Hot walker

Yesterday I put Zoe on the hot walker for the first time.  My barn manager said I could use it anytime but I've never wanted to.  Since I didn't have time to go on the trail yesterday and was only going to do round pen work, I thought I could throw in some hot walker time too.  So in the morning was the hot walker and the afternoon the round pen.

My barn manager showed me how to get her going on it.  She suggested putting her on one of the shorter leads so she wouldn't play around so much.  Then I was to turn on the walker briefly, maybe for 1 second, to get her to feel which way she would be going and to get her used to the noise of the motor.  It does make a quiet noise.  Then turn it on and watch her to see what would happen.  The noise of the motor was noticed but wasn't regarded as scary.  At first she was surprised that she had to walk-something was leading her and it wasn't me.  She was on the walker with 2 other experienced "walkers"-and that was something the barn manager said would help.  Sometimes one of the other horses would stop just because and we have to yell at him to get going again.  Zoe picked up on that behavior really fast.  However she did learn that it doesn't do much good to stop, you just get in trouble.  Then she did really good.  The stopping behavior was greatly reduced and she spent about 20 minutes walking.  I'm not sure that she was thrilled about it as the pictures show but she did cooperate and it was a new learning experience.  I probably won't use it very much and I'm sure Zoe will be happy about that.  One of Zoe's horsey friends called it a hot dragger instead of a hot walker-I'm sure Zoe would concur.