Bozo's Carrots

Trying to feel more, still...

I went out this Sunday to practice more of this “rein-juggling” that I described in the last post. I realized then that during the lesson a week ago, I was so frustrated, that this frustration was getting in the way of me really feeling what Becky was doing. This time, though, I had a chance to just take things from the beginning and, instead of focusing on what I wanted to achieve in the end (which was to ride a good circle keeping the same rhythm and bend), to just ride Becky and feel what it was that she was doing that made the circle so difficult for us – particularly going to the left.

Almost immediately I got a confirmation of the fact that the left rein did not mean as much to her as I would’ve wished for it and as it needed to be. On certain parts of the circle, a small squeeze by my hand on the left rein would cause her to give to it and bend, but on others – the difficult parts where she fell in with her shoulder – a squeeze would not get her attention at all. Her head remained straight, or she would lean on the left rein (i.e she would kind-of tilt her head so that her nose pointed a bit to the right, which allowed her to lean in with her shoulder). So, that was goal number one – to improve her reaction to the left rein.

I worked on that for a bit, not really worrying about how big or small the circle got and I think it got a bit better. The tough bit was remembering that she had to keep walking in the same rhythm instead of slowing down whenever I applied the left rein – particularly on the difficult part of the circle. The importance of that was to make it more difficult for her to actually shoulder in and move into the circle: in order to duck in, she had to shorten her steps, so if I insisted on her taking longer steps while asking her to bend in the direction of the circle, she would not be able to do anything but move around the circle. An alternative for her was to put up an obvious resistance either to bending (which she was doing, by leaning on my rein) or to walking forward (which, thankfully, she wasn’t resisting much once I reminded her with my legs). Marina and I worked long and hard on getting her to lengthen her steps, both while working with her on the ground and in the saddle, and it was obviously paying off.

Once I remembered to keep her walking, her bending to the rein got a bit easier.

The next difficult step for me was introducing the outside (right) rein in order to ask her to not over-bend into the circle, and to step out if need be. This was difficult for me purely for mental reasons: as I kept expecting Becky to duck into the circle, my outside hand kept creeping to hold the rein out, and I found that I was leaning with my body to the outside too – almost begging her not to fall in! And, of course, the more I held the outside rein, the harder it was for me to actually ask her to bend to the inside – she was getting conflicting signals, and pretty soon started leaning on my inside (left) rein as much as before.

Bugger – back to square one!

So, I needed to figure out when and how to use that right rein. Marina told me that the ideal time to ask for Becky to step out of the circle is when her outside front leg is back – i.e. just before she is about to step forward with her outside front leg, so that it’s easier for her to move it – and her shoulder – a bit out instead of just forward. So I concentrated on feeling with my hips for the movement of her front legs and applied the outside rein when her outside leg was back, and the inside rein at the same time and a little stronger so that she maintained her bend, while asking her with my legs to keep walking forward and not slow down.

After a few false attempts it worked, and worked continuously enough for me to be adventurous and ask for a trot (which Marina and I have not yet done in this context). For some reason that I did not expect, picking the point when to use the reins was easier. I think it is because posting is such a dramatic action in comparison to just feeling the movement of her legs through my hips. While posting all I had to do was to time the rein action with the period of me being in the saddle, or out of the saddle. Since the idea of posting on the correct diagonal is to be out of the saddle when the outside front leg is forward, it made sense to me to use the outside right rein when I was in the saddle – i.e when the front outside leg was back. However, at a trot, it also seemed to help to not use both reins at once as I was doing at a walk, albeit with different tensions - but to alternate them. So I used the inside rein to ask for the bend when I was on the up beat, and the outside – when I was on the down beat. Becky seemed to listen quite well to this. Of course, I did not use the reins on every single beat, but just on the parts of the circle where she was struggling to keep the bend. On other parts she went perfectly without me needing to correct.

Afterwards I came down to the walk, reestablished the circle at the walk, and quit for the day.

No perfection was reached of course, but that wasn’t the aim. The aim was to improve my feel of Becky and know when to use the reins, instead of just leaning on them or using them randomly, and in this I was definitely making progress. Next Sunday will tell for certain whether I am on the right track or not, as I attempt to improve upon this before the lesson with Marina.

Walking a circle: Feel More, Do Less

I wonder whether this is a common experience:

I think that when one is starting out in learning how to communicate and train a horse, you rely on the obvious big reactions from your horse to tell you whether you communicate successfully or not – whether you are “getting it” or not.

For example, when teaching a horse how to yield from pressure backwards (whether from rein, or a lead), you expect an obvious step backwards to tell you whether you are successful or not, and it’s reasonably easy to tell when the horse makes that step backwards, whether you are in the saddle or on the ground. The horse might resist - might lean on you - in which case you might persist, might increase the pressure, or keep the same pressure and wait, or jiggle the reins, or even go back to an earlier lesson. Still, the measure of success in this situation is obvious – the horse stops leaning and gives in to the pressure to some degree (it might be just a small shift of weight backwards that you might accept as a praiseworthy try, depending on the stage of education that you are at). And you know that you have done something quite obvious to get there.

However, at some point, just getting the horse to go backwards is not really challenging you or your horse, and you try to refine – to do it at lighter pressure, to do it with softness in his body, to be more accurate in his stride. And this is where both the actions that you make in order to ask the horse to move backwards, and the improvements that he makes, become smaller and smaller and harder to distinguish for an inexperienced horseman(woman) until your own awareness gets raised a notch! Until that awareness does come and knocks on your door, you are very much tempted to increase your own “asking” in order to get a more obvious response. And that holds you and your horse back. What’s worse – with a particularly dominant horseanality who needs for you to constantly raise the bar and provide a challenge – this may cause you to slide back in your training as the horse starts to pay only half a mind to you and going on auto-pilot since you are not challenging him!

This “raising of awareness” of the horse’s reaction while “not doing a lot” is exactly the lesson that I was learning under Marina’s guidance on Sunday. In fact, it was a repeat lesson from a fortnight ago as I obviously failed to grasp even the concept at the first try.

Our particular context in which I was trying to gain this awareness was in circle-work.

Becky has always had a tendency to fall into the circle when going around to the left, and fall out when going around to the right. It used to drive me nuts, as the circles drifted, expanded or shrunk at her whim. At various stages Marina had introduced different techniques in order to assist us both in fixing this (as these circle problems were just an example of larger issues):

At first it was just simple working on getting Becky to yield to the rein, instead of just setting her neck against it.

Then we worked on trying to improve our accuracy and keep her mind a bit more on me by riding squares as precisely as we could. Afterwards, we “subverted” her attempts to duck in or out of the circle by riding straight ahead on those problem bits, while concentrating on keeping the pace the same length.

We started paying more attention to getting her to lengthen her stride (as she was necessarily shortening it when falling in or out of the circle).

About three or so months ago we started teaching her to deliberately step sideways, so that when she drifted I could deliberately ask her to move her shoulder back onto the circle.

We worked on getting her to lean less on the reins – or, more specifically, we worked on me using my reins in a quick ask-release-ask-again-if-needed fashion, so that she did not actually get a chance to lean on the rein.

We introduced more steady contact, rather than always having reins loose.

As you can see, we progressively put into place more and more advanced communication method, and, throughout it all, the circle riding improved and so did my awareness. During this all, Marina worked on my own posture and seat in order to avoid my body sending conflicting signals in opposition to what my reins were asking of Becky.

We now come to the point where we are putting together having the steady rein-contact without giving Becky an invitation to lean on it, maintaining a steady even-length pace, and correcting Becky’s shoulder from falling in or out without losing that pace. In order to walk a circle, the horse needs to maintain the same bend in her body and neck, and the same length of stride, so maintaining the pace is as important as catching her shoulder falling in or out.

What this basically comes down to is that I have to make lots and lots of minute corrections with my reins the moment I sense her shoulder drifting out of the set line. The corrections must be quick with a quick release at exactly the moment she starts to drift. If I hold the pressure on the reins (as I’ve been wont to do when she resisted me previously), it would only encourage her to lean against me and would pull her to a stop, which would break the momentum.

I found this to be incredibly hard. First of all, I discovered that my awareness of her when she actually moved her shoulder was not sufficient to catch every drift and react to it in time. Secondly, I was constantly tempted to do something BIG with my reins to effect a BIG and OBVIOUS correction, when ideally, what I needed to do was a quick tightening and releasing of the rein to counteract her shoulder action (and repeating the tightening and releasing if the first attempt was not successful). As I was insufficiently aware of when she fell out with her shoulder unless she made a big movement, rather than a series of minor drifts, I was also not able to tell when I correctly managed to move her back towards the circle path with those minor rein actions. Thirdly – those quick rein actions often had to be done with both reins (one less so than the other), or one rein after another, in order to maintain the correct bend and correct her shoulder.

It seemed to me like she often tried to slip out of the true path one way or the other and I was constantly trying to catch her and correct her. Except that a part of me was not entirely sure when - or even if - she got incorrect in any particular moment! So I felt that I was twitching those reins more or less randomly, not really knowing whether I was doing it at the right time, nor whether I was actually achieving anything!

Marina, though, pointed out that the circle (to the left), which was previously getting smaller and smaller as Becky fell in with her shoulder, started getting larger! Slowly. Noone was more surprised than I as I didn’t really feel any definite steps OUT of the circle by Becky, and yet there must’ve obviously been a whole load of small steps out which I effected!

By the end of the lesson I started to detect her shoulder movements a bit more, and also got a bit of a sense (after Marina pointed it out) that Becky was still slightly leaning on my left rein when going to the left. In other words, she was constantly trying to resist it: to kink her neck to the right which allowed her to push into the circle with her left shoulder. So, in contrast to the seemingly logical solution of applying the right rein when she was falling in to the left, I had to first “twitch” the left one in order to get her to stop leaning on it and THEN apply the right (in the pulsing apply-release way) to encourage her to step out to the right, while still having a bend to the left.

Makes sense in theory – but still very hard to sense when it is actually happening. My awareness is still lagging behind and I still catch myself wanting to pull that rein – probably the wrong rein! – and GET Becky to step out NOW – and ruin the whole effort of establishing the flow of the pace and easy rein contact.

Becky obviously has moved on from the point where she was resistant to the concept of stepping to the side. She is also not entirely fixated on the idea of leaning on the rein as she was before. She can now be communicated with by just opening and closing my fingers on the reins instead of even having to move my hand. She can be politely asked to step slightly sideways while maintaining the forward motion more or less uninterrupted. In fact, she can even be prevented from falling in, in the first place, by slight pressure on the reins and closer attention to the length of her stride.

It’s just that I am not aware enough, nor control my movements enough, to actually be able to communicate with her like that. :-)

Once again, my horse has left me behind and is asking me to hurry up. At least I think I got a clue now. Hopefully the awareness to do less, and when to do it, will follow soon.

Getting a clue

It seems that it is true what they say: if you keep persevering in learning how to understand a horse, eventually you start getting a clue.

 

One of the biggest problems I have is a lack of confidence within myself to push the boundaries with my horse and to try to learn something new, or solve some existing problem, without my teacher Marina “handholding” me through it. She keeps telling me that eventually it’ll come together for me, and I will stop getting completely stumped by any unexpected behavior that Becky is presenting to me, but will instinctively (or consciously) pick up on certain nuances of that behavior and be able to respond appropriately.

 

Today I went out to see Becky with a firm intention to try something new, probably get into trouble doing that, and see if I can figure my way out of it. Test these developing “instincts”, so to speak.

 

I chose to do some liberty work in the round yard, which we haven’t done for about 12 months now (so I figured we both forgot most of what we knew).

 

The idea of the exercise was for Becky to go around the round yard, being in tune to my body language as I was directing her from the middle of the arena. So as I walk a small circle in the middle of the arena, she would walk a large one – if I increase my stride, she would go from walk to trot and so on. I also had a lead rope in my hands in case I needed to make a slapping sound against my leg if she ignored my body language.

 

We started at the walk, and that went quite well. When I asked for a trot, things immediately went wrong. Her trot was very tight and short with her head up instead of low and relaxed, and she started speeding up immediately as if fleeing. My first idea was that she was mentally just leaving me, wanting to get out of the yard and go to her friends (whom she could see from the yard). But when I slowed my own walking in the middle of the yard, she actually came back down to a walk too. So she was still “with me”. So what was the fleeing about? No idea. There was elevator music in my head, and the nagging panic of not being able to figure things out once again.

 

One thing I have learned though is that trying and trying something that didn’t work the first time was only going to make things worse. If I had no idea, I had better go back to something I knew, which, for me, was putting the halter and lead back on her and doing the same exercise but on the lead (which we have done many times). As I did that, I became very much aware of how many little corrections I was asking her to do: asking her to increase her stride in places where she became short as her attention went somewhere else, or asking her to move out if she cut into the circle. I was communicating with her all the time. But when I was asking her to do that very same thing at liberty at a trot, as she went faster and faster, I stopped communicating with her. I just walked at my increased pace but did nothing else and basically left her floundering on her own, obviously panicked about the new situation she was in.

 

I took the halter off again, asked her to walk out at liberty and this time, when I asked for a trot, I told myself “don’t allow her to just go into a fleeing trot. She feels panicked about it and she does not need to continue feeling that way”. So as soon as Becky started getting tight and speed up, I asked her back to a walk where she was OK (and if she didn’t respond to my feet slowing down, I got in front of her shoulder, so I did not let her to just barrel past me in that panicky trotting state.) It took only 3-4 tries where we went from walk to trot to walk, and her trot became steadier, more even and more relaxed. I could even start directing her a bit more while in the trot without the fear of her panicking and rushing off again.

 

Recognising that her panic was not a sign of her mentally leaving me, but that it was increased as I was mentally leaving her, was the real (and still rare) lightbulb moment for me. As I realized that, the solution slipped into place quite naturally. Frankly the whole experience of being able to communicate with her on my own – to be able to relieve that panic in her mind and offer her the support that she needed in order to deal with the situation that I asked her to be in – is quite astounding to me. Though I hope that these lighbulb moments will become a more regular occurrence, I also hope that I will never quite lose that sense of wonder at being able to so easily and positively influence the feelings of a horse, who, herself, is so willing to forgive my many “blind” and “dumb” moments.

Welcome to Bozo's Carrots - Experiences in Horse Training blog

Hello and welcome to my first post.

 

First – a small intro (see about page for a longer one):

 

I am 29 years old, and, for the last 6 or so years, I have been learning the way of riding and training my horses that is most commonly known as “natural horsemanship”. Before I began on this journey, I was just a hack rider – I could stay on a horse through most things the horse threw at me, and, most of the time, I could wrestle and force it into some semblance of control. To be honest, there was a certain level of exhilaration in this. It definitely gave me an adrenaline rush: to be able to dominate a beautiful and powerful animal; to always stay on that knife edge between being the one in control and having to hang on for dear life! At some point though, I realized that the price I was forcing these animals to pay for my excitement was just cruel. More specifically, this realization arrived shortly after I came across and “adopted” a funny-looking sweet Standardbred, called Bozo.

 

Bozo was my first horse and I made all of the first-owner mistakes with him. What was worse, in the first couple years I owned him I turned him from a responsive and curious riding horse (he was basically unbroken when he came to me!), to one that was hard-of-mouth and shying. It happened because I rode him the way I always rode, and I never took the time in the beginning to establish a basis of communication between us. Nor did I even know that that was missing! I just jumped on and wrestled with him when he “misbehaved”, and figured that when I quit the wrestling it was reward enough and he “learned”. But he would always resist just slightly bit more then next time in the same situation, and things got worse.

 

It was when I realized that Bozo – who always came to me whenever I went out into the paddock to catch him – was putting his ears sullenly back when I put my halter on him and led him out, that I knew something had to change drastically. I took Bozo to a Parelli clinic, and understood that there was another way.

 

Following the Parelli methodology did not work out for me. Why? I’ll go into that in the next post. In short – I did not have sufficient support or understanding of what I was doing, and the pamphlets and magazines and videos that came with the Parelli Club membership did not provide it. Eventually, I did find a Parelli instructor – Chris Corbidge who began to give me an inkling of that understanding that I was missing, but my time with Bozo was short. He died.

 

I did have another horse to take care of by then – Becky. After a period of grieving, and an even longer period of trying to make progress on my own while I was looking to become an apprentice to a good natural horsemanship trainer, I found the clinics of Ross Jacobs, Michele Jedlicka and Marina Morton, who operate out of an equestrian centre in Garfield North, Victoria http://www.goodhorsemanship.com.au

 

I took Becky for a clinic there, cried for 4 days straight cause THINGS WERE JUST NOT WORKING and understanding seemed further than ever, and then, on the 5^th day, it started to come together. I moved Becky to an agistment property nearby and for 2 years now have been taking regular lessons with Marina

 

 

Why this blog?

 

I am hoping that with this blog I will achieve two purposes:

 

1) I want to share my experiences with people as I go through the process of learning how to build a foundation of understanding – a common language – with a horse on which one can build and build almost indefinitely. Hopefully these posts will resonate with some readers and prompt discussions that will benefit myself and all who read this blog and who might be struggling with similar issues I am struggling with, or who are just curious about different training methods and philosophies that are out there.

 

2) These posts will be a record for myself of how far I’ve progressed (even though this blog is starting when I am already well-ensconced in the practices of “natural horsemanship”, I know for certain that I have a lifetime of improvement to experience)

 

I hope that you will mark this blog (or save it to your blog-feed reader) and will come back and participate in the discussions as I continue on this journey.

 

All opinions and responses will be accepted, however obscenities and abuse will not be tolerated and will be removed.

Dedication

This blog is dedicated to the memory of Bozo (1996 – March 24, 2005)

– my Standardbred friend, who was kind and gentle and curious, and whom I love very much. When I first saw him, I made him a promise to give him a good life and be a good partner to him. Unfortunately, I knew very little then about how to be a partner and how to establish a true connection with a horse, but I have started learning it with him and because of him. I wish he had lived to see me fulfill this promise.

 

Also, this blog is dedicated to Becky who has become my partner since Bozo passed away. Without her presence and patience, I would’ve given up.