The result

I went down to the yard this morning to turn Bonitao out. I decided to do nothing special, just turn him out as anyone else would. I wanted to see what he would do after spending a night in his box (one theory is that he gets hungry and wants to get to grass quickly), and was just handled in a normal way.
So all I did was quickly change his rug, put his halter on and head off to the field. I guess the only thing I did differently to the yard girls was walk with authority.
I have noticed that because they are expecting him to run off they are a little tentative and rightly nervous of what he might do next. This uncertainty in their body language leads Bonitao to believe that he does not have a good leader in them. He is the type of horse that needs a good leader to feel safe, lacking one he gets nervous and takes the leadership into his own hoofs. He then does what he feels is needed to keep himself safe and gets from one safe place, the stable, to the next, the field, as quickly as possible.
But by walking purposefully I can give him that feeling of leadership and he happily plodded alongside me to the field with no suggestion that he was about to take off. In fact I walked so purposefully that he had to trot occasionally to keep up.
Adding energy to the situation is not something most folks would consider doing, but this is directed leadership energy which actually has a calming effect on a horse such as Bonitao. For other horses this would be the wrong thing to do, so one has to read the situation as it comes up and adapt accordingly.

Recovery

Recovery from what ? According to Ritchie I may have had actual flu, not man-flu. Not pleasant and therefore no horse play for a while. Recovering now so a gentle day with the horses was called for I thought.

Then came the text message. Bonitao had barged past Amy, out of the stable and into a field, where they could not catch him. He has run off before, but never from within the stable so this was a new development.
Once I had finished my coffee I set off to the yard to sort things out a bit. A quick chat with Amy to make sure she was OK and it was off to catch Bonitao.
If a horse could ever look guilty, it was Bonitao. As soon as I entered the field he started walking tentatively towards me, but stopped 10 feet away. I kept lowish energy but circled around towards his hind quarters forcing him to turn and watch me. When he did I let all my energy out and waited.
I did NOT want to catch Bonitao, I wanted him to catch me. We played this cat and mouse game for a while and then suddenly he was on my shoulder mirroring my every move. I did many turns away from him, asking him to keep up, to improve his flexion towards me and his draw towards me. I did a few turns towards him to generate respect for my space but moving my space into his.
Once this was acceptable I attached the rope halter and lead him back to his box. He followed very calmly and quietly with slack in the rope.
I now wanted to address the issue of the stable door, so started by playing "YoYo" game through the entrance. This consisted of backing him into the stable and then drawing him back out one hoof at a time. We then did the same the other way around, so backing out of the stable and drawing him back in, again one hoof at a time. I wanted to expose him to calmness whilst in the doorway as much as possible.
Once this was good we then moved onto standing in the doorway and asking him to lower his head. This puts him in a very relaxed, but submissive, posture. I asked for the head to remain low for significant periods of time to really reinforce the relaxation in the doorway.
Once I was sure he was happy with the doorway on his own I deliberately stood in the doorway and asked him to come past me into the stable, then turn and face the gap he had passed through. A classic squeeze game. This was repeated many times in and out of the stable with me standing on either side of the gap. Finally I was convinced that he was totally happy and relaxed in the stable, the passageway and the doorway.
I then started on checking out his leading to and from the field. I think a mistake folks make is that they lead a horse like this tentatively which makes them feel like they have no leader. For a right brain horse like Bonitao this makes him worried and he takes the leadership upon himself. Therefore I lead him with authority. We are going Somewhere and if he has to trot to keep up that is his problem. We did this several times to and from the field, with the odd stop and back up to check responsiveness and the odd grazing break.
All went well so I put him out in the field and came home to lunch.

Ridden Sideways

Another fun ride yesterday. All the usual prepare to ride was carried out. A little trouble with standstill for saddling. She moved at least two steps, but it starts like that and then you get three, then four, then "where did my standstill go?".
So I was particular and insisted on a good standstill for the saddling.

Once on board it was obvious that my recent work on forwards at walk on the ground was paying off. She was much more forward and hence much better at inside leg isolations.

Up into trot and the old tossing the head problem came up. Worse than before if anything, but by being persistent in getting her to move her feet around alot (small circles, weave, figure of 8 etc) she soon settled enough that I could reward her with a long rest.

Now I had good leg isolations I wanted to put them to a purpose. As the cones were out for doing figure 8 pattern I decided that sideways over them was a good purpose. It came pretty easy for right to left over the cone, but we had trouble left to right. This seemed to be unconfidence rather than uncooperative and there is no need to fix things like that in the saddle. So todays prepare to rise will include sideways over a cone in both directions using driving game first to get the confidence up, then porcupine game to get the obedience.

Another good example of using the Plan constructively and going back a step when needed to fix a problem rather than just always ploughing on forwards.

Back to ground work

The last two days I have concentrated on playing on line rather than riding. The riding had highlighted the fact that Filly was not upholding her responsibilities of

Acting like a partner was actually not bad so needed little tweaking. 
Maintain gait
Maintain direction
Look where you are going.

Maintain gait was ok ish. But I found that I did have to regularly remind her to keep trotting at all when trotting, and remind her to maintain a forward walk when walking. This means that I am having to use my leg more than I would like and risk getting her dead to the leg if I carried on. This was thus better fixed on the ground.
Maintain direction was sort of all right, especially once I had got her thinking forwards, but with all the head tossing at trot thinking forwards was not what she was doing.
Look where you are going was frankly awful. She even tried to trot straight into a fence and I had to turn her at the last second. Going over poles was sort of ok, but we did knock the jump wing over once. Again it was an issue caused by the head tossing. With her head moving that fast there was no chance that she could focus properly and see objects in the way.

This was all getting better when riding, but I felt I could make faster progress on the ground with the circling game. After all this is a game designed to teach the horse its' responsibilities so why not use it ?

We played in the indoor school, the weather being pretty bad outside. I set up poles around a circle so that when she was around 12 feet from me she would cross the middle of the pole. Then we started to circle. To start with she hit the poles almost everytime with her feet and was getting mighty upset about it. At one point she got so annoyed she bolted into canter, but I kept her on the circle. At canter she did not hit a single pole, interesting.

Back to trot. She then started to avoid the pole at trot by ducking to the inside of the circle or pulling out to go around the poles. I guess many people would have been annoyed by this, but for me it was progress. She was now seeing the pole and making a decision to avoid it. I let her do this for a while, but of course it was sort of breaking the maintain direction responsibility. Once I was sure she was seeing the poles I then asked her more firmly to maintain direction and actually cross them. The hitting of the poles became less frequent. To start I would reward her with a rest if she managed to cross a single pole without touching it, then a reward for crossing 2 poles and so on. Eventually we were getting all three poles crossed with maybe a light brush.

The second day was a repeat of day one except that I raised the poles with jump wings on their outer ends only by around 4 inches. Not much but it gave her a more painful consequence if she did not concentrate on her feet and hit them.

Of course I worked on other stuff each session as well, such as the ever popular hind quarter porcupine, but the essence of the session was her responsibilities on the circle. I think we made progress and I will do something similar on my next prepare to ride.

What I like about the Parelli system is that it always gives you clues as to what needs fixing if you hit an obstruction in your progress, and there is no disgrace in going back to previous sections to fix the problem. This I think differs from other systems. I am sure that many would have just plugged on with the riding to fix the problem, but that would have risked making the riding aids dull as I would have had to nag her to get through the issue.

In the long run going backwards is sometimes the fastest way to make progress

Quick update

Since my last post we have been making good progress. Sean came over to give us a lesson fresh from working in Pat Parellis' barn in Colorado. Filly has been out hacking again, and we inadvertently did our first jump !

First Seans lesson

This was on a cool morning, and Filly was a little upset that she had not been turned out. She got really upset when she saw her field mate passing the menage on the way to the field. Left brain extrovert Sean said, and at this time he was right. She was extroverted in the extreme, bouncing around on the end of my 12 foot line. I did not even have a chance to pick up a carrot stick so just used the end of the rope instead. "Good technique" Sean said, "but get her mind more engaged with obstacles".
Once she was settled the normal prepare to ride ensued which went very well, so with my nerves back under firm control I mounted up.
The major issue was still the head tossing when trotting, which today was extreme. To the point she could not even look where she was going and kept running into things, like cones, the fence !!
Sean suggested that I help her throw her head around, not fight it. Make a game of it and then play it more than she wanted to. So there I was trotting around with my arms flailing all over the place as I encouraged her in the head tossing. God knows what the other folks on the yard thought. Probably nothing as they have long ago dismissed us as a bit strange.
After a time this started to work and the head tossing lessened. The trick now was to time exactly when she stopped head tossing and relaxed and then reward her with a long rest. Getting the timing right was exacting work, but kept me really focussed on my riding.
By the end we had settled on a combination of tactics to overcome this issue. The join in tactic, the ignore it tactic and the extreme random turns tactic to get her to think to her feet. This was my homework for the next few rides.
Sean also rode her for a while, working on the head problem and also getting her softer in the halter. At the end he reckoned that Filly is among the top 3 most challenging horses he has ever had to deal with, which given his experience is saying something. He also said he though Filly and I were well suited. Not sure how to take that !

Yesterday we had a lovely ride in the ménage. Much quieter than when Sean was there. I set up more obstacles and a small trotting pole to keep Filly thinking about her feet and not her head. This worked well, except the first time over this low pole, about 6 inches high, she jumped which was a surprise as she had trotted happily over it online in prepare to ride. I also added in a little clicker training. So when she was trotting calmly I just cluck with my tongue to reward the good behaviour and she immediately stops and gets a treat. This is going to surprise any normal rider who would probably expect clucking to mean go on. Oh well !

Today was one of the best rides to date. Long periods of trotting with no head tossing at all. Lots of really responsive inside leg isolations once I had got her forwards at trot. And then a short hack out along the local roads. It was very very foggy and about -1c. But with Bonitao for company she kept her worries under control and we had a fairly uneventful hack. She was worried when a man with a walking stick loomed out of the mist, but that was soon cured by getting him to feed her some treats. Then she seemed upset when he left ! One thing about Filly is she learns very fast. Once something is proved not to be dangerous she either ignores it or tries to eat it. Just what you want in a hacking horse really.

Comfort, discomfort and the training of horses.

This is a topic that I have recently been thinking long and hard about, and have come up with a theory I would like others to comment on. It's probably not new but I have developed it using a combination of the teachings of Mark Rashid and Karen Rohlf.
Mark talks about horse's main task in life is to feel more comfortable. They don't care how they get to feel more comfortable, just that they do. For example if they are thirsty they go to water and get comfort. If they are scared they do whatever it takes, runaway, buck (right brain extrovert) or go inside themselves and pretend the threat does not exist (right brain introvert) to make themselves feel better. In this context it does not matter if they feel as well as it is possible for them to feel just that they feel a bit better than right now. When you think about this it is easy behaviour to recognise, and we probably have a similar response ourselves. The difference with humans is that we have the ability to project a long way forward in time, which horses don't. They live in the moment. Thus we can experience discomfort for a long period to get to real comfort in the future whereas horses just want to feel better now. As I write this I am sat in a cosy cottage in the mountains of Snowdownia. Ritchie and I have just come off the mountains in pouring rain. We did pass some shelter stones that would have got us out of the rain, but we could project forwards to the cottage and so ignored the small increase in comfort of the stones in favour of a warm dry cottage and glass of wine. I suspect that a horse's mentality would have lead them to just take shelter under the stones and feel a little more comfortable.
Karen Rohlf has this idea that we need to coach our horses through discomfort to find greater comfort elsewhere. In this example it would mean saying to the horse "let's ignore the shelter stone and continue to the barn an hour away where you can spend the whole night in comfort with some hay". As we pass the shelter stone the horse will experience increased emotional discomfort as they wonder why we are not taking such obvious and immediate shelter. Karen actually does not use this example, I doubt she mountain climbs in the rain ! She uses the example of trying to get your horse to go in a straight line. Many horses have learnt to walk crooked, and for them that is comfortable. They would be more comfortable in the long term, however, if they learnt to walk straight. In the short term this is not going to be comfortable as it is not familiar and the muscles have probably developed to walk crooked. Thus as trainers we need to coach them through this discomfort because we can project forward and know that in the long term we are taking them to a place of greater comfort. The same can be said about training the horse to be collected. We have the knowledge that,once learnt, the horse will find it more comfortable to carry the weight of a rider when collected with more of their weight on the hind quarters. The horse doesn't know this, and will only experience the fact that in the training phase what we are asking them to do is less comfortable then the way they are familiar with going. Thus given Marks idea that all a horse seeks is to be relatively more comfortable than now it is easy to see why they will resist such training.
To make use of this idea we need two things. First we need a very clear picture of what the finished, more comfortable, product should look like and second we need strength of purpose and resolve to follow through with the training with the clear idea that we are "doing this for and with the horse, not too the horse". In James Roberts eyes one of the great crimes was to ever do anything to the horse, it must be done with and for the horse. Thus if we do not have a pretty clear idea as to what the finished product is going to be we should not put the horse through the discomfort of taking them there.
I have an example from my own current training with Filly. She is my 4 year old thoroughbred mare and is called "Filly". The problem is the application of porcupine (which is Parelli speak for steady pressure) to any part of her body to ask her to move it away from the pressure. Thus if I want to move the hindquarters away I apply steady pressure, increasing in force, to her flank area. I know that this is not physically a problem for her as she likes much firmer scratches there than I ever use in porcupine. She will escape this pressure and move those hindquarters away but it is done with a really negative emotion, tail swishing, cow kicking the lot. It is the emotional pressure of being asked to move which is the issue, not the physical. So emotionally having the porcupine applied creates a lot of discomfort in her mind, and she reduces this discomfort by a) escaping the pressure with a big move and b) acting so as to discourage any attempts to porcupine her again. She thus falls back into the little comfort zone where there is no porcupine pressure being applied. However she still has the fear of porcupine and discomfort being applied again in the future. I have knowledge of the finished product from other horses however. In the finished product the horses yield gently from this pressure with no mental discomfort at all and are thus not continuously stressed by the fact that this discomfort may happen in the future. The cumulative stress on this "finished product" horse is much less than on Filly as they can accept the necessary requests to yield that humans make of them on a day to day basis without the emotional discomfort she endures . But the only way I can show Filly that a better place exists is to apply porcupine pressure to her until she accepts it as just another part of her life, nothing to be defensive or upset about, just something that happens from time to time. But during the application of the pressure she is going to react with discomfort for a while until it has happened for long enough that she starts to understand that it's ok to move without emotion. Of course should the pressure be removed at an inopportune moment then she is going to get back to her old comfortable place and the idea that acting against the pressure works is going to be reinforced. This is going to make the training task harder as the hill of discomfort is going to become bigger and bigger each time it is reinforced with a release.
Having studied engineering at university I find it pretty easy to think in terms of graphs and diagrams. Believe it or not a graph from differential calculus sprung to mind as a good, if not perfect, representation of this idea, and I add it at the bottom of this page for nerds like me.
I'd be interested to hear folks views on this idea, whether it is totally nuts or just needs modifying or expanding.

James Roberts Funeral

Ritchie and I went to James' funeral yesterday. It was a very sad, but not sombre day.
The weather was fantastic, hardly a breath of wind and clear skies, if a bit chilly.
We started at the James Roberts Foundation Station where his coffin was placed in a horse drawn hearse with his hat and saddle draped over the coffin. His fiancee, Vicky, was there behind the hearse on James' horse Princess. A horse he loved to bits. Bravely he used to say, in front of Vicky, "I think more of this horse than my fiancée". She would just smile sweetly and get her own back later . James' brother was also in the cortège riding Becks, his show jumping horse. I noticed that even for this occasion they stuck to James principles and did a prepare to ride with the horses before mounting.
They made two rounds of the yard and then set off on the forty minute walk to the church. We all followed. And I mean all. There must have been two hundred followers, and as per the request of the family we were all dressed in western gear. Boots, Stetsons, some in chaps and spurs. I am pleased to say we all walked with a forward walk, 110m / minute pace with heads held high, but a few tears. The people in the local village were amazing. Many had dressed up and stood on their porches. The local shops shut and the staff stood outside to pay their respects. He was not just loved by the horse community, but by the whole area.
We made our way, via his house, to the church where all but close family went inside to wait. The church could hold 280 people, but was packed. There were around 100 who had to stay outside and listen via the loud speakers set up.
James was brought in by his closest friends and family with saddle and hat still in place. We sang the hymn "Lord of the Dance" which seemed especially appropriate for me. It really spoke to me that James had started this "dance" and it was for me to continue to follow in his footsteps. Not the religious meaning of the hymn I know, but I can only report its' meaning to me.
We heard Vicky give a lovely speech about James, with hardly a falter. One of the bravest things I have ever witnessed. It was a beautiful speech as well, with only a little sadness in it, it was a celebration of his life. I particularly liked the fact that James used to leap out of bed every morning and do a silly little dance around the bedroom .
We also heard from his brother, and so got details of his behaviour as a child, From what I heard it hadn't changed much. His brother is a huntsmen and played the horn at the end of his speech. A moving moment.
Vickys' brother also spoke. This was about more recent antics and mayhem, and how close he had become to James, thinking of him as a brother.
After the service the coffin was again placed in the horse drawn hearse to be taken to the crematorium. That was my last sight of James, or at least the coffin, and it finally came home to me that he was gone. That came as a real shock and hit me hard.
Ritchie and I decided not to go to the crematorium, feeling that it was a private time for his close family. We headed to the pub instead.
The pub was packed, just moving around was hard work. It had been made clear by Vicky that the day was not to be a sombre occasion, so whilst there were tears there was much laughter as well. In the corner there was a tv set up showing movie clips from his life. Very few about horses, but much about song, laughter, pranks and fun.
So the night went on. Lots of conversations about James, horses, horsemanship, the future.
I think James would have approved. As I have said before he lived by a set of rules and maintained those rules on his yard with his staff, students and friends. Break them and be fined a pound (though I never saw anyone pay )

1) Don't talk about the past. Horses live in the present, so must we
2) Don't say anything negative. Phrases that include: "can't", "won't","don't", "yea but" were not allowed
3) Always know why you are doing something. If you don't, stop.

Not a bad set of rules to live life by really, especially if you want to maximise your potential and enjoyment as James did.

First hack from Manor Farm

It has taken a while coming, largely due to the state of the road outside the farm. They resurfaced it a year ago, but left it so smooth that horses regularly slip on it. When Filly was shod she had road nails put on to help with this, so I now felt confident to take her out the gate. The last thing I wanted is for the first impression she had of hacking out was to slip over.
All the usual prepare to ride steps were taken, with emphasis still on the porcupine yields. They have improved considerably since I last wrote. I now tend to do them as part of the indirect / direct rein manoeuvre. To achieve I walk straight forwards with her on say my right side, I then maintain my ryhthm with my legs but slow down my speed and ask Filly to walk around in front of me. As she does so I lightly press with my fingers well behind the girth to ask for the hind quarter disengagement. As she disengages I walk "through" her hind quarters and use the lead rope to ask the front end to come around. She is now on the other side of me walking forwards as before.
This seems to give a) a purpose and b) a known duration for the yield and as a result she accepts it with less mental brace.
Having mounted her we immediately went for a nice forward walk, she tried to speed up a few times but soon gave up on that idea. We worked on inside leg isolations as usual which are going very very well now.
We did around 5 minutes trotting at one point, again with loads of inside leg isolations. At the end of this she felt to be in a really good place for a short hack.
Ritchie was riding Bonitao in the school and when I suggested a hack she agreed. I managed to get Filly to help me open the gate, which gave purpose to all sorts of little manoeuvres we needed to make.
Once out of the yard I expected Filly to be most comfortable tucked in behind Bonitao so that he could give her confidence. Not a bit of it, she wanted to be in front and to go exploring. Her walk was really forwards and she was thinking forwards the whole time. She got a little worried from time to time, but as I rigidly maintained my focus on where we were going I have no idea what about. She never once spooked, although we did get a few muscle twitches. I was very proud of how she kept herself together emotionally despite all the new sights, noises and smells. Poor Bonitao could barely keep up with her walk and we had to stop a few times. Her sense of exploration really showed itself when we came to a tight bend in the road. I wanted to stop, but she resisted until we were around the corner. Curiosity satisfied we waited for Bonitao to catch up.
All in all a good days riding, which again highlighted the importance of a good focus.

Hind quarter porcupine

I noticed in the stable the other day that Filly did not want to yield her hind quarters when I asked her to move over with my fingers. Did not want to included lashing out with her hind leg, running around me in circles, and generally acting a bit disrespectful.
I felt I needed to fix this for safety of myself and the staff, but also to improve her inside leg isolations when ridden. She cut herself on barbed wire a couple of days ago, not badly but bad enough not to ride for a few days. This then is an ideal opportunity to fix some ground work problems without wasting riding time.
I decided that the confines of a stable were not a good place to deal with a kicking horse so we went to the indoor school.
First a check that it was not a physical discomfort, so I scratched her good and hard in the area I was asking for the porcupine. She didn't like this to start, but gradually seemed to real enjoy it with a curled lip and a look of "please don't stop".
Not physical then, so it must be a mental brace. I like to use my hands for this exercise, although Parelli advocates the use of a carrot stick. The stick does allow you to keep your distance and is probably safer, but with my fingers I could more accurately apply the pressure and also feel for any muscle tenseness in her sides.
As soon as I applied my fingers with an intention to move her she reacted. She did move away from my fingers, but it was an escape not a yield. It was also accompanied with lots of tail swishing and attempts to bite me, blocked by an elbow. Despite the fact she had moved away this would not have been the time to release the pressure, it would teach that this attitude was what was required as well as the movement. Thus I just held the pressure and around and around we went. To be honest I got very giddy, but stopping would have been a huge mistake. I could also feel the muscles under my finger tense into a massive brace. I was intently looking for signs of any relaxation on her part so that I could release, but it felt like an age until it came. Not complete relaxation, just a slight softening of her body, more fluid motion and the tail not actually hitting me.
During this first session she had also thrown in the odd rear as well, which is fun when you have your fingers pressed into her sides :( . By staying close she had no space in which to actually attempt to get me with a leg but it was uncomfortable all the same.
After that first release I went to the driving game with a stick and flag to try and help get the brace out of her body, which did work, but this was the driving game and it was porcupine she was reacting to.
Second round of porcupine and she tried the whole range of evasion to get of the pressure, other than a yield with good attitude. But it took less time to get the attitude I desired and with a sigh of relief I could release again. Of course this whole process was repeated on both sides.
By the end of the session I could give her a good hard friendly game scratch on the porcupine spot then lighten up, add intention and get a yield with half decent attitude, then back to a good hard friendly scratch again.
I guess this was another step in her acceptance of my leadership over her, one of the last I hope, and she was not going to give this precious control up without at least discussing the issue with me. No hard feelings on my part, I would probably have reacted the same. The trade I offered was that nice scratch, followed by a few seconds of control and back to the scratch again. Eventually she decided that as a trade it was not a bad offer and preferable to running round and round in circles :)

Shoeing Filly

It was time to get Filly shod again. She needs special shoeing on the front due to some conformational issues and so I knew it would take a while. Especially so as it was the first time our farrier, Nick, had shod Filly. It seemed that some shoeing preparation was in order.
About forty minutes before Nick arrived I took Filly to the indoor school for the preparation work. She is pretty good with having her hooves handled on a day to day basis, but I wanted to add in some extras for the shoeing.
It is taken as read with our horses that the hooves can be placed on the ground, after picking them out, with the toe down and complete relaxation in the leg. Dropping a hoof to the ground was the one thing that if you were an employee of James Roberts you would be instantly sacked for, it is that important. As he says "if you cannot control where a hoof is going, with no brace, when it is in your hand, what chance do you have in placing the feet where you want when riding and using indirect aids to place them ?" Thus we never ever drop a hoof. I'm not even sure my muscle memory would let me do it anymore. I am pleased to say that the yard staff who look after our horses also don't drop their feet.
However there are other things to prepare. Firstly during shoeing the farrier will put the legs into positions she is not used to, especially forwards and up for the final clenching of the nails and rasping them off. She needs to be just as compliant and un-braced with this movement as the more usual backward flex for picking out.
Not being brave I used a soft thick rope rapped a few times just above her hoof to ask for this the first few times. The front legs were fine, but there was a lot of brace and a few kicks from the hinds. Lucky I used a rope ! All I did was stand in front and lightly pull on the rope to ask the leg to come up and forwards, if she yielded I released by gently lowering her hoof back to the ground. If she resisted then I held the tension until the brace released and she looked relaxed, then lowered the hoof. I also slowly increased the time I held the leg up to get her used to standing in that position for a while. Once this was going well I then transferred to using my hands, which put my body in the same place as the farriers would be. Horses tend not to like predators (us) in their vulnerable spot under their bellys so this was useful for building her confidence.
I also picked the hoof up backwards and simulated the feel and sound of the hammer by knocking on her shoe with the metal clasp of a spare lead rope. Should have taken a small hammer down but forgot.
So after all this how did the shoeing go. Pretty well is the answer. She got a bit bored as it did take over an hour, but a strategically placed hay net helped. She was a bit worried still about having the right hind leg brought forwards, but the farrier was very patient and she soon settled. Given that the last time she was shod at Manor Farm they had to use a twitch (before I owned her), and she was shod once at James Roberts yard with rather more savvy than that I think it was a remarkable improvement. I did discuss the preparation I had done with the farrier. He was very interested and grateful that I had taken the trouble to do this work. In my mind I should present a horse to a helping professional like a farrier, dentist or vet in the best state I can in order for that professional to do his job with minimum risk to himself and also be able to use those skills to the maximum effect to get the job done well. The farrier remarked how few horse owners had my attitude, which I find rather sad.

James Roberts

This is probably one of the hardest posts I've ever had to write. I don't really know where to start.
As many of you may know already James Roberts died in a car crash last night. We were told early this morning and have been in shock ever since. I have thought of all sorts of things to write about James and have decided that I must write in a style he would have approved of. He had rules at his yard which included "You can't say anything negative", "Don't talk about the past", so I'll try and stick to those rules here.
When talking about James it is difficult to find anything negative to say anyway, so that bits easy.
He always tried to encourage me, whatever he privately thought about my ambitions, and had a happy knack of understanding what it was that I needed to hear right now to help me progress as quickly as possible. That is the mark of a true teacher.
He never ever talked down to anyone, and made a point of understanding what point they were in their progress and then impart information in a way that expanded that progress. It would have been easy for him to have baffled me at the start of my time with him but he could put over complicated topics in a way that I could understand, then as my knowledge grew he would explain the same thing but in a more advanced way. Thus it was easy to learn from him, you were never made to feel in awe of him, just that he was a little ahead of you all the time. That is a very encouraging teaching style.
Before I started going to James I really did not understand Natural Horsemanship at all. I had seen the DVDs and had a few lessons, but it was only watching James play with young colts and putting all those techniques and principles to work that I could start to glimpse the whole picture that the little jig-saw pieces I had fitted into. He emphasised so strongly that techniques were not the corner stone of Natural Horsemanship, the principles were. The number of different ways I have seen him start colts was astonishing. When I asked him why he used a certain technique on a particular colt the answer was often "just to show you a different way. Stick to the principles and it doesn't matter how you do it". He was so good at horsemanship he could play with it like this and it was very inspirational to watch. I now try to emulate the same idea, it doesn't matter what you do so long as the end goal is in mind and you stick to the principles.
One of his favourite comments was that the Level 4 pack is the one you should watch until you could see it in your minds eye, even if you were only playing in level 1. Without knowing what level 4 looks like how on earth could you get there ?
I could go on and on about his qualities and what I have learnt from James, but there is a good record of that in previous posts on this blog. I think James would approve if I spoke of the future a bit. I have lost the physical presence of a great mentor, but that does not mean that James does not still have things to teach me.
We discussed whether we felt like riding today, but then I thought of the disapproval James would express if we let he sad demise out-focus us in our horsemanship so went to the yard to ride. 
I joked with Ritchie that now James is in horsemans heaven he can watch us all the time, not just when we are at his yard. And you know the funny thing was that it really felt like that as I rode today. I really had this feeling James was watching me and it made me ride better. I did not want to disappoint him by riding without focus and purpose. It really worked and I had one of the best, most responsive and fun rides I have ever had on Bonitao.
If that is his ongoing legacy to me then I am a very very fortunate man to have known and studied under him. It also means that I don't have to think about the past when thinking of him as he will always be sitting on my shoulder giving encouragement and advice.
Thank-you James. I would say rest in peace, but you still have your students to look after and we never gave you peace in the past.....

First proper canter

Another fun day with Filly. All the usual prepare to ride completed with the addition of checking that there were no braces in zone 3 or 4. I wanted to make sure that she was supple enough, mentally and physically, to continue with the inside leg isolation training.
Once on board we started with follow the rail. This seemed to be going a lot better than before, she was really tuning into my inside leg. After a time Ritchie came in with Bonitao and started to play. She basically ignored them. However as I squeezed between them, a jump wing and the rail of the school she suddenly shot forwards and picked up canter. To start I was unbalanced and regret to say that I pulled on both reins. As soon as I regained balance I just went to the right rein and gently bent her to a slower gait. Ritchie then, rightly, shouted at me to keep her going and make her move her feet more than she wanted to. We went onto a pattern of fast trot with loads of quick turns in random directions. As she relaxed I asked for canter and we spent a minute or so just cantering randomly around the school. I did not ask for particular direction, just maintain gait at canter. As we happened to pass through the middle of the school I asked for a downward transition to walk. Phase one of this was to just let out all my energy and breath. Well she responded to that, we nearly did a slide stop !! Wow!
I think that she was really surprised that her introduction of energy was not shut down. I just said "if you are feeling energetic lets use that and have fun". I did it for long enough for her to be asking to stop so she was more than happy to obey my downward transition cue.
Back to the inside leg isolations and a funny thing happened. She was now super sensitive. Barely a thought on my part to ask for a turn created a turn. At most a slight twist in my hips was all that was required, a leg created an overreaction and a sharp turn.
After a time we lost this sensitivity and so we cantered on the other rein, again not worried where we were going just about the gait. Back to walk and the sensitivity was back. Five more minutes of practise at walk and that was enough for the day. We stopped in the middle and just hung out together for a while to make the center of the school a sweet spot rather than the gate.
As always James is correct. I can't get her sensitive and "straight" until I have got her thinking forwards. The brief canters got her to think forwards and then the straightness between my legs just naturally followed

Further progress

I have ridden Filly 3 times now and I am now becoming really comfortable on her. We have continued to work on forwards and inside leg isolations. Rhythm and relaxation at walk seems pretty much a given now but is checked out each time.
Filly has been testing me with the inside leg isolations, pushing into the leg or just ignoring it. I needed a more effective phase four so resorted to a riding crop. Of course I make sure all the phases are still there when asking for a turn. Eyes turn first, the belly button which twist my hips in the saddle, then leg, then more leg. If this fails to have the desired effect of getting a turn around the leg I then resort to the stick. A few sharp smacks on my own leg to get her attention and if there is still no response some taps on her side just behind by boot. Not hard taps but ones that increase in frequency, not force, until I get a response.
As you can see there are way more than 4 phases here and I stop at whichever one gets a response. I could tell that she was just testing my leadership with the lighter phases because after just a few uses of the stick she was responding to very light phases. It is not as though we have had a gradual improvement in the quality of the response as she learned the aids. She knew the correct response but was just seeing who was going to be the leader.
I noticed after the last ride on Sunday that she was a little lethargic so she got yesterday off being ridden to recover. That does not mean that we could do no playing however. In the evening I went to the yard and we played in the indoor school for a while. I started out with circling her and making sure that she had no brace in any of her zones that could be hindering the riding. I felt that there was a brace in zone 3 / 4 and so spent sometime getting her to circle for a step or two on three or four tracks (i.e slightly sideways). This actually required quite high phases of pressure with the stick and flag to get her to move her hind quarters out. We played with this until I could get her to cross her hind legs over on just my body energy.
I also played a lot with sideways along and across a pole. This was to again make sure that I had control of the placement of each individual foot. As a real test I got her to stand with a front leg either side and a hind leg either side of the pole. This requires that I can control the accurate placement of each individual foot.
To date I have been mounting from the ground, but in future I also want to be able to mount from a mounting block or fence. This requires that Filly comes to the mounting block and positions herself so that I can easily get on. I am not one who is willing to move the block to her, stand on it, have her move, get off the mounting block, move it to her new spot etc.etc. And besides you can't do that with a fence. To aid in getting her into the correct position to be mounted we worked on her sideways towards me. I had done this in the past and was amazed at how well she remembered. Pretty soon I was standing on the mounting block and able to get her to come over to me at liberty and then manoeuvre her into a suitable spot to be mounted. Just to add a nice purpose I then used the stick and flag to drive her head around away from me in a neutral lateral flexion, leant over her back and fed her a treat on the other side to where I was standing. This got loads of stuff done in one hit. Driving game in zone 1, lateral flexion, carrot stretch, friendly game above zone 3, all with a decent standstill.
After the time I have spent at James I am really beginning to get a much better idea as to how all the ground games can be used to get better ridden results. This make the ground games even more fun as they have a much stronger purpose.

First ride at Manor Farm

On Wednesday my new saddle arrived. I managed to get a second hand Parelli natural performer of the same size as the one we rode Filly in at James Roberts, so knew it would fit. Second hand saved both money and a 3 month or more wait.
On Thursday I therefore had no more excuses. It was time to ride Filly at Manor Farm. I admit to being a little apprehensive, but with the "plan to ride" that James has instilled in me over the last few years I also had a tool kit to cope. And thank God for that tool kit, it was needed !
When we got to the outdoor school it was clear that Filly was in a very hyper state. Rather than just try and shut it down I decided to use that energy and, remembering the clinic with Michael Grohman, we had some really high energy play for a while. She obviously loved the idea that I wanted to play "properly" and we were soon both running around the school with many twists and turns. My common theme in these situations is to make her think to her feet. To achieve this involved lots of hind quarter yields, fore quarter yields, backup. Anything that involved complicated leg manoeuvres and not just straight forward gaits.
After around 5 or 10 minutes of this (time has little meaning when playing in this fashion !) she settled down and stood still. I could then start the familiar pre-ride pattern of Touch All Over, Place Feet Down etc. Of course saddling took some time as it was a new saddle and we had to adjust the girth lengths and the stirrup length. She stood very calmly and we soon got to mount with savvy. A perfect mount, except the stirrups were too long. This was odd as the literature on the saddle suggested my leg length was the maximum allowed. Two adjustments of the stirrups later and I felt comfortable on the 8th hole up !
Once I started to move she was a little upset, and very forward going. With Ritchie shouting advice we worked through the problems which involved lots of circles and straight and my first canter on her.  Not asked for but as it turned out very comfortable. At one point I asked her to canter towards the corner of the school. She was not slowing even slightly as we approached, so, scared that she might jump out, we made a quick turn. Note to self, don't try to bluff Filly into stopping, she'll call the bluff. I had markers down in the school and used those to give me focus and work on weave patterns and circles as I calmed her down.
My major fault was to pull back on the rein (just one) to slow her down a little. As Ritchie kept reminding me the trick was to lift it up vertically.
After the excitement she settled right down and now we had rhythm and relaxation at walk we could move onto straightness on the circle. Forwards is rarely a problem for Filly. Again I had markers to help visualise a 10m circle and spent a long time using inside leg isolations and my focus to try and get a round circle out of her. Not easy without touching the reins. Towards the end we did get a few but not of good quality. I felt that this exercise was not engaging her mind enough, so used the same markers to go onto the Stacey Westfall clover leave pattern. That worked like a charm. She now had lots to think about as we did indirect reins around the outer markers and direct reins around the middle marker. She became mentally much more engaged and made a much greater effort to listen to my focus, hips and legs. We actually mannaged an entire clover leaf with the reins draped over her neck. I was not even holding them !!
On dismounting she was so calm and very very cuddly. She seems to really enjoy our time together and after a taxing session nearly always becomes very soft in her mental state.
All in all a very good session. Nervy to start but left me with a real confidence to progress next time.

Back to Manor Farm

Once back at Manor Farm I had to go straight back to work for a few days, then became sick with a very bad cold. Thus Filly had a welcome holiday after boot camp at James'.
I did go and visit everyday but didn't have the strength to do much. However on Wednesday I decided I had the energy to take her for a walk on line up through the village to the main road. The purpose of this was to accustom her to traffic whilst safely on the ground. I knew she was happy with slow light traffic, but the main road with lorries, coaches bicycles and of course fast cars would be a different prospect.
The corner between the main road and the village road has a largish grass verge so I had space to allow her to move her feet if she needed to and then some grass to eat once she settled.
She was not happy about the road at all, very very nervous and spooky. My answer was to make her move her feet a lot. A combination of indirect/direct rein direction changes to make her think to her feet and the squeeze game to modify her flight distance from the traffic. We slowly started to have moments of left brain behaviour where she could stop and think about her situation instead of just reacting. In the process we did a good job of tearing up the grass verge ! After around 20 minutes or so she started to eat the grass and chew at the hedge. This meant that she was becoming more confident about the traffic. I hate the word "desensitised", "confident" is a much better description and lasts longer. Desensitised means that she does not even know the cars are there, confident means she is aware of the cars but understands that they will not harm her.
Yesterday I rode her which is worth a seperate post soon.
Today we took both Filly and Bonitao up to the road. I hoped that the presence of Bonitao's confidence would help finish the work started earlier. And indeed it seemed to help. She very rapidly settled today and ate the grass with a slower action which shows relaxation. After a while she was pushing her nose towards the edge of the road, just feet from the traffic to get that special green blade of grass. We let her graze for around 20 minutes before walking gently back to the yard, practising our transitions on the way.
When you use imagination it is amazing how many ridden skills you can practise just walking your horse around on line. To and from the field, for example, need not just be a chore but an opportunity to promote a forward walk with good halt to walk and walk to halt transitions. I don't have enough time with Filly to ignore this potential training time. Even just standing on the yard talking to a mate gives the opportunity to practise standstill.

The rest of the time at JRFS

The following 3 days at JRFS just passed in a blur. Lots more riding on Filly, including another hack out with Josh. She was more confident on this hack and we trotted briefly.
On Tuesday John Hankinson examined her again. At the time she was apart from her field mate, Chester, and so was a bit upset. In truth I think Chester was the more upset and his whinnying was setting her off. In any event she was almost uncontrollable in the box and Josh had to help holding her for the treatment. The good news is that her pelvis which John had manipulated three weeks earlier had remained corrected. John was concerned about her behaviour, however, and thought it might be feed related. We had only owned Filly 6 weeks at this stage and so had left her on the feed that the yard, who owned her previously, gave her. John got out his dowsing pendulum and used it on Filly. He then took the pendulum to our feed bin and dowsed over that. Then without knowing what sort of feed it was announced that she was intollerant to the sugar and starch in the feed and, in his words, it was "blowing her brain". We checked on the feed we had been given and sure enough it was full of sugar and starch. Fortunately we had more or less decided already to put Filly on the same diet as our other horse Bonitao and when we told John he said that feed should suit her well.
On the Wednesday the ride mainly consisted of trotting, and trotting and more trotting. 10 minutes in each direction with a minute break in the middle. During the first session one of the other horses spooked, the rider came off (unharmed) and the horse ran around the school bronking. Now I know better then to loose focus on my task in front of James so I just kept on trotting whilst the others stopped to watch. I was very impressed by Filly. Even when the horse bronked past her she just carried on trotting with the smallest amount of encouragement. James then looked at those standing watching and asked why they had stopped ! He is pretty tough in this way, but boy it gets results.
On Thursday we had the saddle fitter arrive to see if they had a saddle that would fit. As a result I only did half the lesson with James and then missed out on the hack. The saddler did not seem to have a good saddle so that was a bit of a shame. Ritchie was there that day and we had asked James if she could ride Filly. The answer was "off course". So once the experience week folks had finished Ritchie hopped on and had a ride.
Filly has a learned behaviour of tossing the head whilst she is being ridden. Unnerving to start with, but once you realise there is no malice in it, it's just annoying. James has a solution, of course. Whenever she starts tossing her head make her move her feet...a lot. By this he meant lots of circles, hind quarter yields, figure 8 patterns, transitions. Anything to get her mind on her feet and use up the mind capacity to toss her head. Make her concentrate on something else. He quickly got on Filly to demonstrate and within a minute all the head tossing stopped. Ritchie then had a go with a similar result. This was quite a revelation for her as she is used to going slow with our other horse Bonitao. She now had to think fast, change directions on an instant and keep Filly guessing. I think they both found this really good fun and both looked like they were grinning at the end.
And that was the end of my time at James. She loaded into the trailer almost quicker than I wanted her to and travelled home like a star. Compared to the ball of sweat that got out on the journey to James she was as cool as a cucumber. Even the hay net (untouched outbound) was empty.
Her time at James has really really helped her. She is so much more confident at our yard now, walking through deep mud as though it was a pavement, remaining cool when other horses act up and becoming more of a partner to trust. We still have a long long way to go, but there is a solid base to build on.
Thank-you James, Josh, Kim, Becca and all the others at JRFS. 

Day 2 on Filly

Rode Filly in the afternoon under the watchful eye of Josh. She was pretty upset having been separated from her field mate for a long time and so it took a while to get her thinking to me at all during the prepare to ride. To start I just wanted to get her following a feel on the circle, so every time she leant on the halter to look outside the circle I just stepped backwards until she softened and then let her walk on again. Once I had her attention (i.e have horse catch you), we continued the plan to the saddle part. Some trouble with stand still here, but Josh helped by making my phases softer. I am still struggling to adapt from Bonitao to the incredibly light phases Filly needs. Not that Bonitao is heavy, 4 ounces or less for most things, but Filly takes severe offence at anything over 4 ounces and starts to argue.
Once saddled the prepare to ride was mainly zone 3 driving with transitions followed by lots of indirect/direct rain to really get her soft and thinking to her feet. Then it was time to mount. On the first attempt she drifted a lot and I had to lift high on the rein until she stopped, then step down again. The next attempt was all but perfect.
Once on board we went to the usual of lateral flexions, just hanging in there until she stopped moving and yielded with her neck. This didn't take long to achieve. Then on to indirect reins, waiting until they were soft and relaxed rather than just mechanically performed prior to releasing the pressure. This took a fair time, during which it started to rain, hard !! Still I was not going to be out focussed by the weather and we just kept going until we got some really nice yields.
From there we moved to inside leg isolations to get some good circles. Filly bends around her leg well but also takes the leg aid as a cue to start trotting. It took a while to convince her that just one leg meant bend her body onto a circle, not go faster. Again I found that lightness was the key.
We then moved to linking circles via the figure 8 pattern which was a challenge, again the problem being maintain gait at walk not trot. Once this was done to Josh's satisfaction we had some free time, which I just spent trying to follow the rail at walk. Follow the rail was easy but, Filly, not everything has to mean trot ! Once I had managed a whole lap at walk we left it at that. I then spent quite a while just sitting and chatting with Josh while we got a nice relaxed standstill from her. As soon as she softened at the halt I jumped off to reward that behaviour.
In summary; A fun ride which followed on from the last one in emphasising how much I have to focus and how light I have to be with my cues to get a nice response from Filly. To build rapport I turned her out as quickly as I could, then took her feed to the field next to hers, re-caught her and took her to it. Then spent a chilled ten minutes watching her eat and just enjoying her company.

My First Ride on Filly

At short notice I decided I would go to James Roberts today to see how Filly was getting on. In theory it was the first of two handover days in any case, but as I have to work tomorrow we decided a while back that my handover would be four days next week. Therefore I did not go with the anticipation of riding, just a visit to see how she was doing.
The day started watching James ride his big black show jumper. Very interesting to watch as always. He was working on getting a standard stride pattern at canter, with lead changes, between poles on the ground. That's an overview, the interest was in the detail which would take me hours to describe.
After that the other folks on their handovers had a lecture which I sat in on to save James the trouble of giving it again to me.
Then came the shock. Did I want to ride Filly ? I quick check that Josh's hat fitted and that was settled.
We got the colts out of their pens and brought them up to the indoor school. I guess I expected some coaching from James, but he just said "do what you need to prepare a ride practising inside leg isolations and no more" and left me to get on with it.
The first challenge was getting the saddle on. I ride in a western saddle but with only one cinch and a different tieing system. Having got it on her back I must admit to asking Josh for some clues as to what to do.
The prepare to ride was mainly zone 3 or 4 driving to get a good forward walk, some backup and some direction changes. All designed to get her generally warmed up and in particular her back muscles (hence the backup). Then we did a few circles with some short spells of 3 and 4 track movement to give her a latitudinal stretch and to ensure she would yield sideways. I then deemed her ready to ride.
After the usual rope around check and getting a standstill I arrived at my first big challenge of the day. Mounting from the ground. I can confirm, she is taller than Bonitao. I really struggled to get my leg in the stirrup to the extent that she got antsy and started to move around a lot. James coached me through it and finally I got on vowing to improve my hip flexion further with some stretching at home.
Then we just sat and chilled for a while.
After some very very nice neutral lateral flexions we set off to get a forward walk. That was very easy, direction wasn't. James suggested that we play Tit for Tat. This means I let her take us somewhere and then I direct us somewhere else. Great for getting relaxation and rapport. Very soon she was much more relaxed, though we still had the odd "very forward" moment.
To start I also made the mistake of being too critical over her gait. If she trotted I did what it took to slow her down. James suggested being lighter and waiting for her to come back to me.
Once we had some relaxation and rapport I started working on the inside leg isolations. Oops, too much pressure. She a) turned very sharply, b) bought her head around in a very annoyed manner and c) swished her tail a lot. She is very very sensitive to the leg and I had just deeply offended her. We then spent some time exploring the leg pressure she felt acceptable, which to me was barely perceptible. Guess I'll have to get more subtle. James did comment that it looked very nice at this point, so progress was made.
Then came the next shock. We were to go for a short hack. Now I really understood the need for focus on a hack. She was interested but nervous about everything. She did a good job of breaking my focus to make me look at the big digger and, later, the llama. But other than that I managed ok. And so we made it back to the school in one piece. I got off buzzing with excitement. It feels like a new chapter of fun and learning has just opened up for Filly and myself. Can't wait until Monday to be down there again for another ride.
What did I learn. Filly is perfect for me. Principle number 7 is "horses teach humans and humans teach horses". Well Filly is going to be a great teacher, particularly at maintaining focus !! James and his team have put a great start on her, but she has loads to learn to get to and beyond level 4. Therefore, for my stage of learning horsemanship, I could not have a better partnership.

JRFS Experience week part 2

Having got the horse to James it was time to get to work. On the Monday we spent the morning watching James and his team start working with the young colts.
Day1 is accept the human as a friend and give them a general assesment. I was like a nervous father waiting for James to tell me all that I had done wrong in her early training and how much he had to undo. In the event she was an angel, with a slightly tarnished but serviceable halo. James worked her for a good time off the back of Princess. She responded to the yields very softly after only a short time. Afterall she had never been ponyed before and I was a little nervous as to how she would take to be in the vicinity of another horse. After James had got her nice and soft with her yields he got off Princess and after getting a good standstill jumped onto Fillys' back and just stood there rubbing on her. After a few minutes that was day 1 over for Filly. I say Day 1 over but you have to remember that all the staff there are well trained so all interactions with the horses are done in a very Savvy way. Thus Filly is being trained all the time she is in contact with a human, not just when in the school.
Day 2 was back check day. John Hankinson always checks the colts out physically before they are properly ridden. In the case of Filly he found a mis-aligned pelvis, which he corrected. He also found that her left front leg below the pastern is slightly out of alignment. The implications of this are that it can be corrected with shoeing, but will never go away. I asked what limitations it placed on riding her and he said, apart from not racing her, none. If they had raced her she would eventually have broken down. After having their backs checked and "crunched" James decided to introduce just the bareback pad so that they called all feel the girth. Once they all had a pad on they were allowed to move around at liberty to get used to it for a while. Then they were moved with more purpose at walk trot and canter, again a liberty and as a herd. So the shy little Filly found herself trotting around in front of two young geldings. One kept getting a little close behind her. Even Ritchie and I could read the signs, but the gelding apparently could not. Eventually he got double barrelled by Filly. He can't say she didn't warn him ! Once they were relaxed and comfortable they were mounted one by one and James again worked them from the back of Princess, but this time with a rider onboard.
Day 3 was saddle up day. Each colt was saddled with a western saddle, and then all let loose at liberty at the same instant. The two young geldings immediately went into a strong bucking fit. Filly initially got out of their way, but after a few seconds decided to join in the fun. 10 Seconds later she stopped dead with the most comical look on her face. She was clearly looking at the others and saying "why are we bucking" :). Once the initial frolics where out of the way they were again all moved around at walk trot and canter until the appeared relaxed. Then, as on the previous day they were all ridden one at a time with some initial ponying off Princess. Today however they were also ridden "solo" at walk trot and canter. As James says this gets walk trot and canter out of the way and now they can start their ridden education in earnest.
Day 4. More of the same really, but with more emphasis on getting them forwards in both their mind and their bodies. Also the start on inside leg isolations with lots of indirect and direct rein patterns.
Day 5. Dentist. On her initial examination it was found that Filly had a wolf tooth and 4 baby teeth that needed to be removed. For this she needed sedation so the vet was called as well as the dentist. She was not happy about the injection, but eventually it was done. Given the amount of dental work carried out she was given the rest of the day off.

JRFS Experience week, part 1

We got back from James Roberts on Friday night, reluctantly ! It was a great week with huge amounts to learn and watch, my brain is a little fried.

It started on the Sunday with the job of getting our horses to Wiltshire. A 2 hour journey. We considered taking them both together in the trailer, but as it was Filly's first trailer journey chickened out of that idea and did the extra round trip to take them separately. A total of 7 hours driving.

Bonitao loaded and trailered really well. It was the most relaxed we have seen him. He spent most of the journey munching hay.

Filly was a different story. She loaded easily enough, but when we started moving it was a different story. Unfortunately we have a camera fitted and so Ritchie could watch her as we travelled. This was not good for her peace of mind. For about the first hour she tried to take the trailer apart, I could feel the car rocking. The snag is that if we stopped then and let her out we would have rewarded her for being upset, anxious and fidgety. Whilst there was a small risk involved we had to just keep trucking. James has often said that the problem with the UK is that it is not big enough to travel long enough to get horses really relaxed and confident in a trailer. Bearing this advice in mind we determined that if she was not confident by the time we got to JRFS we would just keep on driving for as long as it took. So long as we were moving she was fine as she had to concentrate on keeping her balance, but if we stopped she kicked off again. After around 1 hour, however, she settled right down. Not happy, but also no longer trying to demolish the trailer. By the time we got to JRFS she was much better, not perfect but good enough that we could stop. She was however soaked in sweat so I had to spend a long time moving her around in the indoor school to cool off and dry.

She was then put in a field. This upset her a great deal. I spent a long time with her as a comforting presence whilst she explored the surroundings and met her new neighbours. She spent a good amount of time cantering away from me towards the gate, then when I did not following galloping back to me for comfort. Once she had settled a little I left her which was a hard thing to do. She immediately tried to push through the rope gate to follow me and ran up and down the fence line whinnying. Like with the trailer it would have been a mistake to give in to the urge to return and comfort her as this would have rewarded the behaviour of being upset and running around. With gritted teeth I just walked away, but asked Josh to go and check on her later. Around an hour later he found her quietly grazing.

Not giving into the human urge to comfort an animal in distress like this is very very tough, but in the end it is the only way to allow the horse to sort out the issue. It is too easy to reward anxiousness and this only positively reinforces anxiousness as a learned behaviour. It makes us feel better but actually does harm to the psychology of the horse. I would like to distinguish this emotional stress from the physical harm. If the horse is physically hurt then of course it is our duty to do all in our power to relieve that pain.

I have noticed that one of the biggest mistakes I make in removing cues from a horse is to release when only the physical action has been achieved. It is also important to wait for the correct emotional state before releasing as well or we teach our horse that, for example, a porcupine cue to disengage the hind quarters means 1) move my inside hind leg and 2) get emotional and evasive about it. The correct time to release is when we have both physical and emotional softness. This might be just a small movement of the leg, but combined with a relaxed emotional state. No tail swishing, ears back etc.

These episodes with the trailer and field, stripped of the physical response and only requiring an emotional response, have really brought this message home to me.

Stretching Filly's back

We had our horse Osteopath, Dusty, come over and have a look at Filly about 2 weeks ago to check over her general condition. It was not a good diagnosis. Nearly every muscle in her body is tight, no wonder she couldn't race. Still if she was in perfect condition I would never have been able to buy her and Dusty assures me it is all fixable given time.
The main areas of tension were the top of her left hind quarters and all the muscles in her chest. What caused this we have no idea, but she tends to be a tense little Filly at the best of times so I guess the tension just became chronic.
Dusty showed me how to massage and stretch her, which I have been doing every day I have been able to. The massage was basically along either side of the spine, for which I used a vibrating hand massager. She was suspicious until she found how nice it felt. Also the chest area, and the shoulders. Basically if was a muscle it got massaged :)
Dusty also showed me how to stretch her legs, easing the hind legs backwards and lowering them to the ground and her front legs both backwards and forwards keeping the knee straight. Filly was not keen on this to start with and so for all our safety I used a 22 foot rope wrapped around her leg just above her hoof to achieve this. She was already used to this feeling as I had long ago taught her to lead by the leg, snag was I now needed her to stand still and just give the leg not her whole body to the tension on the rope. In effect this was friendly game and that is how I treated it with no intention of motion in my body.
Using the rope was much less stressful for all, Dusty even remarked she might use the idea in future on difficult horses.
James has also taught me how to open a horses back up and give it a stretch whilst circling it. The idea is to just drive the hind quarters out on the circle a little so that she is travelling on 3 or even 4 tracks with her feet instead of the usual 2 tracks. In effect she is going slightly sideways. This helps her bend her back laterally a little which in turn helps the vertical flexion of her back. Again this is an exercise I taught her a long time ago so it didn't take long to get it re-established. This is another example of the power of Parelli over traditional horsemanship. With all the yields on the ground we can perform we have the chance to help not only the horses mind, but its' physical body as well. How a traditional trainer would achieve this lateral flexion without forcing it with side-reins etc I have no idea.
Dusty paid another visit on Monday and was very very pleased with the progress Filly had made. The muscles had softened considerably, though still tense. At least now they don't feel like rock and can actually be manipulated properly.
We are all going to James Roberts tomorrow. Filly is going to be re-started by James over the next 3 weeks and I am taking Bonitao for an experience week. Can't wait to see what James makes of Filly, but slightly nervous about it as well. Will report back when I can. Time is rather tight at James' yard and I may not have time to blog until I get home.

Trailer training Filly

With the trip to James Roberts looming it was time to start trailer training Filly. Her previous encounters with trailers havn't been great. They have only been used to take her to and from the vet ! Thus I anticipated trouble.
Two days ago I took her to the trailer and she was not impressed to start with. I had anticpitaed this problem so had already spent some time in the indoor school playing the squeeze game. In this game I ask her to pass between me and a wall and then having gone through the gap, turn, face the gap and wait. This is designed to modify the natural flight distance of the horse. So instead of running for about 3/4 mile when frightened they learn to go just a short distance before turning and facing the threat for a re-evaluation. In this case the threat is a claustrophobic gap, similar to the walls of a trailer really.
So with Filly being uncomfortable even next to the trailer we went straight to squeeze game which gave her orchestrated periods of time to face and think about the trailer. A couple of passes and her natural curiosity kicked in and the trailer was subjected to detailed scrutiny.
I then lowered the ramp so she could see inside. I thought that this would cause problems, the trailer looks like a big cave after all, and caves are the natural habitat of wolves and bears, not horses. However I did not anticipate her curiosity and in fairly short order she had her nose in the trailer without me even asking. One of the hardest things to do when training a horse is knowing when to quit, but this was clearly a good moment. Keep the curiosity there for the next encounter with no scary moments.
Yesterday we had another trailer session. As she is so comfortable in my presence I decided to stand inside the trailer and ask her in using the YoYo game. Normally I would trailer load from the outside to avoid being a predator asking the horse in to its cave for lunch. Filly, being largely hand reared, is an exception to this rule. I also decided to use a combination of classic YoYo with clicker training. Thus if she made an effort to come into the trailer I clicked and she got a small treat, nothing if she backed out. However for each click and treat the effort had to be slightly better than the previous one. I must add that at no time were the treats available or visible until she had received a click. This is the difference between reward and bribery. It did not take long until she was all the way inside and receiving a large handful of treats as a bonus. Job done for day two.
Today we just added the fact that the partition was in place, meaning that the gap she had to stand in in the trailer was much narrower. Same procedure as yesterday and she was in. Again job done. I backed her out and was standing around chatting when she decided to give it a go on her own. I let her stand half way in the trailer for a while before asking her out and taking her to her field.
The combination of negative and positive reinforcement used for this exercise is very powerful, but I can see how if it were mishandled it could cause more trouble than it saves. The timing of the release of pressure (negative reinforcement) and the addition of the click denoting positive reinforcement has to be handled with care. Accidentally give the click a little too soon and you have just powerfully rewarded pulling back on the halter for example. But done right and it really accelerates learning, especially with a horse with Filly's horsenality.

Holiday booked for Filly

Ritchie and I spent the day at James Roberts yesterday. As usual we learnt a huge amount, mostly about the application of various training patterns to different stages of horse development.
One of the main reasons for our visit was to discuss Filly however. He seemed genuinley pleased that I had bought her at last. Of course he hasn't met her yet :-) . He asked what my plans for her were. I said that I want to develop her to level 4 in the Parelli program then continue our development together into some Western classes such as reining. I also admitted to my desire to continue my own development in the direction of young horse starting and development and having Filly be my working partner in this. And of course just general hacking out. He was good enough to encourage me in all those aims.
We then discussed her immediate future. Despite her being backed as a race horse he suggested booking her in for a restart. Not that the race backing has been necessarily bad, I haven't ridden her or seen her ridden so can't comment on that, just that her new career needs a different emphasis in her basic training.
I am going to James on October 7th for my Experience Week course. He quickly checked his schedule for that period and agreed to my taking her with me for her course which will be 3 weeks long.
This could not have worked better. I can now watch the first week of her training, taking the blame for all the things she knows that she shouldn't of course. Very exciting developments and all seems to be happening so fast.
My emphasis for the next two weeks is obviously going to be trailer loading. So lots of squeeze game, and friendly game I guess. We'll see how it goes.

Positive Reinforcement

I have spoken in the past about negative reinforcement, now it is the turn of positive reinforcement. A branch of this is clicker training, but that is only a part of it.
In negative reinforcement an aversive stimulus is presented to the horse (heel pressure in their sides) and the stimulus is removed (the negative as in subtract bit) when the desired behaviour is achieved. Thus the horse gets a reward of the discomfort being removed the moment the behaviour occurs. Now many may say "but I only use very light pressure". That may be true, but the promise of higher phases is still there and so the horse may only feel light physical discomfort, but have the mental discomfort of knowing a higher phase may be the result of not responding. Thus removing the very light pressure is really removing the mental anxiety of something worse happening if they don't respond.
Positive reinforcement operates on the other side of neutral. One waits for the behaviour to occur and then instantly rewards the behaviour with a desirable treat. This could be just a word, a scratch, or a food titbit. What is important is the relationship in time between the desired behaviour and the reward. They need to be as close as possible, which creates a problem if the horse is out on a circle. Suppose they perform that perfect transition and you wish to give them a food treat. By the time you get to them they have probably already stopped, turned and faced you, so which behaviour are you rewarding ?
The answer is to have a bridging cue, a click, a word, a gesture whatever. This has to be trained to be a cue to receiving a reward beforehand but once established can be used to indicate to the horse that a food treat is coming. Technically this bridge cue release the feel good hormone, dopamine, into the brain which give an instant high. The actual reward can then be delivered a little later once it is possible to make physical contact with the horse again.
Once a new behaviour is put in place using positive reinforcement then it is not necessary to reward that behaviour everytime it is displayed. In fact by putting it on a variable reward schedule the behaviour can be strengthened. The horse will try with more and more effort to try and get that reward.
We could wait around for the behaviour we wish to reinforce to occur by chance, then positively reinforce it. Personally I don't have that much time. I see the use of positive reinforcement as a continuum with negative reinforcement. The behaviour is asked for by invoking an aversive cue of some sort, say heel pressure in the flank, the behaviour is negatively reinforced by removing the pressure on the instant of the response and we return to neutral. If we want to really reinforce the behaviour even more strongly we can then go past neutral to positive reinforcement by clicking and giving a food or other treat. Thus I don't see clicker training as being contrary to the Parelli methods, just an extension to them as another arrow in our quiver.
Now you may say that rewarding certain horsenalities with food treats is a bad idea. I find this not to be so, but the way you do it varies. For example with Filly I was wary of introducing food as she then tends to mug you ! My answer was that once the click cue (I click with my tongue) was in place I then first improved the back up part of the YoYo game with positive reinforcement. Thus she was rewarded for leaving my space, not invading it. Seems to have worked well, and her backup is now amazing.
As a topic this is huge and I can only give a brief introduction here, for more information I suggest the book "Don't shoot the dog". The first half of which is brilliant, but then it tends to wander a little. http://www.amazon.com/Dont-Shoot-Dog-Teaching-Training/dp/0553380397

Liberty Clinic with Michael Grohmann

Last weekend we had a fantastic Liberty clinic at Larisa Tasker's ranch with Michael. We had the privilege of having him stay at our house as well. What a nice guy.
As the title suggests the aim of the clinic was to improve our Liberty, but it turned out to be so much more than that.
What I really learned was to "play like horse". In the few years I have been practising Parelli I had never seen anyone put this ideal into action like Michael. He had real energy in his play and the horses responded. Mostly with disbelief at the start, "does he really want to play properly with us?", but then with more and more enthusiasm. I should add at this point that I could see how this could get out off hand without care and training, so don't blame me if you get hurt trying :) !!
Day one was all online work, getting the horses to be really responsive to our cues. Lots of work on really good, snappy hind quarter yields. As Pat says in his videos "hind quarter yields increase the draw to you". At Liberty you need lots of draw. We also added in lots of porcupine games, especially on the circle. I was playing with Mini. He tends to circle looking to the outside and a way of escape. My task was to play the porcupine game on his head with the rope. If he leant on the halter whilst circling I walked backwards, away from him, until released even fractionally or even with just his mind (look at the eye to gauge this). Then give him release. After a very little time he was circling nicely.
The hind quarter yields were also done on the circle, but real play was put in them. Whilst circling the first cue was to bend and look at hind quarters, followed by raising the stick (so far so what?) then running towards the hind quarters with a strong look in the eye which had a "playful" make my day attitude. This was what I had never seen before. The phase four was mad "playfully", not aggressively. When demonstrating Michael would even be tossing his head like a stallion as he ran in and really tagged the horse on zone 4 if needed. The horses really became engaged with the game, their life came up and their faces pictures of curiosity.
This was not a static game in one place either. Once the hind quarter yield was achieved he would then run with the horse to somewhere else in the field and play a different game, maybe forequarter driving. These bursts of movement he explained were important. Horses like to go somewhere when playing, not just stay in one 22 foot circle. Watch them in the field on their own and they use the whole of a 10 acre field to play in. There were also many moments of calm within the play session, again just as horses graze for a few seconds before setting off for another brief game.
Even Michaels porcupine game was more playful. If he needed to get to phase 4 he actually pinched the horse repeatedly, mimicking them biting each other. He says that Pat suggests growing long nails ! The horses seemed to take less offence to this than steady hard pressure. He also suggests that a blunt hoof pick can be used. This I have seen Pat do on videos.
After the demo we all played with our own horses/ponies. It took a while to get the energy and feel needed for the game, but once there, boy we had fun. Mini, who is a 16 year old "been there done it" type of pony really got animated. The response to all the games I had been trying to get for so long just started to happen. Backup was great as where hind quarter yields. Most impressive was his expression. After 16 years here was a guy who really wanted to play.
Over the lunch break we talked about personal space bubbles. No I am a guy who was brought up as a scientist, and all this talk about auras and personal energy bubbles is just bovine faecal matter to me, until I tried it. We partnered up with another course participant and stood facing each other. One would walk towards the other until they felt the personal bubble of the other and then stop and check they had got it right. After a little practise it was actually quite easy to find the limits of the personal space. We then practised altering the size of our bubbles and see if the other person could spot the change, again surprisingly easy. To test that I was not just reading minute body language changes on the subject I walked backwards into a bubble and stopped at it's edge. I must admit to being surprised that I still got it right.
The point of all this ? To be able to influence our horses by altering the size of our bubbles, and also to feel the size and shape of our horses bubbles. The horse bubble is not at an equal distance from the horse. If they are protective of their flanks for example, there will be an outward spike in the size of the bubble at this point. By being aware of these spikes and troughs it is easier to influence the horses movements by only pushing on the edge of the bubble when driving them for instance. Without this knowledge it would be easy to accidentally push too hard into the bubble and cause them to feel offended or threatened. The result at Liberty is they would then leave.
We then tried these new skills out on our horses after lunch. They were remarkably effective. By projecting my energy out I could get Mini to back away, likewise by sucking my energy in I could draw him back. What is more he seemed more engaged in the simple game of YoYo than I have seen him before.
Day 2
More practise at playing like a horse. The emphasis today was improving the forequarter driving game to get the horse bouncing sideways back and forth following our movements, as you might see them do when cow cutting. Now this is not for the faint hearted. Once engaged they could get very animated by this game, with rearing snorting etc. But the game did get them focussed on the human and responding to the suggestion of movement. I am not saying it looked great, with snappy changes, but the beginnings were there and it was great fun.
In the afternoon we did play at Liberty for a while, which resulted in the odd runaway to add to the fun. As a fitness class it left little to be desired :). For me with Mini the stick to me game was very good, but I had to work on getting Mini to be comfortable a little further from me. He tends to want to actually touch me most of the time. I tried a bit of more distant work in the arena, but he tended to just leave, so I moved to the round pen. Now Mini knows he can duck under the round pen tape and leave anytime he wants, but doesn't. This suggests to me that the fact he happily stays on the circle in the pen, and has a great draw back to me, there is not much further to go on our journey before he will stay on the circle in the field.
All in all a fantastic weekend which has really changed my understanding of how to play with a horse and make it more fun for both of us. I can't wait to try me new knowledge out with Filly, but given her inbuilt playfulness it will be done with care !!

Just for a laugh here is a video of me and Mini at the clinic

At last I "own" Filly

I hadn't mentioned this before as I didn't want to tempt fate. I knew for sometime that Rick was trying to negotiate with Filly's owner that I could buy her. The sticking points were that the owner a) might want to breed from her and b) want a lot of money for her.
The reason for the price tag can neatly be summed up in her sire's website (I particularly suggest you watch the video). Now that is a lot of stallion ! Whilst Filly was very unlikely to make a good race horse, due to her injuries as a foal, there was a possible career as a breeding mare. With Phoenix Reach's genes inside her she was possibly worth a lot of money.
Anyway, I was flying my glider one day and my phone goes (I know I shouldn't use one airborne, but I leave it on as a locator beacon in case of an accident). So there I was at 3000 feet and Rick is asking if I want Filly. If so he is really going to push for it. Of course I do.
A week or so goes by with no word and I assume that it is not going to happen. Then on the 7th September I come home from Washington overnight. After a few hours sleep it is down to the yard to play. Rick comes up on his quad bike and starts a conversation. This then leads to the price of Filly. I have been offered her to buy !! With one caveat. I never breed her to a Thoroughbred Stallion. As I wouldn't want to anyway that is an easy promise to make. I am tired after a night flight and a little stunned. I decide to sleep on it, discuss it with Ritchie and give an answer the next day. I also have to make sure I have enough money to be able to keep her in part livery. I don't want to buy her and then compromise her care due to a lack of funds, where is the point in that ? Buying her is not the problem, I could afford that. Keeping her for the next 20 or 25 years is the issue.
The next day, after many hours discussing the proposal with Ritchie and more hours checking my finances I text Rick to accept.
Since then I have been trying to see Rick to pay the money and then I would truly believe she is mine. I am in Calgary now and have just received a text from Ritchie saying "Bought Filly today. HAPPY BIRTHDAY". For years Ritchie has asked what I want for birthday/Christmas and I always answered Filly. Now it's happened.
What is nice is all the well wishes I have had from the folks at the yard. They have all said what an amazing bond Filly and I have and how it was just meant to be that she would one day become my life partner. Amy had a little trouble catching her and her field mate, Shan, the other day. They weren't being naughty, just playful. She asked if I could help. We went to the field and I called Filly's name. She came straight over, at walk to start then with a purposeful trot. The amazing thing is that she left Shan in the process, who followed on behind.
So now what. Well now I have her for the next 20 years or so (she is only 4) I can finally make long term plans. Therefore I can take my time, discussing her training with all my Parelli professional friends and making a real plan for her future. In the meantime I am going to go back and get some of her online and liberty foundation really solid again in preparation for riding her. She has grown a lot in the last 6 months and is now actually a little taller than Bonitao so I have no concern about her being able to carry me. But maybe not for big jumps.
The reality of this is still sinking in, but the more it sinks in the happier I feel.
Of course this means that the Filly Billy blog is truly up and running again, with Filly taking her rightful place in it. I have been learning so much about animal training in the last few months, but the pressures of trying to help keep Shana going and then moving to Manor Farm and buying Filly have left me with precious little time to write. Now that is all settling down I can't wait to start sharing my progress again and hopefully inspiring others to join the rapidly growing Natural Horsemanship world.

So much has happened.

Again, a very long break from blogging. To be honest things have been in such turmoil it was difficult to know what to write and what to leave out. Finally a time of order and stability has come, I hope !

Mini
I have continued to play with Mini on a semi regular basis. We are make good progress together. I have a Liberty clinic to attend with Mini on the 15th/16th September at Larisa's ranch where he is housed. This is with Michael Grohmann, one of the best Liberty instructors in the world. Nervous ? Me ? Yes ! I have this recurrent nightmare of Mini leaving me, ducking under all the fences (which he can do!) with me in hot pursuit, jumping over fences.
To try and forestall this we have been doing a fair bit of Liberty recently. I am pleased to say that he has not left me once, and his draw to me is very good. Hopefully all will be well.

Shana
The power of the internet is frightening. It is no secret that Shana is in some financial difficulties. Someone at the yard did an internet search for Shana Equestrian Ltd and came up with a website that stated it entered liquidation on the 14th August 2012. For many this was the final nail in the coffin and within days Ritchie, myself and Charlotte were the only ones left on the yard. With the yard manager Kath leaving with 1/2 hours notice things got very difficult. I also searched for information on the liquidation on UK Companies house and found that Shana Equestrian Ltd actually entered liquidation in April 2011 and apparently transferred assets to CC Equestrian Ltd at that time. In effect it was a change of trading name. The website folks had come up with apparently trawls Companies house for company data, if it finds "liquidation" against a companies name it adds todays date and so the company appears to have only just failed.
This resulted in just Ritchie, Charlotte and me riding at Shana. We managed to stick with this for several weeks whilst I generally helped to tidy the yard up, but in the end we felt it was too dangerous to be riding with no one else around most of the time. Reluctantly we had to move, though we are remaining good friends with Hamish and Lucy who live there. I must put on record our thanks for the hospitality they both showed throughout the difficult times. I would also like to thank Charlotte for the help with looking after Bonitao after the yard manager so abruptly left.

Manor Farm.
As a result of the need to leave Shana we needed to find another place for Bonitao. We searched many places, but in the end wound up moving back to Manor Farm. The yard manager is now our friend, Amy. The yard now feels a place of calm and peace with much laughing and joking. In addition 5, yes five, Parelli folks moved in on the same day. We have only been there since Saturday but I have already been in the big hay field cantering around and generally having fun with Bonitao. I think our time at Shana has greatly increased our confidence in riding. It was sink or swim at Shana. Yesterday, for example, I was riding in the outdoor school when another rider asked if she could free school her horse soon. I said "sure why not". After being at Shana I thought nothing of the situation. The new horse was a bit flighty to start, which was great for my focus, but we soon settled into a nice pattern of circling on the opposite sides of the school. Again great focus needed to maintain the separation between us. I think I worried Amy and Rick, the yard owner, for which I am sorry. It just never occurred to me there was a problem. I felt it was good practise for my impending "Boot Camp" at James Roberts in October :-)

Filly
That brings me to Filly. Rick has stopped trying to train her as a race horse. She has too many old injuries for that to be realistic. As a result I am allowed to play with her again, but with the proviso that I may loose her at any minute if the owner takes her away to breed from.
I have only had one session so far. She has not forgotten a thing in the six months since my last session. If anything she was better at some games. According to Rick she has transformed since I am back on the yard, becoming much quieter and calmer. Yesterday I went round her field fixing her fence. She hardly left my side. She stopped to graze a few times, but then cantered to catch up. Have you any idea what a great feeling that is ? Long may it continue, but I have to prepare myself for possibly loosing her as well.

Not much horsemanship in this blog I know, but I thought I needed to explain why I have been a little busy to write recently. Normal service should resume shortly !