Chai gets over excited when we leave the yard and can be hard to manage. Her excitement leads to biting, running in circles, planting, and barging. Her behavior is not fear-driven, she simply wants to interact with everyone and everything, and resents being restrained by a lead rope. Chai was separated at a young age from her dam during the gathering process which could be a contributing factor to her behavior.

One of the first things I taught Chai was to stop when the lead rope drops at her feet - also known as ground tying. This came in handy on one of our first walks on the trails. As we went down into a wash an owl flew out of a tree right next to us. She startled, pulled the rope out of my hands and trotted away from me. When she saw the lead rope dragging she stopped and waited so I could approach and collect her.

Next I worked with Chai for about a week on cues that will help to create safe boundaries when we are walking together. I want her to yield her hind end and shoulder away from, stand while I walk away, “back up” out of my space and “stand” out of my space. I also want her to understand the “come to me” cue in case she gets away from me on the trail.

With her tendency to barge and crowd me, I wanted to teach Chai a cue to get her to stop and stand while she is motion, walking toward me. When she approaches me quickly, I hold up a hand and use the voice cue “stand” for her to stop coming any closer, even if I keep moving away from her.

We spent a lot of time throughout this case study working on connected leading at liberty, staying in shoulder position at the walk and in halt, and manners with food using the reverse round pen and then repeating it outside the round pen. .

Walking on the inside circle caused some defensiveness for Chai. She would pin her ears and does not want to move away from me on the bend. So we spent equal time practicing all of her leading behaviors while she is on the inside circle using protected contact to prevent barging.

We are now starting to work on getting a slow walk with longer strides and a low head and neck position around the round pen. Chai has a lot of energy and tends to want to walk quickly with a high head, trot preferably, and will often crash into the round pen and try to knock it down to get closer to me and the food. This exercise has been extremely beneficial for her.

Teaching Chai to “do” new things is relatively easy because she is smart, curious, forward and energetic. What is more challenging is teaching her to do nothing at all. We have been working on leading outside the yard — which is exciting for her — but instead of walking continuously, we stop at every tree, just to relax and do nothing at all in the shade. This work will help us to develop much calmer, more focused leading so we can work up to longer walks around the neighborhood.

Building relaxation outside of protected contact requires intentional and clear hand / voice cues. I am also using cones to direct her attention away from crowding me. The cues we are working on are:

1. SEND: Straight Arm Point + “Target”

2. GO AROUND: Straight Arm Sweep + “Go Round”

3. WALK ON: Arm Down with Finger at Chin + “Walk On”

4. SHOULDER TOWARD ME: Fingers Beckoning at Shoulder + “Shoulder”

5. SHOULDER AWAY: Flat Palm at Shoulder + “Step Over”

We moved on to practicing our new voice and hand cues outside the yard in a stimulating environment. The goals is to keep her focused on me in an area of our property that has lots of stimulus and interesting things to investigate by cueing incompatible behaviors.