Fable has a tendency to walk ahead of me when I am leading her. Well, who is the leader, then? I'm thinking it's me, but Fable's thinking it's her. That can be a serious problem! What if she thinks we ought to go left, but I'm by her shoulder? She's going to walk right over me, because she expects me to move out of her way.
So I am working on teaching her to follow - to really follow. She has to keep her head by my shoulder, or behind my shoulder. The way I get her to do that is by finding a way to demonstrate to her that it's easier to stay back a bit and follow me than to try to get in front and push me around. When I am moving around Fable, I try to keep in mind the idea of "gate open, gate closed." The "gate" in this case is in my body language and my mind. I am imagining that there is a barrier in front of Fable that keeps her where I want her. If this mental gate is open, she can walk through it. If it's closed, she can't.
What I need now that I have this idea of what I want is a way to communicate that to Fable. How can I show her what I'm asking for? I need to give her a physical barrier that she can see, telling her where I'm closing that mental gate on her. Right now I have two methods for doing this. Sometimes I do it by taking my whip and waving it like a windshield wiper past my shoulder. This way, Fable will see that she needs to walk behind wherever I'm swinging that whip, or she'll get bumped on the nose. I'm not trying to bump her nose, but she's free to walk into it and discover that the barrier is really there, and it will get her. It's just easier for her to stay back a bit.
Sometimes I do the same thing with the end of my lead rope, swinging it in helicopter circles to make the closed gate. I am not as good at doing it that way, because I find that I am thinking about a bunch of things at once and my coordination quits on me part way through. I end up with my rope getting tangled or flopping down when I was thinking more about what Fable is doing than what my rope swinging hand is doing. That's ok. I just need to practice.
This works because swinging the rope or swishing the whip gives Fable a clear visual explanation of where I expect her to be. She sees that moving object in front of her, and that means the gate is closed beyond that point. Sure, she can charge through it. If she's doing that, maybe we need to do something different right now. But she doesn't charge through it. What Fable has been doing is getting right up to where that barrier is, and trying to decide if I really mean it. Can she get me to stop waving the whip by pressuring my shoulder a little bit? Nope, the whip swings a little wider or faster. Will it really tap her on the nose if she just walks ahead? Yep! Gee, it's so much work trying to get past the barrier I've set for her. She's starting to learn how to stay back. I can practically feel her thinking it over as we work on this.
Fable still needs the visual reminder to do this correctly. We've only started working on it recently, because we could get along more or less all right with her leading how it was up to this point. But now we can do it better. It will be better because Fable will understand where she is going - wherever I'm going. And I won't have to worry about getting her to back off of me and get out of my space, because she'll be far enough away to watch out for me.
We just work on this a little bit at a time, every day. We work on lots of other bits of things, just a little at a time, too. I am beginning to see the bits falling into place together as Fable learns what to expect from her new home and her new people. I see her relaxing more. It makes me happy.
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