A chilled Filly

Tuesday 23 August 2011

Getting back on track

Finally I have played with Filly on my own, from getting her from the field to putting her back with her herd.
The first challenge was separating her from her herd. On entering the field she trotted towards me but stopped a few feet away. Then Moo caught sight of the carrot stick and halter and trotted away. Filly naturally went with the herd to the end of the field. I just kept cool and adopted the "Catch me" game. In fact it was kind of fun. Normal formula, if she showed me no attention I stalked her, if she put an ear or eye on me I relaxed and turned away. After five minutes she caught me and politely waited until I had fastened the rope halter, turning her head towards me as she should.
One frustration I have is that talking to non Parelli folks they seem to think that Parelli is something we do once the horse is caught and in the school. It is way beyond that. Every interaction has to be completed whilst sticking to the principles and using savvy. In this case it would have been easy to sneak the halter on her and, today, I would have saved ten minutes, but at the cost of making her difficult to catch and halter in the future.
Once in the indoor school (it was wet outside) we started on a new exercise taught to us by David Lichman during a clinic last weekend. The esscence is to get the horse to lower it's head when it is bothered by something. The psychology is split into three parts.
First, lowering the head when bothered by something, as a conditioned response, gives the horse something positive to do rather than rearing, bucking, bolting etc.
Second, a lowered head is a position of relaxation and submission for the horse. As David explained it, adopting a relaxed pose like sitting in an armchair at home does not necessarily result in you relaxing into a good sleep, but it is a precursor for it. Standing to a tense attention is unlikely to result in any form of relaxation. So causing the horse to adopt a relaxed pose when bothered is the first step to getting a relaxed mind.
Thirdly it gives the horse a means to communicate with us. If the horse is clearly bothered, using the conditioned response, it can now lower it's head to say "please stop doing that, I am worried". Far better than the more traditional methods of rearing, bucking, pulling back etc. How we respond to that request is now determined by the circumstances, but at least we have some important information to work on.
To achieve the response I started by lightly bouncing my carrot stick on the side of her back. This clearly bothered her as the swishing tail and thrashing head showed. By lightly asking for her head to lower at the same time by pulling down on the halter I helped her to learn the desired response. Removing the pressure on the halter and stopping the stick as soon as she even thought about lowering her head soon had the desired response working well. I now wanted to generalise the response. To do this I needed another way to worry her. She is still very sensitive to being porcupined in the flanks for a hind quarter yield, so this is what I did. Again as soon as she lowered her head the stimulus was removed. Progress was rapid again. Not only did she lower her head but she soon accepted the porcupine with much less fuss.
She now feels in control of unpleasant stimuli and I think this has empowered her to accept them with the knowledge that she can influence when the cease. I really look forward to seeing how far we can take this method, and enjoy the fact that we now have another level of two way communication.
As a brief summary of the rest of the session we worked hard on straightness on a circle. Now I am mobile, for the first time since I learned the technique, we made real progress. I again used the 3m fishing pole to signal which zone I wished to move away to get the proper bend in her body. I also found that I could observe the footfall pattern with much more accuracy now I am standing which aided in the precision of my signals and hence her understanding of them.
Finally we did a little liberty which we clearly both enjoyed after such a long break from it.
Putting her back in the field tested my adherence to good horsemanship again. The herd came to greet her and she was very keen to run off with them. I insisted on removing the halter with savvy however, and after a brief "conversation" on the topic with Filly, she agreed. She waited patiently, with a lowered head (there's that lowered head again !) turned slightly towards me as I undid the knot and slowly removed the halter. After that the conversation was over and she could rejoin her herd. Again Natural Horsemanship does not end as I leave the school, but when I leave her line of sight.

Sunday 21 August 2011

Content Filly

Just a quick post today.
I spent sometime in the field with Filly yesterday and her little herd. It suddenly occured to me this was what my original goal with her had been. She is not mine so all the other stuff like saddling was not an original aim. Just making this frightened little horse happy in her own skin and content with being a horse was what I wanted. Sometimes we loose focus on what or goals were as we push forwards towards saddling, sitting on our horse, sideways games etc etc. In the end with Filly I just wanted to make her happy and I think we have got there. I will still continue to play with her and enjoy her company rather than get frustrated with getting her to go sideways towards, stand on a pedastel, make the tea and all the other things we would like to be able to do. I need to also reflect on the journey we have completed.
Thanks Filly.


Thursday 18 August 2011

Finally I can play standing up

My hip repair is coming on well and with the help of my Osteo and Physio I can finally stand and walk around without a crutch. This of course opened up the possibility of more provocative play with Filly. For the last two days we have had real fun, but she has lost a lot of her fitness too so I am having to take it easy. This is a case of listening to her needs as well as mine. She makes it clear when she has done enough, usually by becoming less enthusiastic to back away from me and giving me lots of cuddles so that she can stand still near me.
Her time in the field with other horses has worked wonders on her mental attitude just as I expected it would. She is now much calmer, responsive and less argumentative than before. Which leads me to wonder why on earth folks would want to keep their horses in. From what I have seen the improvement in mental fitness more than outweighs the risk of physical injury from another horse in the field. One just has to be brave enough to take the leap of faith that socialising with other horses has more benefits than risks.
We have been working on all the old stuff, concentrating on forwardness and straightness on the circle. Just to recap, forwardness is measured by observing her footfalls. At walk, for example, I want the hind leg to strike the ground 1 to 2 hoof prints in front of where the front foot just left. Straightness is the concept of her body bending so that it is on the same arc as the circle itself. In other words her body isn't "straight" in the normal sense of the word, but curved concentrically with the circle. To gauge this I am looking for all parts of her body to be at the same distance from me, head to tail.
All of this is getting pretty good at walk, but we have counter arc at trot and canter where her body is on the opposite arc to the circle most evidenced by her head pointing out of the circle. At the moment she is not fit enough to trot and canter long enough to fix this quickly so we need to get her (and my) fitness levels up first.
In addition I have been working on her sideways game in order to get her nicely flexible and balanced to help her with her flying lead changes in the future. We have gone back to level 1 for this and I am using the fence to help guide her, but asking for faster sideways further from me than level 1 requires. To get the momentum up we start with a circle at trot, when this is relaxed and confident I wait until she is aiming at the fence then walk towards her and the fence thus driving her away from me along the fence. We have managed a few sideways steps at trot with this method and she keeps going sideways at walk to the end of the 22 foot line.
To improve her draw to me I have also started working on sideways towards me. I set this up by putting her nose to the fence then drawing lightly on the rope whilst hovering my stick over her back (phase 1). Should she bring her front end to me but not her hind end I then go up the phases of tapping her far flank with the stick (it helps being tall and having a short horse !) until she steps under with her hind leg, whereupon I step back and relax. To start she tended to kick out at the stick with her hind leg but after only a short time she was stepping the hind legs across with the lightest of taps around 50% of the time. Not a bad start.
I have kept the sessions short at the moment to allow time for her mental and physical fitness to improve, but as we get fitter together we can get even more progressive. It would be nice to have a level 3 online and liberty horse in around 2 to 3 months (well we all have to have targets and dreams)

Tuesday 16 August 2011

Walking with focus

Another session spent watching the herd. Rosie seems slightly more accepted now, but it is interesting that whenever possible Filly puts herself in the middle of the herd. They were initially indifferent to my presence with Filly positively moving away from me if I rested my hand on her withers. By being passively persistent and just following her with my hand in place she soon understood that this was just Friendly game and became confident with my proximity. I even spent sometime making sure I mimicked her front leg movements with my own legs. This clearly further reassured her and soon she was grazing right next to my foot. This seems to be a sign of friendship as I have noted that Moo and Filly often seem to be trying to eat with their noses as close together as possible.

At this point a car alarm went of in the car park at the yard. Fearing it was mine (it wasn't) I set off at a brisk walk across the field with strong focus on the destination. The herd followed me at a trot, where before they had been largely indifferent to me. A herd leader walks in such a manner from one feeding area to another and I guess that when I showed such behaviour I triggered in them the desire to follow a visually strong leader. This just serves to illustrate how important it is to maintain focus whilst interacting with our horses, not only when riding but when leading them around as well. Of course it is only important if we wish to have them see us as the leader, if we don't care about our leadership then texting or talking on our mobile phones whilst leading them is perfectly ok.

Friday 12 August 2011

A new member of the herd

Filly is now sharing a field with two other mares. Her original friend "Moo" and now "Rosie". It has been interesting observing the integration of Rosie into the herd. Into is a bit strong at the moment as she is not fully accepted yet.
On the first day of observation Rosie was definitely the outcast. But she wanted company so followed the other two around. Moo seemed happy enough, but Filly as herd leader was not. Lots of ear back driving displays if Rosie got too close to either Moo or, surprisingly, me. Rosie tried to retaliate but her heart was clearly not in it and she soon backed away a few paces. On one occasion Rosie got a bit too close behind Filly and I had a wonderful display of phases in the horse language. Filly started by pawing at the ground for at least 15 seconds. She then gave a little annoyed squeal flattened her ears and glanced round. All the time her nose was near the ground and she took the odd bite of grass. Rosie did not take the hint so Filly kicked back with just one leg, no chance of making contact but another phase. At this Rosie kicked with both legs, turned and moved away a few feet much to Filly's satisfaction and peace was restored. Two things stood out. 1) The slow and patient phases Filly used 2) The immediate relaxation of all concerned after the incident was over.
Today it seems that Rosie is accepted a little more but Filly still uses the odd dominance display (driving game usually) to assert her dominance. She was also far more relaxed with me today and was very happy for me to follow her around and waft flies off her. She still left from time to time to take care of herd business, but then either returned to me or let me re-approach.
It was also interesting to observe them eating various bits of the hedge. In particular the fact that when one did they all did despite the fact that they had all been eating grass within feet of the hedge for a long time. The desire to conform within the herd was clearly very strong and I would surmise helped to bind the herd together.
Many people will wonder what this has to do with learning to be a horseman. Everything in my view. Very few others, I have noticed, take the time for this sort of study and intense observation even if the horse (or, as in my case, the human) is lame and they can't do anything else. They tend to just "use" their horse to ride or school, training them to fit into our world. For me this is not good enough, to be a true partner I have to understand some part of their world as well. If I neglect this then I am not being a partner but a user. This may sound a bit strong but over the last 18 months it is something that I have really come to believe in. It may mean it takes me longer to get to a particular standard of riding but I hope it will lay the foundation to let me take my entire horsemanship, not just the riding bit, further than would otherwise be possible.

Wednesday 3 August 2011

Hanging out with a friend

I have not been able to play with Filly for a long while now, but I have been visiting her in her field. Spending undemanding time with your horse is so important for the rapport part of the relationship, and so it has proved in this case. I have come to realise that true undemanding time is just hanging around them in their field. I don't feel that taking them online for a quiet graze has the same benefits as just becoming a part of the herd.
The first few times I hobbled down to the field she was really a bit indifferent to my presence, not avoiding me but not actively approaching either. Recently she has been walking straight up to me, leaving her field mate in the process. Believe me it is a great feeling when your horse chooses to be with you willingly instead of grudgingly. She normally gives me a careful sniff, especially my head, accepts a quick stroke and then it is back to grazing. But she sticks near to me as she eats, moving around with me as she would another herd member which I hope I have now become.
To many it may sound a boring way to spend time with your horse, but do you know which bit of a thistle your horse loves to eat ? I do. The flower and the root. She actually pulls them up turns them round and chews the roots, leaving me to wonder how on earth she learned that skill as I have never seen Moo do it. The benefit of this knowledge is that I can now feed her thistle heads and roots as a treat, further enhancing the bond. (Use gloves !!) I can also walk to an area where they are growing so that she sees me as a leader who understands her wants. Not just a dominant leader but one that supplies food and water as well.
S0 spending time with the horse with no agenda has many benefits which may not become apparent until you try it. It need not be a whole day as Gwani Pony Boy suggests, just 10 minutes or so every now and then. Whilst doing it open yourself up to what the horse is feeling and really observe the smallest behaviour. I will now, occasionally, make a point of spending undemanding time with her because I enjoy it and get a real satisfaction seeing a small part of how Filly goes about her daily life. Slowing down to their pace of life is a great way to relax as well.