Day n - Training to a target

Well, I'm clearly not going to manage training every day with Thyme. In this case, do I count days trained, or days since training began? This conundrum is more than I can bear. Therefore, no more counting.

Phwew. Glad to get that resolved.

Today was a training day. I grabbed a few minutes at lunchtime to spend with the little brown pony. The weather was beautiful and the ground not too too soft, so I put the other ponies out. Even little Tyche went out and hung with Tigerlilly for ten minutes, while her mom worked. It was good.

Thyme has done so well with both the clicker sessions and her willingness to approach me since we started. She even let me kiss her nose yesterday, which is huge, but does not, I should point out, involve me reaching out to touch her with my hand. In any case, I decided to move on to target training,

I selected this object to train her with. It's the broken handle of a swiffer mop. It's perfect as a target and it does my heart good to find a new use for a busted mop. Thyme took exactly 3 trials to figure out that she had to touch the target instead of the orange cup. Her reactions were beautiful. Ab.so.lute.ly beautiful. She was so curious and so attentive and so eager to figure out what the game was. She was also very much her timid little self. She'd stand way back and stretch her nose out as far as she could possibly reach to touch the target without committing her whole body. She was far more comfortable when I held the target level with her mouth than if I held it above her head or down by her knees. She tried to take the whole thing in her mouth a couple of times, which I did not reward her for, instead waiting for her to nuzzle the very tip of the target with the tip of her nose. Two or three points she became overwhelmed and walked away. She'd turn away as though to regain control of herself, yawn a couple of times, and then come back and try again. People have a lot of theories about why animals yawn in contexts like these. My feeling is that the animal is expressing something like frustration, along the lines of, "I know I should, but I don't really want to."

All in all, Thyme had a marvelous third session and I am super optimistic about her potential.