Finally I have played with Filly on my own, from getting her from the field to putting her back with her herd.
The first challenge was separating her from her herd. On entering the field she trotted towards me but stopped a few feet away. Then Moo caught sight of the carrot stick and halter and trotted away. Filly naturally went with the herd to the end of the field. I just kept cool and adopted the "Catch me" game. In fact it was kind of fun. Normal formula, if she showed me no attention I stalked her, if she put an ear or eye on me I relaxed and turned away. After five minutes she caught me and politely waited until I had fastened the rope halter, turning her head towards me as she should.
One frustration I have is that talking to non Parelli folks they seem to think that Parelli is something we do once the horse is caught and in the school. It is way beyond that. Every interaction has to be completed whilst sticking to the principles and using savvy. In this case it would have been easy to sneak the halter on her and, today, I would have saved ten minutes, but at the cost of making her difficult to catch and halter in the future.
Once in the indoor school (it was wet outside) we started on a new exercise taught to us by David Lichman during a clinic last weekend. The esscence is to get the horse to lower it's head when it is bothered by something. The psychology is split into three parts.
First, lowering the head when bothered by something, as a conditioned response, gives the horse something positive to do rather than rearing, bucking, bolting etc.
Second, a lowered head is a position of relaxation and submission for the horse. As David explained it, adopting a relaxed pose like sitting in an armchair at home does not necessarily result in you relaxing into a good sleep, but it is a precursor for it. Standing to a tense attention is unlikely to result in any form of relaxation. So causing the horse to adopt a relaxed pose when bothered is the first step to getting a relaxed mind.
Thirdly it gives the horse a means to communicate with us. If the horse is clearly bothered, using the conditioned response, it can now lower it's head to say "please stop doing that, I am worried". Far better than the more traditional methods of rearing, bucking, pulling back etc. How we respond to that request is now determined by the circumstances, but at least we have some important information to work on.
To achieve the response I started by lightly bouncing my carrot stick on the side of her back. This clearly bothered her as the swishing tail and thrashing head showed. By lightly asking for her head to lower at the same time by pulling down on the halter I helped her to learn the desired response. Removing the pressure on the halter and stopping the stick as soon as she even thought about lowering her head soon had the desired response working well. I now wanted to generalise the response. To do this I needed another way to worry her. She is still very sensitive to being porcupined in the flanks for a hind quarter yield, so this is what I did. Again as soon as she lowered her head the stimulus was removed. Progress was rapid again. Not only did she lower her head but she soon accepted the porcupine with much less fuss.
She now feels in control of unpleasant stimuli and I think this has empowered her to accept them with the knowledge that she can influence when the cease. I really look forward to seeing how far we can take this method, and enjoy the fact that we now have another level of two way communication.
As a brief summary of the rest of the session we worked hard on straightness on a circle. Now I am mobile, for the first time since I learned the technique, we made real progress. I again used the 3m fishing pole to signal which zone I wished to move away to get the proper bend in her body. I also found that I could observe the footfall pattern with much more accuracy now I am standing which aided in the precision of my signals and hence her understanding of them.
Finally we did a little liberty which we clearly both enjoyed after such a long break from it.
Putting her back in the field tested my adherence to good horsemanship again. The herd came to greet her and she was very keen to run off with them. I insisted on removing the halter with savvy however, and after a brief "conversation" on the topic with Filly, she agreed. She waited patiently, with a lowered head (there's that lowered head again !) turned slightly towards me as I undid the knot and slowly removed the halter. After that the conversation was over and she could rejoin her herd. Again Natural Horsemanship does not end as I leave the school, but when I leave her line of sight.
The first challenge was separating her from her herd. On entering the field she trotted towards me but stopped a few feet away. Then Moo caught sight of the carrot stick and halter and trotted away. Filly naturally went with the herd to the end of the field. I just kept cool and adopted the "Catch me" game. In fact it was kind of fun. Normal formula, if she showed me no attention I stalked her, if she put an ear or eye on me I relaxed and turned away. After five minutes she caught me and politely waited until I had fastened the rope halter, turning her head towards me as she should.
One frustration I have is that talking to non Parelli folks they seem to think that Parelli is something we do once the horse is caught and in the school. It is way beyond that. Every interaction has to be completed whilst sticking to the principles and using savvy. In this case it would have been easy to sneak the halter on her and, today, I would have saved ten minutes, but at the cost of making her difficult to catch and halter in the future.
Once in the indoor school (it was wet outside) we started on a new exercise taught to us by David Lichman during a clinic last weekend. The esscence is to get the horse to lower it's head when it is bothered by something. The psychology is split into three parts.
First, lowering the head when bothered by something, as a conditioned response, gives the horse something positive to do rather than rearing, bucking, bolting etc.
Second, a lowered head is a position of relaxation and submission for the horse. As David explained it, adopting a relaxed pose like sitting in an armchair at home does not necessarily result in you relaxing into a good sleep, but it is a precursor for it. Standing to a tense attention is unlikely to result in any form of relaxation. So causing the horse to adopt a relaxed pose when bothered is the first step to getting a relaxed mind.
Thirdly it gives the horse a means to communicate with us. If the horse is clearly bothered, using the conditioned response, it can now lower it's head to say "please stop doing that, I am worried". Far better than the more traditional methods of rearing, bucking, pulling back etc. How we respond to that request is now determined by the circumstances, but at least we have some important information to work on.
To achieve the response I started by lightly bouncing my carrot stick on the side of her back. This clearly bothered her as the swishing tail and thrashing head showed. By lightly asking for her head to lower at the same time by pulling down on the halter I helped her to learn the desired response. Removing the pressure on the halter and stopping the stick as soon as she even thought about lowering her head soon had the desired response working well. I now wanted to generalise the response. To do this I needed another way to worry her. She is still very sensitive to being porcupined in the flanks for a hind quarter yield, so this is what I did. Again as soon as she lowered her head the stimulus was removed. Progress was rapid again. Not only did she lower her head but she soon accepted the porcupine with much less fuss.
She now feels in control of unpleasant stimuli and I think this has empowered her to accept them with the knowledge that she can influence when the cease. I really look forward to seeing how far we can take this method, and enjoy the fact that we now have another level of two way communication.
As a brief summary of the rest of the session we worked hard on straightness on a circle. Now I am mobile, for the first time since I learned the technique, we made real progress. I again used the 3m fishing pole to signal which zone I wished to move away to get the proper bend in her body. I also found that I could observe the footfall pattern with much more accuracy now I am standing which aided in the precision of my signals and hence her understanding of them.
Finally we did a little liberty which we clearly both enjoyed after such a long break from it.
Putting her back in the field tested my adherence to good horsemanship again. The herd came to greet her and she was very keen to run off with them. I insisted on removing the halter with savvy however, and after a brief "conversation" on the topic with Filly, she agreed. She waited patiently, with a lowered head (there's that lowered head again !) turned slightly towards me as I undid the knot and slowly removed the halter. After that the conversation was over and she could rejoin her herd. Again Natural Horsemanship does not end as I leave the school, but when I leave her line of sight.
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