Mule explorations

[glenatron]

Marty Mule is an interesting character. He learns things very quickly and very specifically. So for example when I was asking him to load, he figured out that he needed to put one foot on the ramp, then a second ( because I moved the goalposts quick enough in that respect ) but he also learned to do it standing diagonally on the ramp and looking away from the lorry and once he had that idea, anything else was doing it wrong. We actually loaded him by changing strategy somewhat and having herecirm lead him in while I added a bit of energy behind him.

Last night we put him out with Cash and Iris ( cue mule being chased around the place ) and things seemed relatively calm this evening although the horses were still arbitrarily deciding to chase him.

I want to make being caught and being around humans a more positive experience after his initial couple of days of loading and then travelling, which was inevitably traumatic. My plan for the evening was to bring him in and give him some dinner.

The first task was to catch him in the larger area. That wasn't too bad because firstly he only walks off and secondly when he did decide to go and hang out with the horses they chased him back to where I was. It took a long time but we kept things pretty calm and nobody felt the need to charge about. Then we moved on to step two, which was to head over to the gate. Of course the moment Cash took an interest Marty McFlightAnimal reacted way more strongly to me asking Cash to leave us alone than Cash did. We spent a little while on getting him comfortable with any degree of movement from the rope. He's a sensitive little soul and I don't think anyone had really done any desensitisation type work with him, so I had to start out very quiet. He seemed to get the idea quite quickly though, and he didn't mind other people getting out of our way.

We got to the gate of the field ( a simple hook-on electric fence gate ) and that was really where the trouble started. The problem was that Marty couldn't go through the fence. In his clever mule brain, he knew where the fence was and he knew that the fence would zap him and that was a matter of mathematics and geometry and had nothing to do with the electric tape. He could not cross that line. Meanwhile Cash and Iris were circling like mostly harmless but vaguely irritating sharks, which put him more on edge in case they bullied him and put me on edge in case they made a break for freedom. The mule starts running backwards. I persuade him to stop but now I am stretched between the gate and the mule. If I let go of one the horses get out and cause havoc, if I let go of the other, there is an unsupervised mule on a halter and also I can't ever let go while he is pulling or he'll figure out that pulling works and life will be way harder than it needs to be. In the end I got him to step up a little, but not enough to close the gate, put the lead down carefully and closed the gate. Exit mule at full gallop, pursued by a lead rope.

After a very brisk circuit of the field, with no escape from said rope, Marty came to a stop and I went over and caught him again. He was actually quite superficially calm, but he is a lot tense most of the time so I can't guarantee that this appearance means much. I gave him a bunch of time to think things over ( I give him more thinking time than I usually offer horses because he seems to need it, often he will start to soften and work his mouth a minute or more after the last thing I asked him for ) and I touched him with the tail of the rope a bit so he could see that it didn't want to harm him, then we did some simple leading work. I finished by leading him over to the fence and giving him some handfuls of fresh grass I could reach from underneath it. It wasn't exactly giving him dinner, but it was hopefully at least on the right lines. He stayed with me when I took the halter off, so I think maybe we finished on reasonable terms.

I didn't like to see him bothered like that by the lead rope, but there was a chance it would have happened sooner or later in any case- I have suffered enough rope burns that I let go pretty fast these days and I don't yet have the finesse to be sure that won't happen somewhere along the path. He figured out that he didn't need to run away from it and we ended up on a good note. As with everything at this stage, it is a learning process for both of us.

Comments

[penella22.livejournal.com]

Ahhh yes, this sounds like a mule. There is simply no forgiveness, or tolerance for mistakes. I've had many experiences like this with Jo, and trust me, if the mule would stand near you at the end, you're doing well. He's got a lot to get used to, and what I often find with Jo is that the set up takes weeks or months so we can have the twenty minute conversation that was my goal in the first place. It's like having a conversation about a historical event where first you have to have sub conversations about who each person mentioned is, and how everyone got to be standing where they were on a certain day and what the weather was like and exactly how it all transpired. They are skeptical, and just because one gate has been explained doesn't mean another one has. This specificity is both incredibly frustrating and very useful depending on the situation.

I'm very excited that you are having mule times!!

[penella22.livejournal.com]

Also Jo needs an incredible amount of dwell time. Where horses seem to forget the most recent sequence of events and wander off in search of food if I offer then that much time, my mule will lick and chew thoughtfully about five minutes after that...

Days off in between sessions are also highly beneficial.

[kate sandel (from livejournal.com)]

I agree with Penella, the fact that he stayed with you at the end of the session is a huge compliment as far as Martin is concerned. I think you are going to learn lessons about patience that you didn't think needed learning..,I'll stick with my endlessly forgiving horses thanks! To be honest, I am not sure whether he has had much 'de-sensitisation' stuff done, as the few times when T did work with him I think he was more interested in sensitising him to the human rather than de-sensitising him to external stuff. One would hope that over time he begins to realise there are less mule eating objects in the world that he originally imagined. However, I reckon you could get Martin cool with a blue rope on a Tuesday, and he wouldn't be sure of a red rope on a Wednesday. I am looking forward to reading about your progress. Horses are going to seem like a walk in the park!

[glenatron.livejournal.com]

The specificity is so interesting- it's not that he learns to pick his feet up, it's that this person can pick this foot up at this time in this location. Really interesting.

[glenatron.livejournal.com]

I'm sure he hasn't- he is so sensitive that actually sometimes anything I can do is too much for him because of how close I am. Enabling him to distinguish signal and noise is certainly an early challenge I think.

[re-vised.livejournal.com]

How interesting about him not generalizing well. I don't mean that in a bad way, just that he thinks along the lines of "At X we do ABC, but not D. Why are you asking me to do D???" I think it's this quality that makes them such great partners. I am really looking forward to reading about your mule adventures.

[glenatron.livejournal.com]

He really seems to separate things out, it certainly makes for interesting training and I think it will be something we can really work with as we get more used to it. When you're mostly used to horses, though, it can bring up surprises.

[glenatron.livejournal.com]

I have to say that compared with the conversations we have had about Josie, our mule seems like he is relatively easy to handle.

[re-vised.livejournal.com]

As long as it continues to be a good learning experience, I think it's so great to work with someone unfamiliar.