Happy Christmas

We have been having a small problem with Bonitao, our horse. He has gotten into the habit of bolting to the field when being lead there. We had been hearinf reports of this for a while from the girls at the yard, but it was clearly getting out of hand so we have taken on the problem ourselves.
To understand the problem we had to see it so a week or so ago I went to the yard to turn him out myself. The result was that on the first attempt to take him to the field he bolted but I managed to let my hands slowly close the 22 foot rope and slow him to a halt, but at the expense of some serious rope burns on my hands. I immediately took him away from the field and lead him back again (with gloves on !) and again, at the same spot he bolted. With gloves I had no chance of stopping him.
The question now was, why? He is not doing this through fear as can be seen from his expression. He is clearly very left brain as he goes. Therefore he is not showing respect to humans as leaders in this context. My immediate response was to play the falling leave pattern with him, thus walking into his space as I asked for yields on the head collar. These went very well and the next attempt at passing the gate was good.
Ritchie then had a lesson with Becka, who spends a lot of time with James Roberts and so knows us and Bonitao well. She analysed it similarly to us but added in the idea that this was now a learned behaviour and we needed to break the pattern for an extended period of time to cure it. To ensure no repeats she suggested we send him to the field sideways with his head tipped towards us. In this position he cannot get into a power position to pull away from us. If necessary we should even send him backwards. I have been doing this for about 5 or 6 days now and it is working well. On just one occasion has he tried to bolt and as he was in the thick mud at the time by the gate he failed. In a way this was a good thing as he attempted and failed to get away reinforcing the idea that a new pattern is required.
It would be easy to get frustrated by this behaviour, but I prefer to say "How interesting" and then solve the puzzle. In a way I think this defines good horsemanship. Getting frustrated at a horse behaving like a horse is clearly not the way to go, the challenge is to use natural techniques to strengthen the desired behaviours, and diminish the undesired ones. For the horse it is just behaviour, neither good nor bad and we should "think like a horse" and understand this.
 This ideal can be tough to achieve at times but it is an attitude that separates a good horseman, of whatever experience, from a bad one.
On a happier note Billy can now have his leg bandages off in the stable. They have to be reapplied if he goes out to the field or in the school to protect them from sand and mud, but at least so air can now get to the area.
Happy Christmas everyone !!

Just an update

Although it is a while since the last blog I have been playing with both Filly and Billy. I have been somewhat short of time to write about as well though.
Filly and I continue to work on excellence at all the various games and this has been going pretty well. In particular we have continued to work on maintaining gait through the figure 8 and weave pattern. This has improved beyond measure but is still being done with a sour look on her face. In general I have been given the impression by her that she is rather bored with the whole thing which tells me that I have been a little too strong on the consistency with insufficient variety to keep her mind occupied. Remembering that "communication is two or more individuals sharing and understanding an idea" I realised that my responsibility of listening to her communication had been lacking and it was time for a total change of scene. She was telling me she needed a break and a change of scene.
It was not a very pleasant afternoon with gusty strong winds and the occasional light shower, but horses are fairly waterproof and I had a good jacket on so we went for a walk to the big field. Remembering that in the past Filly had been absolutely terrified of open spaces I was pleased when she excitedly but totally left brained entered the field. She was off to explore. The field had recently been muck spread to encourage hay growth next year and it was interesting to observe that she did not want to eat any of the grass where the muck was. This make evolutionary sense for her to be adverse to this as in the wild it would encourage the spread of worms. So we went further and further from the entrance looking for good grass. As it happens the edges of the field had been left un-tainted and despite this being near a noisy (due to the wind) hedge this is where she chose to graze. Slowly we worked our way further from the gate to the end of the field where she caught site of some very large cows in the next field. Head up and attentive. I was pleased to see that she was evaluating them with a sceptical left brain rather than just going right brained and running away. Back to grazing, but with the odd glance in the direction of the cows.
Spending time like this just quietly grazing allows close observation of the small details and I offer up one such detail below for thought and comment.
I have been continuing to read Equitation Science (Paul McGreevy and Andrew McLean 2010) and it raises an interesting suggestion. It acknowledges that horses have left and right brain behaviour and draws an analogy with left and right brained rodents and their dominant paws. It has been found in rodents that left pawed individuals have associated higher stress levels and speed of fear arousal. Left pawed suggests right hemisphere dominant brain which fits with the Parelli horsenality model. When horses graze they tend to have a handedness (hoofedness ?) as to which front leg they prefer to have forwards as the eat. The book suggests that there may be a parallel with horses and we can determine which leg is preferential from observing them grazing and then possibly use this to discover something about the inherent characteristics of the horsenality of the horse. They muddy the waters a little by then asking which leg is the dominant one, the forward one or the supporting one. However it seems to me that in Parelli with so many horse having had their horsenality determined it would be possible to test this hypothesis with enough subjects to get a statistical result. For what it is worth Filly favours her right front leg forward (by a factor of around 2 : 1) and I believe she is a Left Brained introvert, which suggests to me that the forward leg is dominant.
Any comments from others would be of great interest.

Have horse catch you

Another visit to James Roberts yesterday. He doesn't have any courses on a present so it was an opportunity to see him working with his own horses for a change.
The theme for the day was definitely Liberty work, and we watched a nice session of him playing with his own working horse "Princess". In particular he was working on zone 5 driving at Liberty, over emphasising his direction of focus of both the eyes and the belly button as he asked for serpentines up and down the school. As he said, this was to improve her response to his focus when he is riding her so that he has to use his hands less which are normally fully occupied with the lead rope to the young colts he starts. Princess is used a lot for ponying young colts as she can interact with them as a horse and move them around. So James directs Princess who in turn directs the colts getting them to yield to pressure. She is the perfect horse for this as she can look cranky and forceful enough to get the youngsters to respect her without getting aggressive.
In the afternoon he gave a lesson to a young man who has just arrived at the yard as a livery. (Lucky guy !! I'm not jealous at all !). After the usual brieifing on the Plan (see link on right side) they started working on "Have horse catch you". This was the first time I had seen the catching game as played by James. Basically the horse was put at Liberty and then made to move around the school while the student walked with purpose and "crankiness" around the inside of the arena, regularly putting pressure on the horse to keep moving. The result was this fit young pony cantered around the arena for about 1/2 hour with the occassional directed change of direction. From the ponies head tossing you could tell that she did not like this sudden assertion of leadership from a human. As James suggested the pony had been at the top of the pecking order for years and it was a bit of a shock to the system to find that she no longer was. As time progressed however the head tossing reduced and the horse lowered her head and started to show signs of relaxation and submission. The key was to pay close attention to her expression. To start the head and nose were tipped out and away form the owner, but slowly the head straightened. As soon as she glanced at the owner he had to turn and walk purposefully away for her. The mode of his walk was all important. He had to demonstrate his positive leadership qualities and so walk as though he knew where he was going and was thus worth following. The pony stopped and pondered him for a while before deciding that he was not worth following and turning away again, at which point she was immediately sent out on the circle again. Some minutes later and another glance. The owner turned and walked away again and she pondered him for much longer. So he just walked repeatedly past her as she decided whether or not to accept his leadership. On one pass he just asked her to move her front legs to get her "unstuck" and she then willingly followed him. However it was not all over, as he came and sat in a chair she again turned and left him, but was helped on her way to more circles. Only a short time passed and she again turned and asked for permission to come to him and then stayed with him for a long while as we all discussed what we had just seen.
James suggested that the owner do this for another 3 or 4 days to really get the bond and leadership established before moving onto "Halter with Savvy". This is what I mean on my Plan website where I say "don't pass onto the next item of the plan until the current one is solid".
Why is this so important. Well if you horse is travelling around you, looking to the outside and tossing it's head, as long as it is not doing so in fear or right brained, it is in effect swearing at you and giving you the finger. It does not see you as the leader but as an inconvenience that occasionally does things to it rather than with and for it. That is not a healthy relationship to have with an animal you are going to trust your life to.
All in all a very interesting day. On arriving back at the yard I checked out the "Have horse catch you" with Filly and found it was not really up to standard to start with. I therefore played the game and in only around 10 minutes it was pretty good again. I've made a mental note to be a little more conscientious in checking each box on the plan and make sure that each is done with excellence before moving on in the future.

Playing with Billy again

Just a quick note as it is late and we have to get up early to go to James Roberts yard again.
As the title says I have started playing with Billy again. His legs seem to finally be healing well after some 5 or 6 months. He is certainly full of himself and has spent the last two days testing our leadership relationship again. I hope I am winning !
The remarkable thing is that other than these displays of dominance he seems to have forgotten nothing that he has been taught in the past despite the long layoff. May this give hope to others in a similar situation. Circling game is very good as is sideways. In fact some of his yields have improved. However he is testing my strength of will when it comes to porcupine game on the halter, and given me another learn burn on my hand. Only slight though. The yard girls have mentioned that he is becoming more difficult to lead and as they are using a leather halter I can well believe it.
Sorry this is short but must go to bed now and prepare to have brain overload again tomorrow

Alelomimetic Behaviour

Another fun day yesterday. As I collected her from the stable the food was just arriving. Not a great time to start playing with Filly, but she soon settled down and we had great fun. Due to the upset caused by walking past the food trolley to the school she did not want to roll immediately upon entering the school which is unusual.
We spent quite a while refining her backup as she had started to make the assumption that having backed a few paces she she set off on a circle. Principle number 2 applies. To counter this I just sent her back, made her wait then surprised her by walking to her to give her a carrot piece.
Having sorted that minor problem out we moved onto changing gait from trot to canter on a circle. To start this required an escalation to phase 3 pressure but fairly quickly she learned to transition to canter on only phase 1 or 2. Again I feel one of the differences with Natural Horsemanship is that we start with very light pressure, in this case merely upping body energy and extending the arm out to the side and then slowly increase the pressure until we get the response that is desired. In this case I held my arm out for at least a full circle and to start with released if Filly just increased the speed of the trot. If the arm did not work then I clucked twice followed by slapping the ground with the string behind her. To start with I expect no response at all from the extended arm but horses are very quick at learning "What happens before what happens happens". In other words if I stay at phase 1 long enough and then increase the phases Filly soon learns that if she does not respond to the phase 1 then more forceful phases will follow and therefore it is her interest to respond to phase 1. As training progresses the time interval for each phase is shortened gradually so she does not learn that she can ignore phase 1 for sometime before it is prudent to respond.
Once this was going well online we did some practise at Liberty. I think at one point I must have put a fraction too much pressure on her mentally as she suddenly didn't want to play anymore. Rather than get frustrated I just accepted the situation and set about restoring her trust. Simply done really I just wandered around the school ignoring her, making sure that all turns were made so that my belly button always pointed away from her. After just a few minutes of sniffing the ground, licking the walls (all displacement behaviour) she walked over and suddenly appeared on my shoulder with head lowered. I then reinforced the trust by walking to her favourite roll spot and decided to see if I could get her to roll at Liberty next to me. This is where that forbidding looking title comes in. Social animals will often mimic other animals in the herd and I decided to see if I could use this behaviour to induce the roll. I lowered my head and started pawing at the ground. Within one or two seconds Filly mimicked me whilst standing by my side. I then knelt down and again within 10 seconds Filly had taken a few paces away and knelt near me followed by a good satisfying roll. The speed at which she mimicked my behaviour was actually quite startling as I really did not expect it to work. I had not done any prior training for this other than always kneeling down close to her when she rolled. I had certainly never taught her to paw the ground on command, so this was a true mimicking of my behaviour, or was it just fluke on the timing ? I guess one trial does not make for scientific proof of the concept, but intuition told me she was mimicking me. A man with intuition, now there is a new idea !

Holiday over

Back from holiday with a reasonable tan and a head swimming with the ideas in the book "Equitation Science". Not a book for the faint hearted, but worth a read. Somewhat scathing about Natural Horsemanship but it really just says that the principles are not yet scientifically validated.
Having arrived home I was of course keen to seen Filly and continue preparing for a good audition. Two gentle days later and we are back on track. Playing with a Filly whilst suffering from jet lag is taxing, but keeps me awake and on my toes.
We now have a well established pattern of having Filly roll next to me as soon as we get into the school. She is now very confident with me in close proximity to the extent I have to be careful she does not actually roll onto me. This is a great exercise for building trust between us, and fun as all these interactions should be.
I am still working on getting lightness in the sideways game and have found that giving her a destination, preferably with a carrot on it, makes this much easier to achieve. We can now get to the end of the 22 foot line with only phase 1 or 2 pressure and more importantly with accuracy about the direction. I must start with the 45 foot line soon.
Yesterday we played a bit at Liberty and I found that my hind quarter yield no longer worked. Back to reinforcement online. Even then I had to go to phase 3 or 4 once to get her really responsive. Interestingly as I have noted before she became way more enthusiastic and attentive after a single phase 4 than when I was just trying to be gentle. This is becoming a repeated pattern. It seems that she responds to me better after I have really stepped up and asserted leadership at least once and even seems to enjoy my company more. I guess from her point of view she feels more safety and comfort around a strong leader than a weak one. Still it is hard to have to do this on occasion and I have to take care to use Principle 5 "The attitude of justice is effective" rather than just "Show her who's boss".
Having re established my leadership online I continued to work at Liberty which went much much better. To really reward her for a good hind quarter yield as soon as she started to turn and face I would remove all the pressure by turning and walking away. Within seconds a little Filly face would appear at my shoulder and contentedly walk with me.
All in all a good fun session which softened the blow of coming back to a cool windy England after the holiday.