A chilled Filly

Friday 29 August 2014

Riding Bonitao in the big field

I've taken a break from working in the school. I think we both needed time away from the place. I've been on standby for work as well which means I can only ride in the evening after my standby has ended. So we have been going to the big field on the farm for the last two evenings to get some exercise.

The first trip to the field was a little eventful just getting there. As we came past the row of horse trailers Bonitao got really worried. He actually tried to bolt past them and I had to bend him to a halt. No big drama but a little unexpected. So we played with the trailers for a while, just doing the ridden squeeze pattern until he was confidently eating grass right next to them.
The first day in the field was pretty good. He had highish energy levels, the forwards walk was very forwards. But we just did a lap at walk, another at trot and a last one at canter. We through in the odd refuelling stop to take on some grass from time to time.
The lap at canter was a little tricky. He wanted to really tank off, so we just rode circles until he relaxed and then carried on our way.

Yesterdays field trip was more exciting. He was fine going to the field, the trailers holding no worries for him other than a slightly suspicious glance. The first lap at walk went well until we got to the far hedge. He's always had a problem with this hedge. I have no idea why, and I doubt we can ever really know what worries a horse about any situation, we can just have what are usually unhelpful theories. Unhelpful in that we then become anxious in a similar situation and transmit that to the horse when otherwise they would have been fine !
But he was worried and started spooking and prancing all the way along the hedge. This was not desired behaviour. But then the oft repeated phrase of James Roberts came to mind. "Get them thinking to their feet". We started doing all sorts of patterns. Figure 8, sideways, direct rein, indirect rein, back up etc etc. I tried to ride exactly the same as I would in the school in a normal schooling situation. I would not allow any heaviness on the bosal. If he pushed into it then light bumps until he softened and then release. We kept this up for a good twenty minutes. Everytime he relaxed he got rewarded by eating grass. With tenseness came more patterns. Eventually he was relaxed enough to walk a straight line along the hedge line.

In a way this energy was a gift. We achieved some incredible yields. Sideways had impulsion as did the direct reins. So rather than just seeing the negative of the situation I tried to focus on the positive and get some schooling achieved that would actually been harder in the school.
We'll keep going to the field for a while, both to use this energy and to try and get him more confident in the environment.

Wednesday 20 August 2014

A very quick update

I have to leave for work in a few minutes, but we have had an update from Nic at Rockley farm. It's well worth a look

4 week update

Seems like all is going pretty well apart from the abscess. But then who knows how long that has been in her foot ? The fact it has come out can only be a good thing.

Saturday 16 August 2014

A visit to Filly

On Thursday I finally had time to go and pay a visit to Filly. A long drive in some very very heavy showers, but the reward was when I got there.
After parking the car just outside the yard I walked towards the house. Then I heard the most enormous whinny from the stable block. I thought all the horses would be out so hadn't checked in there but recognised that voice. Filly was in her stable and had recognised the sound of my foot fall. I poked my head around the door to be greeted by an alert little face with ears pricked. So I had to say hi before going to the house. Within minutes she was used to my presence again and went back to her friends. Horses are like that and live in the moment. It probably just took a short time before she forgot I had even been away. But that's fine I had had my reward already.

I then went to the house to meet up with Nic and she took me out to see Fillys' feet. The first thing to say is that a huge abscess had blown out of her front left coronet band. If you remember that was the foot that was extremely lame just before she went to Rockley, so I guess it had been cooking for a while. Apparently she was lame again on it for a few days before it came out, but became much sounder once the pressure was relieved. Nic said it absolutely stank :( .
Once we had discussed that small problem we looked at her feet. I have to say I was amazed. They don't look like the same hooves. I had expected to see badly chipped hoof wall, but what I actually saw was hooves that looked like they had been manicured. OK, the very edges were a little uneven but no sharp chips at all. I also noticed that the frogs looked much much neater and, even to my inexpert eye, stronger. Due to the abscess I did not see her moving about outside the stable but she should be out again as I write this. In fact Nic is hoping to take her long walks on Exmoor soon being lead as Nic rides one of the other rehabs.
We then had a long cup of tea and a chat about all things hoof related and horses in general.
After tea I went back out to just spend some time with Filly in her stable. Nic went for a ride leading a couple of other horses while Filly and I just chilled. And I have never seen Filly so chilled. The atmosphere on this yard is so conducive to being relaxed that leaning over the door next to Filly I nearly nodded off and she definitely did.
After an hour or so it was time to face the long drive home. Bad rain again, but I was feeling so happy knowing that Filly was being well looked after mentally and physically. It was much less stressful than the last drive home. Trusting someone else with your horse for 12 weeks is a bit difficult but having got to know Nic over the last few visits I now feel very relaxed about it.
Nic has shared a few videos of herself riding and that just reinforces my view of her. She doesn't "do" Parelli or any other NH training, but watch these videos and I think you'll agree that that is because she is already there !
https://vimeo.com/81551001
https://vimeo.com/81551489

Thursday 7 August 2014

The Box Exercise

As Filly is away I've been doing a fair bit of riding on Bonitao. I've spent a lot of time recently getting him really light with forequarter yields or direct rein. He will react to just a weight shift now most of the time. If that fails then just moving my outside leg forwards a little will get those front legs crossing over nicely.
At the same time I've been balancing this with getting the indirect rein lighter. This is asking the hind legs to cross over. He'll do this mostly from just my inside leg going back a touch, but occasionally still needs to be reminded with the rein.

For both of these I'm not talking about Level 2 Parelli type of feel, we are going way beyond that. I'm trying to see how light I can get the aids to be without them becoming over reactive. What I mean by this is that with my intention turned off I should be able to squirm around in the saddle, look at the view and have Bonitao not react to those feelings. I only want him to react when my intention (martial arts "ki" if you like) is turned on. To achieve this I've also being doing lots of "friendly" game in the saddle and on the ground both stationary and in motion. I also try to be very clear as to when my ki is on or off.
I don't think ki is a mystical thing by the way. But using it as a model in my mind effects the tension and intention in my body. It changes the activation of muscle groups causing my core to engage or relax. But we are straying of into martial arts training here.

Having got these basic yields very light I now wanted to get transitions much lighter. Not the traditional ones of walk, trot, canter, halt but ones between forwards, sideways and backwards.
I look to many sources to get inspiration for training sessions and so I came across this on YouTube Box Exercise . This was exactly what I was looking for, but how to make it as clear as possible to Bonitao ? Bruce does a great demo of the exercise in the video, but I want to do it from the ground first.

I like to teach a new pattern on the ground first if possible. I needed to make the pattern obvious to me which will help my focus and convey the pattern to Bonitao. Well the obvious solution was to place 4 poles on the ground in a box and move Bonitao around the outside of them with his nose always pointing in the same direction, say south. So we walk forwards along one side until his hind feet are just past the sideways pole. Move sideways right along that pole with his hind legs just in front of pole. Backwards down the other side then sideways with front legs just behind the other side pole. Simple.

Bonitao has done a lot of sideways with poles so I thought this would be pretty easy on the ground. Unfortunately it turned out he had only really done sideways with the pole under his belly or in front of his front legs. Rarely with the pole behind his hind legs and it worried him. This was the first problem to overcome. So we did a session of just going sideways in front of a pole, using the end of the pole as a place of rest. This is a bit like doing the point to point pattern to get impulsion except the impulsion was sideways and the points were each end of the pole. The ends of the pole were a destination, if you like, where he knows he will get a rest.
I also discovered that he was great going to his right, but going to his left was harder. In fact he would try hard to avoid going along the pole to his left at all, but was ok going left sideways when away from the pole. Approach and retreat to get over this problem by not asking him to go sideways with the pole too close behind to start with.

Once this pattern had become acceptable on the ground I tried it ridden. Backwards was good, but we had trouble transitioning from backwards to sideways. He wanted to keep going backwards. This was overcome with putting a long pause between the directions. Sideways to forwards was pretty good as was forwards to sideways. But we still have trouble with sideways to the left with the pole behind the legs.

All of this is very much work in progress, but the video gives me a vision of where I want to get to and now all I have to do is separate out the elements, get them good on their own and then recombine them into one beautiful flowing movement.

Tuesday 5 August 2014

2 weeks at Rockley Farm

Filly has been at Rockley Farm for two weeks now. I missing here terribly. But the reports from there almost make up for this as she seems to be doing very well. The latest blog post about her is here Filly update
I spoke to Nic at Rockley today and she says she is really chilled and has integrated to the herd very well. That makes me feel much better.
I've been riding Bonitao a fair bit but that will be the subject of another blog post