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.
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.
Comments