March 21, 2010

Ridin' Posse

By Kathy Ursprung
The Chronicle

     DUFUR — Bo doesn’t want to cross the bridge.
     The big dappled brown-and-white horse doesn’t like the way it teeters. He doesn’t like the way his hooves feel on the hard wooden surface.
     Throughout the morning of Wasco County Mounted Posse training, Bo refuses rider Kari Kublich’s commands to cross, skittering away when Kublich guides him to the bridge. So trainer Jennifer Mack from the Portland Mounted Patrol takes over.      Jennifer and her husband Greg, an officer with the patrol, traveled to Paul and Dixie Schanno’s covered horse arena in the Dufur Valley March 13 to help the volunteer posse and their horses learn how to do their job better.
     Jennifer patiently works the reins — away from the bridge — pulling up to bring the horse’s head down. From the sidelines, Linda Wilson, herself a longtime horse and rider trainer, whispers a running commentary from the sidelines.
     “He’s a big, strong horse; he does what he wants to do,” she says.
     The theory behind the training is to give the horse the opportunity to get the right answer.
     Scolding doesn’t work with horses, Wilson says.
     “The smart ones just get quicker at doing [the wrong thing].”
     Meanwhile, Jennifer is talking to Bo: “The answer to the leg is not to scrunch your knees,” she says.
     Bo earns a heel kick for his misbehavior, then a “Thank you,” when he gets it right.
“The beauty of reining exercises is when you stop, put the reins down and walk away, the horse is going to be stuck on you,” Wilson says. “They learn to appreciate you as the leader of the pair. Then they can relax.”
     Bo’s jaw offers keys to what’s on his mind, Wilson says.
     “A tense horse is not thinking,” she says.
     Eventually, Bo relaxes and makes a chewing motion, which indicates he is beginning to absorb Jennifer’s instruction.
     “It’s kind of like they are digesting a thought,” Wilson said.
     Bo’s instruction takes up a big part of the Saturday afternoon training. Meanwhile, the other riders watch patiently atop their own horses, absorbing the process. They know that the ability to control a horse under difficult circumstances is critical for a posse member. It can make the difference between resolving a public situation and making it worse.
     In Wasco County, posse volunteers play their own role in law enforcement, working crowd control at the Fort Dalles Rodeo and Wasco County Fair, and participating in backwoods search-and-rescue efforts, as well as representing the sheriff’s office at parades and other events.
     Normally, posse members practice at the Fort Dalles Riders Club in west The Dalles, but the covered arena at the Schanno place helps avoid the risk of a weather cancellation while the Portland trainers are here.
     “Last year, we had helicopter training with the Shearers,” Wilson notes. The local crop dusters hovered over the horses, and swooped down to help the horses get comfortable with the noise and wind.
     “It was amazing. All the horses pretty soon were ho-hum,” she said.
Before they’re through, the Macks will add some more noise and hazard conditioning to the mix. They have brought firecrackers for noise and plastic tarping on poles to wave and crackle.
     “It’s about teaching a horse a cue and being consistent with it, so you have something to fall back on when the horse gets upset,” Jennifer explains. “And they will get upset.”
     Once Bo is answering to the reins, Jennifer turns his attention back to the 10-foot teeter bridge.
     “I’m going to give him a choice,” she says. “I’m not going to beat him up about it.
When Bo once again refuses to step onto the bridge, she guides him away and works the reins again, steering him back and forth in an exercise he tries to resist.
     Once again, Bo approaches the bridge. Once again, he turns away. Once again, Jennifer puts him to work on an exercise he doesn’t like.
     Over and over, the pattern repeats until, finally, Bo takes his first step onto the teetering bridge. Then, once again, he turns away.
     “We forget how scared horses get when they get out of balance,” Jennifer says, patiently taking Bo through the uncomfortable serpentine patterns that are his alternative to crossing the bridge.
     “Horses are comfort creatures, while people are time creatures,” Wilson whispers from the side. Jennifer is approaching Bo on his own terms, with patient repetition and alternatives that gradually steer Bo from a less comfortable alternative to a more comfortable one.
     Gradually, the slow work pays off — with the added incentive of horse treats placed strategically on the bridge.
     With each attempt, Bo goes farther and farther across the bridge until, eventually, he reaches the other side. Jennifer has him do it one more time for reinforcement before breaking for a late lunch.
     “Their reward for doing stuff is release,” Wilson says.
     Now it’s up to Kublich, Bo’s owner, to reinforce the training at home.