Sitting in the dark in a hotel in Calgary so time for a longer post before breakfast time comes around.
I had been getting a bit stuck on progressing with Filly. She has not really grown enough for me to ride and I have had trouble finding anyone else who has the time available, and the Natural Horsemanship Savvy to help (though one maybe appearing soon !). So what to do with her. A friend suggested the obvious answer. Work with Filly to improve my ground skills, keeping in mind that they will also have to have a practical application in preparing her to be ridden (things should never be done to a horse, only for or with them. So just "using" her to practise on is a big no no, and probably immoral).
In addition I have the problem of getting her socialised with other horses enough that she can be turned out in a field. So all in all there is much work to be done with Filly.
I have recently been taking her around the fields, but staying outside them, to get her used to other horses. This has been done in a "me and my shadow" mode, which basically means allowing her to decide where to go with me just tagging along to look after her. This has been an interesting exercise. We have a longish track at the yard with paddocks either side, mostly with one horse in each of them. Taking her to the track she has the freedom to wander up and down visiting each horse in turn and also graze on the track verge. She is always excited to visit all the horses but gets mixed responses. One or two actively charge her with ears back and heads stretched out. She started off getting very worried about them, but quickly realised that they could not get at her through the fence and much to their chagrin she almost ignores them now. But this hardly makes for a useful horse friendship we can use to turn her out. The other common interaction is for her to start with normal horse behaviour of nose sniffing, then working towards the withers. However as soon as the other horse opens it's mouth to giving a grooming type of nibble she reacts with fear. Normally a squeal, wide eyes, spook and sometimes a kick out. I position myself very carefully relative to the pair when this is taking place. She is getting much more settled around other horses as these sessions have progressed but we are nowhere near being able to confidently turn her out with others yet. In the meantime it is giving me a fascinating insight into horse body language just watching them.
On the other side of playing with her I am making a concerted effort to get back on track with ground skills training. The main topics at the moment are to get her straight on a circle and sideways games. Both of these are strongly connected and I will try and describe how.
To start with let us look at the concept of straightness. James Roberts has recently emphasised to me how important this really is. He said he has only just appreciated the importance of straightness in all things following several months of being unable to ride, but observing his staff riding instead. Straightness on a circle sounds a bit odd, but it describes the concept that the horses body should be bent such that looking down on the horse the body describes the same arc as the circle being performed. For a race horse this lines up all the power elements and will make them run more efficiently. For a dressage horse it just looks right. Filly at the moment tends to circle with her nose tipped to the outside of the circle. I do not believe that this is because she is looking to the outside for escape from me as at liberty she does the same, but tends to do small circles around me and draws in at the slightest cue. She just has not learned how to be "straight" on a circle.
There is a saying that the "better a horse goes sideways and backwards the better it will do everything else". With this in mind I have been working on Filly's sideways game, both online and at liberty. The online section is to try to get her to move sideways whilst circling. To aid in this I place a pole on the ground and send her in a circle that lands at around the middle of the pole. Just as she approaches it however I start asking for her to go sideways such that she goes around the far end of the pole. The reason for the pole is that it gives us both a focus to work towards. She gets to associate the approaching pole with a cue from me, I can use the pole as a visual test of the effectiveness of the sideways. This is going pretty well and we are getting several nice crossed through strides. To achieve the desired result is a difficult balancing act however. A signal with the stick and string to drive the hindquarters away is needed along with porcupine pressure in on the halter to prevent her just turning to go around the pole. Too much pressure at either end and she will quite correctly hindquarter disengage, turn and face me. No need to criticise her for this, it was my fault.
Liberty sideways is also helping. I am setting this up in the same way that we ask for online sideways by circling her into a wall I am standing next to and then maintaining momentum asking her to go sideways down the wall with hind and fore quarter driving. What I have found is that she tends to turn away from me down the wall and just walk in a straight line away from me. There is the nose tipping away again. Online it is easy to prevent this with the lightest pressure on the lead rope of course, but as they say the truth is found out at Liberty and I had been relying on that pressure to keep the sideways going. What I do now is start with my fingers lightly on the halter to apply the pressure and once the sideways is going then let go and try to get a few nice paces before stopping and rewarding by getting her to turn and face me.
So how does sideways help with straightness. Well if she is circling with her nose tipped out and her hindquarters tipped in on the circle I need to get her to sidepass her hindquarters out onto the circle a little. So in fact the correction is just a very slight sideways movement on the circle. In addition I hope that the Liberty work will teach her not to tip her nose away from me when circling. All these "Parelli games" are connected the trick is just working out which one to use in any particular situation to get the desired result. The answer is not always that obvious either !
The proof is that all this is beginning to pay off.
I had been getting a bit stuck on progressing with Filly. She has not really grown enough for me to ride and I have had trouble finding anyone else who has the time available, and the Natural Horsemanship Savvy to help (though one maybe appearing soon !). So what to do with her. A friend suggested the obvious answer. Work with Filly to improve my ground skills, keeping in mind that they will also have to have a practical application in preparing her to be ridden (things should never be done to a horse, only for or with them. So just "using" her to practise on is a big no no, and probably immoral).
In addition I have the problem of getting her socialised with other horses enough that she can be turned out in a field. So all in all there is much work to be done with Filly.
I have recently been taking her around the fields, but staying outside them, to get her used to other horses. This has been done in a "me and my shadow" mode, which basically means allowing her to decide where to go with me just tagging along to look after her. This has been an interesting exercise. We have a longish track at the yard with paddocks either side, mostly with one horse in each of them. Taking her to the track she has the freedom to wander up and down visiting each horse in turn and also graze on the track verge. She is always excited to visit all the horses but gets mixed responses. One or two actively charge her with ears back and heads stretched out. She started off getting very worried about them, but quickly realised that they could not get at her through the fence and much to their chagrin she almost ignores them now. But this hardly makes for a useful horse friendship we can use to turn her out. The other common interaction is for her to start with normal horse behaviour of nose sniffing, then working towards the withers. However as soon as the other horse opens it's mouth to giving a grooming type of nibble she reacts with fear. Normally a squeal, wide eyes, spook and sometimes a kick out. I position myself very carefully relative to the pair when this is taking place. She is getting much more settled around other horses as these sessions have progressed but we are nowhere near being able to confidently turn her out with others yet. In the meantime it is giving me a fascinating insight into horse body language just watching them.
On the other side of playing with her I am making a concerted effort to get back on track with ground skills training. The main topics at the moment are to get her straight on a circle and sideways games. Both of these are strongly connected and I will try and describe how.
To start with let us look at the concept of straightness. James Roberts has recently emphasised to me how important this really is. He said he has only just appreciated the importance of straightness in all things following several months of being unable to ride, but observing his staff riding instead. Straightness on a circle sounds a bit odd, but it describes the concept that the horses body should be bent such that looking down on the horse the body describes the same arc as the circle being performed. For a race horse this lines up all the power elements and will make them run more efficiently. For a dressage horse it just looks right. Filly at the moment tends to circle with her nose tipped to the outside of the circle. I do not believe that this is because she is looking to the outside for escape from me as at liberty she does the same, but tends to do small circles around me and draws in at the slightest cue. She just has not learned how to be "straight" on a circle.
There is a saying that the "better a horse goes sideways and backwards the better it will do everything else". With this in mind I have been working on Filly's sideways game, both online and at liberty. The online section is to try to get her to move sideways whilst circling. To aid in this I place a pole on the ground and send her in a circle that lands at around the middle of the pole. Just as she approaches it however I start asking for her to go sideways such that she goes around the far end of the pole. The reason for the pole is that it gives us both a focus to work towards. She gets to associate the approaching pole with a cue from me, I can use the pole as a visual test of the effectiveness of the sideways. This is going pretty well and we are getting several nice crossed through strides. To achieve the desired result is a difficult balancing act however. A signal with the stick and string to drive the hindquarters away is needed along with porcupine pressure in on the halter to prevent her just turning to go around the pole. Too much pressure at either end and she will quite correctly hindquarter disengage, turn and face me. No need to criticise her for this, it was my fault.
Liberty sideways is also helping. I am setting this up in the same way that we ask for online sideways by circling her into a wall I am standing next to and then maintaining momentum asking her to go sideways down the wall with hind and fore quarter driving. What I have found is that she tends to turn away from me down the wall and just walk in a straight line away from me. There is the nose tipping away again. Online it is easy to prevent this with the lightest pressure on the lead rope of course, but as they say the truth is found out at Liberty and I had been relying on that pressure to keep the sideways going. What I do now is start with my fingers lightly on the halter to apply the pressure and once the sideways is going then let go and try to get a few nice paces before stopping and rewarding by getting her to turn and face me.
So how does sideways help with straightness. Well if she is circling with her nose tipped out and her hindquarters tipped in on the circle I need to get her to sidepass her hindquarters out onto the circle a little. So in fact the correction is just a very slight sideways movement on the circle. In addition I hope that the Liberty work will teach her not to tip her nose away from me when circling. All these "Parelli games" are connected the trick is just working out which one to use in any particular situation to get the desired result. The answer is not always that obvious either !
The proof is that all this is beginning to pay off.
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