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.
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
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
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.
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 !
