The scary mower

I’m sooo jazzed with McKee and Handsome. I brought out the humongous mower that drags me around the pasture. That thing is at least 110 HP and weighs a bunch. In “rabbit mode” this thing can move around and where it wants to go, I do my best to hang on and follow..

It’s noisy, big, erratic and very scary to most horses. So imagine my surprise when I was mowing and saw both Handsome and McKee start towards me to investigate. There was no question, that big scary beast was NOT going to rob them of the opportunity to earn reinforcement.

Handsome startled me the most; he is more prone to fear and tends to keep away from situations like this. But what a little trouper he was; he walked right up to my left side and stuck to me like glue (my left side is his default side). Then McKee came over and did the same on the right side. They were doing their default positions for our routine and doing their best to walk along side me with this huge mower roaring along.

Another thing that was fun was that they couldn’t possibly hear the click, so we just communicated with gestures. All our cues for motion, standing beside me, following me and stopping just fell into place and I kept feeding them for their participation.

Finally McKee thought it was a little too much and he moved away. He didn’t really want to leave, but he was having a hard time with this monster. So I put Handsome away and let McKee work it out. We did lots of hand targeting and easy tasks. Eventually I was able to cue him to walk around the mower and come over to his “heel” position where he stayed and continued to mow with me.

I cannot believe how cool it was to watch him challenge himself. I cued him to “station” by the mower and I stepped back to take pictures. The whole process made me ecstatic.