Unlocking the key to Lucy

In the three months that Lucy has been in my life, we have developed a beautiful relationship in the saddle. The only bump in the road has been getting her to the saddle. When Lucy decides she'd prefer not to walk on the lead line from the barn, through the gate, to the hitching rail, she is immovable. Period. No amount of coaxing, cajoling, or carrots will get her from point A to point B if she decides it is not time to go. I've tried every trick in my horsemanship book with her, to no avail. Donkeys simply don't respond the way horses do. With lots and lots of time and patience, we've always gotten to point B eventually, but I knew there had to be another way.

Within the first 10 minutes at the weekend training clinic, I discovered one such way. That yellow rope you see around Lucy's head is what Steve Edwards calls a "comealong hitch." The hitch is used like a halter and lead rope – if she doesn't follow along as you lead her, the pressure of the rope across the top of her nose makes her uncomfortable. To escape the discomfort, she follows. Instead of making the right thing easy and the wrong thing difficult, as you might to train a horse, apparently with donkeys, you have to make the right thing comfortable and the wrong thing uncomfortable. In time, the comealong hitch will be replaced with a correctly adjusted, traditional rope halter.

Lucy picked up on the concept right away, and she willingly walked along with me all weekend without resistance. I could have left the clinic after the first 10 minutes and felt like I had gotten my money's worth – it was that much of a change in her and a mega-kilowatt lightbulb moment for me.

Lucy: Mom, that mule won't stop staring at me.

Me: That's because you're so wonderful. You'd better get used to it.

Everything else we learned at the clinic – and there was lots – was gravy. I don't have any still pictures of us to share with you, but I conned a spectator into shooting some video with my Flip camera.