Last month I had to break up the bromance between B and O. B still doesn't like it but he's for the most part accepted the separation as part of his normal life. Occasionally he'll leave his staring post (staring at O) and wander off into the big pasture by himself. However, B doesn't like it if O wanders out of sight. Commence whinnying.
Also, last month I had O train himself to load in the trailer by feeding his breakfast in there. That worked pretty well except that O learned to turn around and let himself out rather than backing, which is safer when there's a person in the trailer with him. Once O was comfortable loading himself I moved the trailer up front, then walked him up there to load. He loaded just fine but didn't want to stay in the trailer.
This month I've tried several tactics to build duration in the trailer. The first was loading unloading loading unloading loading then tying him in with his hay bag, shutting the divider and the door then let him hang out there for 4 minutes. Repeat. Seems like a good idea except he wasn't relaxing at all, just waiting for me to return. So then I decided that having him stay in for 10 minutes would be better because it would give him time to get used to the idea. Except it didn't so I thought that we'd have to repeat the 10 minutes until it was part of his life.
Except then I started hating trailer training. So I perused trustworthy online sources #MaryKKitzmiller #ShawnaCorrinKorresch #MustangMaddy #HRN #StacyWestfall. All of these trainers use either positive reinforcement or a combination of positive reinforcement and pressure and release and all of them helped me to a certain point with the loading part using positive reinforcement and target training. O loves target training most of the time but it was when I listened to a July episode of Stacy Westfall's podcast about the importance of ground work that it finally dawned on me why O wasn't responding as expected.
In short, he didn't believe me when we left his familiar barnyard. Up front, away from B and out of site of the barn we may as well be 100 miles away. It's all new to him and he wanted to check it out on his own terms rather than listen to me tell him what he needed to be concerned about (me and the horse trailer). He would sort of woodenly go through the motions of moving his feet when asked but was a bit defiant about backing up when asked. And by defiant I mean that I asked and he tossed his head at me rather than moving his feet as requested. Head tossing is the horsey version of sassing.
So then he got to work by trotting in circles, changing directions and doing a lot of backing up until I was satisfied that he was at least listening to that part. Still, O would check out if we stopped for a moment. I wanted to give him a moment to think about things but he turned his head away to focus on something behind him, left of him, right of him. This is the horsey version of checking FB or instagram instead of doing the task at hand.
What I learned from the Stacy Westfall podcast is that I had to be more interesting to him. She suggested all kinds of ways to be more interesting: line dancing, jumping jacks, the can-can, etc. So today we warmed up with some ground work, just moving in circles, moving out, moving in, stopping, backing up, target a flag. He did good so we walked up front. Every time he stopped paying attention to me I'd have him back up, move sideways until his attention was on me again. We moved on to the target and positive reinforcement: I hold out a flag, he touches it with his nose, he get a treat for doing that. Or I point him toward a traffic cone and ask him to target it. When he does, he gets a treat.
I moved the targets to the trailer and that's when he decided to check out and check FB instead. I did a lot of jumping jacks, can-can until his attention was on me again. Then I asked him to back up and come forward to me, get in the trailer, touch the target and back out. Repeat. We came to a good stopping point when I got him all the way in the trailer to touch the flag tied to the hay bag and eat a few bites of hay. He started to back out but I asked him to come forward and he did without resisting my request. That was a great place to stop and it's my impression that he believes me now.
B does a lot of yawning, licking and chewing when we return. He's got a lot to process about O leaving and returning.