Training and Being Trained by Louie

So, last week it was in the 80's, this morning my little part of the world is covered in snow. Mother Nature is obviously having some fun with us.

I had an interesting training session with Louie today. We both learned today but I was more the student then Louie. Louie's a pretty good teacher as he's quite patient with me and thankfully doesn't hold a grudge. I have been working on teaching him to pick me up along the corral fence. This is being done in small steps starting with teaching him to move away from the "pressure" of me tapping him with the whip. He's doing well but each day I've only worked on one side at a time and the next day he wants to move in the direction we worked on the previous day rather then connecting the tapping with what direction he should go. Today, he started out a bit too eager. I was reaching over him and tapping him on the right hip to get him to move his hindquarters to the left. He moved into the whip, I taped a bit harder and faster, he flexed around and touched the whip and wiggled all around and finally moved in the correct direction. He got a "good boy" and a treat. I repeated this on each side and the results were somewhat erratic and not quite right. He kept flexing around and touching the whip. I THOUGHT that HE thought I was asking him to target the whip. About the 4th time when he once again moved the wrong way, and I tapped faster he finally let me know that his problem was that he found being tapped with the whip VERY irritating. He did a super slow motion round house type kick on the side I was tapping on, which was the opposite side that I was standing on. He got a swat for that and he ran off to the other side of the paddock. But, I got it ..... finally..... He hadn't been flexing and touching the whip to target it, he was TRYING to tell me he didn't like what I was doing. And I didn't get it (who is the slow learner here......) So, he upped the pressure on ME a bit trying to get his point across.  I was going too fast, I was asking too much at once and not giving him enough time to process. I was not listening to him. I don't feel the technique was wrong. Not even for a mule. But, Louie didn't like it. And that is ok as there is more then on way to get any task accomplished.

He watched me from across the paddock. And I watched him from the fence line. I told him that kicking in any way for any reason was not acceptable but that I now understood what he was telling me. I told him I was sorry for being so dense and I promised I would try a new approach and do a better job of listening to him. I SWEAR mules understand spoken language. Louie said he was sorry and understood why I corrected him but that he just didn't know how else to tell me. He came back to me, looked me right in the eye as if to say,  "lets try this again." He willingly came back and exposed himself to me and the whip in trust.  So, I very softly just tickled him with the whip on the hip and asked him to move "over". Louie stood, twitched his back muscles and gave me a very irritated look. I listened to him and I stopped touching him with the whip and just pointed the whip at the hip I wanted him to move away, gave the verbal cue, "over" and he moved perfectly! I never touched him. I then pointed at his other hip with the whip and said "over". Again, he moved over perfectly. I repeated this about 4 time on each side and each time I got an instant and perfect response and never touched him with the whip once. I think we were both pretty proud of each other. Well, I actually felt kind of stupid I didn't understand what he was telling me a lot sooner  but.....I did get it eventually.