Bozo's Carrots

Addendum

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

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

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

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

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.

Frogs and snails may enjoy the rain - but not Miss Becky

It has been a while since my last blog, and that was all due to work and studying taking over my life for a little while. I have an exam next week (which begs a question of why am I blogging now? Obviously, I am procrastinating from studying! :-) )

However the studying did not keep me away from Becky! Nope, I faithfully came to see her every weekend, rain or sunshine. Although the rainy one turned into a bit of disaster. Now, rain is a bit of a rarity in Victoria – we are still in the middle of the longest drought in recorded history. This rain wasn't heavy, but the sort of small, misty-and-constant annoying kind.

Nevertheless, I figured that since Becky is out in it anyway, it would only be me who would be noticably uncomfortable. Wrong!! Now, I always knew that high wind annoyed her and caused her to want to turn her butt to it, but who would’ve thought that my Becky was such a wuss, as far as rain was concerned!

My first indication that something was not quite right, was that Becky was hard to catch. Or rather, she tried to sneak away as soon as she got her carrot, but before I put a halter on her (and no, I don’t need to have a carrot with me to catch her normally. I just believe it’s a nice way to say hello to her. Ordinarily, after she comes up to me and I give her the carrot, I do not need to hurry to put a halter on her, as she calmly stands there. It didn’t always used to be that way though – she used to be very hard to catch!) This day though, something definitely wasn’t right.

Normally I saddle her right outside her paddock: I don’t even need to hold onto the leadrope or tie her to something, even if I am rummaging in my car next to her. Not this time – whenever I dropped the rope, she furtively tried to sneak back to the gate back into the paddock.

I dragged her out to the arena: I could almost hear her dragging her feet. Tried to do some ground-work: asked her to walk/trot around me in a circle – the look on her was pure misery. She did it, but every time she faced into the rain, she put her head down, and just squirmed. At that point I was feeling major guilt. Sure, a horse is supposed to work as asked, when asked. The more stable and consistent our relationship – the more she trusts me as her leader – the more she should be willing to listen and trust in me in unusual or uncomfortable conditions. On the other hand – the goal of any training session is for her to become more comfortable with what is being asked of her. In this situation, looking at how much she was hating being out in the weather, unable to put her head down to the ground or hide behind another horse, I realized that chances of her getting “comfortable” were slim. She was still trying – still doing as requested, albeit reluctantly, and yet improving with each circle she completed. However, I could see in her face that she was tolerating – she was not getting to be OK with the situation.

In the end, I concluded that there was no point to continue. I would be forcing her to comply, without any release of discomfort in sight. And riding in the rain is not one of my goals for the moment.

So, after spending all of 10 minutes with her, I took pity on the poor girl and walked her back to her paddock, with her using me for a shield against the rain on her face. As I let her go in the midst of her herd, she took off for the shelter of trees, ignoring all the other horses – she couldn’t wait to get some relief from the small annoying driving mist in her eyes.

Next weekend though – it was sunny and warm and Becky was back to being her usual self. In fact, better than her usual self. Easy to catch, no sneaking away, and behaving like an old schoolhorse when I rode her, despite two other horses exercising in the arena, which was an unusual situation in itself. Obviously, not every uncommon situation is beyond our ability to deal with and grow comfortable in. In fact, we are getting more adventurous every time. But rain – no thanks, not for Becky. She'd prefer a blanket and an umbrella instead. Can't really blame her either.

Our own private “ribbon”

First of all, thank you and welcome to all the newcomers to my blog. It’s an inspiring thing to know that I am sharing my thoughts with real people, not just sending them out into space.

Second – the reason why my posts have become less frequent is because, as I have alluded to before, I am now studying for a Graduate Diploma in Psychology, and the exams are looming. The course is very interesting, but it is not a walk in the park, even with only one subject this semester. In addition, I have started a new full-time job two weeks ago – and, as in most new situations, I have to work hard to be able to “hit the ground running”. There’s a lot of learning involved there, too. The end result is that I am dog-tired by the end of the day and have little energy for anything other than watching TV.

Hopefully, though, as I get more comfortable in my new workplace, and as the semester draws to a close, I’ll resume more frequent updates.

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Becky and I have had fantastic last few rides! Again, it seems as if we’ve made a significant step forward by finally getting the hang of the shoulder-in! Turns out that I was overbending her previously, particularly when we practiced it out on a trail ride. All of you who have been doing dressage for years and years might have forgotten what it was like the first time a “complicated” move like that worked for you. I hope you haven’t! It truly is a milestone and achieving it made me feel on top of the world. And it’s not just the association it has with competition and top-hats and ribbons, but because it highlighted just how far we have come from struggling to be able to walk a wobbly circle. The move didn't come easily for me – as I've talked about before. The main problem was that I felt I couldn't use my legs effectively. As it turned out, that was because my weight was not distributed correctly in the saddle: I needed to have it with just a tiny bit more to the inside which freed up my inside leg. It's funny to me that I have always previously thought that the two legs were meant to have the same sort of "freedom" of movement! They don't, unless you are going dead straight! The inside one always has a little more movement as it is meant to be the active one, with the outside being the "supportive" one, to stop the horse falling out with the shoulder. With the weight distributed correctly, that is exactly what happens.

When I finally got it happening, it really showed how much more willing Becky is to listen to my seat and reins, and bend to the degree required. She didn't struggle with the move at all really.

Another side-effects from learning the shoulder-in was the adjustment to my hands and arms. I finally realized just how much Becky was trying to pull my arms out of position when she loses the bend (which of course I was reinforcing by not being aware of it and letting her do it). Also, in order to be able to detect any loss of bend, my hands have to be steady and low – and what I thought was steady and low… just wasn’t!

All of these "tiny" adjustments resulted in Becky transforming from seeming to be in one of her “resistive” moods on Sunday, to a relaxed “schoolmaster” with a soft, slow, even trot. And that is in the presence of two other horses trotting and cantering around the arena – a situation which we are normally not exposed to!

In fact, the prospect of sharing the arena always fills me with nervousness. It's a bit of a hangover from my days on the trail-riding farm, where horses constantly resisted the riders and attempted to do what the other horses were doing. So having other horses trotting/cantering while I was working on the walk always put images in my mind of Becky throwing a wobbly and taking off after the others. This, of course, made me tense, which made Becky tense... she must've been wondering what the big deal was! Frankly, as it turned out, she didn't give a hoot about the other horses and was perfectly willing to listen to me - once I stopped confusing her with my tense posture, unsteady hands and incorrect weight distribution. Again, she must’ve sighed with relief at having “her human” FINALLY make some progress which brought calm and certainty and agreement into her world.

Again and again, I am reminded of what effect we, as riders and handlers, have on our horses, and how much more willing they can become when we get it right... or, at least, get better.

Ribbons may or may not come for us, and it doesn’t matter… I hope these sorts of feelings of achievement will continue.

If I only do one stupid thing (on a horse) every 5 years…

... I think I am doing pretty well!

It’s been about 5 years since I last fell off Becky. That time, I fully deserved to get dumped as I had been warned and had ignored the warnings.

We were trail-riding with a couple others – cantering along a quiet country road. Becky and I were in front, and doing rather well, when Becky started to put her breaks on and sidling to the opposite side of the road. What the hell? I could see a large rock coming up on the side of the road we were on, but Becky was normally a brave girl - surely she could not have been afraid of rock! So I kicked her on and told her to stop being stupid! Just as we were about to pass the rock, she really put her breaks on, skidded forward and spun around, depositing me – rather gently all told – right in front of her feet and a meter away from the rock. Which turned out to not be a rock at all, but a massive old wombat who was nosing around for grass and just didn’t give a damn!

The look on Becky’s face said it loud and clear: "Have a closer look at your 'rock'!" A sardonic raised eyebrow would not have been out of place.

Last week, the clock struck, and it was time for me to make a fool of myself yet again. This time, we were heading out of the arena for a trail ride by ourselves (I am still stoked at our rediscovered pleasure of trail riding). I needed to close a gate and I didn’t feel like getting off Becky (primarily for the fact that she is so round now that I cannot get up on her from the ground without having the saddle roll, so always need to find some sort of step up). So I urged her forward… and walked her right into the fence by the gate – an electric fence! Poor Becky! She panicked, started bucking and shot me out of the saddle (or, rather, I figured that I was going to come off anyway as she was in no state to be reasoned with, so I just went with it).

I did apologise to her profusely, and it’s a testament to her strong nerves that she settled right down afterwards and we continued onto our trail ride.

With a bit of luck, it’ll be 5 more years before I do something silly again… and, maybe, by that time, I will mature enough not to do it at all.

The trouble with winter...

Winter sucks, as far as I am concerned. Last week was the second time I was sick this winter (tonsillitis this time, and a cold on top of it), so didn’t get to see Becky. Just the weekend past, we had gale-force winds and intermittent rain – not rideable weather! I started to get as jittery and snippy as an addict without a fix.

Today though, even though it is a weekday, I managed to get out to ride, using the fact that I had an equine dentist coming out for Becky’s yearly teeth-check, as an excuse.

I am sure that in the two weeks that I haven’t seen Beckster, she put on even more weight! I am seriously beginning to worry about spring grass, which is not too far off. Normally, winter is the time when Becky turns from a candidate for The Biggest Loser to having somewhat acceptable dimensions. This winter – she lost not an inch! I am afraid that I will have to lock her up in a private yard very soon, to avoid founder.

The ride though went very well. Marina came out too and continued to teach me and Becky how to do a shoulder-in. Of course, as per usual, my first few attempts felt as if I had zero coordination. Having hands short enough on the reins to be able to catch Becky as she tried to put her shoulders too much in or too much out; but not too short to be able to reward when she softens; sitting deep in the saddle and keeping my inside leg looong… so as to be effective in keeping her hindquarters moving. Frankly I was starting to wonder whether an octopus would’ve had an easier time controlling all his limbs than I did. We managed though, and when I finally rode a good shoulder-in along a straight line, I felt like I managed to ride a dressage test. :-)

As Marina explained to me, a shoulder-in is a great tool for riding a circle, as, in a circle, I am always riding with the shoulder just slightly to the inside of the hindquarters. So, keeping that thought in mind makes it much easier for me to catch Becky whenever she loses her bend, and reestablish it. Secondly, as with anything that requires Becky’s full attention – and a shoulder-in most certainly does! – it brings her mind back to me from wherever it is that her thoughts go wondering (like when she is thinking about being with the other horses in the paddock). So I end up with a calmer, more responsive horse. Thirdly, the concept of a shoulder-in should help Becky with her balance in the canter, as she tends to want to throw her shoulders out when going into a canter, and overbalances herself.

So, it’s all exciting, it’s all promising, and next week I will try to put it all into practice on a trail ride. I haven’t been out of the arena for a while again, and it’s time we poked our noses beyond the gate. Hopefully the weather cooperates.

Happy riding everyone!

Danger - feral psychology students!

This is completely off topic, but ... as I've mentioned before, I have just started studying for a Psychology diploma. Today we conducted our first experiment: basically the Psychology class was let out onto the poor unsuspecting population of the campus, to scramble around, drop pieces of paper in front of passerbys and count how many people helped us pick them up. We had to catch these hapless individuals alone - this was one of the conditions of the experiment; I am now entirely certain that the reason why this was so hard, is because our "victims" have learned from past experiences that travelling alone was dangerous, what with all these mad pen-and-paper-wielding predators around!

It is true what they say: when you conduct experiments you stop looking at the participants as individuals - they become "Sources of Data"!

I think it is also entirely fair to say that, although this phenomenon has been observed in a number of universities around Australia, the administration has been undividely lax in addressing the issue: so far there've been no signs posted around campuses "Beware of the Psychology Student"!

(Disclaimer: this has been written with tongue firmly in cheek. Australian universities comply with ethical requirements in all experiments conducted, and no unsuspecting campus dwellers have been hurt. Neither were the Psychology students: they were all safely rounded up and locked away to process the recorded data.)