Zora and the Dogs

Today was one of those days I'm super grateful for my dogs.  They are now both getting to the age where they are able to really help me out with the young horses.  For example, today I started with Zora in the arena, reviewing mounting from the off side, walking, trotting, and going over ground poles.  Rizzo likes to help with the mounting work - she often gets on the block to help out with teaching the basics.  

This is a photo of her with Silver from some time ago, but she does the same for the horses currently learning how to stand at the block.

 

Today Zora very quickly got bored with the arena work review, and when she gets bored she shuts down.  To keep her interested in the training and wanting to participate, the dogs and I took her out to the fields.  

 

After a quick lap around the front field, we marched out towards the back forty where the cross country course is.  She was eager to check out the llamas as we passed by, who were mostly hanging out in the shade of their barns - it was hot today!  Then we cruised on towards the far west loafing shed on our property.  Just behind this shed the solar power is located for the electric fence.  It does make a clicking noise as it pulses, which was somewhat alarming to Zora.  She made some googley eyes at it, and didn't really want to walk past.  

This was a perfect example of what the dogs can do for me.  I called Rizzo, and she and Pascal both came right up to me and Zora.  I tossed them each a cookie, gestured forwards, and said we had to head out.  Both dogs immediately trotted forwards past the clicking.  Zora has had all her training here with them, and is totally accustomed to them being around as security blankets.  Because of this, she observed them go safely past the power source and then she followed along, after they proved there was nothing to be concerned about.  We did the same thing on our way back to the barn - the dogs led the way and Zora happily followed them.

Rizzo helps young Zora find her courage in the wide back forty fields

In an effort to encourage "forward thinking" for a draft horse brain, I did take advantage of the little bit of adrenaline Zora accumulated going by the charger.  I sent her into a trot as we entered the back field, and we even got a little canter on each lead as we went up the hill and towards the west perimeter.  She was kind of sticky in the arena and didn't want to move out much, but the wide open space of the field lent itself to a bigger trot, and ultimately a very nice first canter!

I love having the dogs around because they help the horses to learn to filter out distractions.  On the lunge line they dogs essentially do cartwheels around the lunging horse, and after just a few sessions the horses are so used to it they just ignore them and listen only to my cues.  This pays big dividends when we get to horse shows - if the horse can go through an entire training session with my noisy dogs running around and playing there is very little at a horse show that will startle or surprise them.

The dogs will help lead the horses through difficult situations, like Zora with the charger today, or into water like Casper did last month, or even helping Zora to figure out she can safely trot into shade in the arena like yesterday.  They also will help with jumping (neither of the 4 year olds are really ready for this at the moment but the dogs are prepared when older horses start over fences) by running in front of the horses and jumping the jumps ahead of them to demonstrate what needs to happen.  

 

The dogs also helped today with getting Zora past some suspicious looking cross country fences.  One of the jumps has a portion that pokes out to one side, which to a young horse could appear to be the arm and claw of a predator lurking in the area.  When Zora balked, the dogs immediately came to the rescue, going directly up to the log and hopping on top of it to show her there was nothing to be scared of.  When Zora saw the dogs safely approaching the scary thing, it suddenly was no longer scary.

I'm sure grateful to have such amazing and intelligent animals to work with every day!