Just a short session with Mini yesterday, it was a bit warm to be out in the sun for too long, but then I'm a cold weather guy !
The theme was to continue with the relaxation on the circle combined with Mini being tuned into to me and not just mindlessly lunging round and round. That is the snag with a horse that has been lunged in the old fashioned way too much, they tend to go brain dead and assume that as they are going to be circling with no purpose (in their mind) for ages they had better switch off to preserve their sanity. Of course this is not what we want. We want them to be asking us questions all the time. Circling should be viewed more as a mind exercise for them than as physical exercise. The physical exercise is just a nice by-product.
To get Mini thinking all I had to do was ask him to walk in a circle. In the past I am sure he always trotted circles, to be honest I can understand why. For the human getting a small pony to walk a 22 foot circle takes forever and is rather dull unless you have a strong reason to do it. I, of course, have a strong reason so it was kind of fun.
Mini was keen to keep setting off at trot and thus kept breaking his responsibility to maintain gait. A gentle correction was needed to get back to walk, though many fewer than in the last session. I did not have to circle him into a fence this time for example, a gentle wiggle of the rope was enough usually. He was also tending to pull out on the rope quite hard, again this is a fault of lunging. During lunging it is traditional to have the horse keep the rope tight on the circle, whereas I want to train as if there was no rope in preparation for liberty circles and to improve the mental rather than physical connection between us. Rope tension has to be analysed to find the cause. It could be that the horse is counter arcing its' body and thus leaning on the rope. It could be that the hind legs are close in on the circle and in effect the horse is trying to walk out on the circle. It seemed that with Mini both were present. The nose was tilted out but the hind legs were also tilted in. I picked the hind legs to work on first and so kept asking for a little sideways move of the hind legs by staring at the hips and trying to very accurately waft the stick and string at them. This would get a few steps of being straight on the circle and much reduced rope tension. Note that by pushing the hips out of the circle I reduced the rope tension which may be counter-intuitive but works.
With the hips a little better I moved to the head tilt. There were two strategies. First when he pulled hard with the head I would just step back and ask for a change of direction on the circle, again something it is hard to do with traditional lunging kit. In effect I was over correcting the tendency to pull out. This got rid of a large part of the pull. To finish off I just increased the tension on the rope whenever the head bent outwards, putting the head where I wanted it to be and then immediately releasing. Of course the head just went out again and we repeated. Slowly he learnt that if he carried his head on the correct arc then he was left alone.
This was a good example of reacting with appropriate pressure. If he pulled hard with a phase 3 pull I responded with phase 4 and we changed direction. If he just leant a bit on the rope I responded with an ounce more and put his head back in position. Thus we formed a harmony of pressures. We had a conversation rather than a confrontation. I think my Aikido classes are beginning to pay off !
Talking of which we went to our second session last Monday. Great fun again and strangely after a two our workout we both commented on how more energised we felt, rather than just worn out. Next session next Monday !
The theme was to continue with the relaxation on the circle combined with Mini being tuned into to me and not just mindlessly lunging round and round. That is the snag with a horse that has been lunged in the old fashioned way too much, they tend to go brain dead and assume that as they are going to be circling with no purpose (in their mind) for ages they had better switch off to preserve their sanity. Of course this is not what we want. We want them to be asking us questions all the time. Circling should be viewed more as a mind exercise for them than as physical exercise. The physical exercise is just a nice by-product.
To get Mini thinking all I had to do was ask him to walk in a circle. In the past I am sure he always trotted circles, to be honest I can understand why. For the human getting a small pony to walk a 22 foot circle takes forever and is rather dull unless you have a strong reason to do it. I, of course, have a strong reason so it was kind of fun.
Mini was keen to keep setting off at trot and thus kept breaking his responsibility to maintain gait. A gentle correction was needed to get back to walk, though many fewer than in the last session. I did not have to circle him into a fence this time for example, a gentle wiggle of the rope was enough usually. He was also tending to pull out on the rope quite hard, again this is a fault of lunging. During lunging it is traditional to have the horse keep the rope tight on the circle, whereas I want to train as if there was no rope in preparation for liberty circles and to improve the mental rather than physical connection between us. Rope tension has to be analysed to find the cause. It could be that the horse is counter arcing its' body and thus leaning on the rope. It could be that the hind legs are close in on the circle and in effect the horse is trying to walk out on the circle. It seemed that with Mini both were present. The nose was tilted out but the hind legs were also tilted in. I picked the hind legs to work on first and so kept asking for a little sideways move of the hind legs by staring at the hips and trying to very accurately waft the stick and string at them. This would get a few steps of being straight on the circle and much reduced rope tension. Note that by pushing the hips out of the circle I reduced the rope tension which may be counter-intuitive but works.
With the hips a little better I moved to the head tilt. There were two strategies. First when he pulled hard with the head I would just step back and ask for a change of direction on the circle, again something it is hard to do with traditional lunging kit. In effect I was over correcting the tendency to pull out. This got rid of a large part of the pull. To finish off I just increased the tension on the rope whenever the head bent outwards, putting the head where I wanted it to be and then immediately releasing. Of course the head just went out again and we repeated. Slowly he learnt that if he carried his head on the correct arc then he was left alone.
This was a good example of reacting with appropriate pressure. If he pulled hard with a phase 3 pull I responded with phase 4 and we changed direction. If he just leant a bit on the rope I responded with an ounce more and put his head back in position. Thus we formed a harmony of pressures. We had a conversation rather than a confrontation. I think my Aikido classes are beginning to pay off !
Talking of which we went to our second session last Monday. Great fun again and strangely after a two our workout we both commented on how more energised we felt, rather than just worn out. Next session next Monday !
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