Mule explorations
Marty Mule is an interesting character. He learns things very quickly and very specifically. So for example when I was asking him to load, he figured out that he needed to put one foot on the ramp, then a second ( because I moved the goalposts quick enough in that respect ) but he also learned to do it standing diagonally on the ramp and looking away from the lorry and once he had that idea, anything else was doing it wrong. We actually loaded him by changing strategy somewhat and having herecirm lead him in while I added a bit of energy behind him.
Last night we put him out with Cash and Iris ( cue mule being chased around the place ) and things seemed relatively calm this evening although the horses were still arbitrarily deciding to chase him.
I want to make being caught and being around humans a more positive experience after his initial couple of days of loading and then travelling, which was inevitably traumatic. My plan for the evening was to bring him in and give him some dinner.
The first task was to catch him in the larger area. That wasn't too bad because firstly he only walks off and secondly when he did decide to go and hang out with the horses they chased him back to where I was. It took a long time but we kept things pretty calm and nobody felt the need to charge about. Then we moved on to step two, which was to head over to the gate. Of course the moment Cash took an interest Marty McFlightAnimal reacted way more strongly to me asking Cash to leave us alone than Cash did. We spent a little while on getting him comfortable with any degree of movement from the rope. He's a sensitive little soul and I don't think anyone had really done any desensitisation type work with him, so I had to start out very quiet. He seemed to get the idea quite quickly though, and he didn't mind other people getting out of our way.
We got to the gate of the field ( a simple hook-on electric fence gate ) and that was really where the trouble started. The problem was that Marty couldn't go through the fence. In his clever mule brain, he knew where the fence was and he knew that the fence would zap him and that was a matter of mathematics and geometry and had nothing to do with the electric tape. He could not cross that line. Meanwhile Cash and Iris were circling like mostly harmless but vaguely irritating sharks, which put him more on edge in case they bullied him and put me on edge in case they made a break for freedom. The mule starts running backwards. I persuade him to stop but now I am stretched between the gate and the mule. If I let go of one the horses get out and cause havoc, if I let go of the other, there is an unsupervised mule on a halter and also I can't ever let go while he is pulling or he'll figure out that pulling works and life will be way harder than it needs to be. In the end I got him to step up a little, but not enough to close the gate, put the lead down carefully and closed the gate. Exit mule at full gallop, pursued by a lead rope.
After a very brisk circuit of the field, with no escape from said rope, Marty came to a stop and I went over and caught him again. He was actually quite superficially calm, but he is a lot tense most of the time so I can't guarantee that this appearance means much. I gave him a bunch of time to think things over ( I give him more thinking time than I usually offer horses because he seems to need it, often he will start to soften and work his mouth a minute or more after the last thing I asked him for ) and I touched him with the tail of the rope a bit so he could see that it didn't want to harm him, then we did some simple leading work. I finished by leading him over to the fence and giving him some handfuls of fresh grass I could reach from underneath it. It wasn't exactly giving him dinner, but it was hopefully at least on the right lines. He stayed with me when I took the halter off, so I think maybe we finished on reasonable terms.
I didn't like to see him bothered like that by the lead rope, but there was a chance it would have happened sooner or later in any case- I have suffered enough rope burns that I let go pretty fast these days and I don't yet have the finesse to be sure that won't happen somewhere along the path. He figured out that he didn't need to run away from it and we ended up on a good note. As with everything at this stage, it is a learning process for both of us.
Last night we put him out with Cash and Iris ( cue mule being chased around the place ) and things seemed relatively calm this evening although the horses were still arbitrarily deciding to chase him.
I want to make being caught and being around humans a more positive experience after his initial couple of days of loading and then travelling, which was inevitably traumatic. My plan for the evening was to bring him in and give him some dinner.
The first task was to catch him in the larger area. That wasn't too bad because firstly he only walks off and secondly when he did decide to go and hang out with the horses they chased him back to where I was. It took a long time but we kept things pretty calm and nobody felt the need to charge about. Then we moved on to step two, which was to head over to the gate. Of course the moment Cash took an interest Marty McFlightAnimal reacted way more strongly to me asking Cash to leave us alone than Cash did. We spent a little while on getting him comfortable with any degree of movement from the rope. He's a sensitive little soul and I don't think anyone had really done any desensitisation type work with him, so I had to start out very quiet. He seemed to get the idea quite quickly though, and he didn't mind other people getting out of our way.
We got to the gate of the field ( a simple hook-on electric fence gate ) and that was really where the trouble started. The problem was that Marty couldn't go through the fence. In his clever mule brain, he knew where the fence was and he knew that the fence would zap him and that was a matter of mathematics and geometry and had nothing to do with the electric tape. He could not cross that line. Meanwhile Cash and Iris were circling like mostly harmless but vaguely irritating sharks, which put him more on edge in case they bullied him and put me on edge in case they made a break for freedom. The mule starts running backwards. I persuade him to stop but now I am stretched between the gate and the mule. If I let go of one the horses get out and cause havoc, if I let go of the other, there is an unsupervised mule on a halter and also I can't ever let go while he is pulling or he'll figure out that pulling works and life will be way harder than it needs to be. In the end I got him to step up a little, but not enough to close the gate, put the lead down carefully and closed the gate. Exit mule at full gallop, pursued by a lead rope.
After a very brisk circuit of the field, with no escape from said rope, Marty came to a stop and I went over and caught him again. He was actually quite superficially calm, but he is a lot tense most of the time so I can't guarantee that this appearance means much. I gave him a bunch of time to think things over ( I give him more thinking time than I usually offer horses because he seems to need it, often he will start to soften and work his mouth a minute or more after the last thing I asked him for ) and I touched him with the tail of the rope a bit so he could see that it didn't want to harm him, then we did some simple leading work. I finished by leading him over to the fence and giving him some handfuls of fresh grass I could reach from underneath it. It wasn't exactly giving him dinner, but it was hopefully at least on the right lines. He stayed with me when I took the halter off, so I think maybe we finished on reasonable terms.
I didn't like to see him bothered like that by the lead rope, but there was a chance it would have happened sooner or later in any case- I have suffered enough rope burns that I let go pretty fast these days and I don't yet have the finesse to be sure that won't happen somewhere along the path. He figured out that he didn't need to run away from it and we ended up on a good note. As with everything at this stage, it is a learning process for both of us.