Personal and Pony updates

I'm slowly re-joining the land of the living.  For those of you who don't know, I had minor surgery on Wed. It was no big deal, except that Tuesday I came down with a head cold.  Major stuffiness, sinus congestion, headache, all that fun stuff, but no fever or chest involvement.  So it was up in the air as to whether surgery would go ahead.  However, I still had to follow the pre-surgical rules of no food/liquids after 12midnight the night before and obviously no medications.  The surgery was scheduled for about 3pm, so you can imagine I was feeling great  - thirsty, hungry, tired, totally congested and generally feeling sick and facing anesthesia & surgery for the first time.  Good times!!  The surgery did go ahead as planned, all went well and the head cold is on its way out.  It's like killing two birds with one stone in a sense, as I was going to be stuck on the couch for a couple of days one way or the other!

The couch time has also coincided with some seriously nasty weather - lots and lots of cold rain!!  I'm sure most folks have heard about the tornados in the south and flooding all over the place.   Here in Crozet, we've got pretty good mountain drainage so flooding wasn't an issue, but everything is pretty soggy.  Like standing water in the fields soggy.  That being said, we're way behind in precipitation so the soggy it not a bad thing...I'm imagining underground aquifers re-filling as I type :-)  Pony squishes where ever she walks like she's got wet tennis shoes on, and there are a lot of doggie foot prints on the kitchen linoleum.  The grass is greening at a ridiculous pace....I see a grazing muzzle in someone's future (and a lawnmower in mine).

In pony news, I rigged up a toy a little while back to try to entertain her hairy-ness whilst she was still penned up.  It led to some serious concern and an interesting discovery.

The contraption is very simple, just an old apple cider jug with large holes cut in it, hung by the handle at pony-nose height.  See:

Stuff treats in those holes, and Dax gets to bop it around to get the treats out....it really does take a bit of bopping to get them out, and I watched her mess with it for a good bit of time the first day I put it out.  I'm thinking "Great!!  She's bright enough to figure this out and will hopefully keep herself busy messing with it for a bit each day!".  Horsey people are probably thinking "Yeah right, she's going to figure out she can grab it and pull it down with her teeth in about two seconds."  And we're both wrong.  Second day out, I put treats in it, and she completely ignores the contraption.  I come back that evening, and they haven't been touched.
Seriously....fresh cut carrots and Mrs. Pasture's horse cookies....untouched.  
My god, is she colicking?!??!?
No, she's just fine. I get a friendly nuzzle and she dives into her evening hay.  No signs of distress what-so-ever.  Hmmm.
This goes on for a few days.  I shake it, let her eat what drops out, she snuffles my hand as I put the cookies in the jug....and proceeds to ignore it.

I get the worried suspicion that my horse is, well, stupid.

As I've mentioned before, she's trusting to a fault, thinks pretty much the world is her oyster, all humans are good and she has the least play drive I've seen in any horse, ever.  Play in animals is often considered a sign of intelligence....it's often the first step in learning.

Oh dear lord, I think my horse is simple.

OK, can this really be true?  How does one tell??  Generally when one thinks of a stupid horse, we think of one that doesn't understand simple riding cues, or is scared of every thing, or is easily overwhelmed to the point of emotional melt-downs.  But these all depend on the horse having a functional fight-flight response, right?  (And I want to note that often these "stupid" horses are just very sensitive or simply high-strung and need a calm leader they can trust to excel.  It's really the people who are stupid and don't see what the horse needs.)  Anyway, the above described horse has to be smart enough to be scared of things like a normal prey animal.  What if my horse is so simple-minded that she isn't even scared of things for her own good???

I'm mulling over this possibility when my training clickers arrive.  Right, here's a test - will she get the click-equals-treat thing and can I mold a behavior with her, or will she fail miserably and prove to me once and for all that I actually own a special needs equine?

I have tried to teach her to bow previously by tempting her with a treat between her front legs - this is a no brainer, because her nose/mouth just follow the treat as I lower it to her knees.  But I wanted to see if I could get her to do it without the lure, and on command.  I follow the basic instructions of simply introducing the clicker "click" followed with a treat.  Let's see if she can figure out that the click means "at treat is coming".
Click, wait a second, treat.  Dax loves this game.
Click, wait 5 seconds, treat.  Dax thinks the treat must be in the other hand.  Tries to eat the clicker.  Finally gets her treat.  "Geez, what's with the 5 seconds mom?"
I do this for a minute or two  - it's pretty clear she gets the click and treat connection.  That or she can detect treat molecules on me and won't leave my side till she's inhaled every one.

Ok, time to up the stakes.  I don't do anything, and wait for an interesting behavior, something like a bow.  This is as simple as her dropping her nose to the ground or her leg.  As it turns out, nose to the ground is the first thing she does.  I click immediately and shove a cookie in her mouth.  Her ears are glued on me and I can almost hear the gears spinning behind her bright brown eyes.  She tries gently nudging me, looks around, then drops her nose again.  I manage to click while her head is dropping (you always click while the behavior is happening - timing is key).  'Nother cookie.
I swear she smiles at me.
She drops her head.
Click - cookie.
She drops her head again.

She learned to bow in three clicks.  A few more, and she was basically doing it on command.

I'm not worried Dax is simple anymore.  I'm now worried that she's so smart, she thinks the treat-jug is boring and frustrating, and will likewise ignore any of my other home-made toy ideas.  Crap.