A chilled Filly

Sunday 24 July 2011

Playing outdoors with Filly

Nice day yesterday so we took Filly to the outdoor school for a quick online session. The aim of the day was to get her confident an obedient in the new environment. As usual I started with picking out her feet from the chair, but this is just to put a purpose to placing the feet. I still find it difficult to express how important it is to be able to place the feet with relaxation and confidence (of the horse that is, try doing it from a chair and you will find relaxation and confidence in yourself is rather difficult !). The previous day Ritchie had trouble placing Bonitaos front left foot. It was interesting that doing indirect/direct rein online he had trouble stepping the front left foot across. This exercise really does translate into ground and ridden work in a most powerful way and must not be skipped.
From feet we moved onto circling game to allow her to move her feet and get confident in the outdoor school.
We had a few difficult moments, she nearly pulled me out of the chair a couple of times and threw in a few very impressive bucks, but she soon settled as I just maintained consistency in asking for the circle. "Passive persistence in the proper position" springs to mind. In this case I was persistent in asking for the circle, passively, without getting frustrated or angry, but by just asking for the circle using the proper aids and relaxing into neutral as soon as she complied.
After around 10 minutes she settled into nice confident circling with very little input from me. We continued until we got two circles with confidence and relaxation at walk trot and canter in both directions. Next we must work on consistent forwardness, especially as walk.
To break the above lesson up a little, and to give changes of direction on the circle a little more interest I also had a couple of cones out in front of me to do figure 8 around. As usual this was very easy, but I would like to be able to maintain trot through the whole pattern in the future. The snag is that when she is trotting it all happens much faster and keeping up with stick, string and rope handling whilst sat down is tricky to say the least. She tends to breaks gait while I sort myself out. Just as well really !

Sunday 17 July 2011

Saddling Filly again

We spent another session with Filly and the saddle. All the sections of the plan up to fitting the saddle proceeded very well despite Filly's friend Moo kicking up a hell of a fuss again when Filly left her sight. Filly was totally unperturbed by this bar the occasional flick of an ear in Moo's direction.
Again we took off the halter and left her at Liberty to make what she would of the saddle. We directed her into walk trot and canter on both reins and this time the only bucks were at canter on her bad rein. All horses have a good and bad direction they like to circle in, it is often a physical difference that causes the variation. In Filly's case this seems likely as she can very confidently canter one way, but the other she seems to have at least five hoofs to control and it can all look a little disharmonious. She'll learn as time passes, but at the moment we just note it and do what we can to help her find her four hooves.
As the canter became confident (if not pretty) on each rein we rewarded her by quietly bringing her down to a halt and relaxing. Ritchie sat on her heels, I just relaxed in my chair.
She got so confident with the saddle she tried to roll with it on which resulted in me being told "she's your horse, you polish the saddle", which of course I did.
We then moved onto Ritchie getting Filly used to having a foot placed in a stirrup and weighting it. This did not go so well and we found a hole in Filly's preparation. In this case the plan gives us the clue and it was clearly the "Standstill" section that needed work. Ritchie worked on getting her foot up and then moving around with her, lifting on the lead rope to stop the drift, until she stood still again, then rewarding by removing the foot. On the occasion when she really moved around Ritchie switched to extreme friendly game until she stood still. In other words, whilst being progressive, we rewarded her "Standstill". It was hot frustrating work for Ritchie, but she persevered until Filly stood still with a fair bit of weight in the stirrup, and then went home for a well needed shower !
It is interesting where holes show up in the training. Bear in mind that in the past I have jumped onto her back from the ground with barely the twitch of an ear, add a saddle and all the strange feeling through her back and she is nervous again. It is so easy to anthropomorphise and assume that as she is ok with me jumping up there she will work out for herself that it is ok for someone to use a stirrup to mount. Of course from her point of view the use of the stirrup and mounting are not connected. They are only connected in our minds because on a subconcious level we project the action forward to a familiar outcome we think she should be able to work out for herself. She doesn't know that this strange twisting load on her back and the toe touching her side are the prelude to someone getting on her, how could she ? In fact she almost certainly has no idea what a saddle is for in the first place, to her it is just a stiff tarpaulin and we didn't climb up on that.
It is this requirement to try to get inside the horses mind that makes Natural Horsemanship so fascinating for me. Trying to see the mundane from her point of view makes the world a much more interesting and sometimes scary place.

Thursday 14 July 2011

Filly gets a friend

Several days ago we went to the yard in the evening to see Filly. The box was empty, she was still out. A quick search found her in a field with a mare called Moo. As they were the only two out we felt that we could not bring Filly in for some playing and so went to the pub instead. A few days past before we could speak to the yard owners and she is indeed staying out 24 hours a day, which given her past history is great news. Finally she is out with a horse that can teach her how to be a horse.
Last night we went down to give W a quick lesson with Filly and so I hobbled down to the field with Ritchie and W to collect her. The following interactions we witnessed between Filly and Moo actually became the subject of the lesson and we never did actually catch Filly.
To start we were informed that they were difficult to catch without a bucket of feed. This was interesting as Filly had never been difficult to catch before, she always caught us ! Rather than just go in direct line and CATCH her I thought it would be more informative to see what the problem was first. As I am not very mobile Ritchie went to get Filly using all the usual techniques of walking up to her and turning away when she showed interest. Pretty soon Filly was walking at liberty towards the gate behind Ritchie.
Moo then came charging over and drove Filly away from us and so they cantered back up the field together. There then followed a master class by them both in horses playing the seven games. Whenever Filly tried to come with Ritchie Moo would intervene showing driving games, porcupine games and even the squeeze game by the gate. It became obvious that Moo was the boss and also that she did not trust us one bit and did not want her herd taken away. Filly stood up for herself on occasion giving a great demonstration of horse phases. As Moo was cantering behind Filly she got a bit too close. Filly glanced round (phase 1), flattened her ears (phase 2), lifted both hind legs off the ground in a threat to kick (phase 3). Moo got the message and backed off a bit.
The plot thickens a bit today. We went down this morning and they were both in. Filly is going to be ridden soon by one of the girls at the yard so we wanted to do a session on accept the saddle. Ritchie collected Filly from her stable and brought her to the indoor school. As soon as she was out of site Moo made a tremendous fuss in her stable. Neighing that approached a scream, kicking the door and general mayhem. We made sure she was not going to hurt herself and got on with the session. Filly by contrast was her usual chilled self to the extent that the first thing I did was "touch all over" and "place the feet" from my chair.
This was all very interesting and explains Moo's behaviour the previous evening. She suffers from tremendous separation anxiety and the thought of us taking Filly away did not appeal to her one bit. As a result she did all she could to keep her herd with her.
As for Filly and her saddle, it went very well. We let her go at Liberty, stirrups flapping, and made her trot and canter round the school in both directions. There were a few half hearted broncs to start with but she soon settled into a nice confident canter. The plan tomorrow is to repeat the exercise but add in a small jump to get her to arch her back with a saddle on see if that stimulates a buck, if not we can move onto the riding soon.

Friday 8 July 2011

Fishing poles

First a quick announcement. If you look on the right side of the page there is another link to the start of a new website "Parelli Framework". I have struggled for a while to get all the "principles" and "qualities" in my head. It then occurred to me that some things appear in more than one place, and some link from one set of values to another. To straighten this out for myself as much as anyone I decided to create a diagram that lays all the sections out and provides links between them. Hard to explain, so just head over to the webpage and you will see what I mean. In time each block will be "clickable", but there is so much to do that it may well take months if not years !
Back to the fishing poles.
I have been playing with Filly online again, concentrating on getting her forward going and straight on a circle. In the past I have spent so much time getting the forward out of her to make her safe to be around, I now have to put some back. Gone are the snappy hind quarter disengagements to get her to stop, now I ask her to stop with her body aligned with the circle. This is done with body language to start, followed by a light wriggle on the rope and then flapping the stick and string out in front of her. Should she turn in a little pressure to the side of zone1 / 2 soon gets her back on the circle. Being bright this took her very few tries to master. The reason to loose the disengagement is that it works against forwardness. It is still there in the toolbox if I need it, but to be avoided now when possible.
The test for forwardness at the walk is that her hind foot should strike the ground around 1 to 2 hoof prints in front of the point just vacated by the front foot. We are not there yet but she is now at least on the front hoof print. This exercises her responsibility to "maintain gait" which includes the extension within a gait. (Incidentally did you know that there are 167 identified gaits of the horse !!). If she slackens off I go through the phases to ask her to extend again. Should she trot I ask her to return to a forward walk, carefully applying "braking" pressure to get her to slow down a little bit. Often this is just a slight waggle of the stick way out in front of her. It's fun watching her puzzle out what I am trying to get her to do and in a strange way I finally really feel we are having a conversation, it is not just me directing her, it's also her saying "try putting that another way, I don't get it yet". This then puts the onus back on me to figure out how best to convey my wishes. Mentally taxing, but really rewarding.
Finally we get to the fishing poles.
Not only do I want forwardness I also want her to be straight on the circle. By this I mean her body should be arced so that all parts of her near side are at the same distance from me. No nose pointing to the outside or hindquarters skating around sideways. To achieve this I have to be able to direct individual zones of her body so that they can be moulded onto the circle. Thus if her shoulder is pushing in towards me then I need to be able to push it out. One of the easiest tests for straightness is again to study the foot falls. I want the inside hooves to be following each other on one track and the outside on another. Often the inside hind is on the track of the outside front. To correct this the hindquarters actually have to be pushed out so that her hip is swinging on the correct line, not pulled in as may seem the more natural thing to do.
So how to influence the individual zones of a horse whilst sat in a chair 22 feet away from her. The stick and string can be used, but are not consistently accurate enough. The answer gleaned from videos of Pat and first hand from James is a Panfish Pole. They are telescopic glass fibre poles of various lengths, but are not available in the UK. A quick search on ebay found a good substitute however. I bought a 3m, 4m and 6m pole. I can tell you now the 6m is too long, but can be used for spares on the other 2. The 3m is about the right length for a 22 foot line. On the end I tied a small bit of plastic bag to make it visually obvious.
Now I have a precise communication tool. It is easiest to hold it vertically for a neutral position and then when one of Filly's zones pushes in on the circle I can very precisely lower it and waggle it towards the offending point and influence the bubble around that zone to move it back out. Note I do not touch her with it, it would probably break if I did, just push the air around that zone away from me. It is proving very effective. Filly does not seem too worried by it, almost relieved that she can finally understand what all my imprecise stick and string waving has meant all this time.
I would caution that using it whilst sat in a chair with a horse circling on the end of a line does take some practise and concentration. Rope tricks of the unintentional kind can easily ensue without some care and attention !!
Fishing pole link

Sunday 3 July 2011

Back home from James

After two weeks at James Roberts we are back home to reality. To be honest I need a rest. The amount of information that he gave us is having trouble staying in my head. Bits of it keep trying to leave and I have to force it back in again. I now have several days work to organise my notes and try to give them some structure, when they are done I will use them to update the Training Plan website.
The most important theme was to keep the horse thinking forward and to make each gait a forward gait. Many people get into the Parelli programme because they have a problem horse and spend lots of time in levels 1 to 4 learning how to shut the horse down and disengage it. This is done for good reason, to make the horse safe to ride. Moving beyond this however we need the horse to be forward thinking and engaged, so whilst keeping the option to disengage if required in an emergency we now need to work more on engagement of the hind quarters. This will enable us to prepare the horse for whatever purpose we are aiming to put the horse to, whether it be hacking out or competing at the Grand National.
Interestingly a forward thinking horse is not more likely to run off than a backward thinking one. In fact a backward thinking horse is more likely to bolt as it gets frightened by a stimulus behind it ! Thus we are not making the horse more dangerous to ride by getting it to think forwards, quite the opposite. To think forwards it has to engage the left brain (where the thinking takes place) rather than the right brain (where instinctual survival happens).
 I will expand on this theme as I continue to digest the course and post my thoughts as the emerge.
Of course I have already played with Filly since our return and started to put my new knowledge into practise, much to her disgust. She hates it when I come back from James as her old tricks start to fail !! Yesterday we just worked on the circling game at walk, but rather than just letting her amble around I was asking for a good forward walk. Not only that I was asking her to maintain her responsibility to "maintain gait" by getting her to keep the forward walk going. I am no longer content with just the gait, I want a particular speed and foot fall within that gait. If she failed to keep the foot fall I was asking for she was reminded what her responsibility was with phases of pressure to keep her going. A forward walk can be defined as the one you would make if walking to the pub. Nice long purposeful strides. In this case I am also looking for her inside hind foot to contact the ground at least on the spot that her forward inside foot has just left, and preferably one or two hoof prints in front. This is easy to see if you are in a sand school, but harder on say grass. I will be discussing foot fall a lot in the coming weeks as it was impressed upon me how important it is to be aware of the pattern of your horse.

Just to end, this is a nice video description of the gaits of a horse http://www.extension.org/pages/12480/horse-natural-gaits