Cambria Horsemanship

This blog is moving!

2013-03-05T18:23:00.002-06:00

Thank you to everyone who has followed this Cambria Horsemanship blog for the past few years. In an effort to simplify my life and combine both horses and spirituality in my life (as well as match with the expansion of my business), I now have a new blog combining both my Prayers of Light and my Cambria Horsemanship blog over at www.cambriaequine.com.

If you're an e-mail subscriber, I'm going to import your e-mail, but you'll still have to activate it, just like you did with this blog. I hope you will, though, because I don't want to lose any of you in the blog switch. :)

If you want to subscribe directly, just click this link!

Horse scholarship opportunity

2012-10-13T16:14:00.000-05:00

I don't do this thing very often, but I thought of all you when this came up. There's a really neat trainer in Australia, Jenny Pearce, who offers an online course in really connecting to your horse, developing an excellent seat, working at liberty, and helping eliminate sourness/fear/frustration/etc. I've studied a ton of trainers and Jenny actually seems pretty different, and what I've used of her methods really seems to connect with my mare, who's really picky. :P Anyway, Jenny is offering a couple of scholarships for her 8-month online course, and I'm applying for one of them.

This is the course: http://www.jennypearce.com.au/deeper-than-trust-deeper-than-connected-deeper-than-confident-the-on-line-horse-riding-program-from-your-horses-heart/

And this is the scholarship, which is for the course plus private distance ed lessons with Jenny: http://www.jennypearce.com.au/competitions/details-on-how-you-and-a-friend-can-win-the-goldstar-scholarship-competition-2/

I know some of you won't be interested for yourselves, but if you teach others who perhaps have some fear issues, interest in developing connection with their horse, etc., perhaps they'd be interested?

Anyway, that's all I had! Hopefully someone can benefit.

The mountain is calling...

2012-06-30T10:15:00.000-05:00

As much of this blog seems to be about new experiences with horses, I think it is fitting I am now off on my own adventure for the summer -- I will be gone from now through late August in Israel and Europe.

Have a wonderful summer with your horse!

Image by Leah Flores (http://society6.com/floresimagespdx/Muir-Mountain_Print)

Effortless lightness: It's not about release of pressure

2012-05-31T17:16:00.000-05:00

There is a lightness attainable with a horse that has nothing to do with him coming off a light pressure. “A light horse,” a trainer might say, “is one who responds to the lightest cues.”

I would disagree. A light horse, I would say, is one who never looks for pressure—and to whom you never give it.

Maia wildly resists pressure, real or anticipated. If she’s trotting on the lunge and expects to hit the end of the lunge, she instantly starts slinging and throwing her head in anxiety. If the pressure is something she cannot escape, such as my pressing on the bridge of her nose to get a step back, her ears tilt back, eyes go dead, and I may not even regain her spirit in that session; she shuts down.

You can feel when a horse is not truly light: you don’t feel you can lunge him at the canter with your lead simply looped over your pinky finger; you could not ask for a halt-gallop depart without squeezing your legs (and it might not even come with a big kick!); if you were to let your horse gallop in an open field at liberty, you couldn’t just watch with a leg cocked and a smile and know he was going to boomerang back to you.

Do you sense the lightness in this picture of Caspian and me? I put out no effort or pressure and everything happens.

What is one step toward attaining this lightness? With Maia, it is first clearing my mind of any inclination to match pressure with pressure. If she bolts when I’m on her, will I match that with pressure and pull on the reins? Or will my mind stay clear and find joy in the gallop?

And after my mind is in a light, non-pressure state, my hands follow. When your horse appears he is going to pull on the lunge, have you ever tried releasing, loosening, the rope to him instead? I know what changes in Maia when that happens; but what happens to your horse?

Sometimes the greatest changes occur when we do not apply effort, as we understand effort.

Western-style photo shoot!

2012-05-14T19:24:00.004-05:00

I had a photo shoot with Maia today! It was such fun, Western in the woods, kitty in the hayloft (Maia wasn't in that one ;) I haven't taught her to climb ladders yet), then bridleless/bareback in a skirt. Maia was a saint for not having been ridden consistently (read: more than once a month) since last summer. And the shoot needed to be traditional Western (for the ad agency the photographer is looking to get into), so Maia had only two rides to figure out a curb bit (thankfully I've ridden her a few times in a double bridle). She is such a good mare!

Here's a sneak peak picture -- more coming tomorrow! The photographer was Maurice Northrup and his website is http://www.imagesbymaurice.com/. Go check him out! And he's on Facebook too!

Laredo is for sale! Friesian Sporthorse gelding, 6 years old, $1800 OBO

2012-03-20T00:23:00.000-05:00

I wanted to let you all know that Laredo is for sale! He's been an awesome horse but with graduating college soon and then leaving the state/country, I want him to go to a person who can give him the time he deserves. Here is his ad, please pass it along to others!

Laredo is 50% Thoroughbred, 25% Friesian, 25% Arab (his grandsire is Nero), is registered with the Friesian Sporthorse Association, and is eligible for the American Warmblood Society, Friesian Heritage Horse, Friesian Sport Horse Registry, and the Friesian Blood Horse Registry. He is healthy and sound with large, hard feet (he has always been barefoot) and just had his teeth floated and wolf teeth removed. He has lovely conformation with a beautiful head and great movement that is straight and balanced.

He leads, lunges at all three gaits (takes both leads), has been worked in sidereins, cross ties, single ties, stands for the vet and farrier, has never bit/kicked/bucked/reared, and is very light and sensitive to handle. He is handled daily, gives to pressure, can be touched all over, goes through mud and puddles, is used to barking dogs, and is not herd bound. He works well in hand, schooling shoulder in, leg yield, and spiraling in and out on the lunge. He is easy to bridle and saddle. I have ridden him once and he showed absolutely no signs of bucking, etc.

I am selling him because I am graduating from college in May and traveling abroad for the rest of the year and simply don't have the time to train him, and the longer I have him, the more I spend on board--money I need for college/post-college.

I'm asking $1800 OBO.

Here are some pictures and a video!

Quit nagging and chill out: A lesson from a Minnesota winter

2012-03-09T11:44:00.003-06:00

I hardly dared move my feet. I’d either slip on the ice, step in a puddle, or trip over a pile of frozen horse manure, and there’d go all my dignity. Such is March weather in Minnesota—you’re still cold and getting blasted with snow, only now the sun is so high you get sunburned. ;)

Maia didn’t seem to mind, though. She was whizzing around on the end of the lunge line, slipping on the ice and crashing through the puddles with all the energy she has after not having been worked with for days. And all I could see was how she was counterbent, not in a state of balance, unable to respond to release, and using the wrong muscles.

So I quickly set to work. Move this, change this, don’t forget to bend but keep up your energy and yet slow down and engage your hindquarters and find your balance and move off of there and keep up there and stay responsive and stop and go and speed up and slow down and good grief don’t pull on the line and calm down and stay light and don't pull.

Pretty soon I was thinking horsemanship was way a lot of work and Maia was thinking it was pretty dumb. Not to mention I was moving around so much I was in danger of slipping on the ice.

Maia's expression was something like this, which, in elaborate horsemanship terms, could be called, "ticked off"!

Afterward, I started to realize how I was not operating at all in the principles of release. I was so concerned with keeping her light and soft and balanced that I was doing so without any release at all—meaning, I was nagging. Nagging is the opposite of working with release, because it means you’re constantly trying to change the horse and “do work,” instead of simply “being” and letting the horse move and change on his own.

So the next session, I decided to use the principle of release and not get so hung up on the feeling of it (lightness). As Maia zoomed around on the end of the lunge line, I decided to let her pull on the rope a little, let her counterbend a little, and not worry about it. Instead, I just focused on staying out of her way and letting her just feel free at the end of the line—free to move without being nagged. I’d give her a suggestion, then let it all go for a lap or two, then another alteration, then a lap or two of rest.

In other words, I stopped worrying so much and trying so hard. I just looked at one thing at a time and let her “get away” with the rest. Trying to improve too much at once makes you both frustrated; having an imperfect horse or one that pulls a little does not make you a bad horse trainer. It’s just the way your horse is at that moment, and nagging is not going to help make a permanent change.

Only when your horse chooses to change and fully understands it will that change become embedded in him such that he does it on his own, by his own free will. He will realize it feels good to move and be that way—but only if you show him it without nagging, which is a type of force.

When I changed to stop nagging and start allowing—allowing both some mistakes and her to change them—everything became quieter. Maia’s expression softened, and she became lighter than she had been with all of my nagging and focus on lightness. I became quieter—she became quieter. It is an easier horsemanship than you think, horsemanship based on release.

Not to mention it lets you stand still and not slip on the ice. :)

On bulldozers from Avatar and irreverent horsemanship

2011-12-30T15:46:00.006-06:00

“Sometimes, Maia, you have stupid ideas.”

This would sure be the last time I let her pick her own way through the woods. I leaned forward and grabbed onto her neck while she ripped through the dead branches like some sort of maniac bulldozer straight from Avatar. She clearly knew where she was going and clearly knew the shortest way to get there—which was clearly through the thickest part of the branches’ overhang.

This is Maia. In her heart of hearts, she wants to be a bulldozer from Avatar.

This was quite a dilemma. If I ever wanted to escape this death-trap with all my skin and eyeballs and limbs still intact, I would have to more or less look up from my huddled fetal position. Then I could actually see so as to direct Maia (who was having altogether too much fun killing me, in my estimation, judging from her pricked ears and bouncy step) out of this jungle, as she obviously had no intention of taking anything less than the shortest route full speed ahead to wherever she had decided to go.

But the thing was, if I risked the danger of looking up from where my face was buried in her neck, then sure as anything I’d glance up at just the moment some great big nasty dagger branch would poke me right in the eye and then I’d probably lose my eyeball and while I was occupied with that I’d quit paying attention to my legs and would get my knee whacked into some horrible rock-hard rough scrapey tree and get gashed to the bone or lose my leg or something and then while I was trying to wrench my hip back into its socket a big branch would hit me right in the chest and flip me off my horse, depositing me in a poor crippled heap on the cold, unforgiving ground.

This was so much fun. No, really. It was.

Over the past weeks, I had fallen victim to something very common in the horse training world: not having fun. I spent so much time trying to be productive and "train horses right" that I crippled myself by rules.

Or, in other words, I was not being “irreverent.” In my film and theatre acting training, one of the most helpful concepts for me is to be “irreverent”: be spontaneous, free, breaking the standards and the status quo, getting out of your head and into the moment—and having fun.

Irreverent horse training has similar qualities. It is knowing when to crash through the woods without worrying that your horse is hollow or uncollected—because you know he is building a mental clarity far more important than any momentary posture. It is knowing when to let loose and gallop toward home—because you know at that moment the experience of flying, for you and your horse, is more meaningful to your relationship than any standard of propriety. It is knowing when to give up your slow, careful, conscientious training plan for a day—because you know it is more critical to your horse's joy to be free and happy galloping along the trail than it is for him to never have his mouth pulled on a little.

Irreverent horsemanship is knowing the rules of safety and experience well enough to be just a little heretical with them. It values flexibility and depth of relationship over an external set of rules you have imposed upon yourself and your horse.

Because, in the end, life doesn’t revolve around rules—it’s founded in relationship. With God, with others—and with horses.

Trusting your horse when in an eagle's flight

2011-11-25T15:18:00.002-06:00

She would rather canter, I suppose. Actually, she would rather gallop. Maia is quite fond of galloping, but some sort of empathy in her nature keeps her from breaking into such spontaneous expression most of the time.

Of course, sometimes she does seem to enjoy reminding me of how terribly fond she is of it, and that, whenever I get myself together, she is ready to be a warhorse. After some beautiful canter transitions today, she started throwing in some airy leaps and jumps. Silly girl, I thought, and despite my admiration for her athleticism, self-control is something even aspiring warhorses need to know. I gave her a little boot with my hand on the side of her neck and told her to keep the exuberance to a dull roar, if possible.

Of course, she complied. She usually does when I really need her to. In fact, it is one thing I truly admire about her, and the more I’ve learned to let go, the more she shows her quality. This is true for any horse. The more responsibility that you give them, the more responsibility they show. Some people say we expect too much of our horses. I believe we don't expect enough of them. Horses used to carry us across hundreds of miles through life-and-death situations and were expected to do it every day of their lives. They rose to the task and have carried humans, in many ways, to where they are now.

But today, we tap only a fraction of the horse's ability to carry responsibility. We are afraid that trotting for 10 minutes around a perfectly groomed arena on a loose rein is too much for them; we do our horses a disservice. As C.S. Lewis says, "We are far too easily pleased."

Horses desire responsibility—they want to know you trust them. The more responsibilities you give them that they are successful at keeping, the more they enjoy being your partner and take pride in helping you.

For example, most people pick up on the reins quite a bit when a horse starts speeding up. I get quite a bit of this feeling on Maia, whose preferred speed can sometimes be rather… significant. But I have found it is of little use to pick up on the reins, to half halt each stride, or even to try to tire her out through an endless pattern of circles or turns. That really doesn’t give her much responsibility, which means I am continually reminding her to do it, and soon, she becomes annoyed. She hates being constantly reminded to do things. I guess we’re alike.

Instead, I try to surprise her with how much I trust her. The more I can surprise her with trust—but still stay safe and keep her responsive—the faster the connection grows.

Maia started to extend her trot. I knew she was thinking about the canter; today is just a cantering day, I guess. I matched her energy with mine and, grateful that I had caught on, she leaped into another round of three-beated flight.

Too much flight, actually, I thought, as the fenceposts whizzed past like some sort of old movie watched in triple speed. I prefer watching my movies in normal speed, but had no interest in picking up on the reins to do so. That was certainly going to cause brace and some sort of pressure—not to mention, it would deprive her of the responsibility of her feet and balance.

Instead, I began to breathe deeply, grounding myself into the sand below, while quietly releasing her outside shoulder back and to the inside with my short whip. No reins, no “whoas,” no pressure; I don’t want to stop an ounce of her enthusiasm.

And I don’t. Within just a few seconds, she begins to come down from her eagle’s flight of the hunt to a more sedate glide on the air currents. She rounds, slows, turns, bends, all while the reins hang loosely, unneeded, unwanted, signaling the trust I have in my horse, and the responsibility with which she handles it.

Clarification and blog change

2011-11-04T23:27:00.000-05:00

It came to my attention that a few people were concerned and confused about my recent post regarding terms I was using, quoted below:

I’ve been struggling lately with terms when writing here—it’s so terribly cumbersome to say things like, “when working on using release and then in that principle of release keeping my own attitude one of positivity and lightness and doing this and that and remembering that the horse is meant to be with me and…” Totally confusing, when what those things could be summed up in are the “3 R’s” that I have up in my logo (radiance, release, renewal). Those words do provide convenient tagwords to relate to what I’m talking about, so I’m going to start using them more.

But sometimes, I want to refer to all three of them together—the sort of total horsemanship that I am personally pursuing. And it’s cumbersome to say, “radiance, release, and renewal” every single time, so, at that point, I’m going to just refer to it as Cambria. It’s easier for me and hopefully a little clearer for you.

I realized that I was quite unclear about this. What I meant is not disrespect to any method or trainers I have learned from, but instead, that I have been finding that I am making my horsemanship more and more my own—into me, into “Cambria horsemanship,” different from any other people’s horsemanship.

I have been starting to add a great deal from what I am learning in my film/theatre acting training into how the person should be around horses, changing people from the inside out. There is a certain sort of “radiance” those actors have—as do successful horsepeople—which is why I am incorporating a strong sense of “radiance” (one of the “3 R’s,” whether that sounds cheesy or not ;) )

Release-based training of course I have not purely come up with on my own, instead, begun on my journey there by others, and I am very grateful for that. But even there, I am starting to develop it in my own ways, explaining it in words that I can best understand, so it is moving in its own unique form—into a Cambria horsemanship.

And then renewal—a great deal of my horsemanship, I am finding, is shaped and formed by my Christian worldview and understanding nature and horses and people from a Biblical perspective. This changes a great deal of how I treat horses, and has been doing so even more lately. There is the “Renewal” I have spoken about.

So, radiance-release-renewal—plus the artistic side of seeking to use horses in my other love of acting and modeling—this is what is turning my horsemanship into something unique and of its own—Cambria horsemanship.

I hope that is much more clear for you all about what I meant by that post, as I certainly meant no disrespect to other trainers. I have had a lot of changes in how I look at my horsemanship and my business lately, and there will be a lot of changes here on the website and in my business in general over the next few months. This is for many varied reasons—not least of which is that I am graduating college in a few months and will be turning Cambria into a full-fledged business, which will change the tone and approach of some things.

While I am figuring that out, however, I may not be posting here much—or at all. I want to make sure I am clear in my own mind about where I am going, how, and why, with Cambria, before taking you all on the journey there with me.

10-18-2011: Promising to not pull on the line

2011-10-18T12:51:00.001-05:00

Lesson in Release:
Make a commitment to not take the float out of the line and see how your horse changes.

Maia’s lunging has been changing beautifully. A few sessions (=weeks!) ago, when I was doing groundwork such as lunging, I tried something new: I decided to commit to never taking the float out of the line—ever. In contrast, in Parelli or other training methods, if the horse begins to go too far out on the lunge line, the typical response is to simply draw them back in by pressure (steady or “give and take,” it varies) on the lunge line.

However, I didn’t want to do that, as eventually I want to be able to ride her bridleless and on loose reins, and if I go to pulling on the line on the ground, that will mean I’ll have to pull on the rein when riding.

Now, Maia already has an idea of how to bend towards a release (meaning, if I give her more line, she will bend towards that slack), but lunging brings out a lot of tension and counterbending that sort of “short circuit” that response. I usually have resorted to using a light feel on the line, but I didn’t want to do that anymore.

Therefore, for the past few sessions, when lunging her if she has started to counterbend and almost tighten up the line, I have followed her a bit and offered all kinds of float/release on the line (you need a really long line to do this)—so much float (feet and feet of it) that she has been shocked into bending towards it, with a “what on earth?!” kind of expression. At that point she’d often just stop and look at me—but with a bend to the inside! She was 100% expecting some sort of pressure on the line, and it just floored her when it didn’t come.

Here's a nice example of me and my previous horse Caspian -- he clearly understood how to keep the float in the line and had no intention of taking it out.

So I did this for several sessions and, yesterday, I lunged Maia for a few minutes and started seeing the fruits of our labor! Instead of her doing a full-out stop and look at me, I could offer her some float and she would start to bend and shrink the circle right on her own, coming out of her counterbent brace. She was light, forward, with a nice rhythmic trot—and not expecting pressure on the line, so didn’t try to put any of her own pressure on the line.

It all culminated when I did some liberty at the end and she was galloping and leaping and tearing around the arena at top speed. Despite her pretty good connection to me, I hadn’t been able to communicate I wanted her to do an inside turn and come up to me—she just kept whizzing around the arena as fast as her legs could go, doing all outside turns. I finally thought, hey, I should offer her “float” in the “line” (ie, pretend to give her rope through my body language, as we were at liberty), just like when I want her to shrink her circle when lunging.

And the moment I did that, she turned right to the inside towards me and came tearing up to me with this brilliant expression, like, “Yes, yes, yes, I understand that!”

Perfect. :)

10-3-2011: My new horse -- Laredo!

2011-10-03T17:29:00.002-05:00

Here is my official entry post for my new horse—Laredo!

I have a very good friend who suddenly found she was moving out of state and could not take her horse with her, so she offered him to me. Here are the critical facts:

5 years old
Black. Or bay. Or black-bay. Depending on the season. No markings.
25% Friesian/25% Arabian/50% Thoroughbred
I named him “Laredo,” which means “God ordains” in Latin
~16 hh
No training other than a little bit of lunging

This one makes him look more Friesian-like.

I saw him for the first time about a month ago just to, you know, confirm that he was a horse, had all of his legs, that sort of thing. With that critical examination out of the way, I felt comfortable bringing him home this past Saturday.

Unfortunately, he wasn’t too confident about trailers and because we have a straight-load horse trailer, instead of being a nice, open, friendly, inviting Killer Cave (like a stock trailer), it was a dark, narrow, ugly, horrible Killer Cave. This, of course, made him just thrilled to go in.

Five hours later, having used every technique in the book and a few off of my own head, we finally got him in. Whew.

He’s now getting settled in with the herd and has become lifelong friends with the young Lusitano in his field who is likely to teach him all kinds of great tricks, like how one can stand in one’s water trough and tip it over for entertainment.

I took him out yesterday and trimmed his feet, and he tried very hard to behave, which was impressive. He is incredibly light and sensitive and already is responding with incredibly available instinct and life to the release—meaning, he has no qualms leaping off at a gallop or using every ounce of his deer-like energy and sensitivity at a moment’s notice. It is so much fun. (Until it isn’t. Which is why I’m wearing gloves when I work with him at the moment.)

Stay tuned for more updates!

10-1-2011: Change the subject so you can catch your horse

2011-10-03T17:10:00.004-05:00

Maia has been good—I only see her 1-2 times a week, but that is still fun. Unfortunately she’s been going through an odd phase in the pasture lately where she does not want to be caught and is thrilled to make a great big game out of staying away from me. Of course, that’s not a game I’m interested in playing, but I can usually snap her out of it by completely showing I am not going to catch her.

Meaning, if she gets a bee up her bonnet and starts buzzing off, I’ll do a quick hotspot release behind her and see if I can send her off at the canter or at least a good trot. Almost every time, she goes tearing off for about 30 feet, turns around, and comes right up to me, like, “What? Hey? Weren’t you trying to catch me and wasn’t I running??”

What does a pie-eating contest have to do with today's lesson? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. It's a totally unrelated and ridiculous change of subject. Intrigued? So is your horse when you do that in training.

It seems to really shock her into reconnecting again when I refuse to chase her. ;) It also helps if I completely do something she doesn’t expect. Like yesterday, I sent her off at a fast trot, she turned right around to come back, and she was expecting me to go up to her head but I instead walked straight up to her tail without any greeting and started pulling burrs out of it.

Lesson Learned: If your horse has something in mind you're not fond of, change the subject to something so radically different (or completely opposite) that they are shocked into reconnecting with you.

9-5-2011: Beginning long lining through feel and release

2011-09-05T23:27:00.003-05:00

September 5, 2011

A new exercise today! It’s been a while since I’ve played with long lining. The other day, I realized that Maia was confused about responding to the reins on her neck when I wasn’t right by her shoulder, so I thought some long lining might help that.

It’s actually quite straightforward through feel and release. I tied the end of the 24’ rope to her halter, one end to each halter knot. Using the bit would’ve been easier but I didn’t have the bridle on at the time.

Going forward—easy. Just do a touch release on her rump with both hands. Turning—easy. Instead of sliding the outside rein, I released it away from her neck. It seemed to work great, with the line simulating a releasing outside leg and outside rein. Then offer more float on the inside, and there’s a turn. Because she steps over with her shoulders versus getting pulled around with the inside rein, her haunches don't pop to the outside like I'd had trouble with previous times I'd tried long lining.

I used to long line Maia in a cordeo and would like to do it again someday -- hopefully without the pressure and this expression, though! I think it would be a whole lot easier utilizing release.

Stopping was a little harder, as she had a tough time feeling the release of both reins. I ended up going back to using a feel or even pressure on the reins, so I want to play with that. Clearly if she’s not clear on stopping while long lining, she won’t be clear when I’m riding.

She did great and was very calm at the walk (I didn’t try trot). She could turn both ways (even away from me, which is big for her) with a nice bend, do some very beginning walk pirouette (sounds fancier than it was—we were just doing a cross between walking and turning on the haunches), stop, and back.

It also definitely seemed to help her when I rode later on in the session. It is definitely something I want to keep playing with!

The Gliding Game and finding out where your horse's sticky points are

2011-08-29T22:09:00.001-05:00

Whew, college is busy! Busy, busy little beavers. Unfortunately beavers don’t seem to ride horses very often, and in the prevention of craziness-induced insanity, I have decided that I simply cannot go to see Maia during the week—just on weekends.

However, I’m still learning fun things when I go out to visit her. This weekend I learned this:
everything is about being able to get her to move anywhere at any time by manipulating the space. That sounds simple, but it’s not so straightforward. It would be very easy to show it in person.

Imagine you had a large ball, one of those great big fun ones that is feet in diameter. You can roll that ball forward, backward, left, right, diagonally, and every which way in between with the smoothest, lightest touch of a glide. But I found that I can’t do this with Maia!

For example, if Maia is moving forward and I start to release her off the front space, would she instantly stop and back up in bubble-lightness, and then could I take space over by her shoulders and have her rock into a turn on the haunches, and then glide her off forward, and then… on and on and on. Also, can I do that with no sense that we are moving from “exercise to exercise” or “cue to cue,” but are doing it purely off of feel, in just one long, gooey glide of release?

When I started doing this, I found her backup is extremely confused and sticky. I’ve been wondering why she’s had such trouble moving her shoulders away from a sliding outside rein, and I’ve known this is the culprit (she pushes forward into the rein instead of rocking back off of it), but wasn’t sure what to do about it. However, doing this Gliding Game (isn’t that snazzy? ;) ) showed all of her tendencies to push forward when she is uncertain of what to do.

Gliding Game. Glider. Makes sense to me. At least, a somewhat sleep-deprived me.

It’s no big deal, I just had to help her know that forward isn’t always the answer. Once we got that straightened out, I started bringing the sliding outside rein back into it (from the ground), and she could back up and move her shoulders away from it, no problem! Poor girl, just had that reinback piece all confused.

I’m excited to see how this transfers to riding!

8-11-2011: Bracing at the trot built back in through canter work

2011-08-15T09:41:00.001-05:00

So we’ve been doing lots of cantering and galloping on line and at liberty out in the pasture, which has been fabulous for getting her confidence up at the canter. She’s been doing some great cantering now on line in the arena as well as really moving out over some ground poles at the trot.

Riding has been more sporadic lately, though I did ride yesterday. She was about average at the walk but jaw-droppingly unbelievably bracey at the trot, perhaps the worse she’s ever been, even worse than this spring. I was absolutely floored and stopped her and just sat there a minute racking my brains as to what had built this in so strongly in just 3 or so days since I’d last ridden and she was quite soft on that inside rein.

Finally I figured it out—it was the canter. When she canters—especially the gallopy canter—and also a fast trot, she counterbends and braces extremely hard, so hard it really honestly looks uncomfortable for the poor horse. I’m not sure why it’s so strongly rooted in there—like I said, it cannot be comfortable or feel good, it’s so extreme, so it must be something I’ve built in over the years in a lot of ways. Meaning, she must think she is supposed to do it and it's become habit, or else I'm not convinced she would do something that is so uncomfortable for her. Therefore, it should be relatively easy to fix if I can just explain to her the job is a little different than she thought -- it's to bend, not to counterbend.

Whew! Look at that brace she's got in there at the canter. And look how unhappy she looks, too -- it cannot feel good to her.

Anyway, with all the cantering I’ve been doing with her, lately, all of that brace got built right back in in a serious way, even in the trot. So that was too bad to see, but the upside is that her canter is definitely coming along, under saddle, too, and she seems quite content in her job that canter=counterbend. Oh dear!

Watching her on the video Catherine took, she does not look clear about bending and that she should keep it all the time. Her muscle memory is to counterbend and she thinks that’s the job, no matter how disgusting it feels to her. So I decided to try and break that today. I did use a sort of pressure, but instead of thinking pressure-release, it was feel-float, so she kept a tremendous expression. I wish there was more I could do with float and not taking such a feel on her head.

So I started her going at a quick trot on line and really “got after” her in a very feel-release way  to bend ALL the time, NO counterbend, essentially breaking the muscle memory at every possible step and every possible opportunity. She didn’t seem upset and really started to get it at the trot, giving some nice bending and great roundness (which go together, for her). I tried to focus more on her root of her neck and less on her just “turning her head” which can get into a ridiculous thing of her looking straight at me while popping her outside shoulder and such nastiness. But focusing on the root gets gorgeous collection, though she does have stiff ramener muscle memory that pops in there sometimes.

Canter transitions

I wanted to try that in the canter but she started getting very upset—she started breathing hard, and she never breathed hard for a moment in all our fast work over the past few days which were much faster and galloping. So that was wrong… so I went a different way and got her bending really nicely at a fast trot and then did a hard hotspot-core energy canter transition, trying to get the transition right from the bend versus galloping around like a crazy horse first.

It was a rather theatrical transition, she would rock back on her haunches and do some acrobatics, as I think it’s hard for her to change such an ingrained muscle memory of canter = gallop + counterbend. However, she would give me a great try for that single stride and I would immediately give her the float and she’d stop. (So, it was trot+bend --> canter stride --> stop.) She didn’t seem to mind that at all, stopped breathing hard, and had a marvelous expression when she stopped.

I think all that other cantering was needed or she wouldn’t have done the transition at all, but too bad it builds in such brace. I’d like to find a different way of doing that. Maybe I should’ve started right off the bat with just a transition instead of letting her go longer in it.

Freeing a horse up and causing him to want to be with you

2011-08-11T20:42:00.003-05:00

We’ve been playing a lot with cantering lately on the 35’ line out in the pasture. I’ve been finding how stuck she still feels in tack—if she doesn’t feel confident cantering, that means there is a lack of confidence to really move out at the other gaits as well.

A way I have been able to get her into the canter better is to think of really “freeing her off a spot.” Meaning, mentally free/release her to run away to the end of the pasture, so she can feel totally free off that spot. So “release off a spot” is synonymous to “be freed off a spot”—freed to the far corner of the world, if she so chooses. In other words, it’s having the concept of “no limits/boundaries” (meaning, be released to the ends of the earth, I will never try to stop your running/leaving, be FREE, feel free, like you were created to be, in fact, PLEASE run, please go, please run until you can’t anymore, as far away as you can, because that is beautiful, that is FREE, that is totally released!)

I want her to feel free to leave, yet not as a runaway.

She is far more willing to really move out, then, as there is no small part of me constricting her or thinking, “please stay near me.” She feels that “please stay” and feels stuck, so doesn’t really move out. Freeing her up with tack is much harder, because of course there IS a boundary: the edge of the tack. So for her to feel free in tack I need to use giving float and release, not pull and pressure. Similarly, on the lunge, free her to a circle around you—ie, be taking just that space behind her and mentally be letting her run to the ends of the earth in front of you, totally free. No at her head!!

What is interesting is that, again, this is a principle popular now in many training techniques, but with an important difference. In many training techniques, you let the horse leave whenever they want. In this way, the theory is that you build into the horse the understanding that he’ll never be pressured to be with you and he becomes a happy, willing partner, willing to stay with you through thick and thin.

Contrary to having a horse who wanted to be with me, I found it built a horse who thought the job was to leave the moment he did not understand or was being asked something new or encountered something fearful, instead of thinking that the job was to be a partner and trust me. This became abundantly clear when Maia would tear off to the other side of a 40 acre pasture without a second thought if I even blinked wrong at her. I got a lot of exercise that summer. ;) But, more seriously, that led to quite some dangerous situations, especially under saddle, as her mentality was to run away the moment she became upset or confused—not a fun place for EITHER of us. She was miserable. In fact, she seemed infinitely happier with a far better expression when she had tack on and couldn’t leave, as if she were so relieved that she didn’t have to run away. I really think she thought that was the job—she thought had to leave, even though she perhaps didn’t want to.

In a sense, this is a similar technique. I want her to feel free to leave—and leave far—as far as she wants. Yet, there is a critical difference. I am the one freeing her there (not driving her) so she associates the idea of freedom with me, not in spite of me (which was what was happening when I “just let her leave,” see previous paragraph). She is not doing it in association with a certain mental state which is negative (ie, “when I’m confused I leave”) but is associating the freedom with a positive mental state (“I am free, therefore I’m not trapped”). Without a judgment about the space (I don’t mentally think that where she’s going is bad/good), she doesn’t feel judged about where she is going so feels right, and would be willing to come back. Yet, with no judgment about the space, I am not even thinking about her coming back to me. I’ll just keep freeing her to new spaces until she no longer feels trapped and can approach me with confidence.

It definitely makes a difference for her—I can “free her off a spot” (or “free her to a space,” if you’d rather think of it that way) at a fast canter and she will often turn right around with a great expression, or even come back, not in the least offended. It’s a great feeling! It has been developing in Maia that very horse who wants to be with me and feels no pressure about it—the very thing that previous technique sought to bring, but didn’t quite make it with us.

Amazing how those subtle differences do make all the difference!

Don't be patient! (AKA, keeping the job clear for the horse)

2011-08-03T18:16:00.002-05:00

We’re home safely in Minnesota and having fun playing with feel and release back here. It has been interesting to see how she can start settling into the wrong job almost instantly when I’m not clear.

No matter what you think about rodeos, it's clear that many of the roping horses are very clear on their job - moreso than many working or competition horses.

For example, when I was trailer loading her, I was holding the lead rope taut, asking for her back feet to step up (which she was certainly giving—much different response than when I loaded her at the beginning of the summer!). But when she started to lean on the rope, I realized my mistake gave her the float briefly, and then when I took up a feel again she instantly came forward—in just a few seconds, she had figured the job was to lean on the rope, not bring her back feet up to it. When I re-presented the float, she realized she’d had the wrong job and she quickly switched to stepping right up in the trailer.

I’ve found the same thing with helping her let go of her bracing on the bit. In a sense, these things are spots where “patience” may actually screw things up a little, because if I have to be “patient” it means quite likely she’s totally gotten the wrong job, and the longer I “am patient” and “wait” for her to “figure it out,” I get in a lot of trouble. Just look at those words:

1. Patient. Meaning, she’s doing the wrong thing and I’m there’s tension involved.

2. Wait. She’s not giving me what I’m asking for right away on a release/float. Something isn’t right, as when she’s clear, she’ll do it instantly.

3. Figure it out. She’s having to guess, versus understand. She's not clear.

Today, when I rode and was working on helping her release her brace against the bit, I had to find a good balance of taking up a feel but keeping it lively enough and releasing sooner than I thought so that she realized the job was not to lean but to move through release. I also had to find what little components of the behavior (here, doing lateral flexion in movement) were blocked or unclear to her, so that as soon as I asked, she could be set up to give what I wanted on a release—no patience necessary. :)

Top 20 Reasons that Prove You Spent Your Summer at a Barn

2011-07-31T19:10:00.002-05:00

You know what the most common response people have to my saying that I spent my summer working at a barn?

“Oh.”

Clearly, my concerned friends wonder what I must have done besides dump wheelbarrow and throw hay, and probably equally question the sanity of a person willing to stomp around in horse manure for weeks on end. Yes, there are certainly some tell-tale signs of equine-induced insanity, and here I have gathered together the top 20.

The Top 20 Reasons that Prove Spent Your Summer at a Barn

1. You used exactly three pairs of shoes for the entire summer, and two of those sets were riding boots.

2. The wearing of makeup ceases to exist, because whoever invented it clearly didn’t understand bathing horses, drinking out of hoses, slathering on sunscreen, and sweating like crazy.
3. Talking for five hours straight with friends about horses is considered to be perfectly normal.
4. You stare in awe when in the grocery store you see a group of not two, not three, but FOUR young adults all together at once. You forgot that there were so many people your age living in the world.
5. Your tan lines are a wonder to behold. They actually don’t even look human.
6. The only thing you bought for yourself the entire summer was food. Everything else was horse equipment.
7. You need sunglasses to look at the skin on your legs.
8. It doesn’t bother you in the least if your clothes are dirty and sweaty and full of bits of hay. And they are. All of the time.
9. You categorize people by the ones who will touch the electric fence to see if it’s on, and the ones who won’t.
10. You didn’t wear shorts once all summer (and you try to remember if you even own any).
11. You permanently unplugged the fancy TV in your room so you could plug in your sewing machine so you could start doing CPR on your poor tanktops which are going into cardiac arrest from being worn 24/7.

12. With one exception, you didn’t watch a single minute of non-horse television for the entire summer.

13. You don’t consider it odd to climb ankle-deep in horse manure when trying to get the full wheelbarrow “just a little bit further” up onto the manure pile (because it’s ALMOST there!).
14. You judge the feasibility of hairstyles by whether or not they can fit under a helmet.
15. “Suppertime” is no longer a meal, but just a window of time from after lunch to midnight where you might finally eat something, sometime, in some sort of quantity, when you get done with feeding horses and riding horses and talking about horses.
16. Your idea of a wild Friday night is to stay up until 2 a.m. watching horse training DVDs with friends.
17. You’ve used twine for a belt and you’ve considered wearing nail polish to church, not because of fashion factor, but because it might better cover up all the dirt under your fingernails.
18. The funniest part of your day is when you try to dump the ridiculously overloaded manure bucket into the ridiculously overloaded Gator and spill manure absolutely all over yourself. This is not gross. It is funny.
19. You get hit on not at the mall or the dance floor, but when driving a horse and carriage around town.
20. You use one of those prehistoric things called watches, because you can’t get a cell phone out of your pocket when you’re sitting on a horse and wearing chaps to boot.

If you could identify with more than 5 of these statements, even if you didn't work at a barn, congratulations -- you are one of the equine obsessed.

But now you must excuse me, because I have to go wash hay out of my hair.

7-27-2011: The puzzle-onion model and bracing on the inside rein

2011-07-27T21:25:00.002-05:00

Wow, sorry it’s been so long since I’ve posted! Things have been really busy around here with wrapping up the summer—I go home on Saturday—can you believe it?! I can’t, I know we always say time flies but it truly has. I feel like I was just driving down here.

Anyway, I’ve been having fun really playing with Maia to get her turns smoother and more confident. There is just so much that goes into it, it’s unbelievable, and yet, it’s so simple, too, so much easier than dressage was, with all of the “close the outside rein open the inside rein push with this leg pull with that leg do this do that” until I was ready to pull my hair out and my legs were falling off to boot. (Actually, maybe that’s a sign—if your legs fall off from sheer exhaustion then you can’t use them anymore and you’d be forced to use feel and release. Convenient, yes, for sure.)

It’s simple because I’m now riding each of the feet, instead of basically seeing the horse as a big board I needed to bend, or splitting the horse in half front to back by thinking of the hindquarters as separate from the forehand, instead of the quantum shift in feel/release, where you think almost exclusively in terms of diagonals (left front with right hind, right front with left hind).

It’s actually so new to me to be spending so much time on such a foundational thing as turning. Really, that’s been all we’ve been doing lately. If you were to watch us ride right now, well, you wouldn’t have to pick up your jaw off the floor or anything by our whiz bang amazingness (unless you had to do so in shock that I’d spend a whole ride practically at the halt working with these little tiny particles of the turn). It’s just not spectactular.

But it is everything. I feel like I’m really riding, like I’m doing what they say in the books about “basics being everything.” I see that now, because, with the turns, in this case, it’s like a huge onion crossed with a puzzle. It’s a puzzle because I’m learning about all the little elements that go into a smooth, balanced turn that helps Maia be more athletic, collected, balanced, and flexible, instead of less. The outside and inside rein, the outside and inside leg, the reaching to the inside with the inside shoulder, the lift and bringing up/back of both shoulders, the turn of my own hips and shoulders to get the outside hind, the engagement to the outside by the inside hind, and on and on. It’s like I’m learning a whole book about the horse and their movement just by learning about the turns.

The onion part of it is that I have every foundation of horsemanship known to man built into Maia. I’ve done pressure and release, dressage, natural horsemanship, clicker training, bridge and target, bridleless, liberty, cordeo work, Carolyn Resnick, and more. She has an entire dictionary -- no, I take that back, a whole set of dictionaries -- of layers of cues built into every feel on her body, from her tail to her nose, and whenever I do anything, instead of responding through feel, her poor muddled mind has to frantically do a Google search in this immense dictionary set in her head to try to come up with The Right Answer, and not only The Right Answer, but The Right Answer from The Right Dictionary. It’s super stressful for her and you can see it all over her face. No kidding, I'd be stressed out, too. It's like some sort of elementary school English class competition gone horribly wrong.

See, most nice normal horses with nice normal owners have only one foundation built in there -- maybe dressage, or natural horsemanship, or reining. Not to skimp on anything, however, I enthusiastically built about 45 different foundations into Maia's training. Therefore, instead of having only a single dictionary of conditioned responses for the horse to have to "look through" to find the right answer, Maia has a whole overwhelming set of them!

So all of these days spending on just getting those turns on the offer of float that cause her to reach, bend, lift, and relax have been a matter of peeling back every goupy thick nasty muddy layer of conditioning that is clogging up her brain and re-educating it with something through feel. I have to go through each particle of the turn (puzzle piece) and then work down to the bedrock layer of her instinct (the onion) through her conditioning. But doing this is unbelievably helpful for both of us, and makes a final result that is absolutely crystal clear for both of us, as clear as breathing.

Now just imagine everything I can, do, and will learn by using this puzzle-onion model for everything else—halts, transitions, groundwork, lateral work, everything. So much fun! It feels so easy—I don’t have to be working on Big Hard Things like lateral work, but instead can be playing with all this easy challenging stuff and let those advanced things just flow naturally, because the foundation will be there.

Oh dear, I haven’t really gotten to anything specific, yet, in this post. That’s what I get for writing this late at night in a totally weird silly kind of mood. Bear with me, here…

Anyway, okay, so Karen came out and I was saying how these turns are still causing us some pretty solid trouble, really in movement. At the halt, I can slide the outside rein on her shoulder groove and she’ll turn her head right around in a lovely released lateral flexion coming from the root of her neck, no brace. But the moment we start walking (or—just imagine!!! :-o – trotting), I get absolutely nothing or even a counterbend. That didn’t seem to make any sense to me, given that it was built in so strongly at the halt. So, as we’ve found with Maia, it means we’re missing something and something isn’t clear to her, because the instant she’s clear, she does it 110%.

So Karen hopped on, and, to make a long story short (which actually isn’t possible at this point because just look at how long I’ve been rambling on—my poor social media professor at college would probably have a heart attack, as blog posts are only supposed to be a maximum of 300 words long…oh dear), it’s looking like the very biggest, and possibly the last, puzzle piece that is missing right now is the lateral flexion during the turn, and the onion layers that are gouping that down is that she has a ton of brace built in on flexing to the inside on that inside rein (from work in an inside side rein, as well as just general riding through pressure), on her nose (through pressure on the halter but also a lot through the bitless bridle), and on her shoulder grooves (through the cordeo).

So there are a few ways we can be working to fix that up for Maia.

1. Play with exercises similar to the Uberstreichens, but with more of a release in them, both with my hands on her nose as well as through the bit. Be able to glide her nose to either side and up and down through the bit and on her nose. However, what I should NOT get into is anything needing excessive “patience.” Meaning, it does not have to be this big waiting game, where she braces and I stay there for three hours waiting for her to give. In that case, she is just getting with the job I’m presenting: the job of staying there confidently braced on the rein. Not good. Keep finding new presentations that get under that conditioning.
2. Associate lateral flexion with opening the inside toe by sliding the outside rein and opening the toe simultaneously—essentially build it in without the inside rein, then add the inside rein later to combine the two associations.
3. Do a lot more with the foundational ground exercises of backing in an arc, turning in on the circle on a float, following a feel to the opposite side (rope over the horse’s back and they follow it in an engaging circle—not a disengage!!—back to you). Do them at higher speeds as well so that she learns to release the brace in a more radical way.
4. Use new/unique presentations whenever possible—bending her away from me, being above her, sitting on a fence, sitting in a chair, anything to get under the conditioned response of “no” to the instinctual, feel-based level.

Of course, I can’t forget she is getting so much better already! When I first got here weeks ago, she would feel the inside rein and throw her shoulders to the outside and drag her head to the outside in an all muddled up unbalanced non-turn. Now instead of full out turning the opposite way, she’s just stiffening her neck in kind of an “S-curve” (for example, on a feel on the right rein, her poll and middle of her neck go left in this odd counterbend). That’s a big improvement!

Okay, I should get to bed, because, after all, I got specific instructions from Karen this evening to get a good night’s sleep, and I am a completely and totally obedient working student, so I’d better obey. :)

7-23-2011: Releasing lateral flexion in movement

2011-07-23T14:42:00.000-05:00

Karen and I were talking about why turning under saddle is so difficult for Maia when it’s so easy on the ground for her to come off that sliding outside rein. I said she has a very difficult time coming off the outside rein on the ground when I’m on the inside of the turn/bend. Karen said that she should really just glide her head right around into a released lateral flexion on the release of that outside rein. So I started playing with that, especially undersaddle, and found that, though a sliding outside rein is now starting to mean move the shoulders, it also often means counterbend (ie, she stiffens against it as she moves her shoulders away)! Oh dear oh dear. There are so many pieces to this.

So I worked for quite a while on having a really released lateral flexion—meaning, coming straight from the root of the neck, like the horse was going to scratch his tail, none of this twisty-bracey stuff off that outside rein. Once I explained it to her, more or less, using just that outside rein to re-educate at a halt that a slide means full lateral flexion, she started doing it quite well (definitely more twisty stuff to the right, however).

This is a bridle. It has two reins.

One on each side. Very handy.

It can be helpful to remember that you can use both of them.

But once we got in movement, she just couldn’t fathom it. We were both getting a little more muddled than we needed to be, when I was like, hey, I still have an inside rein. Imagine that. So I started feeling on my inside rein, not even really taking out the float and not, again, to get any sort of bend. Just a short rein, relatively vertical up against that sweet spot in her neck, saying, hey, hey, please come back, where’d you go, I know you’re there, please come back to me. And then I realized I could combine it with the feel that the outside fore needed to step to the inside.

So basically, I was sliding my outside rein, and giving a very very compassionate upward and slightly inside feel on the inside rein asking for both her inside fore to step to the inside and also to come back to me and release the root of her neck to the inside in lateral flexion.

She really seemed to connect to this and started doing some lovely lateral flexion at the walk while keeping her shoulders more or less all going in the right direction. Super!

7-21-2011: More on turning with the inside fore, also leading up free

2011-07-21T13:51:00.002-05:00

Reaching with the inside fore progression—walk/trot on lunge and walk under saddle

I found today that her response the feel in the line on the lunge is all muddled up. I’ve had a bucketload of challenge in lunging her because she is constantly pulling to the outside. I suddenly saw today that she is all muddled and in response to the feel on the lunge, crosses her inside fore to the outside versus reaching it to the inside. Good grief, no wonder she keeps pulling on the line when lunging. A feel on the line, to her, means leave!!

Trying to lunge with the inside fore going to the outside. Yeah, let's see how well that goes for you, there. Ha. Not so much. Judging from her face, Maia thinks the same thing.

So I came up with my own little exercise to help fix that up: stand a little ways in front and slightly to the side (not in her blind spot) and in response to a feel/float on the halter rope to one side, asking her to step that front foot over—in essence begin the whole turn with that leading foot. Once I started fixing that up on the lunge, taking a feel on that rope and asking her to reach with her inside fore, she could suddenly she lunge just marvelously. Poor horse, she was like, “why didn’t you tell me you wanted me to turn in???!!” She must've really thought I'd lost my marbles, asking her to turn one way while her legs were going the other. ;)

When I got on and did the same exercise, I was astonished to find that when she turns from a halt (slowing things down to see what exactly she understands about everything), she was always beginning the turn with her outside fore. How mixed up is that? So we worked on shifting the weight over and beginning the turn with the inside fore and that seemed to help her quite a bit.

Leading up free and going straight

We have quite a struggle with leading up free—she never steps off with me and it’s always sucked back. I realized why, I think, when I slowed things down again to see just exactly what her response was to a release and to walking forward:

1. She doesn’t understand straight.
2. She doesn’t think forward.

For the latter, when I’d release her when I was next to her, she’d go backwards!! So now backwards means forwards and when I walk off she wants to go back. That’s not confusing at all. :P So I spent a while just playing with a lot of ways to release her forward while I was at her side facing her direction (ie, releasing from behind me—a tough thing to do, but a very good exercise).

When she’s walking with me, she constantly is thinking turn, mostly turn in front of me, like lunging. So we practiced walking straight together to various areas (kind of a point to point) with me behind her elbow a little bit and being very definite about now we’re going straight and now we’re turning.

The better she gets the feel of a turn and the feel of straight the better this will go. Interesting that her first response to a release is to go backwards, though—that’ll affect our ride and other work for sure.

7-20-2011: How to get the horse's mind back with feel

2011-07-20T16:45:00.003-05:00

I can’t believe it’s July 20th already. That’s crazy. Only 9 days left here!

I had a beautiful ride on Maia—the slowest we’ve ever had. In fact, the wildest thing we did was walk an entire tiny circle. Once. ;) But it was so great to be able to be relaxed like that and not worry about Doing Lots of Things. We could both feel 100% successful and I know it went well.

Anyway, all we did was that exercise I explained in the previous post. It is amazing after I started getting the feel of it how much I could feel how her inside shoulder was stepping in FRONT of her chest (to the outside) versus away to the inside—no wonder the poor horse can’t turn. Imagine you trying to walk to the left while your legs kept going to the right. How frustrating would THAT be! So we just worked very quietly on stepping that inside front over and she was getting it and it was great.

Another fascinating revelation today was getting access to her mind and when to use “contact-feel” and when to use release. What I have been wondering about and was going to ask Karen (still will :) ) is that, though we talk about using “just release,” lots of times we do pick up on the rein or lead or something to ask for the horse to give to it. So what is that? Is that pressure? And when do we do it?

First, when do we do it? With Maia, I’m finding that I need to pick up on the rein (or touch her, or whatever, doing something that may look a tiny bit like “pressure”) when she is mentally disengaged, checked out, or braced. Sometimes pure release DOES work in that situation, but the whole thing with utilizing pure release is that it only really works when your horse is fully engaged with you and mentally and emotionally present. If she is not there with me, then I might need to take up on the rein to get her mind back.

I just need to get through the crack into the horse's mind...

Second, is that pressure? It was, I thought, before today. But today, after Karen mentioned that it was just getting “access to her mind,” I saw and applied it in a completely different way. If you’ve seen Karen work, when she’s looking to get the mind back in that way, she does all these little funny things on the rope—she might scratch it or twist it or flick it or squeeze it or wiggle it or do all these teeny tiny little things that aren’t annoying or pressuring at all—they’re just interesting, they get access to the horse’s mind and curiosity. And then she’ll offer a float right to them once she gets the mind. Now, I had always done those little funny twiddly things on the rope with a mind to get the behavior the horse is braced against (for example, lateral flexion). However, what I didn’t realize is that the movement only comes through release, not through those little scratchy things. That playing with the rein is simply done in a provocative way to re-access the mind. When I took that approach, it was suddenly far easier to do and I didn’t get the brace/tension in my mind.

Third, is release anywhere in there? Yes, absolutely. Because the moment you get the mind back with a feel on the tack, you release the float/tack to the horse so that there is now a float in your rein again and the horse can give to that release. For example, let’s say I’m asking Maia for lateral flexion and she’s braced in the opposite way. I take up a feel on the rein and do little things like scratching it, or squeezing it like a sponge, or any number of tiny little things that do NOT escalate, just to get a little crack of access to her mind. Once her mind comes back, I offer her all the float so she can come around into lateral flexion on a release.

So there you go! Interesting stuff. And I think I need to copyright the phrase, Little Scratchy Twiddly Things. That could become really famous, you know. ;)

7-19-2011: Getting clearer about riding turns

2011-07-19T23:05:00.001-05:00

Riding was the most interesting, though. She was just all over and it was not working right -- she was pounding along at this stressed loud walk and I had to go back to the lifting inside rein again and again and was having to drill. So Karen got on and found a lot of interesting things.

1. I forget to turn obviously with my shoulders and my nose and LOOK UP!!! WAY UP!!!! and when I do, Maia turns a lot better. :)

2. I’ve had my releasing of my reins and legs a little mixed up. I thought you were supposed to do it each stride, so it’s turned into a little jerky drilling thing versus a release. However, what I should do instead is release my inside leg, and slide and keep on sliding that outside rein down while asking for softening with inside rein and waiting for her to give the turn, then letting her know that that was the job. I don’t have to lift the inside rein too high like I was doing—she should be able to soften from a more horizontal feel on the rein as well.

3. A turn is reach inside with inside front, reach outside with inside hind, reach inside with outside fore. Maia totally did not have the “reach inside with inside fore.” Instead, she pushes that fore to the outside, making her outside shoulder pop out and her inside one get in the way and her inside hind unable to come under. Ie, it is backing in an arc while going forward.

4. Karen found that out partly through that Maia would/could not step under with her inside hind at all for the turn. She didn’t want to get in there and kick her, so she did some fast releases, like “it’s an emergency you get this hind foot under!!!!” but even that didn’t quite do it (as we found out after that her inside fore was in the way).

5. Next, she braces on the inside rein. It’s not as bad as it used to be where she’d feel that inside rein and take her head 6” to the outside—now it’s just a stiffening of her jaw on it. However, this has a strong detrimental effect on the turn, as her shoulders pop out to the outside and her neck stiffens and straightens and doesn’t allow that inside hind to come under.

It's not much, but you can see her bracing on the inside rein in this picture from the spring, before I've even made contact with her mouth!

6. If you slide the outside rein down at the halt, she doesn’t do lateral flexion to the other side; in fact, sometimes she walks forward. This means she’s got it all mixed up, if she thinks that slide is forward!

7. To fix all this up, do a certain exercise: Stand at the halt with your life down. Take up a soft feel on one rein and turn your head that way, asking for a very soft and giving lateral flexion (this fixes up the brace on the inside rein), then get life in your core and slide the outside rein (fixing up the confusion about both lateral flexion on that slide and needing to move the shoulders away from the slide) while releasing the inside leg, then she starts walking a teeny circle (almost disengagement but with the front end moving) and as soon as you feel the inside fore step over, you stop and relax. Let her think and do it again on a fresh start. Karen did this multiple times then I got on and did it, and it was amazing how braced she was on that rein, but how good it felt when she released to it—at the end, she really released the root of her neck up and over and felt so beautiful. I stopped right away and she immediately began to yawn—such a good release!

What was fascinating is how upset Maia was to begin with when she couldn’t understand the turn. Karen was working on the turns in general and every time they stopped Maia would start frantically chewing on her slobber straps (something she does when stressed) like an obsession. It actually seemed to get worse until Karen realized what was happening with her inside fore, then went to that exercise that I described. After a few times of that, Maia got this stunning expression, completely quiet mouth, not even a thought of chewing on the slobber straps, lowered her head, and got this nearly drugged, “endorphin-state” look of total and complete happiness. It was so cute, but also such a good reminder of how incredibly stressful it is for her when she isn’t clear on how to do something—she loves to work with and for us, she just wants to know how!

7-17-11: The 50-50 relationship and the elimination of "bad days"

2011-07-18T12:28:00.000-05:00

I'm not posting about every session with Maia -- there have been some great ones and she's really coming along. She's getting a lot more confident at liberty and her riding is getting lighter and lighter. She is turning almost on the buckle and came to a stop from the canter in ALMOST a stride just by setting the reins down!! Such a good girl.

But of course there are ups and downs, and I had a bad day riding today. I don’t need to hash it all out again, there was less to learn by what happened than by what it reminded me of afterwards. It is not difficult to understand why—I simply got into a pressure-based mindset that I was going to “work on” this and that, and I started drilling, and due to many reasons (although perhaps mostly a lack of knowledge about what to do and a lack of peace and clarity in my mind to come up with something that was not pressure) pressure got involved again. And Maia started flying along at a thousand miles an hour with her mind in complete orbit and mine probably wasn’t too far away. ;)

The best days with Maia are when I do not go to her to “train,” and the worst are when I do. It doesn’t mean that I shouldn’t expect progress—a trap I fell into when previously into training without any pressure/force—but it does mean my mindset needs to be flipped around. Meaning, the “training,” if I’m going to think of it that way, needs to be 50-50. Instead of going out to “train Maia,” I should go to her perhaps with the attitude that 50% of what we are helping develop is indeed her, but 50% of it is simply developing me, on my half of the relationship: on my becoming grounded, clear, Christ-like, empathetic. If nothing “gets done” in a session on her end, but I became a solidly better partner, learning to better control my movements, emotions, energy, etc., then everything was gained. Where did the idea come from that the only progress we are looking for or accept as “productive” in horsemanship is progress in the horse’s physical behavior? How twisted is that!

In fact, I find virtually every time I have a “bad” session with a horse, it is usually because the horse’s side of the relationship became 100% the focus and mine closer to 0%. It is then that my emotions come up, I lose any sense of groundedness, I become unclear, pressuring, frustrated, or begin to drill. However, if I can consistently keep my side of the relationship at 50% of the importance—or perhaps even more, more like 75%—I have a strong feeling that all of the “bad” sessions would quietly fade away. After all, a horse will never have a “bad” session if I never see it as one.