Trickmeister Dude

Sunday January 22 2017

My sister's visiting, and she got to meet Stormy and Jose and Dudley and the rest of the herd for the first time.

Dudley put on a little show for her the first day. Not too bad, considering we haven't worked on tricks for a while! (Day 2 we tried and he was totally uninterested in performing. In fact, he just stood there and stared at us, even with carrots as rewards on offer! Oh well.) My sister took the pictures.


cheese!


give me a hug!


pick it up! 
We just started on working having him pick it up and hand it to me. I tried to run in there to grab it before he dropped it! Gotta work on it.


step!
Working on the Spanish step. Right now he has to do 3 steps (left right left) before he gets a reward. We'll eventually work on walking forward while doing it.

Trickster Dudley

Friday January 23 2015

Dudley cracks me up.

I decided a couple of months ago to teach Dudley tricks, and I joined Jain Brand's Horse Tricks Academy at Horsetricks101.com.

She's got step by step videos of building basics of different tricks, and points out that sometimes it's the horse that gives us clues as to what tricks he might already know. Dudley already learned from a long-ago trainer to bow - and we aren't even working on that trick yet. He already had a habit of throwing his head up in the air - as you see here from my 2008 post, America's Next Top (Equine) Model. I just turned that into a trick, by timing my training cues right.

Dudley and I don't practice every day, and when we do, it's only two carrots' worth: I cut 2 carrots into bite-sized pieces, and we practice a few tricks until the carrots run out. It's just a little fun during the day when he's hungry and wants a snack to eat!

I made this short video to show how he's progressing with minimal practice. As you can see from the video, he just cracks me up.

[embed]


or link:
http://youtu.be/8Z1UFNxV9KM

Ring My Bell

Friday October 31 2014

It seemed natural to want to teach Dudley a few tricks, since he's such a smart horse.

However, he's so smart, he's made up a couple of his own tricks. One is shoving a gate open (I unlatch the gate, say "OK," and with his nose he shoves the gate as hard as he can, swinging it open as far as it will go - he loves doing this).

Another one he debuted yesterday is ringing a bell for a treat. I am not making this up - he figured this out on his own!

Dudley already knew to stop and check out Connie's place - wait outside at her porch, look in her windows - to see if she's home, so he could get a treat.

Yesterday, he figured out, on his own, that if he rang her little bell hanging off her porch, she would give him a treat! I swear, he came up with this bell-ringing on his own.

See the video:


or link:
http://youtu.be/vmS3FIQ9z-A

(and Connie posted later today: Well you have created a monster. I was sitting on the porch minding my own business talking on the phone blah blah, And here comes Dudley, and well he thought about coming up the stairs… Then proceeds to go ring the bell , not once but 3 different times and well I gave him 3 treats, and I would still be up there listening to Dudley ringing the bell and giving him treats, but fortunately his master Phinneas was hollering for him and he left on his own accord!

The New Trickster

Tuesday October 14 2014

Steph has found her new passion of learning Natural Horsemanship in her journey with 5-year-old Smokey. Smokey went to school in Ted Nicholes' training program, and Steph and Smokey just attended a 3-day clinic with him.

Dudley has been my spring-summer-fall project. He's also Steph's horse, and I adopted him as my personal project when he got fat (i.e. obese) last winter. I stuck him in my ODE Program: the Owyhee Diet and Exercise Program. Over the Tough Love months, he lost weight, did his first 50-mile endurance ride in 6 years, and in fact completed 3 50-mile rides so far this year (aiming for the last one of the season in 2 weeks!).

So now what?

Dudley is a smart horse. A good local cowboy broke him about 10 years ago, and had him doing tricks then: While standing on Dudley's back he could crack a whip; he could lay Dudley down. So Dudley already has some trick training in his foundation, and he learns fast, especially when treats are involved. (Once years ago, I gave him a treat when he first stopped and peed out on the trail, since that is a good endurance horse trait to have; after I gave him a treat the second time he peed, he started stopping every half a mile, trying to squeeze something out so he'd get a treat. He didn't forget that for years. Years.)

I've long had it in the back of my mind that shoot, Dudley could learn tricks. Somebody just needs to teach him. He'd look mighty snazzy doing the Spanish Walk, or bowing beside someone. Then I thought, wait, why don't *I* try to learn to teach him tricks? Dudley can become a Trick Horse. He can Spanish Walk beside me! He can bow beside me!

So I joined the Horse Academy.

Horsetricks101.com, the Horse Tricks Academy, is Jain from Australia, with her horses Trigger and Bella. Her method is a well-explained step by step process of building the basic steps and foundations of tricks. She's got videos and ebooks and worksheets, and she uses her horses in her videos to demonstrate the process.

Interacting with your horse by teaching tricks is not only fun, but it improves your communication and trust with your horse. I am lucky (says Jain) that even though Dudley has a weight challenge, he is motivated by food, and he loves treats; and those kinds of horses are easiest to train (I just need to find some very low-cal, or very tiny treats!). I really am lucky that he is already a well-behaved horse who respects my space and won't hog me for treats, and will back up out of my space with a flick of my hands and stand there. (And backing up, and standing and waiting, are two of the foundation tricks!)

The Dude started 2 days ago, and I'd have to say he's already got one of the basics, Touch, down already. He made me laugh today, because he already gets it.

I have a feeling Dudley is going to be teaching me a lot more things than he's already taught me.