A chilled Filly

Sunday 20 November 2011

Holiday !!!!

Just to let you all know that I am going away on holiday tonight and will be away for a week. Of course I am taking several relevant books such as Equitation Science with me.  This is one book that really needs quiet contemplation to understand. I have had to use Google to look up what some of the words even mean. Conspecific for example. But then I was never any good at crosswords having the limited vocabulary of an engineering student.
Filly will, I am sure be glad of the break. The good news is that she is confident enough now that she can be left in a field on her own. A very satisfying improvement from the early days where just being outside the stable block was a cause of considerable stress for her.
Normal service will resume the week after next !!


Tuesday 15 November 2011

Quick update

Just a quick update today. I have been playing a fair bit with Filly but it has just been more of the same. We are still working on getting her draw to be more energetic and to be done with a more willing expression. It is slowly paying dividends. She now draws into me with a reasonable effort, but the expression is still a little sour. On the upside this is finally letting us maintain gait through a trotted figure of 8. Only one lap at the moment but the next session we will increase to 1 and 1/2 laps.
We have also been working on lightness in the sideways game. Larisa has set me a target of sideways to the end of a 45 foot line only using phase 1 or 2 pressure. This is actually going fairly well. I place a carrot on the top of a mounting block, carefully line her up on it and then send her sideways to it to get her reward. Once she got the idea that the destination has a reward on it she started putting real effort in getting there ! There are two advantages to putting the reward at the destination. To start with she can instantly receive the reward on achieving the task and thus link the reward more intimately to the task. Secondly it gives me a fixed destination to send her too which means I have to send her exactly sideways with no drift forwards or backwards.
We have also been working on her zone 5 liberty driving by using the follow the rail pattern. In this task I have to be able to walk behind her tail, guiding her with a couple of sticks whilst she has no halter on. To make this easier I started using the follow the rail pattern. This has the advantage that the wall of the school stops her turning one way whilst I use a stick and plastic bag to stop her turning away from the wall. Forwards in initiated by increasing my energy, focussing on where I want to go and then if necessary using the bag right above he tail to create impulsion. As soon as she is walking I go into neutral and walk, with focus, behind her. I placed carrots on cones in each corner to give her a destination and reward for reaching them. After this pattern was established I placed cones and carrots in the middle of the school and we left the safety of the wall and set off across the school. We didn't get to the cones on a dead straight line, but we did get to all of them which was a good start. As for stopping I just use the signal we use when riding. A breath in followed by a long relaxing exhale, drop my body energy and if this fails then a light pull on her tail and we gently stop. Hence the reason I was working on lead by the tail recently !!
We are also have great success with her friendly game whilst lying down. I know she will always roll in the sand when we enter the school so I have used that behaviour to slowly influence where she rolls. Leaving her online I kneel near her roll spot whilst she looks for the perfect spot. To start with I let that be anywhere she wanted and then moved to her. Slowly I have been using the rope to restrict her range. Now I have it to the point that I am using a 12 foot rope and getting her to roll within 6 feet of me. As soon as she is down she gets a carrot. She will even lay with her head flat out and still take a carrot from my hand. Slowly I am getting to the point where I can move around her and rub and scratch on her whilst she is lying down. And the point of all this. 1) It is a real acceptance of me as a partner, not a predator, to allow me to be near and touch her when she is in this most vulnerable position. 2) If she ever gets sick, such as colic, she is already used to having me around her whist she is on the ground. Thus I can attend to her without increasing her stress above that of being sick. 3) It just feels very special to have that sort of a bond and trust with a prey animal. This is supposed to be fun and rewarding after all !

Friday 11 November 2011

Putting the lesson to use

I have been continuing the exercises that were started during the lesson with Larisa. The main emphasis is still to get Filly to draw towards me with real energy and a lack of aggression on her face.
To balance these two requirements is very tricky. For example is she comes to me with real impulsion but a sour look on her face do I reward her? If I do then I am reinforcing that the attitude is ok. If I don't she will think "I put effort in and still did not get rewarded, so extra effort cannot be the right answer".
In practise I run backwards away from her, encouraging impulsion with a pull pressure on the lead rope and tags with the stick and string on her sides whilst studying her expression. As soon as I see her ears soften I stop and reward her. The snag is that she can twitch her ears faster than I can react so timing the reward of rest and a carrot can be hit and miss. The problem is missing an opportunity to reward her. If I miss such an opportunity I am inadvertently reinforcing the idea that softness is not the answer.
To mix things up a bit I am also continuing to work on her sideways game. Under Larisa's tutelage she suggested that I needed to get to the point where I could get her to drift out to the end of a 45 foot rope whilst I stand still and only use phase one (body energy only) and phase two (very very light use of stick and string wafted in her direction). The key is too walk to her and reward her with a treat as she moves further and further away. So on the first attempts I rewarded her for a quality step or two away from me. Slowly she has to go further and as of last night we were pretty much getting to the end of the 22 foot rope. Quality is the watch word here. I want lightness and straightness. By straightness I mean that if I pick a spot on the wall over her whithers then she should remain on that line. She tends to drift forwards, and if so I just wriggle the rope gently to get her back on line. In contrast to the draw exercises she is learning this game remarkably quickly.

Wednesday 9 November 2011

Can horses laugh ?

We had another lesson with Larisa today. As usual she quickly isolated where my problems lay and then set up specific exercises to improve things.
As I have mentioned before I have had trouble getting Filly to maintain trot around a figure eight. I have tried all sorts of things to improve the issue, boomerang pattern, maintain gait on a circle, weave pattern to name but a few.
I had noted that Filly gave a really sour look as I asked her to change direction at trot but was unsure as to whether this was due to dominance or unconfidence. I had been working to start with on the assumption it was unconfidence. After all I had a 50 50 chance of being right and if I guessed dominance and was wrong the exercises to make her less dominant could really have damaged the rapport with an unconfident horse.
But this was not working. Larisa had me start with the falling leaf pattern. This involves walking in a straight line forwards and asking the horse to perform half circles in front of me as I move. I am therefore continually moving into her space and she has to move to get away from me. Sure enough she showed the sour face at each change of direction, but Larisa noted that she was not very quick at yielding her shoulder away from me and was pushing on my personal bubble. Horses in a herd will often push on each other with their shoulders to demonstrate dominance, especially if their ears are back at the same time. The solution was to continue doing many falling leaf patterns and "tag" her with the string on my carrot stick if she made to push on my space with her shoulder. I was therefore looking for snappy forequarter yields away from me as she came through the turn and a non-agressive look on her face. Lots to take in whilst you are handling stick and rope, walking forwards, asking for changes of direction etc. After many passes up and down the school we started to get the quick yield and she was rewarded with a rest for that. As we progressed I got more particular that not only did the yield have to be good, but the expression as well. Not something to be fixed in a day but we made good progress.
We then moved onto improving the energy she puts into drawing towards me when asked. This is again to improve the maintain gait during figures of 8. Larisa had me circle her around and then run backwards down the school, applying pressure on the lead rope and using the stick and string to tag her on the side until she mode effort to follow me. If she failed to apply effort, or came to me with a sour look I then had to send her back on the circle. If she did put effort into coming to me with a good look then she got a nice long rest by my side.
At the start of this exercise she was really resisting on the rope and I was having to apply quite a lot of pressure, whilst running backwards and tagging her with the string. We worked at this for a while with only small improvements. Suddenly she got the idea and with me pulling on the rope she suddenly broke into canter towards me. Caught of guard and with all the rope tension released the result was inevitable. I landed flat on my back and, according to Larisa, bounced once before coming to a stop whilst Filly overshot me and came back around with her ears pricked, eyes glinting and head tilted to one side as she examined me from an unfamiliar angle. I am sure the answer to the blog title is "yes they can" !!

Friday 4 November 2011

Audition attempt

Finally a few days ago Ritchie and I had time to attempt to film a Parelli audition with me and Filly. For those who don't know the system to get a levels qualification you film a continuous 10 minute video, upload it to YouTube and then send the link to the Parelli campus. There assessors view the video and decide whether or not it deserves a pass.
I am confident that Filly and I can perform all the required tasks to a good level for a level 2 or even level 3 online audition. However trying to get her to perform all the tasks in a continuous 10 minute take proved more challenging (which I guess is why they want it done in one take). I won't bore you with a detailed description of the session as it is all captured and film and if you are extremely bored you can watch it here YouTube Video .
Comments welcome, but please keep them constructive as I think I know where most of the bad points are already. It has taken some courage to even post this video for all to see !!