Leading

So I have been researching leading. Like I have said many times, I'm such a horse noob. So like when I tiled the backsplash, figured out my dog was sick, planted a garden, or anything else that I don't know how to do, I turned to the internet. In my many adventures on the internet I have found alot of crap and alot of good information.

That being said, my training techniques with dogs is simple. I have a treat. You do what I want you get the treat. Then we gradually wean off of treats and the dog is doing things for me for the pure reward of it. I don't beat my dogs nor yell at them during training. It is ineffective and frustrates both the dog and me. Shadow is now at the point (being 13) that she needs to be almost retrained. She is 80% deaf and so now we have been working with hand commands instead of voice. It is working out quite well.

Buck was taught at a very early age the basics. He still needs to work on the recall back to me. But this is my fault, not his. Once he got the basic commands down and decided that this family was for him, he really isn't all that bad of a dog. I just kinda quit with the training. He got 3 solid months of sit, stay, lay, and come. I started training him to search but for some reason or another quit. I may start that back up, he seemed to enjoy that during training.

So, back to my point here. I am not an advocate of pain. Have I ever hit my dogs? Sure! If they are not paying attention to me and I need them to pay attention to me, they get a smack. Not a punch, not a hard hit, just a "Oh! Mom wants me to pay attention to her! Not this delicious dead rabbit I found!" I call it my pecking order is higher than theirs issue.

Take for instance, once Buck got a rabbit. Then Shadow got the rabbit, then Buck, then Shadow. Eventually once I realized that they were playing this back and forth game, I stepped in and said "Drop". Both dogs dropped the rabbit and took 2-3 steps back. I am higher than them in the order of life here and they know it. If I want the rabbit to eat for dinner well then by god I can have it. They have no control over it. (I killed the rabbit btw, the dogs had pretty much destroyed it by that point. Again, I did not realize what they were doing till too late)

So, reading about how to lead Dodge. I know horses are herd animals. It's a little different than dogs and their packs. Being that horses don't hunt in packs or anything.... but the mentality of the pack has to still be there. Start with a high ranking person and stop at the lowly leper. I need to be at the top of the pecking order. Right now Dodge is under the assumption that she is higher than me and I am pretty sure is challeging me.

So I look up leading. Did I mention I'm not a pain fan? I found everything from putting the stud chain back on to carrying a whip and smacking her with it every time she does something wrong. I am NOT putting the stud chain back on her. She does not need it. I don't see the point in doing it with her. She is not out of control at all. Just has some leadership issues.

I also read of jerking her head every time she does something wrong. Once again, I am NOT going to jerk hard on the halter every time something is wrong. Why the hell would I pull and jerk all over her head. She will just think, wow, this lady likes to pull on my head every five seconds. Let me not let her halter me at all. And if she does jerk on my head, lets start going nuts.

What will I do? Exactly what I've been doing which is working. She wants to run me over? That's cool. But we've addressed each issue lately.

1.) The attempting to bolt out of the stall. This was almost completely fixed by standing in front of the stall door and letting her calm down first. If she tried to bolt once I let her have an opening I pushed her back into the stall. Rinse and Repeat. 4 days of the same method and by god she is so much better. Still needs more work but she is now not running over me.

2.) Walking on the lead with respect. Like I mentioned before, we did lots of stops. If she started to overrun me, well, we stopped. I'd grab her halter and give her a gruff "woah". No jerking needed just a little stop. Then we'd start again. Rinse and Repeat. If I needed her attention, remember that lead rope? It's got that little cap on the end as I mentioned and she would get a little pop with it. It doesn't hurt, I hit myself with it first, but its enough to bring her back down to me. I've also pushed her a little. If she gets over excited, well then I take over as pack and push her ass back. 4 days later she is getting better. Again, no stud chain, no jerking on her face, and no beating. This really isn't that hard.

With her hooves being done I may start lunging her for about 5-10 minutes every time I'm out there. Just to get her to bend again and listen to me. She does quite well now with "woah" and now remembers that this means "stop". Haha, I didn't even have her on the lead rope yesterday and remember that game I was talking about? The one where I am getting her to come over to me? I got a wild hair up my butt and asked her to woah mid walking over to me. She totally stopped and stood there. When I asked for the walk, she continued over to me for her treat. Awesome! Just like a dog.

Again, the treats will taper off and she will then be getting pats and non treat positive reinforcement. She went from totally unhandled for 2 years and with a stud chain on her nose because the owner didn't want her to "run over her" to stopping mid field because I asked her to.

I'm not a trainer..... but I'm pretty sure that is some headway. Not saying I'm this miracle worker either. There was a time when she was trained......I'm just refreshing what she already knew. I need her to see me as leader and I think I'm getting that from her.