A chilled Filly

Tuesday 27 September 2011

Liberty in a field

Rosie, one of the herd, has left the yard leaving just Moo and Filly together. This leads to a small problem if I want to play with Filly, Moo can't be left alone. Solution : play in the field next door which has jumps, dressage markers and lots of lush grass. A real test of Filly's respect for me !
We started playing on line which was progressing very well. With a light bow in the line as she circled me she was giving me all the green lights to play at liberty.
Taking the rope off I was ready for her to just ignore me and eat grass but remarkably this was not the case. We started with the easiest task, "Stick to me" which is a bit like heel work with a dog. This is the easiest as she is close to me which keeps the bond strong. Walk, trot and halt worked perfectly with very little tendency to try and eat.
Emboldened I decided to try circling expecting a long walk to get her from the far end of the field. To start she did large circles which actually pleased me greatly. If she could stay connected to me and circle at a distance I was not going to nag her to get closer.
At one point she did apparently leave me. The circle took her to the fence and she just kept maintaining gait but along the fence not around me. I just stayed relaxed and contemplated the long walk when suddenly she turned and faced me, still trotting, and came straight as an arrow to me. I think she just got a bit confused when she got to the fence and never actually meant to leave. On a second occasion she did leave and I did have to walk to get her, but she readily re-connected and stayed with me back to the work area.
I have recently started to work on "lead by the tail". This just consists of lightly pulling on her tail and asking her to follow the feel of pressure backwards. I have tried this with limited success in the past but at last it is coming together. The pressure on the tail is of course applied in phases and released on the slightest try. In this case she started with her ears pricked and pointing forwards as I applied the pressure. One ear twitching to face backwards was the initial try and rewarded with a release. Three of four attempts later we had a front leg moving backwards, followed by a pace or two. I tried this in the field at liberty and it worked !
In many ways, whilst we did nothing spectacular or new, this was one of the best training sessions we have had together. Having that sort of connection in a lush grass field felt very special.
It was only topped by what happened as we walked away from the field. Ritchie looked back to find Filly a long way from Moo and as close to us as possible looking over the fence at us with her ears pricked. We were at least 100 meters away before she turned and went back to grazing.

Friday 23 September 2011

Level 1 at Liberty

I have been continuing to work with Filly. She really seems to enjoy these play sessions walking to me in the field with enthusiasm and ears pricked. In itself that is a most gratifying feeling.
As the title suggests I have been playing mostly with Level 1 concepts, but trying to do them with excellence at liberty.
YoYo. Filly started to make the assumption that whenever I sent her back she had to circle. Not liking to go backwards she would take a few steps and then turn to commence the circle around me. Difficult to prevent with no line attached so I added the use of one of my new tools, the 3 meter fishing pole with a flag attached. Of course with no rope she has to be driven back with my body language and the carrot stick and string adding pressure to zone one. I held the pole vertically in neutral as long as she was going back straight. I was looking for the slightest try to turn away from the straight line and immediately correcting by lowering the pole so that she was turning into it, thus driving zone one back onto the desired straight line. It did not take long for this to really make sense to her.
People who have not experienced Natural Horsemanship may think that a plastic bag on the end of a long pole would badly frighten her. In fact this was not the case at all. She started to look at me with real questions in her face, ears pricked forward and very attentive to my cues. The use of the pole and bag has actually allowed me to reduce the pressure I place on her to get the same result simply because I can be so much more precise in my communication with her.
On the subject of "slightest try" I find it is natural to look for the slightest desired try and release the pressure, but I often miss the slightest undesired try such as the nose tipping onto an undesired circle. I have started to make a point of trying to see these tries and correct them quickly. "Do less sooner rather than more later" is the relevant quote which I am sure we all know, but often miss. I guess the reason is that we are concentrating on seeing the one correct try that we miss the many hundred possible wrong tries that could be occurring. This YoYo pattern at least enabled me to isolate one of the negative tries and correct it in a timely fashion, and boy did it work well compared with the "more later" alternative.
Having established a good YoYo we moved onto more circling. The aim has been very simple. Two circles of trot whilst "maintaining gait, maintaining direction and looking where you are going", during which I remained in neutral in the middle. Should I have to correct any of the above then the circles count resets to zero. As you can imagine this actually means we do many more than two circles in a session before we get the required two consecutive good ones.
Maintaining gait. If you watch Pat closely if a horse breaks gait and slows he makes a point of turning in the direction of the circle "adding energy" to the circle and then  resends the horse to restore the gait. This little detail really makes a huge difference to the response. Pretty soon she restored her gait as soon as I started to move.
Maintain direction. We don't have a round pen at the yard, so if she changes direction I have to time my correction so that she is close to a wall and I can block her sending her in the desired direction. To be honest I found the fishing pole ineffective for this and the stick and string much better.
Look where she is going. This is simply achieved by just placing a few objects in the school, poles, jump wings, cones etc. This aids in analysing her state of mind. If she nearly runs into an object she is clearly not thinking with the left side of her brain.
This would get very boring if that is all a play session involved, so sideways down the wall has also been practised. After lots of attepmts where she generally just turned and walked down the wall away from me I finally came up with a solution that made it clear to her what I wanted. The key ingredient was again the communication tools used. In this case I tried stick and string, stick and flag, short stick and flag all of which failed. The most effective tool was just my body and my hands. Not touching her, just gesturing was the best method, using one hand to "push" zone 2/3 and the other to keep zone 4 going. Pushing zone one was a bad idea as she just turned and walked in front of me. Now you may wish to porcupine zone 4 of Filly whilst walking behind her, but I'll just watch if you don't mind !! She really does not like zone 4 porcupine, she responds very well but with the attitude of don't do that again or else !

Tuesday 20 September 2011

Liberty works again

First an intriguing development in the Filly's herd. Initially when Rosie was added to the herd Filly was the boss moving Moo around at will. Rosie was shunned by the other two and forced to keep her distance. Rosie is now boss ! She only has to give Filly a stare, maybe backed up with the flattening of her ears and Filly moves away at the trot. Rosie is definitely not a benevolent leader, she is and aggressive alpha. On returning to the field after a play session Filly always wants a quick drink, but Rosie drives her away from the water. I have utilised this situation by keeping Rosie away whilst Filly drinks, thus placing myself as a benevolent leader towards Filly by protecting her from Rosie. She tends to stick close by me in the field whenever possible. In this respect I have become her place of safety and comfort.
I have been working, as I said before, on figure 8 at trot and frankly not getting that far with it. Figure 8 is ok, but keeping a trot going round the corners is difficult. I therefore decided to fall back on our best savvy, Liberty. Filly is particularly happy at liberty, probably highlighting my lack of skill with the rope, and we tend to get more achieved when she is free.
I spent one evening just working on getting a consistent figure 8 pattern at libery which was fairly easy. She does try to cut inside the cone on my left, but is happy to go around the cone on my right. Thus most of that session was spent sending her around the left hand cone and drawing straight to me for a treat when she got it right. The session ended with me really reducing the cues I was giving to a minimum to get her to perform the pattern. Again I discovered the power of focus. Looking in the direction I wanted her to go really gave her more of a sense of direction, particularly at the point I was asking for the change of direction as she rounded a cone. The end result was some very nice relaxed figure 8 patterns at walk.
One of our principles is to separate, isolate and recombine. We now had a good figure 8 at walk and can do circles at trot. The problem is changing the direction of circle and maintaining the trot. I decided that we would walk the tight circles around the cones and trot the straight lines between them in the hope that the trot would slowly extend its range around the cone. I have only spent a session working on this and it is starting to pay off. To start I only got a stride or two of trot, but slowly this is increasing to the whole diagonal of the pattern being at trot with just the ends at walk. Of course this is also meaning we get to practise lots of gait transitions at the same time, and it is making the pattern more interesting for Filly.
I don't just work on the one thing of course, that would get too boring for both of us ! To mix things up a bit I have also been working on Liberty sideways. The breakthrough here was the choice of tools. Rather than use a carrot stick and string I have been using a short piece of fishing pole, around 2 foot 6 inches with a rubber "flag" tie wrapped to the end (cut up rubber glove). This is way more effective as I can be very accurate as to which zone I am asking to move away from me. As it is short and light I can also move it very fast to the correct position as well. Thus if she tries to step forwards it takes a fraction of a second to position it in front of zone 1 (her nose) to ask for a step back and then return to either zone 2 or 4 to "push" her sideways. She is not the least frightened by the tool, but seems rather grateful that I am finally being precise in my requests !
One very nice result of this is that almost for the first time I feel we can really communicate and have a conversation. Before, with the stick and string, it has felt a bit one sided with me calling the shots, but now I can see questions in her expression, and get the impression she is really trying to work out exactly what I want. She in turn has got better at communicating to me when she is finding something difficult and we can then take time working on the problem (or maybe I am just better at reading her now ?). This has been my aim all along. I don't want to give the impression that we have never achieved this before, it is just that it seems to suddenly be on a much deeper level.
Personally I have to say this is a great feeling which can get rather addictive, so if you strive for this you may find that when it is reached nothing else between you and your horse will ever be good enough again !

Wednesday 14 September 2011

A good draw

I have had very little time recently to play with the horses. Lots of physio for my hip and shoulder and a short non-invasisve operation on my shoulder have seen to that. However I still try to at least visit most days and managed to get some nice photos of Filly. The snag is her draw to me can be so strong at times that getting far enough away from her to take a photo can be a problem ! But then I shouldn't complain, the horses draw to you can never be too strong.



 




Monday 12 September 2011

Off form

Filly's turn yestreday and she served up an interesting challenge. Ritchie watched this session to give me feedback and it was just as well she did.
Filly was extremely unmotivated. I had planned on working on figure of 8 at trot with the ultimate aim of figure 8 at canter. At canter she will need to do a flying lead change between each cone of course and this will in turn help her find balance at the canter. But trot is needed first. Snag was she did not want to trot around the cones. More pressure to maintain gait just resulted in a really sour ears back look from her, not good for the rapport.
At this point Ritchie aksed "What's missing ?". Impulsion obviously. "What horsenality is she showing ?" Left brain introvert. "How do you fix impulsion in a LBI ?". Ah.... go slower. Then  it also occurred to me that I needed to apply the Parelli formula of Rapport, Respect, Impulsion, Flexion. Well I was certainly not getting Flexion around the cones, Impulsion was only possible on a straight line, Respect was not to bad, Rapport was suffering from the pressure I was putting on her. Slowing down was thus going to help the Rapport and she was then more likely accept my leadership thus increasing Respect. I threw away the idea of figure 8 at trot and concentrated on seeing how slowly she could walk the pattern.
This really grabbed her attention and the inquisitive look returned to her face. We played with this for some time, whilst trying to discourage her from picking up and moving the cones as she crawled past them. I then played with all sorts of other games at a very very slow pace. Sending her backwards on the YoYo one leg at a time got her full attention with a lovely expression on her face. Sideways over a cone slowly meant she had to accept the cone under her belly for an extended period of time. Circling slowly was a real challenge, she kept wanting to walk faster !!
This showed the value of someone on the outside looking in. Ritchie could spot what I had missed and then leave me to figure out the solution. It also showed the value of knowing Pat's various lists in his framework. Their use as a diagnostic tool is invaluable. There is a link to my web page describing them on the right hand side of the blog.

Sunday 11 September 2011

Playing with Billy again

I did not intend to play with Billy at all until the bandages came off his hind legs. I don't want to be thought responsible if he hurts those legs again before they are fully healed. Yesterday, however, I had a spare hour and so went to spend some undemanding time with him in his field. Things don't always go to plan however. In his field there is his good friend Prince and next door are Bonitao and Naz. Ritchie had collected Bonitao to ride him which always disturbs Naz a little so tensions in the area were already slightly elevated. Then Prince was taken away, again to go riding. This left an agitated Naz and a deserted Billy. They fed off each others nervous energy and Billy started to show why he is to be a race horse. This was not a desireable state of affairs, afterall I was not playing with him to avoid him getting anxious and hurting his legs again.
The only solution I could think of was to get a halter on him and try to calm him down. Fortunately he still sees me as a leader, even after four months of not playing, so haltering him was fairly easy. The only downside was that I was now having to use the only halter to hand which was a wide webbing type with a typically short lead rope. (Why do people use 6 foot lead ropes ? If a horse is getting upset I prefer to send them to the end of at least a 12 foot rope if not a 22 foot one to get over it. It seems that with a 6 foot rope, particularly if they rear you are drawn in towards a dangerous animal. Geometry dictates this has to happen. With a 12 foot rope even if the horse rears you don't have to get so close). With the halter on Billy settled fairly quickly and I lead him to a nice grazing spot. If he got agitated I just sent him on a circle at walk until he calmed down. If that failed then we changed the direction of the circle with a indirect/direct rein manoeuvre. This is quite a complicated task for Billy to complete with the hind legs crossing over then the front legs doing likewise. Thus I got him thinking to his feet to get it completed. The important word here is THINKING. It forced the left side of his brain to kick in and start working which let him think through the current situation a realise that he was not in danger not having his field buddy as I was there to look after him. A few indirect/direct reins and his head lowered and he relaxed and started to graze. I had to repeat this on several occasions, but it worked consistently.
He did try to push into my space whilst in a confident state but a little wriggle on the rope, or a waggle with my stick backed him away again thus preserving my personal space.
I was very impressed with the fact that he could still remember all the aids I had taught to play the seven games him despite not having been played with for four months. But then the games we play are just slightly modified versions of the games horses play naturally which of course they are unlikely to forget and the aids are designed to also mimic horses body language to the extent that a tall two legged being with a stick can.

Friday 9 September 2011

Clinic and Party at James Roberts

Last weekend was epic on many levels. James Roberts ran a two day clinic for all the people who had been on at least a two week course with him over the last year. This ensured a high level of horsemanship for all involved and thus allowed him to progress them quickly secure in the knowledge that they would cope.
Knowing this Ritchie was a little nervous as to what James was going to have them all doing, to say the least. The briefing on the Saturday morning gave an idea as to what was coming, but we weren't sure if he was pulling our leg or not. We should have known better, James rarely makes jokes about such things ! The ultimate goal of the weekend was cow herding, brideless and halterless. Thus the training was centered on arriving at the skills needed to achieve this aim.
Day 1 Morning
As they were going to be riding brideless and cow cutting James asked what skills might be needed. The suggestions were a good draw, a good sideways game, good YoYo game and all the above at Liberty. Thus the morning was spent initially online practising all those skills. As this was to be ridden bridleless there was particular emphasis on getting them done using porcupine rather than the driving game. The only driving that was really necessary was in zone one to allow the use of carrot sticks to direct the horse should "eyes, belly button, and legs" not have the desired result.
It was amazing to see 20 horses all being played with at Liberty with very few leaving their human. There was one that did have a problem with this and James had an interesting solution. He got all the participants and their horses to form a circle around the errant horse and its owner. This is actually called a Rodeo. Whenever the horse approached the edge of the circle it was gently driven back towards its owner, who just sat on the ground. Thus the horse found that the only place of safety and comfort was in the middle near its owner. This quickly established the desired bond.
The afternoon was devoted to riding. To start he had all 20 horse just trot the rail, but try to use the reins as little as possible. Then as each of them looked calm and confident he asked them into the middle and quietly removed the halter/bridle, asked them to do some patterns such as figure 8 and sent them back on the rail. Soon nearly all were bridleless and quietly trotting the rail.
The evening was PARTY TIME. And some partied long and hard. I believe 5 in the morning was the latest ! The fact that there was a fairground broncing horse added to the entertainment and several sore muscles in the morning.
Day 2
Late start the next day with the morning being basically more of the same. 20 brideless horses trotting the rail and doing "straight lines and circles" for 15 minutes on each rein was an unforgettable sight. What was interesting was the change in demeanour of a lot of the horses. When given trust you could tell they were going to respond in kind. There was not a single problem for the whole session. To grow that trust James had them do all sorts of other gymkhana type games such as round the world, half scissors, crawling under the horses belly and through its front legs.
For several the focus of the day was to get through the riding without to much pain as a result of the previous nights entertainment. Josh looked particularly fragile which prompted lots of goading from James.
The afternoon was devoted to Cow penning as promised, except the cows were us spectators dressed up with cardboard horns ! To start with the aim was just to drive as all around and get us into a Rodeo. Then they had to split us into fast and slow cows. With my bad hip I was a slow one of course. We were then corralled into two corners of the school, and the real games could begin. Each horse and rider selected a cow and had to drive us to the opposite corner of the school. This was done individually. The rules for the cow were that they could go across the school or down the school towards the penning corner, but not back towards the herd. The rider and horse had to manoeuvre such that the cow had no choice but to progress towards the penning corner. All this had to be done brideleless of course. Again there was an interesting transformation in the horse and rider. They were no longer individuals but started acting as a real team. In terms of precision positioning of themselves it almost seemed better than with the bridles on. The horses rapidly understood the game and locked onto their cow turning almost without being asked in some cases. What is more they seemed to love the game. As for the riders it was noticeable that those that had been initially nervous about riding without headgear on their horses soon forgot those nerves when they had something to focus strongly on. I am sure they were not even thinking about the "driving" or "porcupine" games, they were just instinctively working with the horse to get to the required position to get that cow to move on. Everyone succeeded in the task, some quicker than others, but speed was not the objective. Team work was.
Special mention must be made of a demo from Kim. Kim has worked as an apprentice for James for the last year, and this was her last weekend. To show what she had learnt in that time she put on a demonstration with her friends Becka and Josh. It was very very impressive, with some synchronised work with all three, just two together and finally Kim solo. Again lots of it was bridleless, but you would hardly have known. James loss is our gain however as Kim is moving to work about 30 minutes from our house so we look forward to seeing her even more than in the past.

Tuesday 6 September 2011

Sideways Towards with Filly

Progress has been made with Filly over the last week. She has not been neglected !
There were several goals that I had with her, sideways towards me being just one of those. I'll write about the others in subsequent postings. Sideways towards is useful for many reasons and on many levels. So far, apart from "draw" on the YoYo all other games involve driving her away from me to some extent. With Filly having a fantastic draw this has not been a problem as the driving away games have at least taught her to respect my space to some extent. But all things need balance and sideways towards creates some of that equilibrium. In addition of course sideways towards is useful in purely practical ways, such as lining her up to load on a trailer.
Get her to hind quarter yield towards me was achieved a long time ago when I was teaching her to present herself for mounting next to a mounting block. Now I wanted to take this a step further with the forequarters also stepping towards me and progressing on me backing away as she continues to side pass towards me.
To get the fore quarter yield whilst online is of course easy, just a light pressure on the halter. At the same time I ask for the hind quarters to follow by using the carrot stick in phases. To start I just hold the stick horizontally over her hind quarters, then I rythmically move it up and down, then allow it to rhymically bounce on the far side of her hind quarters, then firmer as necessary. As always I started by looking for the slightest try of a weight shift in the required direction and stopping the stimulation immediately it occurred. Slowly asking for more it was not long before I could get a leg to step towards me. Timing this with pressure on the halter we had a step sideways towards. Using the principle of successive approximation this slowly increased to 2 steps, then 3 etc. Last night we achieved around 4 steps with the added pressure of being in a field full of lush grass which kept attracting her attention.
One tip is tieing a plastic bag to the end of the stick. This provides a big visual stimulus for her to yield from. In addition I could tickle her with it as an additional phase rather than immediately using the stick itself.
All in all it took about 3 short sessions for her to get the idea, not without a few fast hind legs kicks at the pressure from the stick. She has always hated the idea of having her hind legs directed and this proved to be no exception.

Monday 5 September 2011

Trailer Loading Bonitao

Sorry for the delayed updates, but things have been a bit busy. Physio for my hip injury soaks up a fair amount of the day, but it is going very well.
I have been having great fun trailer loading both Filly and Bonitao. Now we have our own trailer this can now be done with some consistency which has allowed real progress to be made.
Bonitao proved to be particularly challenging. It was actually relatively easy to get him to load into the trailer, but getting him to remain there long enough to put the bum bar across and tie him up took a long time. I admit I was slow in diagnosing the problem. Standing in the trailer was fine as long as I did not approach the interior myself. So the issue turned out to be the presence of a predator in the cave on wheels, not the cave itself. Loading him whilst I remained on the outside of the trailer, the usual Parelli way could not fix this problem, time to switch games from circling and driving games to the YoYo game.
I switched position from standing on the ramp to standing in the trailer itself and then using the draw to request his presence in the trailer. This relied strongly on timing and rewarding the "slightest try" by relaxing the pressure. The slightest try could be as small as a small weight shift in my direction. Slowly I upped the definition of slightest try. The movement of a hoof, foot on the ramp, all four feet on the ramp, foot in the trailer etc. Between each try he was rewarded with being allowed to back out of the trailer. If he fought against the request the response was to out persist him in his evasion attempt and use the carrot stick and string to make the wrong response uncomfortable. This could just be picking up the stick and swinging it, all the way up to tagging him with the string on the zone I wished to influence. Again timing is crucial to the extent that if he should give a try when I am in mid swing I can convert the tagging by the string into a friendly stroke.
Influencing his motion was of course only part of the solution, the other part was to gain his trust in me whilst I was stood in the trailer. One of the quickest ways to Bonitaos heart is through food. Using food in this way has to be done with care so that it acts as a reward, not a bribe. In particular I kept the food out of sight and only produced it when I had achieved a correct response, or he had shown a "try" in trusting me. As a method this really worked well, and soon he was standing all the way in the trailer and munching on an apple, carrot or pony nut. To prove to him that this was about the YoYo game and not the trailer itself I also regularly used the driving game or porcupine game to back him out of the trailer without merely trapping him inside. I tried to time this backup so that it was my idea for him to leave the trailer and not his. Having backed him out I made sure that his rest out of the trailer was much shorter than his rest in the trailer, again a way of rewarding him for remaining with me. Of course this exactly how you would approach playing the YoYo game with a horse with better drive than draw.
This highlights the use of Parelli games. I feel too many folk just play the seven games with their horse without a purpose. That is fine whilst the games are being learnt, but there real value is in being able to use the games to succeed in a particular task. If the games are just being played at a level 1 competence for long periods of time without there being a purpose behind them they can rapidly become the seven tortures for the horse. After all the seven games are just the ABCs of a language and I am sure you would have found it boring and de-motivating if your secondary school teacher had still been using the ABC chart instead of using the language to study more advanced and interesting topics.
What was the result of all this playing. Well the first time Ritchie tried to trailer load him she stuck to the task and her principles for 5 hours ! The first time I tried it took 3 hours, the second 1 hour and yesterday about 15 minutes.
The ultimate goal is to get him to trailer load first try at Liberty. In fact an even higher goal as suggested by Linda Parelli in a DVD is that if you happen to pass the trailer the horse should ask you if you want him to load or not. THEN I think you really have not only trailer loading sorted out but you also have a fantastic rapport with the horse.