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 !
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 !
No comments:
Post a Comment