Riding Filly in the big field

Hi All. Many asked for a video of Filly, so here is one http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qGuLXwvZRTk . Think I got the aspect ratio a bit wrong, but you can at least see her being ridden.
It was her first ride in the big field at our livery yard. Prior to this it has been a swamp.
I set out a 20m by 40m arena with little markers and also a Stacey Westfall clover leaf pattern. I was trying to keep everything as consistent and familiar as possible for her and we had been doing lots of these patterns in the school.
I, of course, did a proper prepare to ride ground sequence prior to riding her. After all my mentor, James Roberts, was most definitely watching from horsemens heaven and I did not want to get up there myself one day to be given a telling off. He sits on my shoulder everyday and speaks to me. Before I rode I asked my wife what James would say. "Stop messing about and get on" was her reply. That's what I thought James had just said so I mounted with confidence and had a good ride.
You may notice she is a little lame, particularly at walk. This is due to a conformational issue plus some foal hood injuries which we are slowly overcoming. Interestingly she only feels lame to ride when she is a little stressed like in this video. Today I rode her in the outdoor school and she felt absolutely perfect .
I did know I was on the wrong lead at canter, but rather than make her feel wrong for it decided to just change the circle direction on this occasion.
Not the prettiest ride I know, but for me given Fillys background it felt fantastic. I was so proud about how calm she held herself and how honest a ride she gave me. She really is a great partner.

Relaxation at Canter

Rode again yesterday even though I had a cold and felt miserable. Filly always cheers me up :)

More of the same, but we tried some of the yields at trot. They were even more responsive but given slightly grudgingly. We've been through this sort of thing with Filly before. What she needs under these circumstances is lots of reassurance and rubs. It's surprisingly tricky to apply the aids and give reassuring rubs remaining in balance during a rising trot !

We then spent sometime at canter trying to get rhythm and relaxation. I follow the classical method of training as modified by James Roberts. So for each gait I am looking for Rhythm, Relaxation, Forwards, Straightness, Flexion, Collection. In that order and if I loose one we go back a step to fix it. So as we have done very little canter work we needed to get the rhythm and relaxation first. As there is no straightness in this I was not too worried about where we went just so long as we maintained gait and kind of went around the school.
In fact Filly quickly told me should would prefer to do a 15m circle around a cone we had been working with earlier so I just let her do that whilst she worked on her rhythm. After around 5 minutes of continuous canter she gave a huge relaxing snort and lowered her head. A few more strides with relaxation for her to really get the feel and that was job done. Slight relaxing of my body and we stopped in two strides !
I feel the right way to go with this stage of the progression is to just set it up so we can stay out of their way and let them figure out how to canter nicely. There is no way that I can really influence this other than to stay out of their way with balance and stay off of their heads to leave them the freedom to explore their own bodies and how they move with 90kg perched on top.

Getting the Feel lighter

Continuing to ride Filly as much as weather and work allow.
She is getting so light now that I can barely move without getting a response :) . If I ask even a little too firmly I get the response but also a "get off me I'm doing it" expression. This is great for my riding and feel.
Even if I raise my heel I get a snarky look to remind me to use my calf muscle first. Not sure if she actually feels my heel rise, because it's not touching her, or can visually see my foot move.
I can even do neutral lateral flexions without using the reins, just the inside leg. As long as there is no forwards intention in my body she stays still for this. This is teaching me to be hyper aware of my body energy.
For all the gross moves, turning, stopping etc my reins are pretty much redundant. As a result I can now use my reins to start to shape her body a little. Backup with a nicely rounded poll is easy now, and we have just started getting some really nice fore quarter yields isolated form the hind quarters.
This is still all at walk. I want to get this really really good before progressing to the higher gaits too much. We do some trotting and cantering, but with only a little peppering in of the leg. Response is good to the leg, but with her history of extreme head tossing in the past I am being careful not to resurrect the behaviour.
But I am having trouble giving her the idea of collection whilst moving forwards. I'm going to review some of the Karen Rohlf DVD we have on the subject, but if anyone has other clues as to where to start please let me know !

Mud Fever again.

Filly has mud fever again. The fields at our yard are better described as swamps. They are just below the spring line on the Oxfordshire plain and so are not getting a chance to dry out even when the rain and snow stop falling.
There are very few scabs on her legs, but they have become swollen again. So she is back on antibiotics and twice daily scrubbing and creaming of the infected areas. It also means that she is stable bound again as going onto wet fields is not a good idea.
But true to my ethos that a stable bound horse can still be trained I am still carrying on with some little bit and pieces.
One item is actually the handling of her legs. Obviously I am having to handle them a lot at the moment for the scrubbing and creaming. I think the difference is that I approach even this operation with the idea of "quality" in the handling. So I am gauging all the time how well she is following the feel of my hand on her legs, how she is reading my "intention" as to whether I want the leg just kept still on the ground or lifted up in response to my touch, whether she tries to take over and move her leg away from me or just follows the suggestion as to where I want the leg to go.
In general I would give her 6 out of 10 at them moment. Generally she follows my feel, unless distracted by external stimuli like another horse walking past. When her mind is on the task of following my feel she mostly does so, but her mind keeps wandering off onto other subjects and I think she then genuinely forgets her job with her legs and moves them inappropriately.
When I feel her doing this I just gently move her leg around, even to the point of tipping her off balance to get her thinking back to her legs and my feel again.
I suspect that many folk would just say she was being disrespectful at this point, and maybe even punish her. I think this would be mis-reading the situation and she would have no idea what she was being punished for as her mind was not on her legs at all. Thus the punishment would have little effect but to damage our rapport.

Massaging Filly

Recently Filly has been getting very tight in the hind quarters. Her stride became shorter and she felt a little lamer than usual. As a result we called Dustie out, our osteo. She agreed that she was very very tight in the hind quarters, possibly as a result of tipping a lot of her weight back to take the load off the front legs. Dustie suggested several stretches I could do with Filly to loosen up the muscles and also suggested massaging her.
I then spent several days on the internet looking up massagers. Eventually I settled on an Equissager . Fortunately the distributor was only 40 minutes drive away so I went and picked one up.
Back at the farm I introduced this new monster to Filly. She was not impressed even before it was turned on. As she is a curious horse I decided that the best course of action was to play the touch it game with her. I got Ritchie to hold the equissager which I just treated as an object for her to put her nose on. This was not the only object in the game. Cones were used as well. To get her to understand what game we were playing I sent her to a cone to touch, then a jump wing, then a cone, then the equissager. After several rounds of this, and much snorting, she put her nose on it.
We then turned it on and played the same game, not asking her to put her nose on it, but just near it.
This game overcame her basic fear of the object, but we still had to touch her with it. To get to this stage, with it off, was just approach and retreat until I could rub her hind quarters with it.
As for turning it on, this was again approach and retreat. Turn it on, if she went to pull away leave it on until she shifted her weight towards it. Immediately turn it off. Soon she learnt that she could control the noise by moving towards it so it was less scary.
Now the big test. Turn it on and put it on her hind quarters. A moment of tension in her body then it was like she collapsed in a big relaxed puddle on the floor !! She absolutely loved it. Almost immediately her head went down, she licked and chewed and then gave the most enormous yawns showing she was coming off adrenaline.
This was not the habituation over however, it took several more sessions before I could get it on her shoulders for example. But once there it evoked a similar response.
This just emphasiseis that you cannot make assumptions with horses. Just because one area is fine by them does not make another area ok.

Bonitao was even more skeptical of it, but again lots of patience and we got there. Just to make things even more interesting I tried massaging him at liberty the other night. This really made me concentrate on my timing and feel. It was successful however after only around 5 minutes or so.

Dustie is coming over tomorrow afternoon for another checkup. I'll report back on what she says.

Spurs, Filly and finding Lightness

During my last session with Sean he suggested I might think about using spurs. James Roberts had said that I needed around 100 hours riding prior to using them, but Sean thought I was ready.
With this in mind I therefore went out an bought some. 10 point mild western spurs. They are not to get more impulsion, but to give me more lateral control. Filly knew full well she could push on my leg and the consequences were minor. In effect I could not get strong enough pressure with my boot heel to phase 4 her and she knew it.
I decided to try the spurs out in the indoor school, partially because it was really cold outside and partially because I knew we could have it to ourselves. To say I mounted with care is an understatement, I was very aware of this spikes sticking out of my heels. I'm more used to crampon spikes coming out of my toes, not out of the heel.
The ride was.... eventful is a good description. I had to barely touch her with the spur and she reacted. I was of course being even more careful to go up through my phases than usual and Filly was a bit surprised and disappointed that I now had a phase 4. This was not life as she knew it. I could now actually make her yield her hind quarters or go sideways. She could argue at the lower phases but not at phase 4. Phase 4 was NOT me sticking my spur into her hard. On one hind quarter yield I watched my spur most carefully and it barely touched her hair to get a strong reaction.
We still had a few arguments about it all, but they felt more like frank exchanges of view than real bust ups. Slowly these resolved themselves into conversations and she was coming off the lightest phase 1.
Since then I have ridden her just in boots again, but different boots to my old ones. These are again western boots, but they have a ledge at the heel to take the spurs. The edge of this is quite sharp and acts like a very very mild spur. I have found that this is now all I need for phase 4. Phase one is just turning my eyes and my intention to a new focus point. I have been riding her in the outdoor school using a clover leaf pattern. The variation I have been using is to stop at then fence each time I approach it from X (the centre of the school) and wait. Not a short wait but a long one. Minimum 2 minutes and up to 5. It helps to have some music playing for this to avoid boredom. Played it for 1 hour 30 minutes on the first day, 1 hour on the second.
The result is a connection to Filly I have never felt before when riding her. Ok, I have only been riding her for a few months, but this is a connection deeper than I have felt with any horse. We really are having a conversation, there is no other way to describe it. I suggest and if she understands she complies. If not she tries something else and I find that I can very gently make the suggestion stronger and feel her go "oh, that's what you mean". Because I truly believe that it is just her misinterpreting things it helps keep my emotions under control. I don't get angry or frustrated I just try my hardest to make my intention clearer. I  realise that the fault lies in either how I have taught her our mutual language or how I have presented the feel of what I want.
I guess we needed the stronger conversation with the spurs for her to really start listening, and when she did she found I had some interesting things to say that were worth listening to.
I hope every riders can feel this lightness just once because once you have felt it you just want to see if you can get even lighter. It feels like an addictive drug this lightness, and one I am very happy to be addicted to.

Colleen Kelly

This blog has been a while coming, I hope it is worthwhile.

On the 19th February we went to a clinic by Colleen Kelly at Widmer riding school. We had seen Colleen at the Aintree Horse and Soul clinic and been impressed by her sessions, so when we learned that she was doing a clinic within 15 minutes of our house it was too good to miss.
I could write more about Colleens' background but here is a link to her website http://colleenkellyriderbiomechanics.com/ . Her comments about Parelli were interesting. She freely admits to being very very anti Parelli until she met them. She was very impressed when she did and now has collaborated with Linda in producing a DVD. For someone steeped in the more traditional world of top international dressage that is quite a turn around. She reckoned that Lindas' horse is now technically one of the best dressage horses in the USA, and that is from an international dressage judge ! She has also been on the long list for the Australian Olympic dressage team, so I guess she can ride a bit too.

Everyone on the clinic was a Parelli student, which helped with the language. Colleen could use Parelli speak, which gets complex ideas over in few words, and be pretty sure we all understood what she meant.
We started we a brief discussion in the tea room and then it was straight to the horses. We were only spectators on this course so had the luxury of just watching others ride. This can be a quicker way of learning as you can watch several riders work through their problems rather than just concentrating on yourself. You get five times the learning, albeit without the practical.

To start with all five horses were ridden together. Actually one went into the other school to work through some issues on the ground first with Lyla Cansfield helping them out. That's what I love about Natural Horsemanship. If you have a riding problem, get off and sort it out on the ground first. It is so much safer than the traditional method of just riding through the problem and more respectful of the horse. It helps them through problems rather than forcing them through them.

In the afternoon each horse and rider then got 1/2 hour with Colleen to work with individual training followed by 1/2 hour in the other school with Lyla. We only went for day 1, but learnt loads and saw huge improvements in the horses and riders. 

Here is a write up of the notes I took. It does not contain all that I learnt as I only took the notes that seemed most relevant to me.

Prepare to ride
If needing to calm the horse then use fewer circles. Use more sideways, hind quarter disengagements and backwards until relaxed. Keep your hands low.


Seating Position
1) Whilst sitting on horse : Bend down and touch toe keeping upper body central to horse. ie touch top of neck with chin. Keep legs underneath you. Stretches the hamstrings.

2a) Stand in stirupps and push pubic bone forwards then put an arm straight up. Halt walk and trot. Stretches front hip flexors
2b) As 2a but arm straight forwards. Not on horses centre line but straight out from your shoulder. Keep arm still. Checks if your body is twisting left or right.
2c) As 2a but arm held out to side. Arm at right angles to your body. Check arm is still both up and down and forwards and backwards.
2d) As 2a. Arc arm forwards, up and back to touch horses back. Palm should be in contact with horse then sit down.

Correct riding position can be helped with the following
Stand up
Spurs out
Sit down
The weight on your tail bone should be greater than the weight on your pubic bone
Make sure hands have thumbs on top, not out to the sides. She reckoned that just putting thumbs on top when holding reins could reduce weight on the front legs by up to 15kg !

Turning

As the horse turns keep the peak of the riding hat horizontal. Adjust it so you can see it and use a horizontal line in the arena to check the head is not leaning in the turns.
Keep elbows level. Outside elbow tends to come up and this is wrong
Pressing on the inside stirrup tightens the turn

Downwards Transitions

For downwards transitions use following sequence.
Toes in
Heels down
Eyes up
Chest up
and wait for desired gait. May take a while for first few transitions but get snappier with time. Note no use of the reins.

Tail Swish

Colleen looks for an equal tail swish to either side as a cue that the horse is travelling in a balanced relaxed way.

Getting horses attention

When riding if both ears go forwards so that they are not listening to you immediately turn the horse until you get an ear back on you. Soon they start to pay continuous attention to you.

Impulsion

Never fix impulsion in any sideways movement. Go back to straight to get impulsion then try again.
Flicking outside rein towards groove below and behind ear can help with impulsion without need to use feet. Only use occasionally as they soon become friendly to it and ignore it otherwise.

Stretching and relaxing

Never let horse stretch down when moving so that the nose is below the front knee level. Puts too much weight on the forehand and makes them liable to trip, which is not relaxing for either of you !

Disunited Canter

If disunited then go to shoulder in to bring inside hind under the horse. Quick cure. When cured formerly disunited horses are great at flying lead changes.

Lowering the head

This is an idea I have heard about a fair bit and on occasion have used, but the other evening it had dramatic results so I thought I would make it the subject of a post.
The basic idea is that if you can get a horse to softly lower its' head below the level of its' withers then you can help the horse to relax. I have heard that this position results in a hit of dopamine, the "feel good" hormone, being released into the brain of the horse.

Bonitao is a bit of a right brain horse, though he is generally pretty centred these days. But put in a situation he is not sure about and he very quickly goes very introverted and unconfident.
The exercise was to get him to go sideways over a plastic jump wing. He is unconfident about having something this big under his belly and either resists the pressure to move there, or pushes out over the jump wing to get away from it. We had been working on this for some time and slowly getting results. But Bonitao was stuck on getting the obstacle completely under his belly. We decided that maybe switching from the gentle driving game we had been using and use gentle porcupine pressure with the fingers instead might work.
The main sticking point seemed to be the front feet, so I applied gentle pressure to the shoulder and as soon as he shifted his weight over quit. Then I lowered his head and rubbed on his shoulder. He seemed to relax somewhat. Interesting. I continued with the process, asking for more and more with each try, but in small increments, each time lowering his head as a "reward". Soon he was standing with the jump wing under his belly.
It then appeared that the hind legs were stuck and he could not move them. Porcupine did not work, so I switched tactics. Being James Roberts students our horses are very good at having their feet placed down. We never ever drop a foot when picking out the feet for example. We make sure we can place the tip of the toe on the ground with a completely relaxed leg.
I now used this to make Bonitao think about his hind feet. I picked them up and gently moved them around until I felt him thinking to the leg, then placed them on the ground. With his attention now on the feet I asked again for the hind quarter porcupine, and he took a small step. And again for each good try he got a "reward" of a lowered head.
We did not get him all the way across the jump wing on that session, but subsequently have. For me it really reinforced the idea of this low head position being a place of relaxation and reward and its' cheaper than treats !

Aintree Horse and Soul Tour

Ritchie and I managed to get some last minute tickets to go to the Parelli Horse and Soul tour event in Aintree Equestrian Center at Aintree race course.
It also gave me a chance to see what Filly is missing out on as we parked next to the race course itself. The jumps did not look that big and impressive when I think of the controversy of the Grand National. That's before I learnt that the Grand National fences are not left up all year round as they are regularly burnt down by protesters.

The venue was small compared to previous events at the NEC in Birmingham, but I liked the more intimate feel. There were around 2500 people there and the seating was no more than 4 or 5 deep. Being a smaller crowd they were likely to consist of more hardened NH supporters so the show could afford to show more advanced topics without making anyone feel left out.

The event started with Neil Pye, the announcer, dedicating the event to the memory of James Roberts. For this he got a standing ovation showing the strength of support James had in the UK. Brought a tear to the eye of many people, including me.

Then the demos started. I cannot possibly describe all the demos that were performed, so will concentrate of the highlights for me.

One of the first day demos was on horsenalities and how to use the techniques in a real life situation. This was lead by Linda and involved for folks and there horses, each representing a specific horsenality type. Once we had all had a chance to see the reactions of each horse to the crowd environment the horses were broadly classified as one of the four key types. For once this worked like a charm, all four really did display archetypal behaviour, this had not been the case at the last show in Birmingham !
Then each horse was played with in turn to get them calm and mentally collected and connected whilst in front of a large audience. Being a knowledgeable audience there was no clapping at inopportune times which was nice to see. What I did like is that if a horse crossed, temporarily, into a different horsenality this was pointed out and the correct strategy used for the horse that was there this second. Personally I get really fed up with folks who label there horses once and for all then don't play with the horse in front of them. It was great to see Linda trying to correct this trait.

There was a very cute spotlight (just a demo with little teaching element to it) where a Parelli professional and her six year old son played with their horse and pony. Very good for his first spotlight.

On both days there was a training session with Collen Kelly http://colleenkellyriderbiomechanics.com/ working with 4 top Parelli professionals highlighting horse and rider biomechanics. Collen is an Australian dressage specialist who is both a top judge and has been long listed for the Australian Olympic team. She has also trained with the head trainer of the Spanish Riding School. She is probably one of the most highly qualified horseman I have ever met. We were so impressed by her that we immediately booked onto a clinic she was giving near us yesterday. More about this in a later post.

Of Pats' demos the one that made the biggest impression was helping a rider with canter lead changes. Pat rode a beautiful young grey horse who belonged to one of the UK Parelli instructors. This was a horse under development and so we could not only watch Pat helping the rider, but also developing the grey.
He quickly assessed the problem areas for the lead changes and set to work on improving them. It basically involved the ridden sideways game. He wanted the rider to get her horse much much more responsive much more impulsion sideways. He helped by positioning the grey and using a stick to drive the horse sideways. The result was nice figure of 8 canter patterns with a flying lead change on each change of direction.
On occasion there were hints of Pats legendary toughness as an instructor showing through, but he has enough instructor savvy not to put too much pressure on the rider in front of a large audience.

But for me the absolute highlight was after hours on day 1 when most of the audience were leaving. Pat was on the grey again, just playing with it as he would back home with any young horse. Oblivious of the folks around him, just connected to the grey. He had a big green Parelli ball that he was getting the grey to put its' nose on and push around. But this was a dynamic play. Very little rest, just go go go. The ball gave Pat and the horse a focus for all the little sideways, backup and forwards aids Pat was using. And he played for a long time at this one game. I later heard that he had ridden the grey on the Friday before the event and played just the corner game for 4 hours ! That is a level of consistency in training that I have never reached.
I would give a lot to spend a week with Pat in the same way I used to with James. Just sitting and watching him work with no pre-planned lesson plan, just Pat doing his job (and hopefully the odd explanation !)

The Saturday evening we had dinner with many of our Parelli friends. In a way this social side is a big reason to go to an event like this. It gives a chance to chat to like minded people. Most yards are a bit of a dessert when it comes to being able to talk about NH. We're a little luckier with 3 of us being actively involved and several others interested.

My only criticism of the weekend is that there could have been fewer demos aimed at complete beginners. This was clearly a very knowledgeable audience and more higher level demos could have been incorporated. However if you watch close enough you can always get something out of every demo.

For example the last demo was a trailer loading demo, of which we have all seen many episodes before, both live and on DVD. This one had a twist however. Pat was coaching a young 13 yr old girl through the process, with what started as a horse she loved, but could barely control. For those of us who love to pass this knowledge on it was interesting to see how he taught this young girl. No isolation of the seven games, just getting the horse to move around naturally. Of course she used all seven games in the process without realising it, and maybe this is the best way to teach beginners the rudiments of NH.

Lesson with Sean

A long day for Filly today which will have really tested her mentally. She came through it well.

Sean came to give us a lesson. We started with the usual prepare to ride, but as I had noted yesterday that she was not so willing to go in a circle on the right rein we put emphasis on getting her more flexed on the right circle prior to riding. This was done by putting her on a right circle online and then just asking with a stick and flag for her to sidepass just a step or two out on the circle, then back to the circle again. This sidepass just gets her to flex her body so that she is straight on the circle. Over time this should help her with all her right rein work, be it walk, trot, canter and even lead changes. As Pat says "the better they go backwards and sideways the better they will do everything else".

Then to get her forwards better we worked on snappy halt to walk, trot or canter transitions online. This involved asking her gently to get going, but if after a few seconds she had not headed out with energy I ran towards her hind end and slapped the ground hard three times with the string. All three times on the same spot, not chasing her. After just a few attempts she was flying into her transitions without the high energy running from me.

Once riding we worked a bit on forwards at walk, which after the preparation was pretty good. We then spent a fair amount of time on indirect rein. This is where we ask the hind leg to cross under the body, but the front legs to stay still.
The usual progression of eyes, belly button, legs, rein were followed. If she still was not crossing under after all this, then gentle rhythmic tapping with a stick just behind my boot until we got a nice step. This involved several tight circles to begin with until we got that soft step we were after. Sean even helped to start with by applying pressure with a stick behind my boot heel.

From there we moved onto direct rein (yielding the fore quarters). For this we want the front legs to cross over, but the hind legs to stay still. This was initially approached in a similar way but we moved onto a different pattern after a while.

The new pattern was to get her to back up really well next to the rail, then ask for a 180 degree turn along the rail turning towards the center of the school and stop. The backup was to keep her weight over the hind legs so that the front legs were light and could step over. The stop was to isolate the front legs so that the direct rein would be more strongly associated with them.

Sean helped this by using my 5m pole with a flag on the end. With this he could add a little driving pressure in front of her to really engage the backup. Once this was softened then the eyes, belly button, leg, rein sequence was followed to ask for the direct rein. Sean "helped" with the pole and flag to drive the front end around.

Filly really didn't like the flag ! It improved my seat and balance no end. She was not frightened of it, in fact she tried to attack it once. But it did do the trick. After around 10 or 15 minutes of this we got some really nice backups and direct reins. Could it have been done without the flag ? Probably, but it would have taken way longer and would actually been more stressful for her as I would have needed to be more vigorous with the legs and reins for a longer time.

As soon as we stopped she relaxed totally with lots of yawning as she came off adrenalin and much licking and chewing as you digested what had just happened. Being in a western saddle I felt pretty secure throughout, and english saddle might have been a different story.

I like to allow better horsemen than me to ride Filly when possible. Not so that they can teach her better than I can, but so that they can get a feel for her, how she has improved and what I need to concentrate on in the near future. Therefore I got Sean to ride her for ten minutes or so. The feedback was pretty positive. He said that she felt like a different horse compared to last time. The main points to work on were those that lesson had concentrated on anyway. Getting her softer to the direct and indirect rein. Also to work more on her sideways.

Another very good lesson, which was fun for me, provocative and, from her expression, fun for Filly.