A Day of Mistakes

Had a very average day today, meaning that it wasn't good. At the beginning of the session, my plan was to be a better leader, because in case I haven't mentioned it, I'm experimenting with leadership this week due to an e-mail with Shirley.

So, I see Moose. He looks at me. I circle around to yield his HQ so he'll turn and face so I can halter up. He trots off! I whack my carrot stick on the ground hard and walk after him. After a few times of making the right thing easy and the wrong thing difficult, he let me walk up to him and so I haltered up and started playing, completely ignoring the fact that he was hard to catch. *Possible Mistake #1. How to fix if I could've done it all over again: skip the play session entirely, and take the halter off after giving him a treat.*

Then, I tried some Porcupine and Driving Game. I was just doing the basic Porcupine the Forehand in a circle, then Porcupine the back end, then do Driving on the forehand and then on the back end, then switch sides and repeat. He did okay, but he won't pivot! It was really bugging me that he wouldn't, but I just went back to doing 1 or 2 steps, for the goal of building off that in the future. *Possible mistake #2. How to fix if I could've done it all over again: taking a break while I was frustrated, because I find that once my emotions come up, retreating helps them go back down.* But I did notice a staggering difference between his right side and left. Left was a lot easier and had more flow, right was really jerky and just plain more difficult.

After that, we did some Touch It. We haven't done that in a while and he was very rusty. We did Touch It all over the pasture, and he really didn't have touching things on his mind. And it bothered me again that he won't go straight at the things I point him at (I go straight to the item, but is kind of bent around me). This's been going on for forever, but it had to pop up today. Luckily, I didn't act on that thought, but just stored it for later. *Good choice.*

Then, I tried getting him to touch the chicken coop with me being about 12' away. I had to move closer to him before he would move his forehand and thus put his nose on it, but he did it. So, then with me standing in the same spot, I sent him to a tree (so I'm still about 12' away ), and he touched it again. Cheers for Moose! So, I sent him back to my first destination and he wanted to put his Zone 2 next to it, not his Zone 1 facing it. I had to get firm with him that I wanted his Zone 1 near the coop, so then he was too focused on me to think about touching it. *Possible mistake #3. How to fix if I could've done it all over again: Stopped when he touched the tree, that was good enough for one day.*

Then, we did Falling Leaf and he did okay for a little big, but then he started running around behind me and not yielding his hind end. I just passively persisted for a little bit, but then I got angry and said "I want those HQ now!" and he faced up fast but very wide-eyed. So, I apologized for getting firm, then yielded his HQ at close range to make sure he understood. I was still a little annoyed at this point, but decided I could be fair.

So, then I started playing with our change of direction, because in all honesty you would think we never practice it. *Mistake. How to fix if I could've done it all over again: Not even attempt this when I'm annoyed. I remember thinking: "do I want to quit here or get all worked up again?" Unfortunately, I made this decision off of feelings, not logic, because if my brain would've been working I would've just called it quits beforehand, and not have put my horse through torture from my own lack of emotional fitness.* He didn't do very good, and that was to be expected. I backed up as far as I could, he ran forward and completely ignored my looking at his hinder, so my angry predator came to life again and started whacking with that stick at his butt vigorously, and Moose obviously kept running. But after doing that twice, my brain kicked in and I decided I didn't want Moose to hate me for life.

Now, the good part about all this is that I thought of a way to fix our change of direction! Use a fence. *Good choice.* I stand a ways off the fence, so I have room to back up. I send Moose out, and then back up to the fence and if he runs forward, he just runs into the fence, and I just re-direct and then ta-da! A change of direction! Did that 3x and he changed without the fence for support. :)

So, I'm guessing tomorrow's going to be a bad day, so I'm going to get proactive and play with him with a bag of carrots tonight instead. Hopefully, that'll change his mind that I'm not so bad after all.