Paradigm Farms Horse Retirement: Potty Training

Tuesday, July 1, 2014

Potty Training

Jason and I decided that this was the week that we were going to get serious about potty training Carter. He has showed zero interest in potty training, and in fact had us fooled into thinking that he was still fairly clueless about when he was actually peeing or pooping in his diaper. Today was our first day of Beast Mode, or operation Potty Training, or whatever name you choose to call it.

Jason and I worked in shifts today. We got up at an ungodly hour (think 4:30am) so we could do morning chores well before Carter was awake. Once we were done Jason carried on with work around the farm while I went inside to take the first shift on potty duty. Carter thought it was a bit strange that I took off his pj pants and his diaper upon rising and immediately plopped him on the toilet and started reading books to him. However I had picked out some favorite books so he soon got past the oddness of it all and enjoyed the books while he sat on the toilet.

It took seven books but right off the bat we had a winner when Carter peed in the toilet. Carter really loved the fact that we celebrated with Teddy Grahams. After a couple of hours of living within 20 feet of a toilet at all times Jason relieved me from potty duty and I took over the farm work. When I came back Jason informed me that Carter had peed again and also had a poo on the toilet (Carter rated his poo "excellent"). Just like that Carter went from not potty trained at all to well on his way to the opposite.

It made me start thinking about how people, and all animals, tend to meet whatever expectations are being placed upon them. We hadn't expected Carter to understand the whole toilet training concept so he didn't. The very first day we changed our expectations Carter changed his as well.

With a spring in my step I headed back to work with plans to test out my revelation. There are certain horses on the farm that are always hard to catch, but maybe the horses in question were just living up (or should I down?) to my expectations. I decided to test this theory out. I waltzed up to Apollo, who tends to not want to be caught, fully thinking that he was going to simply stand there and be caught because I had changed my expectations. They say a picture is worth a thousand words so the below should be very informative of how my experiment turned out.

Bye Bye Thomas, Apollo and Hemi. So much for meeting my expectations.

With that result I passed on even trying my theory out on Noble, the hardest of the hard to catch. I figured one spectacular failure was good for the day. It was a nice thought anyway. So much for potty training bleeding over into horse whispering. I think from now on I will go back to the more reliable method of bribing with food when I need to catch a horse.

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Lightning and Lucky