Wyoming’s work continues…

In this session I continue getting back to working semi-regularly with (Wild BLM Mustang) Wyoming. I’ve had her in my herd over six years and have had mixed success and lots of going backward and sideways over the time. I’ve worked from many different paradigms from natural horsemanship to positive reinforcement and tried approaches that stay more soft to trying to firm up and demand more compliance. Somehow most of what I’ve done has not helped this mare to work with me in a way that she’s felt good about.

Last year, when I asked her to try letting go of a hard thought- she generally threatened to kill me, but only because the idea of letting go of a thought felt life threatening to her. With Tom Moates’ help we began laying the groundwork to more trust- for both of us!

In this video I condensed about 45 minutes of work into the highlights and used 1.5x and 2x (and at one point 5x) speed to give the feel of the work but not have to sit through the slow and waiting of real time.

We have a long way to go- but this video was a pretty good session between us. In the previous video, I made it a point not to have Wyoming feel “wrong” or corrected, I tried to “go along” with her as much as possible in bringing about my plans through her ideas if at all possible. In this second session I began to ask more of her to “let go of some of her magnets and hard thoughts” but I was intentional not to get to a point where she may not be able to let go without a big altercation. In other words, I tried to keep us out of the deep end of the pool.

Thanks Tom Moates, Harry Whitney, and Mark Langley for the different ways I’ve observed you all and taken in your approaches and tried to make them my own in in helping this mare. (Especially Tom who has gotten up here to help me personally a handful of times last year and will be coming back this year as well!)