My Homework

Now, with this title you might all be thinking...why is she telling us about her homework?
Well it's not exactly that kind of homework. It's Kissie homework!

Well, we figured out that my horse Kissie was being...well...a pain. She decided that she was the one in charge of me...something  I never realized this until it was pointed out. We figured out a way to fix this, and Roberta assigned it  to me for homework.

- Teaching her to stand still-
 Assignment due Saturday, October 1st....double spaced, 1,000 words....don't forget to cite your work! :)
    I started by showing her who was boss. I did this by teaching her to stand still, while I walked around her gradually got further away from her.

Before we started this, Ms. Kissie had her head held high prancing around like she was the princess of the castle....yeah... well the evil stepmother just came back home...me....poor cinderella!

This has a series of steps to complete this process.
 I started with leading her around the ring, then I asked her to stand, as usual she didn't want to do this, so as the punishment I ordered her to back up.
Then I asked her to stand once again, this time she stood for a little while longer. When she moved I said no and ordered her to back up again... asking her to stand once more.
I repeated this process until she stood there for as long as I asked her to.

Now, in this process, it's not exactly fair to make them stand there for a long time, so when doing this you should at least make them stand until you feel that they understand that they should obey when you ask them to.

Once I got the response that I was asking for, I rewarded her; but not with a treat. This is because she will decide that she won't do anything, unless I give her treats....  a bad habit I created.... Instead I rewarded her with a good pat, some love, and allowing her to walk out a little.

Then I asked her to stand again. When I felt that she was going to stand there, I started moving away from her still asking her to stand. In response, she followed me because I was walking away. So I, again, backed her up and told her to stand. After several tries,I think she was getting the hang of it, because she stood still while I was walking away.
Next, I started to move in a circle around her. Since, I was getting closer to her butt, her immediate reaction was to move it away from me. This is a good thing if I were doing a different excercise, like lunging, but at this time that isn't what  I was asking her to do. With my "Hey look at me I am in charge" voice, I said, "No, stand!" I eventually had her standing still while I walked around her, twice, with out saying "stand" a million times.
 This is a big achievement. Instead of looking all around not paying attention to me, she was paying attention to my every move, and listening to me whenever I spoke. This may have taken a long time, but it was worth it because now I am the boss!
Well...maybe not the boss...but I definately feel like I am in charge when I am around her.

I have a lesson today, have to turn in my homework, Pray for me! :)
 ~Katie~