The hose monster is defeated!

After the biggest battle of Tama's life, we have finally defeated the hose monster.

Many many things  have happened to this baby horse in his short life.  He was herded by helicopters over the wide open Kaimanawa plains, taken off his mother and away from his family band, and put into yards with crowds of other horses.  He was driven all the way from Waiouru to Huntly to Hunua on a cattle truck, with each of the other horses leaving him one after the other until he was the only one left on the truck.  He was all alone, at about 6 months of age, in that big empty rattling truck, until he finally arrived... to a strange place with strange coloured horses and strange tasting food and scary human beings and lots of wire fences that bite when you touch them.

In a matter of weeks he learned to let me touch him all over, put ropes and straps on his head, pick his feet up, lead him around and tie him to a post, preventing his natural flight instinct.  What's more, having never seen a float before, he proceeded to learn in less than 15 minutes to walk up the ramp and into that small metal box and have the ramp shut behind him so he was trapped inside.  And he was perfectly calm about it.

...but the HOSE !!!! Now that was a different story altogether.  Even when it was just lying on the ground gently leaking water he was adamant it was a Very Scary Thing.

During the fourth or fifth lengthy training session, after making very little progress, Tama and I had a bit of a battle.  I picked up the hose; he reared, spun around and tried to push past me. What was interesting about his behaviour during this session though, was that all the while he was rearing and pushing and carrying on, he didn't seem at all scared any more. He was very deliberate in the way he was behaving. He was simply saying "NO", in as clear a manner as he knew how.
 I stayed very calm and insisted that he was polite, and eventually he was lunged in small circles for a long time before having the hose on one more time and then going back to the paddock.

Well what d'you know... next time I got the hose out he kept his 'thinking brain' switched on and I was able to click and reinforce him for the hose wetting his back and shoulder.  Within minutes I extended the duration out and only clicked him for standing still while being hosed, and voila!  He is now standing quietly and eating his dinner while I hose him all over. He may even have realised it's quite nice having a bath on a hot day.

About bloody time!

It is very seldom (actually virtually never) that I would use the word 'dominant' to describe an animal's behaviour - most of the time I believe that label is a cop-out by the trainer, and usually it's applied incorrectly as justification for aversive training methods.  But I'm fairly sure that this hose argument was in fact an attempt to test my leadership, and more specifically, to test whether or not the rearing and pushing would work for him then and in future, as a way to avoid doing something he'd really rather not do!  It seems I passed his test.  Thank god for that.