Paddy poles and pedestals 28 Feb 23

Paddy is doing great. He's still super fearful about many things, but I'm confident he is a convert to Positive Reinforcement training, as he gives me the most adorable huffs and wheezes and bangs the gate impatiently and bravely, hoping it's his turn.
It's interesting how I can take liberties with the fearful ones like Paddy and make him wait longer than the others or walk past him to train someone else. But he's close to telling me he's not happy about this treatment. Currently he rushes up and follows me around like a puppy dog. But I can see him becoming more insistent that it must surely be his turn or he must surely be trained first!
Either way, he's still quite afraid, you can see him flinch or duck his head away a couple of times, but other than that, he's keen to train for boring chaff and follow me around.
We train at liberty but he doesn't have many cues yet, so there is some basic luring and following me around. But he's very intuitive and figures things out very well and understands my marker signal of the word "good" and understands how shaping works ie. I pause and see what he offers after giving me his little quizzical look (start button).
We can navigate obstacles and he can offer behaviour and best of all, he's happy to step up or jump over something to get to me.
All great things to see and great progress.
He's an adorable little gem of a mini donkey.
#clickertraining
#donkeytrainining
#fearfreetraining