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 !
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 !
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