A chilled Filly

Saturday 18 June 2011

A little bit of Liberty

I had another chance to play with Filly yesterday. We started with the usual circling game, still trying to make them round. She is getting much better at this but still comes in a little bit behind me. In general, however, there has been a huge improvement since I was able bodied. Interesting eh !? I have spent nearly a year trying to get round circles whilst standing, and failing. Sit me in a chair, really having to work at my body language, and most importantly having a really good neutral pose and she improves in a few weeks.
I think this is due to several seperate components. 1) my neutral is much much better (I just slump in my chair) and thus it is clearer to Filly when she is doing the right thing so she learns more rapidly what the right thing is. 2) I have really worked hard on directing my energy at particular zones. For example to drive her out onto the circle I am getting much more accurate at directing the energy at zone 2 or 3. (Occasionally zone 1 if she has come a long way in). Thus my directional corrections have become much clearer to her.
This has actually increased the rapport between us as she finds my leadership less scattered and confusing, thus she has become a more willing interested partner.
To help even further with this I added in another exercise. A pole was placed with its' end pointing towards me and about 6 feet away. We then played at going sideways away from me using the pole as a guide. From the seated position this took some practice on my part getting the energy focussed alternately in zone 1 and zone 4 to yield the front away then the back. After a frustrating 5 minutes we finally got it sorted out and had several nice sideways passes along the pole. In fact I turned it into a modified figure 8 pattern to give it purpose. Starting at the near end of the pole go sideways to the far end, then circle in front of me to face in the opposite direction at the near end of the pole, sideways again to the far end and repeat. A real challenge and good fun.
As a side note to this it demonstrates that the seven games and the various patterns are only classes of games and patterns. There are hundreds of variations on sideways and likewise hundreds of figure 8 patterns that can be used. The trick is to use your imagination to make up new patterns and games within a class and combine them to get the training objective achieved.
Towards the end of the session I decided to take a small chance and try Filly at liberty from the chair, something I had not tried before with her. Removing the rope she ran towards the school gate but Ritchie was there to send her away. Thus comfort was not to be found at the gate ! After this one attempt she focussed on me and we had some really good fun with circling at trot and canter, with some exuberant changes of direction at canter. We even managed figure 8 pattern around some cones at trot. At the end she came and stood next to me nuzzling my hair. I have to say it went way better than I expected and the look on her face and her shear exuberance was a joy to watch. But even during the exuberance she was concentrating on me and did not miss a signal, reacting faster than she does online.
Whilst the injury is a pain in many ways, I still feel that in the end it has probably helped jump my horsemanship up another notch. I hope I have the discipline to keep it going when I can walk properly again, but then there is nothing stopping me sitting down in a chair to recapture the same feeling. I suspect that a garden chair my become an essential part of my horsemanship equipment.
Ritchie and I are going to James Roberts  for a course with Bonitao for 2 weeks starting tomorrow. Me to watch and Ritchie to ride. I'll blog what I can whilst there, but I am not sure what the internet connection will be like. Normal service will resume around the 3rd July.
Wish I could take Filly, I think I'll miss my little friend !

Friday 17 June 2011

Filly the retreiver

I had time for a very quick play session with Filly a few days ago. As usual I was sat in my chair in the middle of the school and we played on a 22 foot rope. The main theme again was circling. I am really working on trying to get the circles circular. As Ritchie always says she does beautiful Easter eggs, maintaining gait and her own direction.
To make them more circular I have been working on the sideways driving games so that as she edges in on the circle I have the language to say "please get back on the circle". I light flick with the stick and string towards her shoulder usually does the trick. Of course this is done in phases. Phase one is a stern look as I give in the yoyo game. Phase 2 is lift the stick off the ground, phase 3 start to bring the stick over my head, phase 4 aim the string at her shoulder. If she had come so far in on the circle the string could tag her off course, thus if she made a large error in her direction there was a phase 5.
After a few sessions of this she is beginning to repsond to phase 1 sometimes and always to phase 4.
I really made a point of making a game out of this for her. Ideally she wanted me to just remain slumped in my chair in neutral. This is one of the differences to lunging. In the circling game we do not micro manage her gait and direction, we let her make mistakes and correct them. Her puzzle was to work out what she needed to do to stop me from picking up the stick and flapping it at her.
Circling may sound boring for the horse, and micro managed circling undoutably is. You could see from her expression that this for really engaged her brain. Her ears were pricked and attentive and when I asked for a hind quarter disengagement it was quick and accurate with the slightest instruction.
I also had a single cone out on the circle in front of me to act as a "question box" for changing gait. As we know Filly loves cones ! Everytime she stopped at it she had to pick it up, chew it etc. Ritchie was watching from the door chatting to one of the other yard members. She joked that it would be good if Filly could pick up the cone and bring it to me. Two minutes later Filly did just that.From 20 feet away she grabbed the base of the cone in her teeth, walked over and waited until I had it in my hands before letting go, with a very smug look on her face. As Ritchie said the challenge now is to get her to do it on command !
Finally news about Billy. He is doing well, the swelling on his legs is going down, but he is getting very bored in his box and his mischievous side is coming out !! 

Saturday 11 June 2011

Filly gives horsemanship lesson. Billy gives anatomy lessons.

It's been a few days since the last blog, but that does not mean nothing has been happening. Quite the reverse.
Filly gave the perfect lesson to one of the stable girls, "W", a couple of days ago. We started with some more zone 3 driving which went so well I decided it was time to teach the "Catch me game". I felt this might help W in her day to day work of bringing the horses in. Some horses can be difficult to catch using traditional techniques.
Filly knows this game, but W doesn't. The psychology behind it is simple really. Let the horse off the halter in a reasonable sized arena and observe it's behaviour. If it moves away or ignores you, make a game out of it, start stalking it like a predator aiming to tag it with the carrot stick and string on it's rump. So look menacing like a cat, bend forward, stare at the hind quarters and stalk. However if the horse pays any attention to you at all, like pointing an ear or eye towards you, straighten up turn away by the shortest direction and walk away casually. This makes use of the Psychology of Causing the Wrong action/behaviour difficult and uncomfortable (moving away from person) and the right thing easy and comfortable (moving towards to be with the person). Use peripheral vision to keep an eye on the horse, or a helper to give you information. As soon as the horse stops paying attention circle around to stalk the hind quarters again. Getting a tap with the stick/string is the aim, but reading the horse and turning away at the right moment is the skill.
Gradually ask for more than just the attention of an ear, wait for both eyes before turning away. Then wait for a step towards you and so on. This again is the principle of successive approximation. We want the horse to follow us "at heel" around the school, but we start with just an ear.
Anyway Filly was a wonderful teacher. She did not wait for W to get the timing or stalking perfect, but required her to show sufficient skill that Filly could give her the reward without feeling too generous. Soon they were trotting round the school together with a proper bond. Even Liberty circling game went well, and remember this was Ws 4th or 5th go at playing using the principles of natural horsemanship. She texted us the next day to say that with no prompting Filly had followed her across her field as she went to clean the water troughs. Don't forget principle number 7 "Humans teach horses and horses teach humans".
Now to a more serious topic, the anatomy lesson. Billy somehow got trapped in wire 2 days ago. He managed to seriously injure both back legs. One had a 6 inch by 2 inch flap of skin hanging down and the other had a nasty looking slice into the fetlock joint. The slice whilst visually smaller was the more worrying as it could have let an infection into the joint, which would have been very very serious indeed. Obviously the vet was called and we were lucky to get one of the best equine vets in the area turn up. An inspection showed that he had not damaged his extensor tendon. The vet injected fluid into the side of the fetlock joint to see if any liquid was forced out of the wound indicating a puncture of the joint. To our relief none appeared. Lots and lots of stitches later things looked better and a large bandage was applied to both legs. Yesterday he was reluctant to move his hind legs at all to the extent that he would not walk to his hay net. The vet arrived to change the dressing and inject some more antibiotics. They made him walk outside and once moving he walked with virtually no lameness. I think the reluctance to move was just a loss of confidence in being able to. Something I can relate to with my hip injury. Lots of TLC given to Billy surely helped to him acting and feeling a lot brighter later on. Today he was moving much better, but has been given so many treats he is tending to mug anyone who passes his stable. We are not out of the woods yet with him, but I feel more confident than I did two days ago.

Thursday 9 June 2011

Filly becomes a film star

Not so much to say today as most of the session, which was very short, was filmed. At the risk of all my mistakes being pointed out to me in the comments section I have uploaded the video to youtube. As you will be able to see she was generally very good.
I was particularly happy with the sideways past the pole, and the fact that with only a little zone 2 driving her circles were more or less round. Round circles are a bit tricky for Filly, she is more into Easter eggs !
She just got a bit pushy towards the end when I was placing her hoof, hence my response. I maybe over responded a bit, but you do feel a little vulnerable when sat in a chair with a broken hip. No harm done though as after the video she stayed quietly breathing into my nose for several minutes !


Sunday 5 June 2011

Playing with Billy at last

After the success with Filly and Bonitao I decided it was time to play with Billy. Being a large horse with less training experience I had wanted to see how effective I was with the other two before committing to playing with the big lad.
I needn't have worried, he was incredibly good. If anything easier than Filly and so eager to please. Simple games today much as I have with Filly recently.
We started with the touching game with cones. This is a simple task but allows the use of all the porcupine and driving games at the same time and most importantly gives those driving and porcupine games a purpose. The purpose in this case was to YoYo Billy back to a cone and then use driving with the carrot stick and string, or porcupine with rope pressure to get his nose over the cone. Usually they then become curious about the cone and touch it with their nose which is the purpose of the game. To be honest it took Billy a while to figure this out. Then he got a nice long rest as a reward.
Of course this game is not about the cone at all, it is about giving purpose to the various driving games that I needed to employ to get him to touch the cone. It is about building communication with Billy to explain what it is I want him to do where the porcupine and driving aids are the letters and words in the conversation. Just driving him aimlessly around with no purpose would be like shouting random words at him and expecting him to learn and respond to them.
From the touch it game we moved onto some gentle circling, again using the cone as a focal point. As with Filly the other day the cone was used as the place to stop on each circle, and touch if he wished. Slowly you could see it dawning on him that the cone was the place to ask questions as to what I wanted next. This all went so calmly that I decided not to do too long a session. I wanted to finish whilst he was still eager to do more.
The last minutes were spent just being together quietly. The photos show what I mean. He was, like Filly, so gentle that it felt like a very special time and a real strengthening of the bond.




A more difficult Filly

I have only had time to play with Filly once in the last few days. Doctors appointments, weddings and the arrival of my new glider has kept us very busy.
As usual we played in the indoor school. Ritchie played first doing all the usual circling, sideways and YoYo, plus letting have the all important roll. Ritchie asserted some dominance over her by making her work first and then rewarding her with the roll. She was clearly not happy with this turn of events, but it did demonstrate that Ritchie had 51% of the partnership and Filly 49%. In practical terms this meant that she acknowledged Filly's desire to roll but it would be done on Ritchie's timeline not at Filly's immediate demand.
After the roll it was time for me to play, again sat in my chair. I am still have trouble with the backup part of YoYo and again had to go to phase 4 to get respect. That said phase 1 or 2 was all that was required thereafter. We worked on sideways over cones again at a distance of about 15 feet. Eventually I want to work up to sideways circles, but for now the cones give a purpose and focus to the exercise both for me and Filly. At present we are successfully passing over one cone so the next step is to place more cones on the arc of the circle and pass over all of them.
We then moved onto more circling game with gait transitions, mostly trot to halt. I know this may seem a rather simple exercise for a horse and human with an 18 month relationship, but to some degree we are having to revisit the basics given my confinement to a chair. The cones came into play again as I was after precision stops with her front legs next to a cone. Should she be late on the stop she got firmly backed up to the cone and then given a long rest to think about it. Improvement was slow but measurable.
One note of importance is that if you are playing sat in a chair do not let the excess rope fall on the floor as one would normally do when standing. It can wrap around the chair resulting in a right mess or worse if the horse panicked and pulled back hard.
I have noticed that playing sat down has much improved my ability to allow the rope to slide through my hand and slowly increase the pressure should she be pulling on it. This in turn has lead to much better circles as she is being gently corrected on the exact size and direction of the circle rather than being rather rudely snatched at as my hand closes too fast. Another upside to my current condition, I only hope I remember all these lessons when I can stand again. I will try to make a point of training whilst sitting occasionally in the future. Come to think of it standing on one leg would be an even more extreme test of the ability to stay still, add pressure slowly and release quickly. I'll leave that for my readers to try for the next month or so until I am fitter !!