Training Duke

After the National Cavalry Competition was over I resolved to spend more time training horses. Of the several projects I have, none is more important than gun training Duke. Last June we conducted a cavalry riding demonstration at Wren Arena which involves a fair amount of gun fire and, indeed, some cannon fire. I was planning to ride Apache in the show but he got sick and I decided to ride Duke instead. Duke's training wasn't complete but sometimes you can get a horse through the demonstration okay anyway. Big mistake. Duke didn't like the gunfire at all and it was a real ordeal to get him though the demo. Since then I've been keeping him away from gunfire until I could get him retrained.

Duke had regressed pretty badly. I have had to go back to the beginning with gunfire. I start out with a cap pistol using the usual technique of having someone fire the pistol while I ride the horse at varying distances until he gets accustomed to the sound, then I begin firing from the back of the horse. Duke, however, wasn't even able to handle this so I've been holding him on a lead line while firing the cap gun a few feet away from me and rewarding him when he doesn't move his feet.

Because of our schedule and other considerations, I haven't been able to conduct this training with any consistancy. However, I've decided that other matters can wait and horse training will be a higher priority. As such, I've been able to get three good sessions in with Duke this past week.

The training has been frustrating. Duke just didn't seem to be getting any better. Everytime I'd fire the cap gun he'd jump and start rolling his eyes and snorting or try to run in a circle around me. Just when I was beginning to think the whole thing was hopeless, I finally had a small breakthrough. I was finally able to get him to stand without jumping while firing the cap gun today. I could even hold it over my head and fire it without him moving his feet. He doesn't like it much, but he is no longer panicky about it. Hopefully, I can keep up with the training and we will see some more progress. Getting through that first barrier always seems to be the toughest when it comes to horse training. Duke's a good horse and has potential to be a good cavalry horse, so here's hoping things will get easier.