Earlier this week, Chewie and I spent some time playing with a small tambourine!
We’ve spent a lot of time exploring new and interesting objects, including various objects for Chewie to stand on. (You can check out the exploration sessions tag to read about some of our past training sessions with new items and experiences.) However, Chewie and I haven’t experimented as much with novel sounds.
So, I wasn’t sure what Chewie would think of the tambourine.
When I first tried shaking it, she raised her head and pricked her ears forward, listening to it. She was curious and interested and not at all scared!
Later on, I tried shaking it closer to her.
And, Chewie showed her true colors as a clicker-trained horse. When the tambourine was closer to her, she definitely thought that it was a target!
She immediately wanted to reach out and touch it with her nose, as you can see in the photo below.
I was pleased that Chewie had such a positive reaction to the tambourine.
Still, since I wasn’t 100% sure how she would react, I set up this training session so that she had plenty of space and options if she did decide she needed to move away from the noise.
In the coming weeks, I hope we can continue playing with some other novel sounds.
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