When I first adopted Chewie, I took her on some exploration walks around the ranch where she lives.
Wait, I probably should revise that sentence. I didn’t take Chewie out walking — I let her take ME for some walks!
We usually went walking early in the morning, when there weren’t other people or horses on the dirt roads at the ranch. I would let Chewie decide where to go and what to do, as long as she stayed safe. I followed along as her chaperone.
Chewie certainly seemed to enjoy exploring. She would spend a lot of time sniffing things and also a lot of time roaming around, checking out different parts of the property. She was confident walking away from the pasture on her own, which indicated to me that she enjoyed getting out and exploring.
We eventually stopped doing these walks because she discovered several areas of the property where she really wanted to go, but where she was likely to get herself into trouble.
At the time, she didn’t know enough cues and have enough foundation skills for us to navigate some of these tricky areas, without one (or both!) of us getting frustrated.
Over the past several months, we’ve spent most of our time doing training activities and enrichment activities in Chewie’s pasture and in the two paddocks that are connected to the pasture.
Now that we have a better relationship and Chewie knows a lot more foundation behaviors, I want us to start exploring new places again. So, recently, we have started going on very short walks outside the pasture.
But, the difference now is that we’re having a conversation!
I’m giving cues and asking for Chewie to engage in certain behaviors. I’m also paying attention to her behavior and responding to what she wants to do.
These are short walks.
We do several walks each day, and each walk lasts around three to five minutes.
Currently, one of our main goals is to practice navigating getting in and out of the gate. We are also practicing walking together with a loose lead rope. And, we practice halting and chilling out together while standing still.
Our walks are short, and we stay near the pasture. As a result, Chewie is alert about her surroundings, but stays calm and focused on what we are doing. She’s been doing really great on our walks so far!
We’ll gradually start working on longer walks. We’ll also move farther away from the barn and start incorporating more of the cues that Chewie knows into our walks.
I’ll post more as our training continues!
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