Back from the USA and after failing to sleep, straight to the yard.
Started playing with Billy as he is still in a field 24 hours a day. Due to the fact that his field mate cannot be left alone that is where I have to play with him. I have had a few issues with him not catching me so decided to spend a whole session working on this. He would come over but after a while he would move a short distance away and then, when far enough, run away. I needed to get him more connected to me so catching game seemed like the right way to go about it.
The method I used is the old predator / friendly switch. If Billy was ignoring me I would go into the pose of an approaching predator and stalk him. This creates discomfort for him as being stalked by a predator if you think you might be lunch cannot be a nice feeling. If he continued to ignore me I would throw the end of the rope at him and try to tag him. To start with this resulted in him running away, as you might expect, but it did heighten his awareness of me being around. You might think it odd that I am apparently driving him away when I want him to come to me, but bear with me.
As he became more aware of me and made the slightest effort to look at me as I approached I would immediately switch to friendly pose, look away and stop approaching him. I then had to study him with my peripheral vision to see his reaction. If he turned away again, then back to predator, if he looks at me then stay friendly. He is learning that as long as his attention is on me the predatory behaviour disappears. He is teaching ME to be friendly.
As this progresses I ask for more response. To start with a glance with one ear is enough, but as we progress I require him to move in my direction before getting the comfort of a friendly look. Pretty soon he is walking right up to me and following at heel ! If he leaves then of course the predator reappears. We had a lot of fun with this game, plus some extreme friendly game with a horse fun ball which was in the field.
Toys and obstacles are great to get my imagination going and keep it interesting for both of us. The fun ball has a handle on it that I could thread a 22 foot rope through. Now I could drag it, swing it etc. Use your imagination, I probably did it. Billy was skeptical to start, but when it kept dragging away from him, or swinging away from him he got curious and readily followed it.
Being autumn it then got dark, so time for Filly indoors.
What a difference from the previous session. Yesterday and today I kept wanting to ask where the real Filly was, because this friendly, inquisitive version was so different. YoYo was much better, today a stern finger waggle got a reasonable response and an ears pricked "what are we doing next" look. She was also like her old self when it came to cuddles. No mouthing or biting, just calm and affectionate. We played all the usual games, sideways is not as good as it was pre ring worm so needs work, but the rest were pretty good. We did a lot of stick to me at trot which gave me a good work out. I few dominance issues easily corrected with forequarter yields.
Today I particularly did a lot of work just getting her to automatically move into the mounting position when I got on the mounting block and then just getting her to stand there whilst being scratched. I can't be bothered to get the horse to go to the mounting block every time I want to get on, I would much rather they just got into position themselves when they see me on the block. This went really well. Whilst standing on the block I could direct her such that I could get on either side without moving so much as a toe myself. True partnership.
A quick note on which side to mount a horse. The traditional side, left, is only taught as a result of old military doctrine. A cavalry officer wears his sabre on his left hip so that it can easily be drawn with the right hand. Therefore if you mount from the right side and swing the left leg over the hind quarters a neat shaving of horse meat comes of ready for dinner. Therefore one should mount from the left side swinging the right leg over, which the horse finds much more comfortable, but means you have to get your meat from elsewhere. Now I don't wear a sabre as there is a law against long knives in public in the UK. It therefore does not matter which side I get on and I can't help feeling that alternating sides has got to be better for my thighs and the horses back.
Finally I had a wonderful compliment from Filly today. When we first enter the indoor school she loves to have a quick roll in the sand. I make a habit of crouching down as she rolls to appear less threatening. Today she rolled several times and then stayed on her belly chewing a hoof. I moved over and started to scratch her neck, she placed her head in my lap and stayed there for a while. It is important to me because a prey animal is very vulnerable when lying down, and to let me, a predator, approach and touch her shows great trust. A special moment.
A chilled Filly
Sunday 31 October 2010
Friday 29 October 2010
Trouble with YoYo game
Yesterday I went to the yard before work to have a quick play with Filly. ( By the way I'm writing this from Philadelphia, which is kind of appropriate !) I still wanted to improve her tendency to nip so concentrated initially on the "stick to me" game. She was much better today. Whenever her head came round at me with an open mouth I only had to move the carrot stick towards her for her to think better of it. We also did lots of turns towards her as forequarter yields are generally what triggers a mouthing attack. Again much improvement on previous days.
Using forequarter yields are one of the ways that horses determine the pecking order in the herd. I am sure that many of you have seen the fencing (as in swordsmanship) games that horse play with their necks and teeth. They rarely actually bite each other (though one horse on the yard currently has evidence that they do occasionally) but use their heads almost like clubs trying to knock the other horse away. The looser is the one who yields their head or ultimately their front legs away. This is in effect what I am doing as I ask for a forequarter yield. The important thing in this game is to never move your feet away from the horse. Towards is OK as soon as they start to yield so that you can follow them and eventually get a full 360 degree turn with the hind legs remaining in one place. Alright, I can dream can't I !! It may happen one day.
I think she will always be a horse that tests the boundaries of what is acceptable. In a way it is this spirit that I find fun. You can never assume anything with Filly, it doesn't change on a daily basis, but on a second to second basis. It can be a bit frustrating at times I admit, but the reward is enormous when it works well.
We then moved onto the YoYo game. She is very good at the draw ( towards me ) but the backup is to put it politely slow. I try to keep the phases consistent, starting with a finger wiggle, moving to a rope wiggle, a wiggle that moves the halter on her nose and finally a full hard rope wiggle with lots of commotion. She does go backwards, even at phase one, but you could go and make a cup of tea in the time it takes to move one leg, and I want her to go back 22 feet. A full English cream tea could be consumed in that time. I have tried making it more interesting for her by backing between cones, over poles etc, but it is still slow. Today I tried making the phases quicker, which caused her to look interested, not at all alarmed, even at phase 4, but move at about the same pace. Maybe a tad quicker, but it was certainly me putting in most of the effort. After a slightly more acceptable backup I called it quits for the day and took her outside to apply more hoof putty.
I noticed that she was walking a bit lame on the concrete and went to pick out her hooves to find the cause. To my horror I found two round stones which she must have picked up between the field and the school ( I had picked hooves out in the field entrance) lodged in her bad hoof sole. The bar shoe she has on along with tiny feet mean that stuff easily gets stuck there. No wonder she was having trouble moving quickly, but she had not appeared lame in the school, and her expression had not revealed any pain. As Ritchie commented, "always check for a physical problem before assuming a psychological problem ".
Lesson learned, experience gained, but a bad feeling of guilt all the way across the Atlantic !
Using forequarter yields are one of the ways that horses determine the pecking order in the herd. I am sure that many of you have seen the fencing (as in swordsmanship) games that horse play with their necks and teeth. They rarely actually bite each other (though one horse on the yard currently has evidence that they do occasionally) but use their heads almost like clubs trying to knock the other horse away. The looser is the one who yields their head or ultimately their front legs away. This is in effect what I am doing as I ask for a forequarter yield. The important thing in this game is to never move your feet away from the horse. Towards is OK as soon as they start to yield so that you can follow them and eventually get a full 360 degree turn with the hind legs remaining in one place. Alright, I can dream can't I !! It may happen one day.
I think she will always be a horse that tests the boundaries of what is acceptable. In a way it is this spirit that I find fun. You can never assume anything with Filly, it doesn't change on a daily basis, but on a second to second basis. It can be a bit frustrating at times I admit, but the reward is enormous when it works well.
We then moved onto the YoYo game. She is very good at the draw ( towards me ) but the backup is to put it politely slow. I try to keep the phases consistent, starting with a finger wiggle, moving to a rope wiggle, a wiggle that moves the halter on her nose and finally a full hard rope wiggle with lots of commotion. She does go backwards, even at phase one, but you could go and make a cup of tea in the time it takes to move one leg, and I want her to go back 22 feet. A full English cream tea could be consumed in that time. I have tried making it more interesting for her by backing between cones, over poles etc, but it is still slow. Today I tried making the phases quicker, which caused her to look interested, not at all alarmed, even at phase 4, but move at about the same pace. Maybe a tad quicker, but it was certainly me putting in most of the effort. After a slightly more acceptable backup I called it quits for the day and took her outside to apply more hoof putty.
I noticed that she was walking a bit lame on the concrete and went to pick out her hooves to find the cause. To my horror I found two round stones which she must have picked up between the field and the school ( I had picked hooves out in the field entrance) lodged in her bad hoof sole. The bar shoe she has on along with tiny feet mean that stuff easily gets stuck there. No wonder she was having trouble moving quickly, but she had not appeared lame in the school, and her expression had not revealed any pain. As Ritchie commented, "always check for a physical problem before assuming a psychological problem ".
Lesson learned, experience gained, but a bad feeling of guilt all the way across the Atlantic !
Wednesday 27 October 2010
Dominance reduced at Liberty. Filly solves a problem
I've spent two days playing with Filly trying to overcome the dominance issues. She was trying to bite at every opportunity and reared a couple of times. Being fairly small still she is not too intimidating when she does this and gets backed up a long way after each attempt. However the problem was not resolving itself, so taking the idea that repeating the same actions time and again and expecting a different result is a sign of madness I changed tack.
Now I must admit to being a bit of a risk taker at heart, so in light of this I removed the lead rope and started playing at liberty. I hoped that the removal of one form of pressure would enhance the partnership side of the relationship. To start with she then advanced on me rearing slightly, for which she got a sharp tap and the shoulder. This startled her somewhat, and she settled down to a bout of licking and chewing. Now this could have been good or bad news as she digested the fact that she was now "free". I waited patiently but pensively to see what would happen next.
She approached me with the nicest look on her face and I had my old Filly back ! In fact liberty was better than ever, with no tendency to leave for the gate at all.
We moved around the school with "stick to me" game. I found that if I turned into her she again tried to nip me, but I countered this with a rapid forequarter yield through 360 degrees to continue walking in the original direction. To achieve the yield I looked stern, turned sharply into her and rhythmically moved the carrot stick towards her neck. If she turned quickly enough there was no contact, any defiance in the turn and she got tapped on the neck with the stick handle. Left brain horses particularly seem to resent yielding the forequarter as in the horse world it is a sign of submission.
There is a world of difference between asking for a yield in this way and merely hitting the horse. When asking for the yield my intention is NOT to touch her, but if she is slow in moving out of the way of the approaching stick then it does make contact. The difference is CHOICE. If you hit a horse then you make contact irrespective of what the horse does, if you ask for a yield the horse does not get touched if it yields away quickly enough. Obviously a long response time is given in the early stages of training, which reduces as they get better.
We then moved onto weave and figure 8 at liberty with very few problems at all. We even managed the aforementioned squeeze game, and football. Circling was good, but a bit closer than I would really like, but at least this means the draw is good and there is no desire to leave.
After playing last night I had 15 minutes to kill before the pub opened so decided to spend it with Filly in the stable. I had made up a hay net in which I had buried pieces of carrot and apple and carefully watched to see what she would do. What I was not prepared for was her ability to solve the problem of the next treat being around the back of the net. Very carefully, using her nose, she rotated the net until the morsel faced her then picked it out. This may not sound that impressive but to me it showed a problem solving ability I had not expected. Lets consider the logical steps required
1) Notice that morsel is round the back of the net
2) Decide to rotate the net in order to get to it ( an interesting spatial awareness problem)
3) Realise that by flicking the net with her nose in a particular way she could get the net to turn (this involved moving her nose/mouth away from the desired morsel so showed a degree of planning)
4) Stopping the rotation at the correct point
5) Eat morsel
If anyone has further insight into horse problem solving of this sort please leave a comment as I would be fascinated to hear about it. Also, if you have any experience of how liberty exercises can solve dominance issues then please do comment.
Now I must admit to being a bit of a risk taker at heart, so in light of this I removed the lead rope and started playing at liberty. I hoped that the removal of one form of pressure would enhance the partnership side of the relationship. To start with she then advanced on me rearing slightly, for which she got a sharp tap and the shoulder. This startled her somewhat, and she settled down to a bout of licking and chewing. Now this could have been good or bad news as she digested the fact that she was now "free". I waited patiently but pensively to see what would happen next.
She approached me with the nicest look on her face and I had my old Filly back ! In fact liberty was better than ever, with no tendency to leave for the gate at all.
We moved around the school with "stick to me" game. I found that if I turned into her she again tried to nip me, but I countered this with a rapid forequarter yield through 360 degrees to continue walking in the original direction. To achieve the yield I looked stern, turned sharply into her and rhythmically moved the carrot stick towards her neck. If she turned quickly enough there was no contact, any defiance in the turn and she got tapped on the neck with the stick handle. Left brain horses particularly seem to resent yielding the forequarter as in the horse world it is a sign of submission.
There is a world of difference between asking for a yield in this way and merely hitting the horse. When asking for the yield my intention is NOT to touch her, but if she is slow in moving out of the way of the approaching stick then it does make contact. The difference is CHOICE. If you hit a horse then you make contact irrespective of what the horse does, if you ask for a yield the horse does not get touched if it yields away quickly enough. Obviously a long response time is given in the early stages of training, which reduces as they get better.
We then moved onto weave and figure 8 at liberty with very few problems at all. We even managed the aforementioned squeeze game, and football. Circling was good, but a bit closer than I would really like, but at least this means the draw is good and there is no desire to leave.
After playing last night I had 15 minutes to kill before the pub opened so decided to spend it with Filly in the stable. I had made up a hay net in which I had buried pieces of carrot and apple and carefully watched to see what she would do. What I was not prepared for was her ability to solve the problem of the next treat being around the back of the net. Very carefully, using her nose, she rotated the net until the morsel faced her then picked it out. This may not sound that impressive but to me it showed a problem solving ability I had not expected. Lets consider the logical steps required
1) Notice that morsel is round the back of the net
2) Decide to rotate the net in order to get to it ( an interesting spatial awareness problem)
3) Realise that by flicking the net with her nose in a particular way she could get the net to turn (this involved moving her nose/mouth away from the desired morsel so showed a degree of planning)
4) Stopping the rotation at the correct point
5) Eat morsel
If anyone has further insight into horse problem solving of this sort please leave a comment as I would be fascinated to hear about it. Also, if you have any experience of how liberty exercises can solve dominance issues then please do comment.
Sunday 24 October 2010
More Squeeze with Filly
Finally I have remembered to take some photos of the squeeze that I set up for Filly. It is designed as a start for loading in a trailer, getting into starting stalls etc.
She was nice to play with today. Far fewer dominance issues.
They only surfaced when I asked for an extreme turn into her as I was leading. It could of course be that she has not learnt to move the front feet sideways fast enough yet to get out of the way, and so lifts them both of the ground in frustration. The face expression would suggest that this is the case. I need to teach her to turn with her weight on the hind quarters to make this easier for her to organise her feet. There is an exercise that Russel taught that should help with this.
Step one is driving from zone 3.
Step two, turn towards her so that I am facing her hind quarters and ask for a hind quarter yield. When she yields she is now facing me and backwards to the direction of the original driving game.
Step three, get her to backup smartly ( a challenge with Filly). This gets her weight over her hind legs.
Step four. Fore quarter drive whilst walking on the original line so that she has to pivot about her hind legs and is neatly now walking in the original direction on the other side of me.
Believe me it is difficult to describe, but harder to execute. As Russel said it is a thing of beauty when done well. For us it is still rather ugly, but fun.
I also spent a considerable time doing gentle games while she was wearing her bridle. We have just introduced her to this, but at the suggestion of a lady at the yard smeared a very small amount of mint toothpaste on the bit ( I checked with a vet first and a very small amount is fine ). She loves this. In fact when I came to take it off she was reluctant to let it out of her mouth. This was the longest that she has had a bit in her mouth so I was very pleased with the acceptance.
More time was spent with Billy in the field. He is really a very sensitive horse. Sideways was a bit better, but as Ritchie observed he wants to go sideways but can't yet work out how to move his feet to make it happen.
Ritchie played with him for a while. She is very experienced with Parelli, but was a bit taken aback by his sensitivity. Comments like "I didn't ask for that" floated across the field. I had to point out that actually she had but the aid was sooo subtle she didn't even know she had given it.
I think this subtlety has got him into trouble in the past. People have inadvertently asked him to do something and then got annoyed with him when he did. He is going to take a lot of patience to back, but I can't wait for the challenge.
At one point he stared into a neighbouring field. I have long since learnt to follow the gaze of a horse and was rewarded today with the sight of two young foxes playing. What a privilege which I would have missed but for Billy
They only surfaced when I asked for an extreme turn into her as I was leading. It could of course be that she has not learnt to move the front feet sideways fast enough yet to get out of the way, and so lifts them both of the ground in frustration. The face expression would suggest that this is the case. I need to teach her to turn with her weight on the hind quarters to make this easier for her to organise her feet. There is an exercise that Russel taught that should help with this.
Step one is driving from zone 3.
Step two, turn towards her so that I am facing her hind quarters and ask for a hind quarter yield. When she yields she is now facing me and backwards to the direction of the original driving game.
Step three, get her to backup smartly ( a challenge with Filly). This gets her weight over her hind legs.
Step four. Fore quarter drive whilst walking on the original line so that she has to pivot about her hind legs and is neatly now walking in the original direction on the other side of me.
Believe me it is difficult to describe, but harder to execute. As Russel said it is a thing of beauty when done well. For us it is still rather ugly, but fun.
I also spent a considerable time doing gentle games while she was wearing her bridle. We have just introduced her to this, but at the suggestion of a lady at the yard smeared a very small amount of mint toothpaste on the bit ( I checked with a vet first and a very small amount is fine ). She loves this. In fact when I came to take it off she was reluctant to let it out of her mouth. This was the longest that she has had a bit in her mouth so I was very pleased with the acceptance.
More time was spent with Billy in the field. He is really a very sensitive horse. Sideways was a bit better, but as Ritchie observed he wants to go sideways but can't yet work out how to move his feet to make it happen.
Ritchie played with him for a while. She is very experienced with Parelli, but was a bit taken aback by his sensitivity. Comments like "I didn't ask for that" floated across the field. I had to point out that actually she had but the aid was sooo subtle she didn't even know she had given it.
I think this subtlety has got him into trouble in the past. People have inadvertently asked him to do something and then got annoyed with him when he did. He is going to take a lot of patience to back, but I can't wait for the challenge.
At one point he stared into a neighbouring field. I have long since learnt to follow the gaze of a horse and was rewarded today with the sight of two young foxes playing. What a privilege which I would have missed but for Billy
Filly still playing dominance games
Another good days playing with the horses. Started with Billy in his new field. What a smart horse ! We played all the usual games as a warmup and then I finally managed to start the sideways game.
In the initial stages this is played facing a linear obstacle such as a menage fence or indoor school wall. I had put off playing this in the previous field as, to be honest, the fences are not safe. They are loose barbed wire with stray strands of chicken wire.
The new field on the yard has great fences though so I felt that the neglected sideways game should be tackled. I start by getting Billy to stand facing the fence and then just wait. Once confident with that a gentle fore quarter drive moves the front legs sideways away one step, then a hind quarter drive to move the hind legs away then fore quarter and repeat. To start with I was happy with a step or two, but as he gained confidence I increased this to about 4 steps. Of course he tries to go backwards, sideways, and turn whilst he learns to understand what I mean. With patience and gentle corrective pressure he soon got the idea though. This is a classic case of "making the wrong thing hard and the right thing easy". When he even tries to go purely sideways all pressure comes off, but if he moves in the wrong direction then corrective pressure comes on. Thus the right thing is like a "tunnel of calm" surrounded by walls of commotion. He learns to seek the calm tunnel of comfort.
I have to emphasise that in Billy's case the commotion I cause is very subtle, but with Filly it has to be very active. I have to play to the horsenality of the individual, which in a way sums up Natural Horsemanship well.
Talking of which I had another play with Filly. This is a very different horse. She needs lots to be happening to keep that active little mind working in my direction. Down time is used to plot against me !! We played the squeeze game between the jump and wall again. I must post a photo of this sometime as it a very effective squeeze to use. She was a little less confident with it and tended to charge through a bit. Rather than keep doing the same thing over and over expecting an improvement (a sure sign of madness) I switched to YoYo game through it. Backing her into the squeeze, getting her to stand, then drawing her slowly out. This improved her confidence a lot and she could then stand comfortably in the squeeze.
We did lots more circling, figure 8 and weave pattern. She had one little go at rearing at me again, but it was a bit half hearted and resulted in me forcefully backing her up the length of the school. She'll learn that it is not worth the effort of trying to take over my herd leadership eventually, but top marks for trying. It's fun to even make a game out of this.
Unlike Billy I find that the more pressure I put on her the better her expression becomes. Her ears prick up, her eyes sparkle and she has fun. Too gentle and not enough happening and she quickly looks dull and bored.
I am so lucky to be able to play with two opposite horsenalties every day, and a third when Ritchie lets me ! It is really helping my savvy improve very rapidly. I now understand why they say to be a great horseman you have to play with hundreds of horses. If only I could !! All I can say is.. never ever pass up the opportunity to play with a new horse, the rewards are huge.
In the initial stages this is played facing a linear obstacle such as a menage fence or indoor school wall. I had put off playing this in the previous field as, to be honest, the fences are not safe. They are loose barbed wire with stray strands of chicken wire.
The new field on the yard has great fences though so I felt that the neglected sideways game should be tackled. I start by getting Billy to stand facing the fence and then just wait. Once confident with that a gentle fore quarter drive moves the front legs sideways away one step, then a hind quarter drive to move the hind legs away then fore quarter and repeat. To start with I was happy with a step or two, but as he gained confidence I increased this to about 4 steps. Of course he tries to go backwards, sideways, and turn whilst he learns to understand what I mean. With patience and gentle corrective pressure he soon got the idea though. This is a classic case of "making the wrong thing hard and the right thing easy". When he even tries to go purely sideways all pressure comes off, but if he moves in the wrong direction then corrective pressure comes on. Thus the right thing is like a "tunnel of calm" surrounded by walls of commotion. He learns to seek the calm tunnel of comfort.
I have to emphasise that in Billy's case the commotion I cause is very subtle, but with Filly it has to be very active. I have to play to the horsenality of the individual, which in a way sums up Natural Horsemanship well.
Talking of which I had another play with Filly. This is a very different horse. She needs lots to be happening to keep that active little mind working in my direction. Down time is used to plot against me !! We played the squeeze game between the jump and wall again. I must post a photo of this sometime as it a very effective squeeze to use. She was a little less confident with it and tended to charge through a bit. Rather than keep doing the same thing over and over expecting an improvement (a sure sign of madness) I switched to YoYo game through it. Backing her into the squeeze, getting her to stand, then drawing her slowly out. This improved her confidence a lot and she could then stand comfortably in the squeeze.
We did lots more circling, figure 8 and weave pattern. She had one little go at rearing at me again, but it was a bit half hearted and resulted in me forcefully backing her up the length of the school. She'll learn that it is not worth the effort of trying to take over my herd leadership eventually, but top marks for trying. It's fun to even make a game out of this.
Unlike Billy I find that the more pressure I put on her the better her expression becomes. Her ears prick up, her eyes sparkle and she has fun. Too gentle and not enough happening and she quickly looks dull and bored.
I am so lucky to be able to play with two opposite horsenalties every day, and a third when Ritchie lets me ! It is really helping my savvy improve very rapidly. I now understand why they say to be a great horseman you have to play with hundreds of horses. If only I could !! All I can say is.. never ever pass up the opportunity to play with a new horse, the rewards are huge.
Saturday 23 October 2010
Rugging Billy and my first fall
Finally Billy has been bought up to the main yard, so I don't have to walk to a field at the other end of the village. Great news.
With the move came a request from Rick, the yard owner, to put a rug on him. Now bearing in mind that he has not had a rug on for nearly a year, and I suspect he is a innate RBE and it was getting dark I felt this could be fun. And I do mean fun. I recruited Ritchie, my wife, to share in the games. The good news was that he was in a field on his own, so no chance of interference from others.
For this rapport was going to be paramount so I spent a long time getting him to repeatedly catch me. Remember I always get horses to catch me, not the other way round. It would be too predatory of me to catch him and damage the rapport.
Safely haltered I then got Ritchie to drag the rug around the field on the ground. This really raised Billy's curiosity. A predatory object does not retreat from him, it attacks. So dragging the rug away definitely cued him into this object not being a predator. If it is not a predator then it is an object of curiosity. Ritchie further teased him by dragging it just out of his reach every time he tried to sniff it. This drove him mad with curiosity. When we finally stopped the rug he immediately sniffed, pawed and chewed it. Horses get a lot of information from there mouth, so chewing is not necessarily and attempt to eat it, just to gather data. We repeated the dragging several times until we were absolutely sure that he had made friends with the rug on the ground.
As soon as the rug leaves the ground, of course, it is a somewhat different object in his mind. I switched places, with Ritchie taking the lead rope and I picked the rug off the ground and again backed away from him, the retreat part of "approach and retreat". He was pretty confident with the rug and us by then so happily followed the rug. Stopping moving we allowed him to "approach" the rug. This is a soft part of the approach section of "approach and retreat". Almost a midway point. To up the pressure a bit further I approached him whilst carrying the rug. The rug approaching him now takes on a slightly more predatory aspect, but he was confident in it now and stayed still.
I now opened the rug out so that it was wide and flapping. This caused some worry, so back to the retreat phase again. At one point I flapped it a little to hard getting a proper "spook" and a rebuke from Ritchie. She was a bit close to him at the time !! More retreat proved that no damage had been done and he was soon sniffing the open rug.
Now to get it on his back, which again is a predatory move in his mind, as this is were lions attack, and so needs to be done gently. Horses are reassured by rhythm, so I repeatedly, gently swung the closed rug onto his back. He was a little unconfident to start, but the nice rub as the rug was pulled off and the retreat of the rug from him soon reassured him. Leaving it on his back, scrunched up I then rubbed him all over with it, a nice sensation which further served to reassure that this object on his back meant no harm.
This whole backing sequence was then repeated with the rug open and as he was getting used to the sensation when others might say job done, we continued. We were after a complete desensitisation to the rug, not just an unconfident acceptance. This takes discipline and patience the first time it is done, but I believe that the cumulative saving in time over the years more than justifies the little extra time taken in training. By now it was pretty dark, so we drew the session to a close.
We have also been working with Filly. This is the first proper training in nearly six weeks due to her various injuries and illnesses. To start with she seemed a bit "dull", but this was just her saying "make me". I had lost some ground in being her leader, not surprising given her horsenality and the lack of playing.
This became particularly obvious when playing the weave pattern. Pushing on her zone 1or 2 bubble to get her to go around the far side of a cone was strongly resisted, with ears back and ribs pushed towards me. I got stronger with her and eventually as a last ditch effort she reared at me. This let me escalate immediately to phase 4 on the pressure, at which point she did yield and go around the cone. She then had a long lick and chew.
I had my old Filly back !! It was as though she had said "ok I have given it my best shot to be herd leader and failed, I had better fall back in line". We still had a few ears back expressions, which made me up the phase a bit, but soon she was weaving with the slightest pressure.
Interestingly she also looked much happier and interested in life as well after this. I think that maybe she was looking for a strong leader and feeling insecure without one. I provided and she was content again.
Finally the "fall" in the title. Ritchie let me ride Bonitao in a bareback pad and halter, but not having stirrups I had to get on from a mounting block. I fell off the mounting block. Pause to allow you all to stop laughing ....
With the move came a request from Rick, the yard owner, to put a rug on him. Now bearing in mind that he has not had a rug on for nearly a year, and I suspect he is a innate RBE and it was getting dark I felt this could be fun. And I do mean fun. I recruited Ritchie, my wife, to share in the games. The good news was that he was in a field on his own, so no chance of interference from others.
For this rapport was going to be paramount so I spent a long time getting him to repeatedly catch me. Remember I always get horses to catch me, not the other way round. It would be too predatory of me to catch him and damage the rapport.
Safely haltered I then got Ritchie to drag the rug around the field on the ground. This really raised Billy's curiosity. A predatory object does not retreat from him, it attacks. So dragging the rug away definitely cued him into this object not being a predator. If it is not a predator then it is an object of curiosity. Ritchie further teased him by dragging it just out of his reach every time he tried to sniff it. This drove him mad with curiosity. When we finally stopped the rug he immediately sniffed, pawed and chewed it. Horses get a lot of information from there mouth, so chewing is not necessarily and attempt to eat it, just to gather data. We repeated the dragging several times until we were absolutely sure that he had made friends with the rug on the ground.
As soon as the rug leaves the ground, of course, it is a somewhat different object in his mind. I switched places, with Ritchie taking the lead rope and I picked the rug off the ground and again backed away from him, the retreat part of "approach and retreat". He was pretty confident with the rug and us by then so happily followed the rug. Stopping moving we allowed him to "approach" the rug. This is a soft part of the approach section of "approach and retreat". Almost a midway point. To up the pressure a bit further I approached him whilst carrying the rug. The rug approaching him now takes on a slightly more predatory aspect, but he was confident in it now and stayed still.
I now opened the rug out so that it was wide and flapping. This caused some worry, so back to the retreat phase again. At one point I flapped it a little to hard getting a proper "spook" and a rebuke from Ritchie. She was a bit close to him at the time !! More retreat proved that no damage had been done and he was soon sniffing the open rug.
Now to get it on his back, which again is a predatory move in his mind, as this is were lions attack, and so needs to be done gently. Horses are reassured by rhythm, so I repeatedly, gently swung the closed rug onto his back. He was a little unconfident to start, but the nice rub as the rug was pulled off and the retreat of the rug from him soon reassured him. Leaving it on his back, scrunched up I then rubbed him all over with it, a nice sensation which further served to reassure that this object on his back meant no harm.
This whole backing sequence was then repeated with the rug open and as he was getting used to the sensation when others might say job done, we continued. We were after a complete desensitisation to the rug, not just an unconfident acceptance. This takes discipline and patience the first time it is done, but I believe that the cumulative saving in time over the years more than justifies the little extra time taken in training. By now it was pretty dark, so we drew the session to a close.
We have also been working with Filly. This is the first proper training in nearly six weeks due to her various injuries and illnesses. To start with she seemed a bit "dull", but this was just her saying "make me". I had lost some ground in being her leader, not surprising given her horsenality and the lack of playing.
This became particularly obvious when playing the weave pattern. Pushing on her zone 1or 2 bubble to get her to go around the far side of a cone was strongly resisted, with ears back and ribs pushed towards me. I got stronger with her and eventually as a last ditch effort she reared at me. This let me escalate immediately to phase 4 on the pressure, at which point she did yield and go around the cone. She then had a long lick and chew.
I had my old Filly back !! It was as though she had said "ok I have given it my best shot to be herd leader and failed, I had better fall back in line". We still had a few ears back expressions, which made me up the phase a bit, but soon she was weaving with the slightest pressure.
Interestingly she also looked much happier and interested in life as well after this. I think that maybe she was looking for a strong leader and feeling insecure without one. I provided and she was content again.
Finally the "fall" in the title. Ritchie let me ride Bonitao in a bareback pad and halter, but not having stirrups I had to get on from a mounting block. I fell off the mounting block. Pause to allow you all to stop laughing ....
Thursday 21 October 2010
Now I'm off sick !
It seems we cannot get all of us fit at one time !! I have been down to the horses to get some fresh air, but not doing too much serious playing as they are both wondering what the command "sneeze" means !
I have made some progress with Billy in recent days however, although I am still a bit puzzled by his horsenality. Depending on circumstance he seems to be all over the chart. As long as I am very careful to stay soft with my body language he remains LBI, but get just a little too energetic and he goes RBE very quickly. I guess that makes him inately RBE.
Circling game is now very good at walk, but it requires the slightest aid to get him to send on the circle, too much and he prances around sideways, or takes off at a canter. We can even change directions on the circle now at a walk without any problems.
Figure 8 is, as a result, coming on very nicely. Very gentle and subtle aids required again. When he is LB he learns very very fast indeed, putting his little sister to shame.
One of the main things that the yard wanted corrected was his leading. Apparently he used to be very pushy. With lots of fore quarter yields this is now sorted. We even have him backing alongside us just by walking backwards.
I have to say that he is one of the more fun and rewarding horses I have played with. I am really looking forward to getting him into a menage so that more obstacles and toys can be used.
Filly has again had problems. As a result of the hoof problem we had her on box rest, snag was that during the day all the other horses in the barn were out and she got very upset. Lots of weaving, rearing and bucking in the stable. I had been grazing her, but she was very spooky in the field. Not surprising after all she has been through recently. In desperation she was finally let out with a mild sedative for a few days and could graze fairly happily. Playing with her in this state was a bit pointless as she was kind of spaced out. She did not have the pill yesterday and was apparently fine in the field.
I played with her briefly in the evening, but she still seemed "dull". Might try again tonight, cold permitting. It is possible that she is becoming a bit LBI of course and so needs more motivation to work well. I might try food treats as a reward to see if that helps, it does with our own LBI, Bonitao.
Note I say food reward. I never use food as a bribe prior to an exercise, only as an occasssional reward afterwards. Using it as a bribe would rapidly evolve into her demanding food before doing anything, and then she is training me !! Also note I say ocassional reward. Apparently research has shown that intermittent rewards are better than continuous rewards. Works on humans as well, witness how slot machines work.
I have made some progress with Billy in recent days however, although I am still a bit puzzled by his horsenality. Depending on circumstance he seems to be all over the chart. As long as I am very careful to stay soft with my body language he remains LBI, but get just a little too energetic and he goes RBE very quickly. I guess that makes him inately RBE.
Circling game is now very good at walk, but it requires the slightest aid to get him to send on the circle, too much and he prances around sideways, or takes off at a canter. We can even change directions on the circle now at a walk without any problems.
Figure 8 is, as a result, coming on very nicely. Very gentle and subtle aids required again. When he is LB he learns very very fast indeed, putting his little sister to shame.
One of the main things that the yard wanted corrected was his leading. Apparently he used to be very pushy. With lots of fore quarter yields this is now sorted. We even have him backing alongside us just by walking backwards.
I have to say that he is one of the more fun and rewarding horses I have played with. I am really looking forward to getting him into a menage so that more obstacles and toys can be used.
Filly has again had problems. As a result of the hoof problem we had her on box rest, snag was that during the day all the other horses in the barn were out and she got very upset. Lots of weaving, rearing and bucking in the stable. I had been grazing her, but she was very spooky in the field. Not surprising after all she has been through recently. In desperation she was finally let out with a mild sedative for a few days and could graze fairly happily. Playing with her in this state was a bit pointless as she was kind of spaced out. She did not have the pill yesterday and was apparently fine in the field.
I played with her briefly in the evening, but she still seemed "dull". Might try again tonight, cold permitting. It is possible that she is becoming a bit LBI of course and so needs more motivation to work well. I might try food treats as a reward to see if that helps, it does with our own LBI, Bonitao.
Note I say food reward. I never use food as a bribe prior to an exercise, only as an occasssional reward afterwards. Using it as a bribe would rapidly evolve into her demanding food before doing anything, and then she is training me !! Also note I say ocassional reward. Apparently research has shown that intermittent rewards are better than continuous rewards. Works on humans as well, witness how slot machines work.
Friday 15 October 2010
Dinner date with Filly
Sorry it's been a few days since the last update. Trouble with the broadband service !
Ritchie and I have started sharing Billy, and are both finding similar problems. Good, it's not just me then ! He is getting better with the carrot stick, but a fraction too much pressure and BANG he blows up. Not enough and he sticks two hooves up and ignores me, on circling game at least. Interestingly he is fine with porcupine games using the stick, and driving games.
Combine them into a circling game, be very afraid and wear gloves. I noticed that when he blew up today his eyes were still blinking and his ears mobile. Is he maybe still LB and just playing his own game at the safe distance of 22 feet. To test this theory when he pulled back hard today I drove him back vigorously, in effect saying "if you want to go backwards let me help you". Two goes at this resulted in a long lick and chew. We then managed several nicely controlled circles. Such a complex horse with so much "baggage" is making me work mentally very very hard. Of course this makes small advancements even more rewarding.
Apparently he has given the farrier some trouble when clipping the hooves. To try and counter this I have been doing lots of work with his legs. To start I massage them, then ask for the hoof to be picked up, then more leg massage as I hold the leg up. Hoof is then picked out, followed by more massage, hoof lowered to the ground, more massage. This may seem over the top but I am trying to counter all the previous times his legs have been handled. Every time previously it will have been for hoof picking, or farrier work. We know that this is good for him and kind, but from his point of view it is just a pain. I want to make "leg" work pleasurable so that he feels I am doing something "for him" not "to him". This seems to be paying off now as he is getting much better around the legs.
I then took Filly for dinner in the field. Very little training today, just no pressure time in the field. Since she was put out with ringworm and bought in with a bad hoof she has been very wary of the outdoors. Again lets look at this from her point of view. Suddenly she is out in a field 24 hours per day, with a filly who when they both come in season severely dominates her, then tremendous pain in a hind hoof as it splits. Not a great outdoor experience.
Now bear in mind that horses probably have a memory that is better than ours and we have an agoraphobic Filly. So making the field a really nice place to be and to try and bury those memories is a priority. All went well until it came to near darkness. A Blackbird then gave an alarm call to which Filly reacted violently. Fortunately she has an odd habit. Just prior to spooking she gives a call which I can only describe as a squeak. I know it is not very chivalrous of me to share this with the world, but then she can't read so will never know I have betrayed her secret. This gives me time to react to the subsequent bolt that I know is coming. We then went to investigate the area the noise came from. Reassured she returned to her grass. My philosphy when it comes to spooky things is to gradually approach the source of the fear, retreat, re-approach etc until she gets bored and eats, certainly not to move away from spooky things.
This makes everything that is scarey a potential toy to play with. Who would have guessed that big scary tractors are actually covered in carrots ?
Ritchie and I have started sharing Billy, and are both finding similar problems. Good, it's not just me then ! He is getting better with the carrot stick, but a fraction too much pressure and BANG he blows up. Not enough and he sticks two hooves up and ignores me, on circling game at least. Interestingly he is fine with porcupine games using the stick, and driving games.
Combine them into a circling game, be very afraid and wear gloves. I noticed that when he blew up today his eyes were still blinking and his ears mobile. Is he maybe still LB and just playing his own game at the safe distance of 22 feet. To test this theory when he pulled back hard today I drove him back vigorously, in effect saying "if you want to go backwards let me help you". Two goes at this resulted in a long lick and chew. We then managed several nicely controlled circles. Such a complex horse with so much "baggage" is making me work mentally very very hard. Of course this makes small advancements even more rewarding.
Apparently he has given the farrier some trouble when clipping the hooves. To try and counter this I have been doing lots of work with his legs. To start I massage them, then ask for the hoof to be picked up, then more leg massage as I hold the leg up. Hoof is then picked out, followed by more massage, hoof lowered to the ground, more massage. This may seem over the top but I am trying to counter all the previous times his legs have been handled. Every time previously it will have been for hoof picking, or farrier work. We know that this is good for him and kind, but from his point of view it is just a pain. I want to make "leg" work pleasurable so that he feels I am doing something "for him" not "to him". This seems to be paying off now as he is getting much better around the legs.
I then took Filly for dinner in the field. Very little training today, just no pressure time in the field. Since she was put out with ringworm and bought in with a bad hoof she has been very wary of the outdoors. Again lets look at this from her point of view. Suddenly she is out in a field 24 hours per day, with a filly who when they both come in season severely dominates her, then tremendous pain in a hind hoof as it splits. Not a great outdoor experience.
Now bear in mind that horses probably have a memory that is better than ours and we have an agoraphobic Filly. So making the field a really nice place to be and to try and bury those memories is a priority. All went well until it came to near darkness. A Blackbird then gave an alarm call to which Filly reacted violently. Fortunately she has an odd habit. Just prior to spooking she gives a call which I can only describe as a squeak. I know it is not very chivalrous of me to share this with the world, but then she can't read so will never know I have betrayed her secret. This gives me time to react to the subsequent bolt that I know is coming. We then went to investigate the area the noise came from. Reassured she returned to her grass. My philosphy when it comes to spooky things is to gradually approach the source of the fear, retreat, re-approach etc until she gets bored and eats, certainly not to move away from spooky things.
This makes everything that is scarey a potential toy to play with. Who would have guessed that big scary tractors are actually covered in carrots ?
Tuesday 12 October 2010
Trouble afoot
Ok, the title is a bad pun as you will soon see !!
Ritchie and I went to the yard yesterday at around 3pm. My intention was to play with Billy first prior to the sun getting too low. (see the post on Sun Angle ). Before going to his field however I decided to check on Filly. To say she was unhappy in her box is an understatement. She was almost alone in the barn, all but one of the other horses having been let out. The one horse left was not in line of site. Add to this she was out of hay. Look at this from her point of view. "The entire herd has deserted me and I'm now left alone in a dark cave without even the comfort of food". She was bucking and rearing round the box. I was afraid that she would kick a wall with her bad hoof and cause further injury. Fortunately Ritchie arrived and I asked her to quickly get the halter and 22 foot lead rope while I tried, unsuccessfully, to calm her. I then had to lead a young horse high on adrenaline to the field, which was fun. She was so high that my attempts to correct her behaviour barely registered on her left brain, immediate phase 4 pressure was all that got through.
Bear in mind that it is permissible to mimic their energy levels to get a response, so if she is at phase 4 already in her pressure on me then going straight to phase 4 on my part does not break any of my principles. Messing about at phase 1 would have been a dangerous waste of time.
In the field she started eating manically. The mouthfuls were taken very very quickly. This is a definite sign that an explosion is imminent and she is still on adrenaline. Sure enough the fun began pretty soon. I started by putting a fence to my back to prevent her from being able to do continuous circles as she bucked, reared and.... what do you call all four feet of the ground at the same time (a bronc ?). Every half circle she has to stop. This allows for a brief low energy moment where I can influence her behaviour as the left brain kicks in to say "stop, fence in the way". Whilst she is briefly LB I could try to shut down the reversion to RB by giving her something to do, such as hind quarter yield, back up, anything to force her to think. Note I pick the "slow down" yields.
Once she was a bit calmer and could listen to me we needed some movement to use up the stale adrenalin so I swittched to travelling circles. These are normal 22 foot circles at trot, but with me walking. I noted that she wanted to do small circles around me not use the full 22 feet of rope available. This meant that she was seeing me as a place of safety and comfort rather than trying to leave which was gratyfying. Travelling circles forces the LB to kick in as she has to deal with a moving target, maintain gait and direction. To add to the intellectual challenge I then did some direction changes on the circle, which also caused her to slow down, then falling leaf pattern, which is a direction change every half circle whilst I walk towards her. This has the effect of enhancing my dominance as I continuously move into her space and the repeated direction changes cause her to slow down. I continued this until it was clear that stopping was her idea and hey presto we had a calm Filly again.
If you look at the principle I employed it was to increasingly engage the LB by making the movement more and more challening to her intelectually, thereby putting her in the frame of mind to think rather than just react.
Once she was grazing I had a chance to give her a good look over and found that the hoof putty had been dislodged from her injury, and a small amount of blood was seeping out.
Ritchies timing was immaculate as she reappeared at that moment. She was given a calm horse to graze whilst I leapt in my car and dashed to the tack shop to get some more putty before it shut. We took her up to the yard to apply the putty, giving her a hay net to chew on. Again she was very very patient whilst I sorted the putty out. The previous lot had gone hard and almost fell out as I pulled on it. Never having applied the stuff before, which prefers to stick to the hand rather than the hoof it took me some time. She only asked for her hoof back to move a bit and get more comfortable, and she always gave it back immediately. I would like to think she knew I was trying to help her, but that would be being anthropomorphic of me, a condition I continuously fight against !
After all this we put her back in her box as the other horses had been brought back in and I left to play with Billy.
Uneventful with him really. We continue with the desensitisation to the stick which is coming on well, introduced lateral flexion of the neck towards me, which is delightfully soft. Less than Pat Parelli's 4 ounses he uses as a bench mark for yields. In fact after the Filly incident it was a most relaxing and enjoyable session. I can't wait to get him into the school where we can use more obstacles to enhance the sense of play, and also start to work on the sideways game. We initially start the sideways games by facing the horse towards a barrier of some sort, a fence or wall, preventing them from moving forward. This makes it easier for them to work out that the aids mean sideways as the option to go forwards is removed. The only long barriers available in the field are barbed wire fences, which I don't think are appropriate to use !
For anyone trying to post comments to this blog, I think I have finally managed to fix the problems. Please do so as encouragement is always welcome, as is criticism which will make me think even more deeply about what I am doing ! If you are going to criticise please do so constructively rather than just oppose the methods I use without properly researched evidence to back those criticisms up. Neither of us learn anything that way !
Ritchie and I went to the yard yesterday at around 3pm. My intention was to play with Billy first prior to the sun getting too low. (see the post on Sun Angle ). Before going to his field however I decided to check on Filly. To say she was unhappy in her box is an understatement. She was almost alone in the barn, all but one of the other horses having been let out. The one horse left was not in line of site. Add to this she was out of hay. Look at this from her point of view. "The entire herd has deserted me and I'm now left alone in a dark cave without even the comfort of food". She was bucking and rearing round the box. I was afraid that she would kick a wall with her bad hoof and cause further injury. Fortunately Ritchie arrived and I asked her to quickly get the halter and 22 foot lead rope while I tried, unsuccessfully, to calm her. I then had to lead a young horse high on adrenaline to the field, which was fun. She was so high that my attempts to correct her behaviour barely registered on her left brain, immediate phase 4 pressure was all that got through.
Bear in mind that it is permissible to mimic their energy levels to get a response, so if she is at phase 4 already in her pressure on me then going straight to phase 4 on my part does not break any of my principles. Messing about at phase 1 would have been a dangerous waste of time.
In the field she started eating manically. The mouthfuls were taken very very quickly. This is a definite sign that an explosion is imminent and she is still on adrenaline. Sure enough the fun began pretty soon. I started by putting a fence to my back to prevent her from being able to do continuous circles as she bucked, reared and.... what do you call all four feet of the ground at the same time (a bronc ?). Every half circle she has to stop. This allows for a brief low energy moment where I can influence her behaviour as the left brain kicks in to say "stop, fence in the way". Whilst she is briefly LB I could try to shut down the reversion to RB by giving her something to do, such as hind quarter yield, back up, anything to force her to think. Note I pick the "slow down" yields.
Once she was a bit calmer and could listen to me we needed some movement to use up the stale adrenalin so I swittched to travelling circles. These are normal 22 foot circles at trot, but with me walking. I noted that she wanted to do small circles around me not use the full 22 feet of rope available. This meant that she was seeing me as a place of safety and comfort rather than trying to leave which was gratyfying. Travelling circles forces the LB to kick in as she has to deal with a moving target, maintain gait and direction. To add to the intellectual challenge I then did some direction changes on the circle, which also caused her to slow down, then falling leaf pattern, which is a direction change every half circle whilst I walk towards her. This has the effect of enhancing my dominance as I continuously move into her space and the repeated direction changes cause her to slow down. I continued this until it was clear that stopping was her idea and hey presto we had a calm Filly again.
If you look at the principle I employed it was to increasingly engage the LB by making the movement more and more challening to her intelectually, thereby putting her in the frame of mind to think rather than just react.
Once she was grazing I had a chance to give her a good look over and found that the hoof putty had been dislodged from her injury, and a small amount of blood was seeping out.
Ritchies timing was immaculate as she reappeared at that moment. She was given a calm horse to graze whilst I leapt in my car and dashed to the tack shop to get some more putty before it shut. We took her up to the yard to apply the putty, giving her a hay net to chew on. Again she was very very patient whilst I sorted the putty out. The previous lot had gone hard and almost fell out as I pulled on it. Never having applied the stuff before, which prefers to stick to the hand rather than the hoof it took me some time. She only asked for her hoof back to move a bit and get more comfortable, and she always gave it back immediately. I would like to think she knew I was trying to help her, but that would be being anthropomorphic of me, a condition I continuously fight against !
After all this we put her back in her box as the other horses had been brought back in and I left to play with Billy.
Uneventful with him really. We continue with the desensitisation to the stick which is coming on well, introduced lateral flexion of the neck towards me, which is delightfully soft. Less than Pat Parelli's 4 ounses he uses as a bench mark for yields. In fact after the Filly incident it was a most relaxing and enjoyable session. I can't wait to get him into the school where we can use more obstacles to enhance the sense of play, and also start to work on the sideways game. We initially start the sideways games by facing the horse towards a barrier of some sort, a fence or wall, preventing them from moving forward. This makes it easier for them to work out that the aids mean sideways as the option to go forwards is removed. The only long barriers available in the field are barbed wire fences, which I don't think are appropriate to use !
For anyone trying to post comments to this blog, I think I have finally managed to fix the problems. Please do so as encouragement is always welcome, as is criticism which will make me think even more deeply about what I am doing ! If you are going to criticise please do so constructively rather than just oppose the methods I use without properly researched evidence to back those criticisms up. Neither of us learn anything that way !
Saturday 9 October 2010
FIlly steps out in a new shoe
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| Filly favourite pass time |
Billy's turn next. I decided that we had to get over this stick phobia, so loads of friendly game with the stick was required. This seemed to calm him down, the best strategy to start with being leading him whilst waving the stick in front of me. To him it seems that the stick is retreating and he is chasing it. Therefore the stick cannot be a predator because they don't back away like this and so the curiosity is aroused.
Next was circling game, again. They say that you need to train a new pattern at least 7 times before it becomes established. The circles at a walk were a dream, with a nice slack rope all the way round the circle. We look for slackness in the rope as it shows the horse is bonded to us, and circling us, not just being pulled in a circle by the rope. We even managed a few very calm direction changes.
I had placed 2 cones in the field about 10 feet apart. Small objects like this really enhance the purpose in the games. For example the backing up may seem a bit pointless to Billy once he has done it a few times, but back him so that he stands between the cones and the game suddenly has a focus. We repeated this YoYo game several times and he rapidly got the idea that when standing between cones he got a rest. I hope you can see how over many increments this can lead to easier trailer loading for example.
We then played "touch it" with the cones. This consists of me driving Billy to a cone using all the driving games at my disposal, fore quarter, hind quarter, backup etc, such that he arrives standing next to a cone, and hopefully touches it with his nose. Again this is about giving purpose to the games, rather than just pushing him around an empty field he is driven to an interesting object.
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| Billy tortures a cone |
He will however expend energy in purposeful play, purposeful to him that is, not necessarily us. Play is what develops bonds within a herd and partially determines hierarchy.
Giving purpose to play, in this case exploration of new objects is worth energy expenditure to him so he participates willingly, and from his expression seems to have fun doing it. He certainly tortured the cones with his feet, inventing all sorts of ways of moving them around. In fact I had trouble getting him to leave them and come to me !! So the driving games now have a purpose worthy of energy expenditure.
It also elevates me a small notch up the "worthy leader" ladder. A good leader in the herd does drive them around but with a purpose. To a good source of food, water or a cone (!) for example.
Friday 8 October 2010
Bad days and Good days. The Filly has her first shoe !
Tale of two days for this blog.
Yesterday I went to play with Billy after landing from Hyderabad. Maybe that was a mistake as I was very tired, though I tried hard to allow for this. We started with the usual games and again moved on to circling game. Initially this was going very nicely, so I thought we would move onto changing direction on the circle. Then the fun started. Any pressure to change direction made him become very unconfident, to the point of being RBE (Right brain extrovert). Every time I gave the command he would either just go much faster in the direction he was already going or turn face and pull back really hard. I would only release the pressure when he took a step forward to ensure that pulling back was not rewarded with pressure release. By the end of this we were both frustrated, tired and sweaty. On taking off the halter he stayed a few seconds and then ran off. I made sure that before leaving I could approach him again and do the friendly game.
In the meantime Filly's foot has been progressing well. The poultice had done it's thing and the infection was gone. Rick, the yard owner, had been treating it with a concentrated solution of sugar and iodine held on with a nappy and duct tape !! Apparently you can buy expensive dressings for this sort of thing, but nappies work fine. This hardens the hoof ready for shoeing. He had been having a lot of trouble doing this, probably because it really stung her, and he had the bruises to prove it ! Very impressed by the time he took to care for her despite the pain she kept causing him, Thanks.
Today Rick informed me that the farrier was coming to put a bar shoe on to stabilise the hoof. I had been studying the Parelli dvd on preparing for the farrier whilst in India, so went to the yard to put the ideas into practise. I started with loads of leg massages to get her used to the idea that every time a human touched her legs pain was not about to ensue. I then took a loop of rope around her leg and again rubbed her with it to get used to the sensation. Gently increasing the pressure on the rope acting as porcupine game to get her to lift the foot. She rapidly got the hang of it and stood quite happily with her leg up. This means I don't have to get easily damaged bits, like my face, near her for the early stages of lifting the hoof. The bruises on Rick had made a big impression on me ! However she almost looked amused by the whole thing. After a while I asked with my hands for the leg to be lifted, by squeezing on the chestnut as I had taught her in the past. This was very easy and soon she was standing with her hoof in the required shoeing position. This was rewarded by lots more leg massages whilst the leg was up. This showed her that having her leg up could actually feel quite nice.
To simulate the farrier rasping her hoof I just slapped it with my hand in a stroking motion. I then tapped the hoof lightly with the handle of a hammer, then harder then lighter in the classic approach and retreat manner to simulate the hammering of the nails. She withstood all this with barely a murmur. Of course I had to do this with all four legs not knowing which were to be shod. Twice, once in her stable ( her place of safety and comfort) and once in the yard to change the place part of the equation. Fortunately my wife, Ritchie, helped with most of this procedure as it meant that she could hold her headcollar rope. This allowed her to look round at me which if she was tied up would not have been possible and could have lead to claustrophobia.
Remember that horses are perceptive to "people, places, changes and things". To allow for the "people" part Ritchie and I then swapped roles and we did the whole thing again. This soaked up about 2 1/2 hours, with tea breaks of course. I am English after all !!
The farrier then arrived, the moment of truth ! I was a little nervous about how she would cope. We put a hay net up for her to munch on, as food always distracts the Filly. I held her on a loose rope to ensure that no "I'm trapped" feelings could arise and the farrier got to work. To say that she behaved in an exemplary manner would be an understatement. She only tried to pull her leg away once but not strongly. She looked round at him a couple of times but only curiously. During a break she wanted to inspect his van, and of course the grass. Even when the nails were hammered in she just paid complete attention to her hay. I was extremely proud of her and relieved it all went so well.
This has been a long blog already, so all I will say about today with Billy is that we made up ! I left the stick behind and played without it. Changing direction on the circle even started to go well. On taking the halter off he followed me to the gate. It seems that he is very worried by the stick and with it gone he felt much more confident. I therefore need to slowly work up to him thinking of the stick as a pleasant object so that he will do well in the racing world.
Yesterday I went to play with Billy after landing from Hyderabad. Maybe that was a mistake as I was very tired, though I tried hard to allow for this. We started with the usual games and again moved on to circling game. Initially this was going very nicely, so I thought we would move onto changing direction on the circle. Then the fun started. Any pressure to change direction made him become very unconfident, to the point of being RBE (Right brain extrovert). Every time I gave the command he would either just go much faster in the direction he was already going or turn face and pull back really hard. I would only release the pressure when he took a step forward to ensure that pulling back was not rewarded with pressure release. By the end of this we were both frustrated, tired and sweaty. On taking off the halter he stayed a few seconds and then ran off. I made sure that before leaving I could approach him again and do the friendly game.
In the meantime Filly's foot has been progressing well. The poultice had done it's thing and the infection was gone. Rick, the yard owner, had been treating it with a concentrated solution of sugar and iodine held on with a nappy and duct tape !! Apparently you can buy expensive dressings for this sort of thing, but nappies work fine. This hardens the hoof ready for shoeing. He had been having a lot of trouble doing this, probably because it really stung her, and he had the bruises to prove it ! Very impressed by the time he took to care for her despite the pain she kept causing him, Thanks.
Today Rick informed me that the farrier was coming to put a bar shoe on to stabilise the hoof. I had been studying the Parelli dvd on preparing for the farrier whilst in India, so went to the yard to put the ideas into practise. I started with loads of leg massages to get her used to the idea that every time a human touched her legs pain was not about to ensue. I then took a loop of rope around her leg and again rubbed her with it to get used to the sensation. Gently increasing the pressure on the rope acting as porcupine game to get her to lift the foot. She rapidly got the hang of it and stood quite happily with her leg up. This means I don't have to get easily damaged bits, like my face, near her for the early stages of lifting the hoof. The bruises on Rick had made a big impression on me ! However she almost looked amused by the whole thing. After a while I asked with my hands for the leg to be lifted, by squeezing on the chestnut as I had taught her in the past. This was very easy and soon she was standing with her hoof in the required shoeing position. This was rewarded by lots more leg massages whilst the leg was up. This showed her that having her leg up could actually feel quite nice.
To simulate the farrier rasping her hoof I just slapped it with my hand in a stroking motion. I then tapped the hoof lightly with the handle of a hammer, then harder then lighter in the classic approach and retreat manner to simulate the hammering of the nails. She withstood all this with barely a murmur. Of course I had to do this with all four legs not knowing which were to be shod. Twice, once in her stable ( her place of safety and comfort) and once in the yard to change the place part of the equation. Fortunately my wife, Ritchie, helped with most of this procedure as it meant that she could hold her headcollar rope. This allowed her to look round at me which if she was tied up would not have been possible and could have lead to claustrophobia.
Remember that horses are perceptive to "people, places, changes and things". To allow for the "people" part Ritchie and I then swapped roles and we did the whole thing again. This soaked up about 2 1/2 hours, with tea breaks of course. I am English after all !!
The farrier then arrived, the moment of truth ! I was a little nervous about how she would cope. We put a hay net up for her to munch on, as food always distracts the Filly. I held her on a loose rope to ensure that no "I'm trapped" feelings could arise and the farrier got to work. To say that she behaved in an exemplary manner would be an understatement. She only tried to pull her leg away once but not strongly. She looked round at him a couple of times but only curiously. During a break she wanted to inspect his van, and of course the grass. Even when the nails were hammered in she just paid complete attention to her hay. I was extremely proud of her and relieved it all went so well.
This has been a long blog already, so all I will say about today with Billy is that we made up ! I left the stick behind and played without it. Changing direction on the circle even started to go well. On taking the halter off he followed me to the gate. It seems that he is very worried by the stick and with it gone he felt much more confident. I therefore need to slowly work up to him thinking of the stick as a pleasant object so that he will do well in the racing world.
Tuesday 5 October 2010
Acceptance in the field plus Drunken Man
Yesterday morning I again went to play with Billy. This was an early session as I had to leave for work mid morning. In fact I am writing this in Hyderabad !!
We all know that some of the Parelli techniques can spook untrained horses, particularly the waving of the stick and string. As a result I am always very careful around the yard to respect the presence of others. This can prove inhibiting at times, especially on wet days when everyone wants to use the indoor school. I tend to wait until late evening in this case, or take the horse for a walk in the surrounding fields.
In the big field that houses Billy at the moment there are however two other horses, an older dominant mare and a young filly, so I have had no choice but to play with them around. To start with they were startled by the training, but the field is big enough for them to not feel trapped and be able to move away. The filly has however shown increasing interest recently, to the point of continually getting in the way, which is a bit of a pain. I have had to drive her out of the way on more than one occasion, but this seems to improve my standing in Billy's eyes. On one occasion, previously mentioned, I drove the mare away which caused a profound change in Billy's attitude to me.
Today, however, as I entered the field the filly and mare were lying down, only Billy was grazing / on guard. I expected them to get up but they remained where they were, and so I continued to cause Billy to catch me and we started playing. We started with reinforcement of the normal set of games and moved on to more circling. We were quite close to where the filly was lying and so I expected her to get up as the energy of our games increased. Then I heard an odd noise. Looking around the filly was now flat out and snoring !! Now I am used to being ignored, but really.
From circling we progressed to some more leading work. Up to now Billy has at best walked with his nose next to my shoulder, or just behind. I wanted to progress to the point where he would confidently walk alongside me such that I was next to zone 3. This puts his nose out in front of mine and thus requires more confidence on his part to meet new experiences before his leader. It is of course the position I will be in when riding him as well, so in a way this is his first steps to being backed.
To achieve this I rest the carrot stick lightly on his withers, if he gets behind me the stick is lifted up and moved over his hindquarters, phase 1 (p1). If he does not move forward the stick is moved up and down in the air, phase 2 (p2). Still no response and he his rhythmically, lightly tapped, phase 3 (p3). Finally the firmness is increased, phase 4 (p4). This procedure is awkward. A more flexible shoulder would be a great advantage as tapping the hind quarters whilst facing forward means moving the arm backwards to an uncomfortable degree. I have to face forwards as the direction in which I look is the signal as to direction to move in.
I thought this might prove difficult, but in practise he rapidly learned to move up on my shoulder so that his nose/head was in front. Directing him is then a matter of turning my head to look in the new direction (p1), turning my body to move in the new direction (p2), using the stick alongside the head if turning into him (p3) and finally tapping the neck/head with stick (p4). This is again leading up to the aids that will be used in the saddle when riding freestyle.
We never actually got back as far as zone 3, but well into zone 2 was a good start.
His reverse however is getting really really good. Just walking backwards in zone 2 made him stay in tight formation with me for many paces. Not quite straight, but compared to the Filly, very good indeed.
The preparation for backing continued with the drunken man walk. This consists of walking around in a very unsteady fashion and winding up lightly bumping into his whithers and giving him a nice scratch. This is to prepare him for people preparing to mount, and in general being clumsy around him. I am planning on walking him to the pub at Christmas after all.
Desperately hoping that no one in the local houses was watching I started. He looked a little startled at first so I did the approach and retreat method. Wobbling towards him then away. Even leading him backwards in a very unsteady fashion so that he had to follow me. After a few minutes of this I could walk all the way into his whithers and lightly bump him, with only a slightly unconfident look on his face, or was it a look of profound pity for me having gone mad ?
To up the pressure a little more I then started skipping around him, again retreating initially and eventually going up to his whithers and jumping up and down next to him. Again preparation for mounting later. This was to say the least hard work. The principle of him moving more than me having been reversed, and it is fair to say that I was a little sweaty at the end.
Neither of these procedures were completely straight forward, with him backing away several times. By closely observing his reactions I could just keep the upping the pressure and then releasing so that we slowly moved his threshold of fear towards him until I could stand next to him and continue jumping. The reward was of course the nice long scratch on the whithers.
I am continuing to read about the subject and have now moved onto another of Robert Miller's books "Understanding the Ancient Secrets of the Horses Mind". This is again a fantastic read with huge amounts of information on horse behaviour. To be honest I am learning so much that I find it difficult to understand how it is possible to effectively train a horse without a deep understanding of this subject. I have discovered that many of my assumptions about behaviour have been profoundly wrong and have in hindsight lead to mistakes on my part. But learning any subject without making errors is impossible. I really look forward to applying the new knowledge to my training. Remember that this is about my "journey" in natural horsemanship, these books feel like someone has kindly stopped to give me a lift for a part of that journey.
We all know that some of the Parelli techniques can spook untrained horses, particularly the waving of the stick and string. As a result I am always very careful around the yard to respect the presence of others. This can prove inhibiting at times, especially on wet days when everyone wants to use the indoor school. I tend to wait until late evening in this case, or take the horse for a walk in the surrounding fields.
In the big field that houses Billy at the moment there are however two other horses, an older dominant mare and a young filly, so I have had no choice but to play with them around. To start with they were startled by the training, but the field is big enough for them to not feel trapped and be able to move away. The filly has however shown increasing interest recently, to the point of continually getting in the way, which is a bit of a pain. I have had to drive her out of the way on more than one occasion, but this seems to improve my standing in Billy's eyes. On one occasion, previously mentioned, I drove the mare away which caused a profound change in Billy's attitude to me.
Today, however, as I entered the field the filly and mare were lying down, only Billy was grazing / on guard. I expected them to get up but they remained where they were, and so I continued to cause Billy to catch me and we started playing. We started with reinforcement of the normal set of games and moved on to more circling. We were quite close to where the filly was lying and so I expected her to get up as the energy of our games increased. Then I heard an odd noise. Looking around the filly was now flat out and snoring !! Now I am used to being ignored, but really.
From circling we progressed to some more leading work. Up to now Billy has at best walked with his nose next to my shoulder, or just behind. I wanted to progress to the point where he would confidently walk alongside me such that I was next to zone 3. This puts his nose out in front of mine and thus requires more confidence on his part to meet new experiences before his leader. It is of course the position I will be in when riding him as well, so in a way this is his first steps to being backed.
To achieve this I rest the carrot stick lightly on his withers, if he gets behind me the stick is lifted up and moved over his hindquarters, phase 1 (p1). If he does not move forward the stick is moved up and down in the air, phase 2 (p2). Still no response and he his rhythmically, lightly tapped, phase 3 (p3). Finally the firmness is increased, phase 4 (p4). This procedure is awkward. A more flexible shoulder would be a great advantage as tapping the hind quarters whilst facing forward means moving the arm backwards to an uncomfortable degree. I have to face forwards as the direction in which I look is the signal as to direction to move in.
I thought this might prove difficult, but in practise he rapidly learned to move up on my shoulder so that his nose/head was in front. Directing him is then a matter of turning my head to look in the new direction (p1), turning my body to move in the new direction (p2), using the stick alongside the head if turning into him (p3) and finally tapping the neck/head with stick (p4). This is again leading up to the aids that will be used in the saddle when riding freestyle.
We never actually got back as far as zone 3, but well into zone 2 was a good start.
His reverse however is getting really really good. Just walking backwards in zone 2 made him stay in tight formation with me for many paces. Not quite straight, but compared to the Filly, very good indeed.
The preparation for backing continued with the drunken man walk. This consists of walking around in a very unsteady fashion and winding up lightly bumping into his whithers and giving him a nice scratch. This is to prepare him for people preparing to mount, and in general being clumsy around him. I am planning on walking him to the pub at Christmas after all.
Desperately hoping that no one in the local houses was watching I started. He looked a little startled at first so I did the approach and retreat method. Wobbling towards him then away. Even leading him backwards in a very unsteady fashion so that he had to follow me. After a few minutes of this I could walk all the way into his whithers and lightly bump him, with only a slightly unconfident look on his face, or was it a look of profound pity for me having gone mad ?
To up the pressure a little more I then started skipping around him, again retreating initially and eventually going up to his whithers and jumping up and down next to him. Again preparation for mounting later. This was to say the least hard work. The principle of him moving more than me having been reversed, and it is fair to say that I was a little sweaty at the end.
Neither of these procedures were completely straight forward, with him backing away several times. By closely observing his reactions I could just keep the upping the pressure and then releasing so that we slowly moved his threshold of fear towards him until I could stand next to him and continue jumping. The reward was of course the nice long scratch on the whithers.
I am continuing to read about the subject and have now moved onto another of Robert Miller's books "Understanding the Ancient Secrets of the Horses Mind". This is again a fantastic read with huge amounts of information on horse behaviour. To be honest I am learning so much that I find it difficult to understand how it is possible to effectively train a horse without a deep understanding of this subject. I have discovered that many of my assumptions about behaviour have been profoundly wrong and have in hindsight lead to mistakes on my part. But learning any subject without making errors is impossible. I really look forward to applying the new knowledge to my training. Remember that this is about my "journey" in natural horsemanship, these books feel like someone has kindly stopped to give me a lift for a part of that journey.
Friday 1 October 2010
Filly update and Billy in the Rain
Yesterday the farrier came to see Filly. He pared out the area of the hoof split a little to allow the infection to drain better. He reckoned that the split was not close to any of the bone structures in the hoof. The only worry was that the infection might have damaged the hoofs ability to regrow properly and the split may remain a weak area. That was the worst case scenario. So all in all a much more positive outlook. The hoof was poulticed again and will be until early next week. The intention then is to use a strong iodine sugar solution to harden the area ready for a bar shoe to be fitted. She is walking without much sign of lameness and seems happy in her stable. Still not touching her to make sure that the ringworm is fully dead, but once the shoe is fitted she should be OK for gentle play again.
The weather today was very very wet, but warm. So wrapped up well in waterproofs I went to the field to play with Billy. He was a little difficult to catch today, but then as horses are perceptive to people, places, changes and things he had a lot to think about. I was wearing rustley waterproof trousers, it was raining hard, it was windy, and it was very slippery underfoot. I stuck to my principles and did not "catch" him as soon as he came close, but waited until he was very calm and standing next to me. This took sometime of playing with him, and he chose the muddiest part of the field to do it in.
Once he was haltered we started playing all the usual games. The only one I had a little trouble with was the circling game. He was a bit right brained about it all, especially the hind quarter yield to stop. We therefore spent some time fixing this at the halt, after which it went much better. Originally he was turning to face, but continuing on the circle sideways, or pulling back with head high. We worked on making the hind quarter yield a movement where the front feet stayed still, and ONLY the back moved round. This worked well.
I also started a more extreme friendly game. This comprises standing in front of him and throwing coils of the rope around his neck, and then uncoiling them again. Not being a cowboy throwing a rope to achieve this was tricky, not helped by his right brain head lifting. Slowly we both got the hang of it and he would let me through a couple of loops round and then uncoil them again. The purpose of this is to get him used to ropes flashing past his face so that when he is eventually ridden in a halter the rope can be thrown from one side of his head to the other. We will work towards advanced stuff like two lead ropes on his halter as reins after his has been ridden for a while. Bridles and bits come much much later !!
I also felt that I knew him well enough to fill out a horesenality chart for him. He came out as a left/right brain extrovert. No surprises there then. We now have a family of L/RBE, LBE, and L/RBI.
I have just finished reading a book called "Natural Horsemanship Explained" by Robert M Miller. It is not a book on HOW to do natural horsemanship NH, but on WHY it works. Unless you already know a little of the mechanics of NH I suspect it would be a bit confusing. For me however it has clarified so much I have learned from the Parelli program. I hate doing things without understanding what they are trying to achieve. Combining this book with the Parelli material will increase my rate of learning enormously... I hope.
The weather today was very very wet, but warm. So wrapped up well in waterproofs I went to the field to play with Billy. He was a little difficult to catch today, but then as horses are perceptive to people, places, changes and things he had a lot to think about. I was wearing rustley waterproof trousers, it was raining hard, it was windy, and it was very slippery underfoot. I stuck to my principles and did not "catch" him as soon as he came close, but waited until he was very calm and standing next to me. This took sometime of playing with him, and he chose the muddiest part of the field to do it in.
Once he was haltered we started playing all the usual games. The only one I had a little trouble with was the circling game. He was a bit right brained about it all, especially the hind quarter yield to stop. We therefore spent some time fixing this at the halt, after which it went much better. Originally he was turning to face, but continuing on the circle sideways, or pulling back with head high. We worked on making the hind quarter yield a movement where the front feet stayed still, and ONLY the back moved round. This worked well.
I also started a more extreme friendly game. This comprises standing in front of him and throwing coils of the rope around his neck, and then uncoiling them again. Not being a cowboy throwing a rope to achieve this was tricky, not helped by his right brain head lifting. Slowly we both got the hang of it and he would let me through a couple of loops round and then uncoil them again. The purpose of this is to get him used to ropes flashing past his face so that when he is eventually ridden in a halter the rope can be thrown from one side of his head to the other. We will work towards advanced stuff like two lead ropes on his halter as reins after his has been ridden for a while. Bridles and bits come much much later !!
I also felt that I knew him well enough to fill out a horesenality chart for him. He came out as a left/right brain extrovert. No surprises there then. We now have a family of L/RBE, LBE, and L/RBI.
I have just finished reading a book called "Natural Horsemanship Explained" by Robert M Miller. It is not a book on HOW to do natural horsemanship NH, but on WHY it works. Unless you already know a little of the mechanics of NH I suspect it would be a bit confusing. For me however it has clarified so much I have learned from the Parelli program. I hate doing things without understanding what they are trying to achieve. Combining this book with the Parelli material will increase my rate of learning enormously... I hope.
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