I’m going to start doing wordless Wednesday posts. If I have any really fun training photos, I’ll post them. But, most weeks I’m planning to feature some of the rescue animals I work with. I work with the dogs and cats at the Denton Animal Shelter and also with rescue horses at Never-E-Nuff Acres Horse Rescue and Sanctuary. These posts won’t be completely wordless. Sometimes I’ll cheat and include a short description or some information about the animal.

This week’s adoptable pet is Archer. He’s a gorgeous Russian blue who’s available for adoption at the Denton Animal Shelter starting today. This handsome young man is also quite a sweetheart. He had a great time playing with us yesterday when we let him out for some play time. Hopefully he’ll find a great new home this week!

Note: Please feel free to link to my wordless Wednesday posts or share them on facebook, especially if you live in Texas or have friends in north Texas who might be interested in these animals.

These are some pictures from last summer that I just ran across. I know they are old, but I’m still posting them because I LOVE them! Most horses are naturally VERY curious. Especially if they are given the time and space to explore something new. Horses get scared when we force them to interact with new things, instead of allowing the horse the time to investigate at his own pace.

Temple Grandin says that what animals are often afraid of is “forced novelty”—when we push the horse into new situations that he does not understand. Confidence increases when the animal feels like he has control over his environment and surroundings. (More about this here).

The following pictures show Luna checking out the new hay ring the rescue got last summer. (Luna’s the pony I wrote about in this post about a week ago. She made SO much progress last year.) Luna can be very skeptical about new things. However, given time to investigate and explore, she approached and retreated from the hay ring, even approaching close enough to smell it. Then, after a few more approaches, she walked all the way through the hay ring! After that, she turned around and walked back through it the other way. What a brave little pony.

If you are working with a horse who is scared of something, DO NOT try to force the horse to approach the scary object! Instead, use other strategies to help the horse build his confidence. For instance, make the scary thing smaller or less intense, if possible. You can turn down the pressure on a scary water hose or fold up a scary plastic bag to make it smaller. Find a place to start working where the horse can remain comfortable and relaxed.

Let the horse choose when to approach and honor the horse’s requests to move away. If the horse needs to take a step or two backward, let him, rather than trying to pull on the lead to keep the horse in one spot. You can practice approaching and retreating from the scary thing, gradually getting closer.

That’s what I did with Autumn when we found a crinkly balloon in the yard (pictures here). With a clicker trained horse, this quickly becomes a fun game for the horse because the horse learns that she will get a click and a treat for approaching and touching new objects. Novel objects then become something fun to investigate, rather than something scary to run away from.

The horses are pretty miserable. They spend most of the day standing in the sheds or huddled together under the trees. We try to get most of our chores, training and riding done in the early morning, before the temperatures get too hot. Still, with lows in the low 80s, even the early morning feels warm!!

What’s the weather like in your part of the country? Is it miserably hot and dry or are you getting some nicer weather, shade, or rain? What are you doing to stay cool and what are you doing to keep your horses happy during the hot weather?

Our boys in the front pasture were feeling pretty silly the other day and took off running and chasing each other mid-day, in the heat of the day! They didn’t run long, probably about 5 or 10 minutes, but they sure seemed to be having fun. Lately, none of them have had the energy to move very fast in this hot heat. I got a few good pictures, which are below. With the lack of rain, they were really kicking up the dust.

After running their laps and stirring up the dust, the three big geldings settled down near the water troughs to get a much needed drink! The two ponies and our yearling donkey found a nice shady spot at the front of the pasture to rest and catch their breath.

So, how are you and your horses holding up with all this hot summer weather?

The family who adopted Tilde earlier in the summer had been eyeing Gingersnap all summer. They finally decided that they couldn’t let this sweet girl get away from them and they said, yes, they’d adopt her too! So, Tilde and Gingersnap are keeping each other company again. Gingersnap is the filly we got from the sheriff at the beginning of the year who was just skin and bones. Physically and emotionally she has turned into a completely different horse and is now such a sweetheart. We know her new family is going to love her too!

This is the fun part of rescue work, getting to see our efforts of rehab and training pay off when our horses find awesome new homes. We have about eight other horses currently available for adoption, so we’re hoping we’ll have some more happy endings this summer and fall!

I’ve written previously about Beau, our big black and white gelding, such as in this recent post. He was badly abused and was untouchable and VERY skeptical of people for a long time.

We worked with him a lot this spring using CAT (constructional aggression treatment), which a procedure that works well with both aggressive dogs and fearful horses.

Now, we are so proud of Beau because he seeks out attention, even from strangers. He is pretty curious and interested in meeting new people. You can see he’s pretty calm about the whole affair, his head is low, his eyes and nostrils are relaxed and his ears are more floppy than tense. He was more than happy to let Hailey scratch him a bit on his neck.

February was busier than I thought is was going to be! Sorry for the lack of posts the past two weeks, I was busy with a conference, traveling to a clinic, and then catching up on school work. The good part, though, is I have lots of interesting things to think about and write about for March!

I have a post I’m working on for tomorrow about an awesome non-profit that helps shelter dogs. Then, for this week I have several posts about the Alexandra Kurland clinic I audited last weekend. It was a very interesting clinic. We had a diverse group of horses and everyone in attendance was experienced with horses and clicker training. We had some really good discussions about teaching strategies, effective clicker training, and creative solutions to complex problems.

Then, next week, I have about half a dozen posts I’m working on about ORCA’s 2011 animal training conference at UNT. This year’s conference was absolutely fantastic. The speakers were great and many of their presentations seemed to connect and expand on the other lectures. Quite a bit of the discussion centered around finding ways to train that help our animals be successful and minimize frustration and errors. Also, Bob Bailey spoke at the conference! This was a bit of a surprise and everyone was very excited to get to hear him speak.

The pictures are from yesterday. My friend Liz came out to the rescue with me, along with her dog Ransom. We had fun, although it was very windy and cold, so we didn’t do a whole lot with the horses. Liz got to meet Ella, our baby donkey, who is getting sweeter by the day! Ransom had a blast meeting the horses, finding interesting things to roll in, and attempting to swim in the water troughs. He even tried to play some with Ella. I got some cute video of this, which I’ll stick on youtube. He would run up to her, then she would chase him off, then he would run around her and back up to her, and she would chase him off again. They both seemed very playful about it and seemed to enjoy their game of “you can’t catch me.” Ella seemed more playful than serious, although if she wanted to, I think she would make a very good guard donkey!

Since Connor was gone, we deemed it safe to open the gates between the back two pastures. Of course, the additional space, plus mixing the two herds together got everybody excited! They all had a nice time running around kicking up their heels.

This weekend is going to be a BUSY weekend, but it should be a lot of fun. ORCA (our graduate research group for animal training) is putting on our annual training conference. So, I’ll be busy with conference stuff from sunup to sundown all day Friday, Saturday and Sunday. But, it should be a great time. I always learn a lot and come away with a lot of great ideas. My notes from last year are here, I promise to post notes from this year as well. Our speakers this year are Kay Laurence, Alexandra Kurland, Steve White, Ken Ramirez, Phung Luu, Bob Bailey and Paul Andronis. You can read more about the talks and the conference on ORCA’s website.

I’m also going the following weekend to audit an horse training clinic with Alexandra Kurland in the Houston area. I decided to register toward the last minute and got lucky–I got the last auditor spot. It should be a lot of fun as well. I learned a lot at the clinic I went to with her about a year and a half ago.

But, onto the pictures. The horses all first went running toward the back of the left pasture.

Then they came running back to the front. In this picture, blossom is in front, Daisy and Apollo are together, and Rohan’s in the back.

Sometimes they were all running together, sometimes there was a bit of chase going on. At this point, I think Paden (the black and white paint) was trying to get Takoda (the bay paint) away from the mares.

Chardonnay, our big chestnut paint mare.

Takoda, with almost all four feet off the ground. Paden is in the background. This one is my favorite, I think!

Everyone going through the gate, back into the other pasture.

Daisy, with all four feet off the ground. Apollo is the chestnut paint behind her.

On Friday we got about 6-8 inches of snow. This is probably the second largest amount of snow that Ginger has ever seen. In any case, she was thrilled to go running and jumping and digging through it. Here’s a short video clip, it’s about two minutes long.

Watch Ginger Playing in the Snow on YouTube

And here are some pictures of her having a great time! I know the weather’s been nasty throughout most of the states, I hope that where ever you are, that you and your animals are staying safe and warm.

Boo, the rescue’s friendly black and white cat, is not at all fond of the horses. He’s been even less enthusiastic about them this year, ever since Dillon stepped on his tail last spring.

He’s an independent cat and doesn’t really like to be held, either. So, he was pretty grumpy with me when I picked him up over the weekend and let Takoda nuzzle and sniff him.

However, it was worth it, because Takoda absolutely loved him! Takoda scrunched up his nose and started grooming him, as if he were another horse. Boo eventually started squirming, so I let him down and he went running off. Takoda tried to follow after him, but he scooted under the side of the fence. I don’t think Boo was too offended, though, as he came wandering back several minutes later looking for more attention.