This has been a thorny issue with Bonitao for a while, but yesterday we made progress.
But first, what is neutral lateral flexion and why is it important? Put simply it is asking the horse to bring his head round so that it almost touches your toe when riding. It is important as it is a primary means of stopping a horse, if its head is pointing towards its' tail it is probably not going to be able to run forwards very fast. Psychologically it is important as this bent neck posture is a very submissive position and is one that many predators will try to force a prey animal into in order to bring it down. Thus adopting this pose with a predator on its' back and then have that pose released will help to build trust between the horse and rider as the horse figures out that even in this extreme submissive pose its' predator still does not mean it harm.
The snag is getting the horse into this position, bearing in mind that the neck muscles are some of the most powerful muscles a horses possess. Given their job of supporting and moving its' massive head a long way out at the end of a cantilever that is not surprising. Pure muscle on our part is not going to do the trick.
Much of the work is of course achieved on the ground. All the exercises that make the horse responsive to halter or bit pressure will prime them to responding when pressure is applied asking for an NLF.
Once in the saddle it is vital that before asking for the NLF we are completely relaxed in our body cues. We want to just talk to the head and neck, not the feet. Any body tension will be perceived by the horse and at best we will get a hind quarter yield and at worst we will have given conflicting cues and wind up with a prancy confused horse.
To achieve this state of relaxation it is suggested that for a right NLF you pick up the buckle of the rein (middle with rope reins) with the left hand, lift it high up, gently stroke down the rein with the right hand several times and then politely and gently apply pressure with the right hand easing towards your right thigh. Now just wait until you get relaxation from the horse at which point you have around 1 second to release it so that you negatively reinforce the behaviour. (look at this link for negative reinforcement).
Slowly the time period in the NLF is increased with the aim of 1 full minute with no brace from the horse and a maximum of 4 ounces of pressure applied. Sounds easy until you try.
Back to Bonitao. Ritchie had of course taught this years ago, but with me starting it was back to kindergarten for him. I found that his NLF to the left was just about ok, but to the right it was sticky to say the least. Once he was in the right NLF he would tend to stay there OKish, but getting there took more than the desired pressure and longer than I would want to take on a horse I needed to stop in a hurry. Ritchie and I puzzled over this for a solution. The progressive application of pressure as a form of phases was not working. Remembering Pats phrase "If you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you've always gotten" we needed a new idea.
Ritchie provided the first part by suggesting I could use the tail of my lead rope rein to apply a little rhythmic driving pressure on his zone 1 or 2 to further ask the head to yield. Having first checked he was ok with me swinging the rope around whilst sat on his back in neutral I decided to give this a go. I applied just the 4 ounces of pressure I desired a response from and then instead of upping the phases with more pressure I started to use the driving game with the rope tail on his left side to ask for more. Here I introduced phases, first a swing then a tap on the neck with the rope. He was a little startled but I got the most beautiful lateral flexion.
Now to refine the response. This was just done with repeats of the above, stopping increasing the phases and negatively reinforcing by releasing the pressure as soon as I got the flexion. In only two or three goes at this and I was getting light responsive flexions at the first ask. What a turnaround.
The timing of the phases was critical. Reading the "Equitation Science" book has made more concentrate not only on the phases but the time interval of each phase. We desire a response to the onset of phase 1 pressure, not 10 seconds after the onset of the pressure. Thus we need to increase the phase such that the new phase can still be associated with the onset of the phase 1 pressure. I used to wait for 30 seconds or more before increasing my phase, I now think this was a mistake as horses do not remember that far back in the past. As a result they do not associate this new aversive stimuli with the onset of a previous lighter one. I now use about 3 to 6 seconds before upping the phase and this seems to be paying dividends. I am going to experiment more with this timing and try to work out what the optimum is. Too quick and the horse has not had a chance to respond and increasing pressure then breaks the principle "The attitude of justice is effective". Too slow and am not allowing the horse to associate new pressure with the onset of light pressure and I am also then breaking the same principle. I feel this is going to be a fascinating but frustrating learning curve !
But first, what is neutral lateral flexion and why is it important? Put simply it is asking the horse to bring his head round so that it almost touches your toe when riding. It is important as it is a primary means of stopping a horse, if its head is pointing towards its' tail it is probably not going to be able to run forwards very fast. Psychologically it is important as this bent neck posture is a very submissive position and is one that many predators will try to force a prey animal into in order to bring it down. Thus adopting this pose with a predator on its' back and then have that pose released will help to build trust between the horse and rider as the horse figures out that even in this extreme submissive pose its' predator still does not mean it harm.
The snag is getting the horse into this position, bearing in mind that the neck muscles are some of the most powerful muscles a horses possess. Given their job of supporting and moving its' massive head a long way out at the end of a cantilever that is not surprising. Pure muscle on our part is not going to do the trick.
Much of the work is of course achieved on the ground. All the exercises that make the horse responsive to halter or bit pressure will prime them to responding when pressure is applied asking for an NLF.
Once in the saddle it is vital that before asking for the NLF we are completely relaxed in our body cues. We want to just talk to the head and neck, not the feet. Any body tension will be perceived by the horse and at best we will get a hind quarter yield and at worst we will have given conflicting cues and wind up with a prancy confused horse.
To achieve this state of relaxation it is suggested that for a right NLF you pick up the buckle of the rein (middle with rope reins) with the left hand, lift it high up, gently stroke down the rein with the right hand several times and then politely and gently apply pressure with the right hand easing towards your right thigh. Now just wait until you get relaxation from the horse at which point you have around 1 second to release it so that you negatively reinforce the behaviour. (look at this link for negative reinforcement).
Slowly the time period in the NLF is increased with the aim of 1 full minute with no brace from the horse and a maximum of 4 ounces of pressure applied. Sounds easy until you try.
Back to Bonitao. Ritchie had of course taught this years ago, but with me starting it was back to kindergarten for him. I found that his NLF to the left was just about ok, but to the right it was sticky to say the least. Once he was in the right NLF he would tend to stay there OKish, but getting there took more than the desired pressure and longer than I would want to take on a horse I needed to stop in a hurry. Ritchie and I puzzled over this for a solution. The progressive application of pressure as a form of phases was not working. Remembering Pats phrase "If you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you've always gotten" we needed a new idea.
Ritchie provided the first part by suggesting I could use the tail of my lead rope rein to apply a little rhythmic driving pressure on his zone 1 or 2 to further ask the head to yield. Having first checked he was ok with me swinging the rope around whilst sat on his back in neutral I decided to give this a go. I applied just the 4 ounces of pressure I desired a response from and then instead of upping the phases with more pressure I started to use the driving game with the rope tail on his left side to ask for more. Here I introduced phases, first a swing then a tap on the neck with the rope. He was a little startled but I got the most beautiful lateral flexion.
Now to refine the response. This was just done with repeats of the above, stopping increasing the phases and negatively reinforcing by releasing the pressure as soon as I got the flexion. In only two or three goes at this and I was getting light responsive flexions at the first ask. What a turnaround.
The timing of the phases was critical. Reading the "Equitation Science" book has made more concentrate not only on the phases but the time interval of each phase. We desire a response to the onset of phase 1 pressure, not 10 seconds after the onset of the pressure. Thus we need to increase the phase such that the new phase can still be associated with the onset of the phase 1 pressure. I used to wait for 30 seconds or more before increasing my phase, I now think this was a mistake as horses do not remember that far back in the past. As a result they do not associate this new aversive stimuli with the onset of a previous lighter one. I now use about 3 to 6 seconds before upping the phase and this seems to be paying dividends. I am going to experiment more with this timing and try to work out what the optimum is. Too quick and the horse has not had a chance to respond and increasing pressure then breaks the principle "The attitude of justice is effective". Too slow and am not allowing the horse to associate new pressure with the onset of light pressure and I am also then breaking the same principle. I feel this is going to be a fascinating but frustrating learning curve !
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