Bozo's Carrots

Shaping

2010-06-30T22:56:45+10:00

Wow, has it been a while since my last post! Kinda been through hell and back work-wise and university-wise since then: work got tough with deadlines, and uni got tougher with its deadlines, and I got to be a nervous mess as the result.

My work with Becky, unfortunately, also got a bit neglected, though that was also partially due to the fact that just about when all these deadlines hit, she got herself injured. Basically, she got into a battle for leadership with a younger and stroppier mare, and lost. I am not sure how the other mare fared (nothing but minor scratches I think), but Becky ended up with a deep cut just below her shoulder, which put her out of action for better part of 6 weeks. I am very lucky that Maya of the Bridlewood Farm, where Becky is boarded, was happy to wash her and generally look after her on daily basis, while I was struggling with all the other stuff in my life.

But Becky is OK now, and uni is over for the semester.

My first couple rides back were just about remembering how to ride, particularly at a trot. I think prior to this hiatus I spent a lot of time doing a sitting trot, as I found that it was easiest for me while I was working on Becky’s flexion. So I was completely unused to rising trot and was feeling very unbalanced. However, since we’ve now had to take a necessary step back, we are not concentrating on flexion – just getting Becky enough to work in rhythm and to start dropping her head and relaxing her body so that the steps are long. My latest ride on the weekend was all about that, and about illustrating to me quite colorfully a concept that we learned about in my psychology course: shaping.

Shaping is a concept from behavioral school of psychology and is underlying in training of complex behaviors. Basically it’s about identifying the behavior that you desire to teach, and, starting from the behavior that you are getting, persistently rewarding the approximations of what you desire – i.e. rewarding the tries – gradually getting more exacting in how close a try has to be to the desired behavior. Really, this concept is what I’ve been using all along with Becky, I just now know the official definition of it! However, on the weekend, it was illustrated very clearly that shaping has to start from the behavior you get, not from what you were getting, say, 6 weeks ago.

Becky was quite antsy from the very beginning when I pulled her out of the paddock. So were all the other horses for some reason. Her walk was far too rushy – normally I have to work to get her to stop dragging her hooves – and when it came time to trot it was obvious that her mind was not really on the job. Marina was trying to get me concentrating on keeping my rising extremely even, both in rhythm and the time of rise, just to give Becky a beat to follow, which she was trying hard to ignore. It was all building up to a huge fight which finally blew into bucking when other horses in the nearby paddock started galloping around.

So that was the behavior that I was starting with.

The next time round the circle, at the same spot she bucked, Becky started to wind up for another go. But Marina just insisted for me to keep rising at the same rate, even though Becky was almost trotting on the spot or sideways, obviously having a titanic struggle with herself over my insistence for her to keep trying to match my rhythm and her need to concentrate her attention on what was happening in the paddock. It seemed that my rhythm won out and she moved past that spot without bucking. Even though what was happening was probably looking atrocious from the outside, this small shift in attitude was a definite step in the right direction and, as Marina prompted, me I gave Becky a pat and started to softly talking to her (instead of what I normally would done, which would’ve been to grit my teeth and prepare for another fight the next time we went around). And all of a sudden, Becky dropped her head, lengthened her stride and visibly relaxed. Oh she wasn’t perfect by any means, and her steps shortened and her head came up again at the same spot in the circle, when she came into sight of her running mates in the paddock, but it was all a mile better than bucking. So I kept talking to her and petting her for a few more circles, where she got a little better still. And at that point we quit – still being very far off the nice soft trots I was getting 2 months before, but also quite a way from the jittery, distracted and, frankly, dangerous horse I was riding.

Showing off can make a fool out of you, but has some upsides too

2010-04-20T22:21:06+10:00

Ok, so I was totally correct in suspecting that I was overly obsessing about the softness and flexion in Becky’s walk and trot. Not that they weren’t important – just that it was all I was concentrating on, circle after circle, and driving us both nuts.

But the next time I went to see Becky, I didn’t have a chance to obsess about anything. Because this time, my Mum came with me. Mum hasn’t actually seen Becky for a few years now – she’s been living overseas and, now, she lives in another state from me – and she has never seen me ride Becky. So, come what may, I was going to show off!

Actually, there was some logic to my madness: I figured that if I had a very strong focus on performing well, then Becky would listen to me better.

I was mostly right, too!… eventually…

But first, Becky made a complete fool of me.

There was quite a bit going on in and around the arena when I mounted: another horse inside the arena, horses in the paddock right outside, kids running around nearby, something with a motor rumbling… plenty of distractions! So Becky wasn’t her most cooperative self, and I wasn’t on the ball as much as I hoped to be. So she had a tantrum and threw a couple of bucks – which I was used to. Unfortunately, in the middle of that tantrum one of the ties on my bridle came undone and Becky came out of the buck with the bridle hanging around her neck.

That I wasn’t used to.

Becky though, bless her heart, did not take any further advantage of my ludicrous position where I had no control whatsoever and, instead of bucking harder to remove me, she calmly trotted off in the direction of other horses across the fence.

I decided not to stick around to see what would happen next and swung off her.

Although embarrassing, this little interruption was very useful as when I got back on her, I approached it as if I was starting all over again, and this time my focus was spot on. I picked a spot on the ground and concentrated on keeping the same distance from it at all times, which didn’t allow Becky to drift her attention away from me. After that, I went all around the arena at a nice sitting trot, following a pattern that was in my mind, and doing a few shoulder-ins.

Mind you, I had to do a few more shoulder-ins after that cause Mum completely missed what we were doing and just thought we were trotting on nice diagonals. :-)

And the most amazing thing was that throughout all of it Becky was rhythmical and soft. Without me struggling to pull her head around or anything!

This weekend, I tried to repeat the experience, but I guess without a real audience, it didn’t quite work as well as before (although no embarrassing moments intruded either). I have definitely not been imagining that the right rein going to the right can be quite heavy, but the difference is I am not obsessing about it, and just trying to keep my lines and rhythm, keep Becky forward, and rewarding any softenings I do get. Also I do think that Becky was really not wishing to bend: at several spots in the circles she did her best to try to drift out left from the circle. Once, as an experiment, I simply released the right rein, without putting pressure on the left, and, sure enough, Becky just swung left on her own accord and headed for the fence – her thoughts were obviously strong in that direction. In other parts of the circle, the pressure on the right rein came off completely!

Marina had taught be to try and correct this drifting out using my left rein – to stop the shoulder from falling out - and then using the right rein just to keep Becky bent around to the right. Sometimes keeping her bent around to the right took a lot of force!

Again didn’t get much improvement on that heaviness, but overall the rhythm was good and her attitude was very good.

When I got off, I took up Becky’s reins from the ground and asked her to trot around in the circle to the right to see if I felt the same sort of heaviness from the right rein on the ground as I did in the saddle. As I guessed, it wasn’t there. Becky was much more willing to soften and bend to it from the ground, which poses a big question of what am I doing different in the saddle. My suspicion is that it has much to do with the position of the reins: when I am on the ground, the left rein is much closer to Becky’s neck, and sometimes even over it, keeping her left shoulder in. The right rein is bending her a lot more directly to the right and comes down as I hold it in my hand in front of me, instead of going up into my hand when I am in the saddle. I suspect that this gives Becky a two-fold signal of very clear unignorable direction to bend, and to soften downwards.

I have to try and keep the feel of that in the saddle somehow.

Pulling a bow

2010-03-28T23:52:40+11:00

It’s been a while since my last post; study, work, life in general just got in the way, I guess. Thankfully, it didn’t get in the way of my horse riding. In fact, I’ve been seeing Becky more than I normally do: twice a week most weeks. She is agisted about an hour’s drive from my home, which makes things a bit tricky.

Unfortunately, I can’t say that the whole softness and roundness thing is getting much clearer for me, though. The concept is clear; the practical element of how to achieve it – much more confusing.

The way I see it, achieving softness in Becky – where her head is down and there is no weight on the reins, and her back is rounded and she is stepping underneath herself freely and with long strides – is something that combines absolutely everything that I have learned in the last 3 years. My seat – have to sit back, and move with Becky, as well as directing the length and quickness of her stride with my seat. My hands - shoulders back and relaxed, elbows bent and steady, so that I give Becky a clear direction of how much bend to have. And also knowing how much pressure to put on reins, and when, and when to apply my legs.

And I struggle with all of it.

Particularly the hand steadiness and rein pressure. My lesson a couple weeks ago concentrated on how little pressure I could put on to achieve a softening from Becky. After my struggles before with trying to get Becky to respond to the rein, and ending up with a death-grip and us leaning on each other, it was quite eye-opening how little pressure she actually needed if I was quick to release her softening. However, during the lesson we ended up mostly walking, so translating this into trot was left up to me. And it sort of did… sometimes… I got some really good moments where we were trotting along soft and rounded… It did take some fighting and some pressure though, mostly with me pulsing the outside rein so as not to allow Becky the steady pressure to lean against. Becky would throw here head up and down sometimes in annoyance at it, or just try to ignore it, but I was persistent and we got some good steps. Most importantly – I felt that it was all slowly improving. I had to fight less and less for each softening response.

However, somehow I suspect that I shouldn’t have been fighting at all.

The next lesson we were concentrating on my hand position: something that I didn’t realize at all was that my inside hand was not at all steady, and allowed Becky to lose the bend and also gave her no steady guide to which to soften. The idea was that if she wasn’t soft or bent, she would end up putting pressure on herself by pulling against the rein… but only if my hand was steady! Also, we worked on a neurotical obsession of mine: there’s an area of the circle that I am convinced Becky really falls in on. As Marina demonstrated by putting herself as the focal point at the center of the circle that Becky was doing no such thing: her slight impulse to fall in was very easy to correct with just a bit of outside rein and inside leg, instead of making her step right out as I was doing circle after circle.

Yeah, I get obsessed about little things. Maybe I am getting a bit obsessed about the softness and roundness… but it’s still not really working!

Today’s session I paid attention to keeping my hands steady, not too much pressure on the outside rein, and the circles even… which I think was all working, except that the inside rein to the right weighed a tonne at a trot!! I constantly felt like I was pulling a bow taught. And it wasn’t because Becky just refused to bend – she refused to bend and have her nose down. That idea of having my inside hand in a steady spot, close to my thigh, which would give Becky a guidance as to how much of a bend I wanted and put pressure on her if she stuck her nose out or tried to lose the bend just didn’t work: Becky would put pressure on herself, and quite happily keep that pressure, leaning against it. There was no attempt to soften to it at all. Using outside rein and extra pressure just shortened her steps and made her head go up.

In hindsight, I am wondering whether she actually deliberately twisted her head with her nose to the outside, even though she maintained the bend. I was concentrating so much on her neck and the steady rhythm, that I didn’t actually check whether her head was hanging straight down. If it wasn’t, I was missing a very big clue as to what was wrong and where her attention was. Ah, the power of hindsight!

I ended up giving up on the softness, lengthened the inside rein, putting pressure on Becky only when she lost the bend (though I always felt her pushing against the rein slightly) and concentrated on rhythm and steady circle, which was all pretty good. At the walk, I tried to remember the lightness with which I managed to get her softening a week ago, and with combination of inside and outside reins, I again got some good soft steps.

But to get that at a trot – it’s still a mystery.

Working out how to stop the lean on the reins

2010-03-06T13:41:35+11:00

Becky and I have a problem. We always had this problem and I think it’s a fairly common problem. Leaning. She leans on the rains. She doesn’t quite give to them. In the past, when I first started taking lessons, she was incredibly hard, particularly to the right. She would just tilt her nose away from the bend and just lean. As we worked with her, over the years, she did become softer and requests for bend did not result in me feeling like my rein was attached to an immovable brick wall. But a little bit of a tug always remained. She would just stick her nose out slightly at walk and trot, and, as far as canter was concerned, well she would just duck her head down, throw her nose quickly out, and launch herself up in the air. I would end up with a bucking horse and mile-long reins.

Last year, Marina and I made the first big step in putting a stop to this. Whenever I felt the lean on my reins, I stopped and applied pressure until Becky put her weight back and stopped leaning. During the bend, I sometimes literally had to jerk the rein on the side she was resisting in order for her to let go (mind you, I ride in a halter bridle with no bit). This went a long way to eliminating the “brick wall”.

Then we started to teach Becky to lower her head and step longer (which helped her to use her back and hind more), all on a lose rein; this also helped with relaxation.

Now we are introducing consistent contact and are working on her using her hind end a bit more, stepping underneath herself and lifting up her back, while lowering her head and not poking her nose out. All to help teach her to balance properly and not lean on the rein: if she uses her back properly, and has her nose down, she cannot lean on the rein.

At first, we just taught Becky the concept of putting her head down and nose tucked in a little (ie. where the head just hangs straight down). Then I asked for the backup until I felt her back come up, head come down and lightness on the rein, before asking her to go forward. At first, that movement forward resulted in the nose coming back out again, and the back getting hollow once more, but, after a bit of rinsing and repeating, I could reestablish her posture with a tug on the reins downward while moving forward. Although after a few lessons I was going around at walk and trot with Becky’s head down, back up and reins the lightest I’ve ever felt, the movement was all a little slow, a little constricted, because in order to fix things I still sometimes had to stop and back Becky up.

So now, we needed her to free up her forward, but not lose the posture, and this is where things got tricky. Marina suggested that I stopped backing up to fix things, but, instead, asked Becky to step her hind up when she got hollow in her back. Basically, do the reverse: instead of asking front feet to back up into the posture, ask the hind legs to move up. Sounds like a good theory, but I’ve been finding it real tricky.

At first, it almost immediately broke everything: Becky’s head went up and she started resisting the rein’s pressure to lower her head, which I was used to fixing with a backup, but now couldn’t. Instead, I had to keep pushing her on and be watchful for any movement down with her head which I could reward with a little release on rein. It worked while I was having the lesson, but I found I was having real problems when practing by myself. Isn't that always the case!!

At the start of a ride, Becky would be reasonably soft, but as I put pressure on and pushed her on with my legs, while waiting for her head to make the slightest movement down so I could release, she resisted me more and more. Particularly at the trot. The soft rounding I was getting before became a very rare occurrence, although she was certainly moving forward easier. Mind you, the first time I practiced by myslef, there were two other horses in the arena with me, which played havoc with Becky's focus on the job at hand! So, as well as working on her softening I had to continuously fight her drifting sideways towards other horses.

When I rode her yesterday, there were no other horses, but she was in a mood to rush, which hasn’t happened in a while. So her head was more up and her back more hollow than normal. Now, as well as trying to ask her head down with the reins, I also had to use them to slow her down when she rushed! This really confused everything, as she would sometimes put her head down from the rein pressure, but continue motoring ahead, so that I could not release when I otherwise would’ve.

In the end, I felt that I was encouraging her to lean on me more and more because I was never getting a full softening, but was releasing for little movements which did not add up to any changes in her frame.

So, I went back to the “drawing board”: I returned to a walk and stopped accepting pure head movements as queues to release rein pressure. I asked her to walk – had to keep pushing her into it quite a bit with my legs – while applying pressure with the reins, until I felt her coming off my reins. Because I was doing it while asking her to keep walking forward, the only way she could come off my rein was to bring up her back and lower her head – to, basically, concertina herself a little. Then I let go, and allowed her to walk out for a couple steps before picking up the reins again and asking again. It stopped being about the head for me, though that came down too when she came off the rein and rounded.

We didn’t return to the trot this time – will do so tomorrow (weather permitting) – but I managed to reestablish that feeling of lightness on the reins at a walk. The question is: did I manage to encourage forward enough?

I’ll let you know.

Looking into her eyes

2010-02-25T01:03:29+11:00

Why do we so rarely look at the horse’s eyes as a guide to what they are thinking? I’ve read very few articles, and heard very few horsepeople talk about the horse’s eyes in any but most anthropomorphic fashion, as in “oh he looks sad”, or “he has a cheeky look on his face”. We judge other people’s moods and thoughts by the expression in their eyes, and we respond to that, often more so than to the spoken words. But, for some reason, we tend to not use that same tool to help us understand our horses.

Of course, it is hard to see a horse’s eyes when you are in the saddle: hence the feel of the body, the shape of the neck, the tilt of the head are the clues we have to rely on to know what the horse is thinking about doing. But, on the ground, looking at where the horse is looking is a very good indicator of what he is thinking of.

Becky gets very good with keeping half-a-mind on me, doing as I ask her to do, when what I am asking is something she is very familiar with. She will even do a decent job of maintaining the shape I require of her with her body and head position. But where her eyes are looking will be a giveaway as to where the other half of her focus is; where she would really rather pay full attention to, rather than to me.

For example, the other day I was struggling with getting Becky into the new washbay. Not really a “bay”, it was just a bit of concreted ground, with some wooden rails around it. Becky was not good on concrete: she dis not feel surefooted on it, as many horses don’t. However, even more of a problem for me turned out to be the presence of another horse in a yard some 20 meters from the bay. It was that horse that Becky wanted to watch, which caused her to resist coming into the bay, or, if she came in, she would come on a diagonal – shouldering her way in - regardless of whether I was in the way or not.

Becky is not normally a pushy horse, hence the fact that she was coming so close to me, disregarding my slapping of the leadrope in order to block her shoulder, concerned me.

However, it was the fact that I was concentrating on that shoulder was what not letting me see the real problem. Or, rather, I was seeing the third or fourth expression of the problem. The very first clue to it was happening even before Becky moved: instead of looking at me, or in the direction I was asking her to move, Becky was eyeing that other horse (even though her head was mostly pointing towards the washbay, with only the slightest tilt towards the other horse).

So, in order for me to get her into the washbay, I had to forget about the washbay, but make it about me: about Becky changing her focus from the other horse to me. Twitching or tugging the leadrope, asking Becky to look at me – really look at me – and then asking again when her attention drifted – that was the first step! After I could maintain her focus, I could start asking her to shift her focus in the direction I wished – towards the washbay – but I had to be extremely careful for her not to lose her focus and drift away. And the way I could tell she was mentally leaving me were also her eyes. Just like humans, when we get bored with listening to someone and start daydreaming, her eyes glazed over a little bit when her attention was lost to me.

At that point I had to stop her movement (as that was when she was likely to start shouldering towards me), and again twitch the rope to return her attention. Rinse and repeat, praising every try of movement which happened with the correct focus as I requested.

In the end, I got her into the washbay in a straight line after, what must’ve looked like, fifteen minutes, of shuffling outside the washbay. All the information I needed to understand the problem, and to solve it, were in her eyes!

(can’t claim the credit for coming to this conclusion though: Marina was there, once again, with her wisdom).

Addendum

2010-02-07T02:23:31+11:00

I got annoyed with myself after that last essay: ultimately I feel like I am not saying anything that hasn’t already been stated in other natural horsemanship blogs. It sounds too sanitized, too deceptively simple – and we all know that communication with a horse (or any living being) is anything but.

What I could not convey in my last post was how difficult it can be in the beginning to link back what one does in the round yard with a leadrope and a horse, to these concepts. “Changing of the thought” – it sounds so dictatorial – how can it be something that ultimately will make the horse happy? “Putting pressure on” – and there can be quite a lot of pressure put on a horse to change the thought – how does it result in him freely “choosing” the thought that you want him to have?

In the very beginning of studying natural horsemanship, I think it’s a matter of faith in past and present horsemen such as Tom Dorrance and Ray Hunt and Harry and Ross and Marina – that they are on the right track, and that the horses that seem happy and willing to do what they request of them, genuinely are so. Because, in the beginning, it is hard to tell a truly willing horse from one that has learned it’s “job” very, very well. Afterwards, personally, I began to tell when a horse was getting calm after a tough session of full of pressure– and I had to trust that a horse’s nature tells it to look for that calm, and that that calm overrides any resentment at the “pressure”, (if horses even feel such concept)! As a human being, that is something very hard to understand. It’s even harder to understand that that calm is reached because of that pressure and a well-timed release!

Eventually, a long time after hitting my head against these questions, I began to start to feel that line between pressure that annoys and frustrates Becky (because it is applied wrongly or not released), and the pressure that brings Becky’s focus back to me and thereby gives her that “moment of calm” and congruence between what she is thinking and what she is doing and what I am asking of her to do. And I started to see the results – not just in Becky’s behavior with me, but in a change of attitude in her while she was out in the paddock. I know that in the years I’ve been working with her according to these concepts, she became a quieter, calmer, less aggressive, and more confident within herself while out in the paddock with other horses, and while by herself. She also became a lot happier to be around me.

I trust that the concepts I am following are correct. That putting a lot of pressure on to block a very strong and unwanted thought does not necessarily mean putting a horse in a position of an impossible choice - do as I say or else! - but does allow them the space to look for an alternative answer and try it and achieve the calm of finding the release for themselves. But, frankly, it is not something that is easy to understand without feeling it. So, to anyone who is reading this, and who is plagued by those questions, I can say that I understand and I’ve been there, and still sometimes am there. But nowadays, more and more of what Marina tells me to do falls into place within the overall concept, and extends (rather than makes me doubt) my developing feel for what my horse is thinking.

Back To Basics

2010-02-07T02:22:49+11:00

Hello to all! I trust you all had a great Christmas and New Year, and are looking forward to all the adventures with your horse(s) this year. I sure know that I am.

Apologies for disappearing for a couple months. I’ve been away in Russia to visit my grandmother and to recollect in my adult mind where I am originally from – I haven’t been back to Russia for 15 years! It is an interesting place – though I wouldn’t say it was a “nice” place: people have been feeling cheated by the social system for many generations now, which hasn’t changed with the collapse of USSR, so there’s a lot of palpable aggression. The arts, architecture and quality of orchestras though do make up for that, if such is one’s interest. Also food was fantastic and, comparatively, cheap! – where else can you eat a jar of salmon caviar a day?!

But, back to horse-related subjects …

This year started with a wonderful back-to-basics learning experience for me. Last week I audited one of Harry Whitney’s clinics – a rare opportunity as Harry’s home is Arizona. This is a man of whom I – as a student of Ross, Michele and Marina – have heard much about. Harry’s experience included having ridden and studied with Ray Hunt and Tom Dorrance, and he is someone whom Ross very much admires. After attending the clinic, I understand why.

While Harry helped each of the participants with their horses, he always brought what he was doing back to the main concept behind horse training: changing a horse’s thought; and he was able to show what the concept translated to in the practice of training!

I’ll try to put it into words it the way I understood it, which, hopefully, isn’t too far off what Harry meant 

A horse – any horse – will be calmest, quietest, happiest, most at peace with himself and the world, when acting according to his foremost thought. The problem for us humans, when we want to ride or train our horses, is that their thoughts are usually not the same as our thoughts. So when we are riding towards home, and we want a nice slow relaxing walk, but the horse wants to get back to his herd and his hay asap, his feet speed up and he jiggy-jogs, and gets frustrated with being pulled on the mouth to slow down, and, in the end, he may even buck or rear! And it’s all because his thoughts are back at the barn, while you want his thoughts to be walking quietly and being prepared to listen to you, so you get in the way of his thoughts – but, usually, not enough to actually change it, though you may be successful in slowing the horse down physically. Which is why the same story tends to repeat itself every time you go riding out the front gate.

Pretty much everything that ever goes wrong for us, when dealing with horses, is due to that one basic reason.

The news gets worse though, as Harry explained with an example of a horse that tends to take off and be hard to stop – such as many an ex-racehorse is known to do.

Horses are masters at adapting to almost any situation – however much it does contradict their thoughts. They learn our ways and they learn what is the minimum they need to do in order to get us “off their backs” – literally and figuratively. Very quickly, after coming into first contact with humans, the horse will learn what “answers” to give us that will allow him to survive and for us to leave him alone. Though a horse will, of course, want to do what he thinks, he may not always get away with it completely – our bits and spurs and other paraphernalia can be harsh enough, so that not every horse will choose to keep fighting them. So, instead, a horse may choose to give up his wished-for action – the physical expression of the thought - at least partly – and replace it with something that will work in shutting up the human that’s bothering him. But he does not give up the thought itself, or rather, his thought never matches his new action! The situation that the horse ends up in, is akin to one of us going to a job we don’t like and don’t want to do, where we dream every single moment of doing something else and being somewhere else. Needless to say, it makes him as miserable as we would be in the same situation, and his performance at the job (even though it may be quite good, even excellent by human expectations) will never be as good as he can be.

However, the big difference is that a human can, after all, quit the job and try to find something else. In most cases (at least in a relatively safe and democratic country such as Australia), quitting a job does not endanger one’s life. Such is not the case with horses. Doing the “job” – however unsavory it appears to the horse – is how he learned to survive. In a way, doing the “job” has become his secondary thought (though not his primary wish, and it wasn’t taken up by free choice).

So, back to the example of an ex-racehorse. A horse that’s been trained to run when he is ridden, will offer that “answer” of running in any situation when being ridden – cause that’s what worked in the past, that’s what allowed him to survive this long, so that’s what he’d be sticking to. That’s how he understands his job, regardless of you who may, just now, want a quiet walk! And woe be to you for interfering with it, as, now, you are threatening his chance of survival when you try to get him to stop running. He’ll rear, spin, jump, or just pull against the bit. The thing is though, that even when you want him to run, it is not really his full willing thought either. Ultimately, it’s an answer he learned, not what is true to his own thoughts. He never chose the running to be his own thought.

So what’s the answer to all of these problems? Simple: change the horse’s thought. Not just his actions, which, as with the example of the racehorse learning to run even against his primary thoughts, are not necessarily enough – but change his thought! For if he thinks that he wants to walk quietly – and the thought is truly chosen by him - then he will surely do so!

The way you achieve that change of thought is by blocking the thought that you don’t want him to have (e.g. running, or heading back to his mates) by putting pressure on him contrary to that thought (making that thought hard – not impossible(!), but difficult), and then allowing him to come up with a different thought. That different thought may not be what you want either, so you have to block that too, and allow him to try again, and again and again, until at some point he comes upon the thought that you do want him to have – and that’s the one you allow him to continue with by releasing all pressure. His feet and his actions now become congruent with his thought and for that time – which may only be a split-second – all is right in both of your worlds.

In the next split-second, though, his thought is likely to revert to the original “answer”, or something else, and you have to block it again and help him find the “desirable” thought” and the moment of peace that comes with it. Eventually, after some time, and if this is practiced in the many situations in which you interact with him, he will start looking for that place of congruence between thought and action, and will be willing to change his thoughts to suit yours, because he learns that that is easy. What’s more, even when you present an unfamiliar concept to him – you ask him to have a thought he has not had before – he’d be that much happier to search for that thought until he finds it.

So, it is a simple concept, but, as Harry said at the clinic – and as I heard from Ross many times - “it’s simple, but it’s not easy”. The difficulty, of course, lies in

a) knowing exactly what the original (undesirable) thought was;

b) how best to block it, and how strongly (do too little – you won’t discourage the thought; do too much, and you won’t encourage the horse to search for an alternative thought, but just “escape” – fight, mentally shut down, or just panic);

c) detecting when the thought has changed to the desirable one – not just the horse’s actions, but his actual thought: e.g. when he gives to the rein, or lowers his head – when there’s just that moment of quietness and focus where you want that focus to be. Then you release the pressure and praise like crazy.

But without the feel of those 3 points – a feel that comes from years of working with horses and good trainers – chances are you’ll confuse and frustrate your horse by releasing at inconsistent times, or putting the wrong pressure at the wrong time, and therefore not achieving a change in thought. And, without the change in thought, all you do is fight against existing thoughts and frustrate your horse and ask for trouble. Just how much trouble depends on how laid-back your horse is.

Becky isn’t laid-back, so she lets me know in no uncertain terms when I am frustrating her and getting between her and her thoughts, without actually achieving a desired change in her thoughts.

These concepts are at the foundation of everything I’ve been learning with Marina and practicing myself, but, due to my inexperience, it is easy for me to forget of them while being busy with “getting Becky to do what I want”. There lies a danger.

Listening to Harry teach, not only reminded me of all these concepts, but filled me with more awareness when interacting with Becky of the things that I should be watching for.

Training Becky to change a thought isn’t just about getting her to do what I want. It’s about training her to make her thoughts available to me: to listen to me and be ready to change her thoughts; teaching her to give up her thought. And that means being aware of what her thoughts are, and where her focus is, a lot more than what her body is actually doing. After all, a thought, and the resulting focus, precedes the body.

Following of these concepts, is, in effect, an attempt to influence another living being in a way that most humans aren’t even able to do with each other, without resorting to threats, manipulation, emotional blackmail, or other violent means. But then humans are even less ready to give up their thoughts and follow someone else’s. A horse, on the other hand, is willing to do that, and, if we continue to prove to him that it is a good idea, trust in that. Now there’s a humbling thought.

The power of food

2009-12-03T01:02:38+11:00

I was once told by a clever horseman (probably Ross Jacobs, but, just in case it wasn’t him, and he doesn’t agree with this, I am not going to sound certain) that horses generally prioritise things in the following order:
Safety comes first – most important.
Then company of other horses.
And food comes last.

Well, apparently noone has told Becky this.

Now that she has eaten down the grass in her yard (though with recent rains it keeps shooting through), and is being fed only hay, she is certainly feeling a lack of both food and company. Poor girl! (But she is dropping weight! And, let me note, she is certainly not starving – there are no indications of that, and I am the only one who gets to clean the paddock, so I see the proof.) Since I am only able to see her on the weekends, I normally need a good hour to clean out her yard, during which I leave her untied to wander around out of the yard, so that she doesn’t get in my way. There’s lots of grass on the property, and she can’t get out onto the road; but she can, potentially, go down either driveway at the front or the back of the property and visit other horses (at least say hello to them over their fence), including her former paddock-mates.

According to the preference ladder, that is what she can be expected to do.

But, not my Becky. She stands in one spot, munching and munching. In fact, she doesn’t even shift when another rider leads her horse on the way to the arena within couple meters off Becky. Grass! That’s all that matters… for, at least, the hour required of me to clean. If I dawdle for a long time though (as I did a couple weekends ago) Becky will, eventually, lose the grass-centered narrow-mindedness and will start paying attention to what’s happening in other paddocks, and will, eventually, munching all the way, go visit someone.

Other people marvel at how relaxed I am with Becky – that I am not afraid she would make me chase her all around the property. She might, one day, just to prove me wrong, but, for the moment, I trust in the power of food to keep this horse’s mind occupied above all else.

The usefulness of a nicely-padded horse

2009-11-23T23:57:44+11:00

Hello. It’s getting to the crazy time of the year – Christmas time – and, although my family is remarkably small (by modern Australian standards: I am an only child of only-child parents), it still seems to always be a busy time for me. Maybe because around that time everyone is desperately trying to “catch up” with all their friends before they get swallowed up by the days of festivities in their own clans.

It seems not-entirely-coincidental then, that my memory and general mental capacity seems to be receding around this time. The latest stupid thing I’ve done, which is relevant to this blog, is forgetting to pack the saddlepad and the girth, which I carefully washed, into the boot of my car before driving the one hour to see Becky. Now, the saddlepad I could’ve somehow improvised (maybe), but the girth – that I could find no substitute for: the “spare” girth I had in my car (Becky’s old girth) was about a foot too short.

What was a girl to do other than put on the protective vest and make use of Becky’s well-padded back to ride without a saddle? It was the first time I rode bareback in a long time, and never before on Becky, so I had no idea how it would go. However everything I learned in the last 3 years told me that the most likely recipe for success was to not make a Big Deal out of it, but to try and be as precise with my intentions and aids as if I was in the saddle, and not to just meander around on a lose rein just to “see how it goes”. Which meant that I had to try and relax as soon as possible and not expect Bad Things to happen. Mind you, despite my intentions, I did fully expect to be eating arena sand at some point, particularly since the last ride I had on Becky contained more bucking and otherwise "swearing" on Becky’s part than in a long while.

I should probably backtrack and explain that last bit. As far as I can tell, Becky’s problem was extreme crankiness at being locked up. Being in the arena put her both further away from her buddies (with whom she could still communicate across the fence from her locked yard), and at a different perspective to them. She really did not want to be in the arena. Every time she was asked to turn away from the sight of her friends, she drifted with her shoulder, and, in the end, when asked to trot, started to throw her lunges and bucks. Since Marina was with me, I felt more confident than I normally do, and with her insistence that, for once, the bucks were not caused by my own inaptitude, but by Becky’s lack of cooperation, there was nothing left to do but persevere. So, I kept asking of Becky everything I intended to ask, and attempted to ignore her jumps the best I could. Including asking her to canter, which she does not do graciously at the best of times.

In the end I surprised myself by how little the bucks affected me. The thought of them truly is more frightening than the reality. By her 10th or so attempt to lodge her protest, her efforts just seemed pathetic to me, and, funnily enough, she quit the jumping soon after.

So, with this lesson fresh in my mind, filling me with both confidence and trepidation, I climbed bareback onto the somewhat surprised, but quite calm Becky.

As anyone who has ridden bareback knows, the first reaction is surprise at how different everything feels: everything moves more and is unstable. But what surprised me more, as soon as I relaxed, how much easier it was for me to feel when Becky drifted off the line I put her own. Logically, it’s obvious that it would be easier to feel, without the barrier of the saddle between me and her body, but the reality is quite startling nonetheless: all of her movements seemed emphasized to me… the downside being that all my movements (and mistakes) were emphasized to her: from the uneven pressure in my thighs and calves, to possible slippage of my seat off-center. I really had to concentrate on everything I was doing so much more.

That concentration really took my mind of Becky’s possible misbehaving and, to be honest, that thought never seemed to cross Becky’s mind either. By the end I was finding that I could do everything we practiced at the lesson in the walk, including the shoulder-in. In fact we practiced that a lot - getting it smoothed out - which primarily required me to get out of Becky’s way with the reins, relax and maintain a consistent position.

It went so well that I was tempted to up the ante and try a trot, but another lesson learned over last 3 years floated to the surface: to not bite off more than I can chew straight away. This was a great success at a walk, and it could all be undone by going to a trot, especially since I remembered that I am not good at bareback trot at all. That is something that I should leave till next time, and the success of the session makes me think that there will be a next time.

Bareback riding is something that is interesting to play with, although I can see that doing too much of it may disrupt my seat in the saddle for now – since I am still establishing it, and since I may not be doing things entirely correctly while riding bareback. For example, keeping my feet in a proper "stirrup" position is extremely hard bareback and, probably, impractical, but it could affect my seat in the saddle. I have heard conflicting opinions on this count.

However it is a challenge and is fun to try, and it is certainly good to know that it is an option the next time I forget my gear.

Becky is on a diet… and more on shoulder-in

2009-11-07T20:17:32+11:00

I finally came to face the fact that Becky’s weight has become a real problem. It got to the point that her saddle – which has interchangeable gullet system, and is now on the widest gullet possible – no longer fit her, and I could not get on her from the ground without the saddle rolling. So, she is now locked up in a small private yard, and though there are horses in the yards either side of hers, she stands at the gate and looks at her former herd where she used to be the top mare… and they stare back at her.

Heartbreaking, but has to be done. I just do not have the time in the week to give her enough exercise to overcome the rich growing grass in the big paddocks, which was leading her straight to founder.

It seems to be working, too – the girth went up one hole already!

And it didn’t diminish her energy any. Maybe made her crankier though: when I rode her on Tuesday (just before the Melbourne Cup: what better way to spend the Melbourne Cup holiday in Melbourne than to ride yourself?!), she started doing her little jumping around in preparation to bucking at a walk. To be honest, I am still chuffed that I can now be clear, consistent, and just purely single-minded enough in my cues to actually overcome her tantrums. It takes confidence to be able to communicate that “we are doing this and that’s all we are doing, and you can just put your thoughts of going somewhere else, or bucking, aside.” And, amazingly, she actually does as told. No huge amount of force hauling on the reins, or kicking, or anything, is required – just the ability to interrupt her drifting out of line early enough and firmly put her back. Yeah, I say “just”, but I am still preening every time I am actually able to do it.

The latest trick that Marina taught me helped me enormously in this. It’s probably something that everyone has heard at some point: to think of your legs as being the guiding posts for your horse, and your feet in the stirrups as two fences, or rails, or skiis, or tracks that fence your horse in. This way as you turn your hips to communicate to your horse that you want to turn, your thighs and legs start applying the correct pressure, and the reins become secondary support tools, to be used if the leg are ignored. The second benefit is that you become very sensitive to your horse pushing with his shoulder or butt outside the line you chose (outside the fence).

That’s what permitted me to catch her drifting out of line early enough, and put her back with the extra pressure in my legs or reins soon enough, before she decided that she was the top horse in our herd of two, and tried to put me in my place by bucking.

The difficult thing about this visualization is that it doesn’t help all that much until you are sitting correctly in the saddle, with your legs under you and relaxed in your shoulders and arms – which is something that, believe me, doesn’t come easily, or fast. Once I started thinking about it, and using it, I realized just how much my legs didn’t do what was required before – because, all of a sudden, my thighs were starting to get quite tired! The danger there was to not get too tense in the legs, as I concentrated on “steering” with them, as that caused me to get tense all over, and to lose some of the feel of Becky’s movement.

This setting of the two lines of the “fence”, with Becky in the middle, helped me to get better at the shoulder in, which was all about having those fence lines going straight ahead, and Becky’s shoulder just off the line. Previously, I had a tendency to twist my hips with Becky’s shoulder, so I ended up sitting at an angle to the line too, and it all started to turn into a kind of awkward side-pass.

Now we are working on smoothing out the shoulder-in in a straight line, and also doing an exercise where we are moving laterally with the same body-position. So we start off about 5 meters away from the arena’s fence, moving parallel to the fence, then I ask Becky to take her shoulder off the line on an angle that is away from the fence– as in classic shoulder-in - and also ask her with my inside leg to move laterally towards the fence. The end result should have us approaching the fence smoothly on a diagonal, where we cover about twice or even three times the distance going forward (so, about 10-15 meters), as sideways to the fence (5 meters). The way I understand it, the benefit of this exercise is that it allows the hind inside leg to step even further under Becky, thus encouraging her to use her hindquarters. But, more importantly to me, it’s a more difficult exercise than shoulder-in straight down the line, which means that I am more aware of when Becky is resisting the bend, or tries to barrel straight ahead. In turn, the more I am “on the ball” in correcting Becky, the more she gets in tune with me, as she realizes that she has to listen to my cues carefully, and she relaxes more. Magic!

Working on this “diagonal” shoulder-in is what took Becky’s mind off bucking at the walk.

We then worked up to the trot, which is essentially the same, but the angle of the bend is a lot smaller. And then, just for the fun of it, played with some cavalletti poles that someone left behind in the arena. Given that we’ve never done that before, and that I didn’t really know how far apart they should be for a horse of Becky’s size and movement, I didn’t care about finesse at all. What I cared about is going through on a straight line, which really made me concentrate on setting Becky up for it and not letting her fall out. In the trot I had to really think about going forward - have all my intention going ahead and think “trot”, or else Becky would slow down, break to a walk, and start to weave uncertainly just before going over the poles.

In the end, we were quite successful, and it kept Becky’s interest which resulted in her finishing our session in a lot more relaxed and less cranky mood than what we started with.