Another good day with the horses, which as I have said before always bothers me a bit. I know that I will get a bad day eventually !!
It was a beautiful sunny day for a change and I only had a short time to play with Filly. I decided that a non-demanding walk to the herd field and some grazing was in order.
Remember I am trying to rebuild her confidence in the great outdoors. Currently the yard won't allow her in a field as she looks unhappy and tends to tear it up. See previous post on my analysis of this behaviour. In short I think she is very unconfident in the field due to there being no proper leader in the field, just a rather old pony.
I am making a point of walking "with focus" down to the field. There is the odd spot where she gets worried and tends to pull back on the lead rope. I do not look at her at this point, and most definitely do not look at whatever is spooking her. It is natural for humans to try and anticipate what might worry our horses and as a result we tend to look at scary things. When we identify one we probably stare at it and tense up a bit waiting for the horse to react. Lets look at this from the horses point of view.
"What a nice walk with my leader. Oh Oh what is he looking at. That looks scary and my leader has become tense, I guess I should be worried as well. I am worried as he has tensed even more now I have seen it. Run Away."
The alternative conversation is
"What a nice walk with my leader. What the hell is that object maybe I should pull away. Hang on my leader isn't even looking at it ! Guess it isn't scary then. Ok onwards to the grass"
I hope this helps illustrate the point. Focussing on potentially scary objects makes them scary !!
This mimics wild horse behaviour of course. In the wild the youngsters look to the more experienced horses to see how to react to a new object. If they ran from everything there would be no time to eat, and lots of energy would be wasted. If a scary object appears and the experienced horses ignore it and carry on walking or grazing the youngster is reassured and quickly adds the object to it's internal library of things to ignore.
How to be the calm leader in practise ? One suggestion from James Roberts is to walk or ride with focus. With a young horse, when out on a trail ride he looks into the distance focussing on a tree way way in front of him. He does not let the horse out focus him when it looks around. He just stares at the tree even if it starts prancing around.
When you are riding round the school he will randomly call your name, or do something else to grab your attention. If he manages to out focus you he fines you a pound ! Simple but effective. Should your horse spook on a trail ride he asks what it spooked at. If you tell him you must have looked and there goes another pound. No wonder his courses seem good value, he makes his money on the job !!!
Does it work with Filly. Yes ! She walked down to the field in a much calmer state than the previous day. She did stop a couple of times, but by applying steady pressure on the lead rope and maintaining my focus we got through them. One stop did make me turn to help her through, but I made a point of not looking where she was staring.
In the field itself I just let her graze quietly for half an hour, with no right brain moments at all. What a change from the previous day.
Walking with focus takes practise and I have practised without a horse when going to the yard. (About 2 miles). Believe me it is difficult.
With Filly happily back in her stable attention turns to Billy.
Not too much to report, which when backing a young horse is a good thing. Most of the plan up to mounting went really smoothly. Billy is of course getting the hang of it himself now, and knows what is coming next. Mounting was the usual joy with him nestling against my legs with no prompting at all from me. Standstill was better than in the past. Lateral flexion was still dominant with some biting issues, but maybe a little better than in the past. Indirect rein not great but usable.
This leads me onto asking for forward movement which was better than before, but he still got "stuck" a few times. The incorrect response to this would have been to just push him through. If the feet are stuck and he cannot move forwards then if more pressure is applied there is one other direction he could go, UP and this would be a bad thing. So I need to get the feet moving again, in any direction, to unstick them. This is where indirect rein comes in. Asking the hind legs is a good method and we are soon walking again.
Lets have a look at the alternative which is direct line thinking and pushing him through into walking. To achieve this I would have to squeeze harder with my legs, really up my energy and tap him on the rump. He is stuck because he is unconfident so responding like a predator and clamping myself to his back whilst I get high energy becoming big and scary is hardly likely to end happily !
All in all a good day which was made even better with the knowledge that I had Ritchie and a friend watching. This matters as he still kept most of his attention on me, came to the mounting block as they stood nearby, and generally felt confident with them about on the ground. A big change from the early rides.
Going to Calgary this afternoon, back on Saturday, so no more posts until Sunday or Monday.
It was a beautiful sunny day for a change and I only had a short time to play with Filly. I decided that a non-demanding walk to the herd field and some grazing was in order.
Remember I am trying to rebuild her confidence in the great outdoors. Currently the yard won't allow her in a field as she looks unhappy and tends to tear it up. See previous post on my analysis of this behaviour. In short I think she is very unconfident in the field due to there being no proper leader in the field, just a rather old pony.
I am making a point of walking "with focus" down to the field. There is the odd spot where she gets worried and tends to pull back on the lead rope. I do not look at her at this point, and most definitely do not look at whatever is spooking her. It is natural for humans to try and anticipate what might worry our horses and as a result we tend to look at scary things. When we identify one we probably stare at it and tense up a bit waiting for the horse to react. Lets look at this from the horses point of view.
"What a nice walk with my leader. Oh Oh what is he looking at. That looks scary and my leader has become tense, I guess I should be worried as well. I am worried as he has tensed even more now I have seen it. Run Away."
The alternative conversation is
"What a nice walk with my leader. What the hell is that object maybe I should pull away. Hang on my leader isn't even looking at it ! Guess it isn't scary then. Ok onwards to the grass"
I hope this helps illustrate the point. Focussing on potentially scary objects makes them scary !!
This mimics wild horse behaviour of course. In the wild the youngsters look to the more experienced horses to see how to react to a new object. If they ran from everything there would be no time to eat, and lots of energy would be wasted. If a scary object appears and the experienced horses ignore it and carry on walking or grazing the youngster is reassured and quickly adds the object to it's internal library of things to ignore.
How to be the calm leader in practise ? One suggestion from James Roberts is to walk or ride with focus. With a young horse, when out on a trail ride he looks into the distance focussing on a tree way way in front of him. He does not let the horse out focus him when it looks around. He just stares at the tree even if it starts prancing around.
When you are riding round the school he will randomly call your name, or do something else to grab your attention. If he manages to out focus you he fines you a pound ! Simple but effective. Should your horse spook on a trail ride he asks what it spooked at. If you tell him you must have looked and there goes another pound. No wonder his courses seem good value, he makes his money on the job !!!
Does it work with Filly. Yes ! She walked down to the field in a much calmer state than the previous day. She did stop a couple of times, but by applying steady pressure on the lead rope and maintaining my focus we got through them. One stop did make me turn to help her through, but I made a point of not looking where she was staring.
In the field itself I just let her graze quietly for half an hour, with no right brain moments at all. What a change from the previous day.
Walking with focus takes practise and I have practised without a horse when going to the yard. (About 2 miles). Believe me it is difficult.
With Filly happily back in her stable attention turns to Billy.
Not too much to report, which when backing a young horse is a good thing. Most of the plan up to mounting went really smoothly. Billy is of course getting the hang of it himself now, and knows what is coming next. Mounting was the usual joy with him nestling against my legs with no prompting at all from me. Standstill was better than in the past. Lateral flexion was still dominant with some biting issues, but maybe a little better than in the past. Indirect rein not great but usable.
This leads me onto asking for forward movement which was better than before, but he still got "stuck" a few times. The incorrect response to this would have been to just push him through. If the feet are stuck and he cannot move forwards then if more pressure is applied there is one other direction he could go, UP and this would be a bad thing. So I need to get the feet moving again, in any direction, to unstick them. This is where indirect rein comes in. Asking the hind legs is a good method and we are soon walking again.
Lets have a look at the alternative which is direct line thinking and pushing him through into walking. To achieve this I would have to squeeze harder with my legs, really up my energy and tap him on the rump. He is stuck because he is unconfident so responding like a predator and clamping myself to his back whilst I get high energy becoming big and scary is hardly likely to end happily !
All in all a good day which was made even better with the knowledge that I had Ritchie and a friend watching. This matters as he still kept most of his attention on me, came to the mounting block as they stood nearby, and generally felt confident with them about on the ground. A big change from the early rides.
Going to Calgary this afternoon, back on Saturday, so no more posts until Sunday or Monday.
No comments:
Post a Comment