that floating can be nice and calmly done too. I'll keep on with that.