As I mentioned recently I have been helping with a super young horse called Dodger. Progress has been really good, thanks mainly to the consistency of handling that the owners are able to provide. As I keep repeating natural horsemanship is not just something you "do" in the school, it is a way of "being" with the horse. Garry and Helen have really understood this now and progress is rapid. This fact was obvious when I went to play with Dodger yesterday and Garry suggested that I watch him being brought in from the field. This really told me that Garry was trying hard to interact with Dodger in a natural way all the time.
To be honest Dodger was being a bit bargy and pushy coming in and seeing this it made it easy to decide what we needed to do during the session.
We started with "place the feet" in the stable whilst his feet were being picked out. It was not a surprise to me that he resisted this, whilst recently he has been an angel in the school. To generalise new behaviour it is necessary to train the same response in multiple locations, another good reason for ensuring that all interactions with the horse are performed consistently in order to generalise the training.
It was interesting that the back right leg was particularly difficult to handle. He has had an injury there in the past and as a result the vet had to do lots of possibly painful handling of that leg. He now, understandably really tries to protect that leg from interference. The solution was just to pick the leg up in a whilst in a "power position" so that I could gently resist his attempts to kick and pump his leg. I also tried to gently rub his leg at the same time to give it a nice feel for him. Slowly his resistance subsided and I was able to place the toe of the foot down just as it should be done. This was repeated several times until the response was nice and light. This however was just one session of training that leg in the box. As he had many interventions on that leg by the vet it will probably take some time until he is consistently good with the leg. Passive persistence is the only way in this situation in order to bury those many painful memories under many more good ones. I expect there will always be an occasional problem with that leg from now, just as there was with the leg where Filly split her hoof. Horses are made up of "potential minus interference" and in this case, whilst the interference was completely necessary, it will always, but to an ever decreasing degree, interfere with his potential of being perfect with that leg.
Once in the school we started working with the leading problem just by leading him around. His habit was to hold back a bit behind and either stop altogether or push you in the back. The aim was to get him to lead alongside and act as a partner.
He was not going to submit to this lightly and loose another precious ounce of dominance. There are a couple of ways of doing this. Porcupine pressure on the halter is an obvious one, and the one most people will instinctively adopt. However it is not necessarily the best one. First, and most important, is to maintain a focus. Second, I like to use the stick and string as an extension of my body to signal the horse to come along side. To do this I just have the stick trailing on the ground behind me, if the horse starts to lag then lift the stick, if it continues to lag then wave the stick, then if needed tag the horse with the string. In a way this is emulating how a mare uses her tail to keep her foal alongside her.
With Dodger I immediately found that whilst he was perfectly happy with the stick and string flapping around during friendly game he was not happy with it driving him forwards like this. He tended to charge past and which met with the stick coming around in front of him and a sharp wiggle on the lead rope. If he stayed on my shoulder all was calm. Rapid control of my body energy was needed in this scenario so that I was only in a friendly state when he was at about the right spot. This is a classic example of helping him find the answer by making the right thing easy and pleasant, and the wrong thing difficult and unpleasant. To avoid placing additional pressure on him I made sure to make all my turns away from him to start with (let's be kind and remove his dominance a little at a time !) until he settled down. Garry then repeated the process on the other side, as we are of course training two horses (left and right) not one. Once this was solid we then added in turns into his space, again being very careful to signal the turn by focussing in the new direction for a stride or two first.
The result : he lead to the field beautifully. No pushiness or holding back and by all accounts the final lead of the day back to his stable was similarly angelic. I am sure that there will be problems ahead with leading in different situations but we now have a language to consistently ask for a nice lead
To be honest Dodger was being a bit bargy and pushy coming in and seeing this it made it easy to decide what we needed to do during the session.
We started with "place the feet" in the stable whilst his feet were being picked out. It was not a surprise to me that he resisted this, whilst recently he has been an angel in the school. To generalise new behaviour it is necessary to train the same response in multiple locations, another good reason for ensuring that all interactions with the horse are performed consistently in order to generalise the training.
It was interesting that the back right leg was particularly difficult to handle. He has had an injury there in the past and as a result the vet had to do lots of possibly painful handling of that leg. He now, understandably really tries to protect that leg from interference. The solution was just to pick the leg up in a whilst in a "power position" so that I could gently resist his attempts to kick and pump his leg. I also tried to gently rub his leg at the same time to give it a nice feel for him. Slowly his resistance subsided and I was able to place the toe of the foot down just as it should be done. This was repeated several times until the response was nice and light. This however was just one session of training that leg in the box. As he had many interventions on that leg by the vet it will probably take some time until he is consistently good with the leg. Passive persistence is the only way in this situation in order to bury those many painful memories under many more good ones. I expect there will always be an occasional problem with that leg from now, just as there was with the leg where Filly split her hoof. Horses are made up of "potential minus interference" and in this case, whilst the interference was completely necessary, it will always, but to an ever decreasing degree, interfere with his potential of being perfect with that leg.
Once in the school we started working with the leading problem just by leading him around. His habit was to hold back a bit behind and either stop altogether or push you in the back. The aim was to get him to lead alongside and act as a partner.
He was not going to submit to this lightly and loose another precious ounce of dominance. There are a couple of ways of doing this. Porcupine pressure on the halter is an obvious one, and the one most people will instinctively adopt. However it is not necessarily the best one. First, and most important, is to maintain a focus. Second, I like to use the stick and string as an extension of my body to signal the horse to come along side. To do this I just have the stick trailing on the ground behind me, if the horse starts to lag then lift the stick, if it continues to lag then wave the stick, then if needed tag the horse with the string. In a way this is emulating how a mare uses her tail to keep her foal alongside her.
With Dodger I immediately found that whilst he was perfectly happy with the stick and string flapping around during friendly game he was not happy with it driving him forwards like this. He tended to charge past and which met with the stick coming around in front of him and a sharp wiggle on the lead rope. If he stayed on my shoulder all was calm. Rapid control of my body energy was needed in this scenario so that I was only in a friendly state when he was at about the right spot. This is a classic example of helping him find the answer by making the right thing easy and pleasant, and the wrong thing difficult and unpleasant. To avoid placing additional pressure on him I made sure to make all my turns away from him to start with (let's be kind and remove his dominance a little at a time !) until he settled down. Garry then repeated the process on the other side, as we are of course training two horses (left and right) not one. Once this was solid we then added in turns into his space, again being very careful to signal the turn by focussing in the new direction for a stride or two first.
The result : he lead to the field beautifully. No pushiness or holding back and by all accounts the final lead of the day back to his stable was similarly angelic. I am sure that there will be problems ahead with leading in different situations but we now have a language to consistently ask for a nice lead
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