We had another lesson with Larisa today. As usual she quickly isolated where my problems lay and then set up specific exercises to improve things.
As I have mentioned before I have had trouble getting Filly to maintain trot around a figure eight. I have tried all sorts of things to improve the issue, boomerang pattern, maintain gait on a circle, weave pattern to name but a few.
I had noted that Filly gave a really sour look as I asked her to change direction at trot but was unsure as to whether this was due to dominance or unconfidence. I had been working to start with on the assumption it was unconfidence. After all I had a 50 50 chance of being right and if I guessed dominance and was wrong the exercises to make her less dominant could really have damaged the rapport with an unconfident horse.
But this was not working. Larisa had me start with the falling leaf pattern. This involves walking in a straight line forwards and asking the horse to perform half circles in front of me as I move. I am therefore continually moving into her space and she has to move to get away from me. Sure enough she showed the sour face at each change of direction, but Larisa noted that she was not very quick at yielding her shoulder away from me and was pushing on my personal bubble. Horses in a herd will often push on each other with their shoulders to demonstrate dominance, especially if their ears are back at the same time. The solution was to continue doing many falling leaf patterns and "tag" her with the string on my carrot stick if she made to push on my space with her shoulder. I was therefore looking for snappy forequarter yields away from me as she came through the turn and a non-agressive look on her face. Lots to take in whilst you are handling stick and rope, walking forwards, asking for changes of direction etc. After many passes up and down the school we started to get the quick yield and she was rewarded with a rest for that. As we progressed I got more particular that not only did the yield have to be good, but the expression as well. Not something to be fixed in a day but we made good progress.
We then moved onto improving the energy she puts into drawing towards me when asked. This is again to improve the maintain gait during figures of 8. Larisa had me circle her around and then run backwards down the school, applying pressure on the lead rope and using the stick and string to tag her on the side until she mode effort to follow me. If she failed to apply effort, or came to me with a sour look I then had to send her back on the circle. If she did put effort into coming to me with a good look then she got a nice long rest by my side.
At the start of this exercise she was really resisting on the rope and I was having to apply quite a lot of pressure, whilst running backwards and tagging her with the string. We worked at this for a while with only small improvements. Suddenly she got the idea and with me pulling on the rope she suddenly broke into canter towards me. Caught of guard and with all the rope tension released the result was inevitable. I landed flat on my back and, according to Larisa, bounced once before coming to a stop whilst Filly overshot me and came back around with her ears pricked, eyes glinting and head tilted to one side as she examined me from an unfamiliar angle. I am sure the answer to the blog title is "yes they can" !!
As I have mentioned before I have had trouble getting Filly to maintain trot around a figure eight. I have tried all sorts of things to improve the issue, boomerang pattern, maintain gait on a circle, weave pattern to name but a few.
I had noted that Filly gave a really sour look as I asked her to change direction at trot but was unsure as to whether this was due to dominance or unconfidence. I had been working to start with on the assumption it was unconfidence. After all I had a 50 50 chance of being right and if I guessed dominance and was wrong the exercises to make her less dominant could really have damaged the rapport with an unconfident horse.
But this was not working. Larisa had me start with the falling leaf pattern. This involves walking in a straight line forwards and asking the horse to perform half circles in front of me as I move. I am therefore continually moving into her space and she has to move to get away from me. Sure enough she showed the sour face at each change of direction, but Larisa noted that she was not very quick at yielding her shoulder away from me and was pushing on my personal bubble. Horses in a herd will often push on each other with their shoulders to demonstrate dominance, especially if their ears are back at the same time. The solution was to continue doing many falling leaf patterns and "tag" her with the string on my carrot stick if she made to push on my space with her shoulder. I was therefore looking for snappy forequarter yields away from me as she came through the turn and a non-agressive look on her face. Lots to take in whilst you are handling stick and rope, walking forwards, asking for changes of direction etc. After many passes up and down the school we started to get the quick yield and she was rewarded with a rest for that. As we progressed I got more particular that not only did the yield have to be good, but the expression as well. Not something to be fixed in a day but we made good progress.
We then moved onto improving the energy she puts into drawing towards me when asked. This is again to improve the maintain gait during figures of 8. Larisa had me circle her around and then run backwards down the school, applying pressure on the lead rope and using the stick and string to tag her on the side until she mode effort to follow me. If she failed to apply effort, or came to me with a sour look I then had to send her back on the circle. If she did put effort into coming to me with a good look then she got a nice long rest by my side.
At the start of this exercise she was really resisting on the rope and I was having to apply quite a lot of pressure, whilst running backwards and tagging her with the string. We worked at this for a while with only small improvements. Suddenly she got the idea and with me pulling on the rope she suddenly broke into canter towards me. Caught of guard and with all the rope tension released the result was inevitable. I landed flat on my back and, according to Larisa, bounced once before coming to a stop whilst Filly overshot me and came back around with her ears pricked, eyes glinting and head tilted to one side as she examined me from an unfamiliar angle. I am sure the answer to the blog title is "yes they can" !!
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