Hmmmmmm......

As I was doing the big muck out again this morning, I was interrupted by mother approaching me with a mixture of contrition and high dudgeon. She was a little bit cross because as she had been walking the dog around the outside of the field, on her special ‘dog walking path’ that we created for her outside the perimeter fence of the horses’ grazing, Faith came up to the fence on the scrounge, and finding that Mum had nothing for her, she had turned around and lashed out. Fortunately the only thing she came into contact with was the fence post, and Mum had given her a good growl, at which point she backed away from her looking slightly alarmed.

Now she was also contrite, because she also admitted that she regularly gave the horses bits of apple over the fence as she walked the dog, despite my numerous and insistent requests that she didn’t.

Now personally I have never encountered behaviour like this from Faith. She can get a little snarky and visibly frustrated during training when I am withholding treats looking for either the right behaviour, or varying the schedule a bit. But she will often come to the paddock gate for a bit of a fuss, and yes, she gets the odd treat from me too, but when I walk away, or tell her to run and play, she never looks in the least upset or bothered, and just tootles off.

Now I am starting to wonder whether I am sufficiently addressing the matter of emotional control with Faith. I must admit when we are training, if she is finding something a bit hard, and is getting frustrated, I might ask for another behaviour which she can do easily, so I have the opportunity to reward her, before returning to what I originally asked for. This normally works well both in terms of training progression, and distracting her from snarkiness, but at the same time not giving her something for nothing. I wonder if this is the right thing to do, but at the same time, I am conscious that she is only two, and as such has a fairly limited attention span, so keeping her motivated is an important factor in keeping her attention as well.

But then I also think that OK, Faith wasn’t in a training situation, there were no clearly defined rules or boundaries, and there was also the sense of competing for food and attention with the other horses who had received treats, so maybe, I’m making a fuss about nothing. I don’t know.