Spent time today helping Z’s confidence on the draw. Found sitting down to take more pressure off her helped, especially walking between obstacles. Kept the rope slack. Lots of walking away when she started to come toward me. Quit when felt an emotional shift.
While putting on her blanket realized that while she always stands nicely, even in her paddock, she keeps her ears back. Tried teaching her to relax her neck and head (needle simulation) but this didn’t help.
Then, used shaping technique for following the halter, but did it with her saddle pad. Reward when stood by saddle pad with ears up, touched the saddle pad, came toward the saddle pad, didn’t move backwards when lifted saddle pad. After awhile (and a ton of treats), I thought she was having trouble chewing because she was making wide mouth faces with her tongue sticking out. Then I realized, she was licking and chewing and yawning!!! Wow.
When I went back to the blanket I was able to quickly get her to accept it, by rewarding her willingness to touch it, and have me touch her with it. Looking forward to seeing if I can develop her acceptance of other friendly game issues using shaping instead of classical conditioning (release as the reward), because that does not seem to be working.
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