Chewie has now been at the new barn for two months.
She and her buddy Liberty have been living in the largest pasture on the property. They have room to roam and a run-in shelter to protect them from bad weather. There’s also plenty of room in the pasture for training!
We’ve had an unusually warm and dry autumn here in north Texas, However, winter is coming!
So, I’ve started introducing Chewie to the barn. The barn will give us a great location for feeding time and for training when it is cold, rainy, or windy.
I started by bringing Chewie into the barn to feed her and to let her play with her enrichment puzzle toys. Importantly, Liberty got to come, too!
I watched Chewie’s behavior carefully for the first several days.
How much time did she spend eating? How much time did she spend sniffing and investigating? How much time did she spend listening to new noises? Did she look anxious and alert or calm and cool?
Chewie was just a little unsure at first. However, after a couple of days, she seemed to regard the barn as just another nice place to eat breakfast.
Now, we are expanding what we can do in the barn.
- Practicing old behaviors. At first, we practiced behaviors Chewie already knows well, such as touching a target and picking up her feet. During these sessions, I was checking to see whether these behaviors would transfer to this new location or if we needed some extra training to help them transfer.
- Teaching new behaviors. Now that Chewie is happy being in the barn, we are starting to work on some new tasks! We’ve been working on building duration for standing on a platform and also doing some preparatory work for some veterinary tasks.
- Separation training. Chewie loves her donkey friend, Liberty. However, I would like to be able to bring Chewie in the barn alone. We’re working on this gradually, so that neither Chewie nor Liberty is stressed. Our current progress is that Chewie can come into the barn and eat hay or do a short training session, while Liberty eats hay in the pasture. I position Liberty’s hay bag so that Chewie can easily see him, if she wants.
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