Farrier Prep
Tammy asked: Lester donkey is a challenge to trim. It’s hard because he lifts feet fine for me but trimming is different. How can I better prepare him for my farrier?
This question is a great example of how donkeys don't generalize well. The owner lifting feet, in the donkey's mind, is entirely different from the farrier lifting feet. The farrier also comes smelling of different animals, with big metal tools, and comes in with strong intention and purpose. Oftentimes, that purposeful energy causes a flight/fear reaction in uncertain donkeys. When I approach trimming my own donkeys, I come in without a set time to be finished, and as if we are here for a "relaxing spa day".
The way I would prepare him for the farrier would be to:
1. Work on lifting hooves for a similar length of time/position as your farrier would. Work up to longer periods of time, rewarding with a release (giving back the hoof) and a food reward WHILE the donkey is standing still in the manner you'd like.
2. Buy/borrow some old tools from your farrier to practice with your donkey. Even if you have no experience trimming, running a rasp over your donkey's hooves so that he gets less reactive to tools near him will help.
3. Pay your farrier to come out a few times in between trims to practice with your donkey. Reward the donkey AS the donkey is practicing the behavior you desire, not after. Keep these training sessions short and successful, and relaxed.
4. When you are working with the farrier to actually get trims done, keep consistency. Don't treat the trimming time as different than the training time. Don't assume that because you've done it in training that they will be perfect for the trimming. All time spent with your donkey is spent either training them correctly or untraining them. So treat the farrier time as training time, and reward in the same way that you would during training. The more consistent you are the better. It will be. If you have used food rewards and want to reduce the schedule of reinforcement with them, first, the animal must be performing optimally with the food rewards, and then you may slowly reduce the schedule of reward while maintaining the desired behavior. If the desired behavior regresses, you will have to up the reward until the behavior returns to optimal. This will have to be done at your discretion for each individual animal.