Chewie and I have been working a lot lately on picking up her feet.
We are working on two aspects of hoof care:
- Better communication. I cue Chewie to pick up her foot by running my hand down the back of her leg. Then, I wait for her to shift her weight and begin lifting her foot. That’s her cue, telling me that I can pick up and hold her foot.
- Building more duration. We are also working on duration for how long I can hold the foot. We have been practicing both with a hoof pick and with me pretending to rasp her hoof.
These are not long sessions, I usually do around four or five repetitions. Still, I was finding that I was often loosing count partway through the session because I had too many other things that I was also trying to pay attention to.
In this situation, I could try harder to remember, which might or might not work!
Or, I could come up with an easier way to keep track of the number of repetitions.
So, I dug through my training equipment and found a golf counter.
Now, my sequence of behaviors is that I put down Chewie’s foot, give her a treat (a small handful of hay pellets), and then push the counter.
This new routine has made it a breeze to keep track of our repetitions.
One of my goals is to make training easy for both Chewie and for me!
Often, I think trainers spend a lot of time figuring out how to help their animals be successful. But, we need to be figuring out ways to help ourselves be more successful, too.
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