A chilled Filly

Thursday 29 August 2013

Bridleless on Filly

Yesterday it finally happened. I knew it was coming, but wanted to be absolutely sure of success.
After my normal prepare to ride, where I am currently working on more 3 track on the circle at trot and also getting her to accept more pressure without reacting badly to it, I got on.
The main topic was real refinement of follow the rail. I am really after at least two laps of the school with no rein intervention from me. Afterall to get on Pats Mastery course you need to demonstrate 14 laps with your arms folded !
To achieve this I did use one carrot stick to reinforce my leg before using the rein. This went really well, and whilst I was using the carrot stick occasionally I found that after ten minutes I had not used the reins once. This was 30 minutes into the session so I had used the reins earlier.
James always emphasised acting on any green lights the horse gave you. In my mind this was a strong consistent green for taking the halter off. So off it came. She gave a nice lateral flexion to help me and immediately it was off shook her head as if to say "AT LAST". We then went back to follow the rail with some nice walk trot transitions. Trot to walk did require the gentlest use of the carrot stick the first few times to bend her to the fence just a little. After that all transitions came off my energy. We had ten minutes of really good fun. I got the confidence in her to leave the fence and do the clover leaf pattern, Very nice except to expected to stop everytime we back to the fence. Too much point to point pattern I guess, but at least it gave me confidence that even left alone she would stop.

What is odd is that I felt more comfortable and at one with her without the halter than I did with the halter. Similalarly I feel more at one with her at liberty rather than online. She really comes into her own when there is nothing on her head at all.
Down to the pub afterwards for a beer or two where I met the girl who had done Fillys' early riding before she was mine. She was really amazed and excited. She said she thought no one would ever be able to do that with her as she had been so difficult in the old days. But then they weren't using NH methods ;) . She now wants to try this on Filly herself. Spreading the ideas one person at a time seems to be working at our place.

I am so excited about this. It was one of my dreams to do it and it only took about 8 months of proper riding on her. A long time by some standards I know, but I needed to feel confident in my own abilities to carry it through. Although this is the first baby step with Filly into bridleless I think it is probably a defining moment in our friendship.

Monday 12 August 2013

Filly Stretch

We had another visit form Dustie, our horse osteopath. She was very concerned about Filly's right shoulder. She has some scar tissue there from an old injury which makes stretching the leg back difficult for her. So we need to work on that to loosen it up.
But how do you get a horse to do yoga ?
The answer seems to be by using positive reinforcement training, sometimes called clicker training.
The idea is to associate a particular cue with a particular behaviour. For this behaviour, stretching the leg, I decided on the cue "stretch".
So the sequence is
cue : "Filly Stretch"
then I place the right front hoof on the ground as far back as it will go
As she puts more and more effort into the attempt I use a bridging cue "good, Good,GOOD"
When I get the maximum effort required for that attempt then I click with my tongue which tells her that a treat is coming as soon as I can get it to her mouth.
The reason this works is described by the work of B.F.Skinner as described very well here Reinforcement and in any website devoted to clicker training.
The result is that she is now willingly letting me place her leg on the ground quite a way back. We are now working on getting her to stay in the stretch for longer to get more benefit. I have even be doing it in her field at liberty and yesterday for the first time she took a mouthful of grass with her left leg forward and right leg back whilst she waited for the click. Ultimately I would like her to graze with her legs this way round so that she maintains the mobility in that shoulder on her own. I feel this could be someway off however.