Chewie and I often train in short sessions, with little breaks in between the sessions.
I video many of our training sessions, but I often don’t video the in-between time. That is, what happens during the breaks and immediately before and after each training session.
Recently, I decided it would be interesting and useful to video ALL of our interactions on one of my visits.
I videoed everything, including what happened:
- While I got things set up at the beginning of the day
- When feeding Chewie some supplements
- As each training session started and ended
- During each training session
- During the breaks between training sessions
- As we transitioned between training locations
- Our ending routine
This ended up being about 45 minutes of video. I did have to reposition the camera several times when we changed locations. But, I was still able to video record about 99% of our day.
Here are some pictures from our day!
I’ll also share a few thoughts from this experience.
Chewie is always happy to see me when I arrive. She lives in a medium-sized pasture with two other horses.
There is a large run that is attached to the pasture. I often feed Chewie in the run when I arrive, and we also sometimes do our training in the run.
Chewie has figured out this location is where we start our day, and she will usually go to the run (or already be in the run) when I arrive.
In the photo above, Chewie had followed me to the end of the run when I went to shut the gate. We paused here for some scratches for a couple of minutes.
It takes me a bit of time to get set up when I arrive. Chewie follows me around if I’m in the run or pasture. Or, she stands and watches if there is a fence between us.
I was interested in recording this part of our day, as I’m often not watching Chewie while I’m getting things set up. I wanted to figure out if there were parts of our routine that could potentially be improved.
The photos above show two of the training sessions we did on this day, working on building duration for rasping during hoof trimming and some targeting exercises in the pasture.
Chewie also spent some time playing with her enrichment ball between some of our short training sessions.
I was particularly interested in looking at what happened as certain training sessions began and ended. There are some of these transitions that I think could use some small tweaks, which I’ll write more about in the future.
Finally, I was also interested in looking more closely at some of Chewie’s interactions with the other horses, at the beginning and end of our day, as well as when we are doing training in the pasture.
So, that’s a snapshot from our day!
Do you video your training sessions? You should!
You’ll learn a lot from watching your animal’s behavior and your own behavior.
No comments yet.