Outside leg isolations

Yesterday we had a nice but short hack out. I rode in the indoor school first playing with inside leg isolations (asking Filly to turn by bending around my inside leg) and then outside leg isolations.

In the inside leg isolation I place my leg where it naturally hangs down her side and ask her to bend her body around it. At halt this just brings her nose around (neutral lateral flexion without the rein), at walk because her body follow her nose it turns her towards the leg I'm using.

For outside leg isolations I place my leg forward of neutral. When exaggerating to teach this may be as far forward as on her shoulder itself. When pressure is applied there the leg I am touching should step over under her body. To get the opposite front leg to move over and step out away from her body I ask with the rein held out to the side. So the rule is "my left leg talks to her left front leg and my right hand held out to the side talks to her right front leg".

When asking her to turn on her haunches to the right she has to extend her right front leg out to the side then cross her left front leg over it, then her right leg etc. This makes the timing of the aids critical. Apply rein pressure, release when the associated leg moves then apply leg pressure, release when her leg moves, apply rein pressure etc. Difficult to describe when writing about it, even harder to time correctly ! To make sure she doesn't drift forwards with her hind legs I apply a little back pressure with the other hand from time to time to keep her weight back over her hind legs. The weight has to be there in anycase to free up the front legs to move.

To make a game out of it I place a cone in front of her and one behind her. The pattern is to turn her with just her front legs moving so that her nose goes from one cone to the other. Once she got the pattern she put real effort into turning, especially the last step or two.

This exercise is having lots of beneficial effects in other parts of her training. I can now push her over if she trys to turn to early during "follow the rail" for example. Her ridden sideways work is getting better as I can keep her shoulder in line.

What is more is it is great fun. Not to watch maybe but to ride it feels like a real conversation.

Initially of course she didn't understand what I was asking so we have done lots of groundwork to prepare her. One good exercise is to ask her to yield her forehand around her hind legs in a circle using porcupine pressure. For this I use one hand to apply pressure to her shoulder to ask that leg to move over, release, then apply pressure to the side of her head to ask the opposite leg to move over. Afterall it is this side of the head the she will feel the pressure from the bosal so it is a totally congruent exercise with the ridden work.

When ridden I started moving my leg way up onto her shoulder and pressing, if I got no response I tapped lightly with my toe, still no response I used coils of the 45 foot rope to tap where my leg was. None of this was hard, just rhythmical tapping to get the response. The coils were actually hitting my leg, not her. They just made the aid really obvious. And that is what it means to exaggerate to teach, not more pressure or more pain as some folks use, just working out a way to make the desired response more obvious.

A great ride

Recently I've had a couple of trailer loading sessions with Filly. Not to get her better at loading in the trailer, though that is a nice byproduct, but to get her better at yielding to pressure and not pushing into it. More specifically not pushing into me !

The trailer was just an obstacle to play with, not the point of the training session. By using the trailer I could get her to display "I don't want to" behaviour. She is not at all worried about going into the trailer but she can decide that she doesn't want to go in the trailer. There is an important difference. Never push a worried horse, but expect a confident horse to respond.

The trailer loading was pretty full on, and I have to admit to using the handle end of my stick. I didn't want to but she was pushing on me with more pressure than I could apply any other way. Remember principle number 5 "The attitude of justice is effective". The stick was only used to apply a little more pressure than she was applying to me, and as soon as she de-escalated so did I. If she would uphold her responsibility of "Act like a partner not a prey animal" then I would reciprocate with "act like a partner not a predator".

In the end she became pretty responsive and we could go one step into the trailer and then back out one step. The only difficult step was getting the back legs from out of the trailer and onto the ramp. Here she was worried so we took our time to softly work through the issue. It's not just about loading the whole horse each bit has to load and unload confidently.

We then had a few days of just having fun and chilling out together. I had withdrawn pretty heavily from the rapport bank and needed to make some deposits back in. Not that she was allowed to go back to her old ways of pushing on me of course.

I now found that she was much softer and more responsive to pressure. She could think her way through it and try to figure out what I meant instead of just reacting to it.

This translated into a really good ride the other night. Nothing fast, all at walk and for the outside observer it would have been like watching pain dry. But there was no one else on the yard and we could just chat to each other through the aids I was applying, discussing what they meant.

I've been trying to get her really good at just moving the front legs sideways when I ask. The inside hind foot should stay still. I rode her in the bosal. The inside hand stretched out to ask the inside front to step over. As soon as it did the pressure released. Then the outside toe on her shoulder asked the outside front to move over and again a release. Then the timing had to get good from me. Inside hand, inside leg, outside toe, outside leg. Finally I got the timing right and we were performing 180 degree turns on the spot without the inside hind moving in about three or four steps. To make the end of the turn obvious and give her a goal I had two cones set up so that at the end of each 180 turn her nose was on one of them. So that's why we teach "touch it game" !! :) .

We did other things as well, like sideways over the cones, sideways along a pole backup etc but the highlight was having those front feet in my hands. For a left brained horse like Filly to give up those front feet softly is a really big deal.

Happy Christmas everyone. I'm looking forward to a great horsemanship New Year for all of us.

Riding JRFS December 2013

My last post dealt with getting Filly to and from JRFS, this one deals with the actual lessons I had whilst there.

On arrival we had pizza and beer with Josh during which we discussed what I wanted to achieve during the week. I've noticed that many folks turn up for a lesson and expect the instructor to tell them what they are going to do. I like to discuss what I feel I need to work on. The instructor may then asses me and disagree, that's fine but at least we have a starting point. My emphasis was threefold.
1) More birdleless riding
2) Assess my liberty to see what needs to be improved for my level 3
3) Hacking out

Day 1

This was really an assessment day to see where Filly and I had got to since my last visit to JRFS.
Normal prepare to ride but with an emphasis on indirect/direct rein online. What is interesting is that as I improve I am using the stick and string less and less. I am also using the 12 foot rope more than in the past.
For example : indirect/direct rein online. Start by getting Filly to walk (or trot) whilst I walk at her hips. Then using my intention to start with and the belly of the rope as phase 4 touching her sides ask the inside hind to step under her body. Timing the "ask" with her leg being off the ground is important in this. So I use a little feel on the halter to ask the outside hind to step out and intention/touching her sides to ask the inside leg to step under. Like I said timing is crucial. Once the steps fluid and willing I ask for a little more so that the hind quarters swing away from me and the nose comes towards me. As the angle off the rope to the halter changes I am now talking to the front feet and start to time the feel on the rope with the inside front being off the ground to ask that leg to step out towards me. Again timing is vital.
Riding emphasised "follow the rail" to improve her responsibilities.

Day 2

More of the same online, but the riding now was all about bridleless. More "follow the rail" to start with trying to use the reins as little as possible to keep her on the rail. Once this was going tolerably well with the reins over the saddle horn Josh asked if I was ready to take the bosal off. I've ridden her bridleless a fair bit so I was happy to do this. We were in a lovely indoor arena with great boarded sides so what could go wrong ?
To start with she would not now stay on the rail. She decided that tighter and tighter circles were a good idea. Josh shouted over "do you want to ride like Pat or Dave Stewart ?". Well much as I respect Pat, Dave Stewart is a beautiful rider who I would love to be able to emulate. "Dave please". At which point Josh handed me a 45 foot rope. Apparently if I had said "Pat" I would have got the carrot sticks :) . Splitting the coils so that I had some in each hand I now had a method of tipping her nose each way if she did not respond to my eyes, belly button or leg. The coils could also be used to give her a nice rub on the neck when all was going well then lifted up and forwards to direct the nose if needed.
This worked very well and we were soon moving along the rail at trot in a very orderly fashion. A few circles were thrown in just to keep it a little more interesting.
Once this was going really well I had now proven I did not need the reins to direct her. It was now time to put the bosal back on and start using the reins to pick up a soft feel. For this a little pressure was applied to the reins, and if that didn't work some soft bumps, to get her head to lower and her nose to tip in. Now all the steering was being done from the body/legs this left the bosal to speak to her about vertical flexion.
This was the theme for the next few days. Ride with the bosal until I wasn't using the reins and was ready to go bridleless. Ride bridleless with the rope coils until I wasn't using the coils for directional control. Put the bosal back on to pick up a soft feel. I really logical progression.
We finished the day with a short hack out across big open stubble fields. She was great on the way out, but a bit joggy on the way back which I corrected with sideways and small circles.

Day 3
No hacking out today as the wind was ridiculously strong.
Prepare to ride emphasised use of the 45 foot rope. That is such a versatile bit of kit. Not once did we use it at its' full length.
Taking a loop over the nose I used it to get the nose to tip gently each way. Adding in a loop around the near front leg allowed me to ask the nose over and the front leg to step over at the same time. Getting the timing so that the nose tipped first followed by the leg stretching out established a link between pressure on the far side of the nose and the leg stretching over.
Take a loop around her belly and now I could work on porcupine game by gently picking up a feel and pulling her towards me.. Depending where the loop was I could talk to the front legs or the hind legs.  
We then made a loop that fitted around her neck with a not to stop it tightening. Now with the halter off I could lead her around and ask for yields off the neck. Combine with putting it around her legs or body and there was a huge range of response I could ask for.
Ridden was just the same as before but I added in playing with the big green ball to give more purpose to moving her around. Here's a short video of it

At the end we played a little a liberty. She left me a couple of times, but Josh reckoned that we were easily able to take out level 3 liberty audition. All I have to do is work out a routine to film and hope I can keep her interested for ten minutes ;)

Day 4
The last day :( . More of the same for the school work. But then we headed out for a longish hack up onto the Salisbury Plain. Filly was a star. She seemed to really enjoy her time out of the school. Lots of looking around in curiosity, no spooks. She only got a little fast coming back down the hill of the plain. Again I just set her to going sideways so that she had to think about her feet rather than just charge down the hill. We stopped at the pub for a half pint of beer, which Filly didn't seem to like to my disappointment. Maybe try cider next time.


So ended another great week riding with Josh. As usual I learnt loads of new skills to take me to the next level.
I said that I eventually want to get her good enough that we could pony young horses to help with colt starting. Josh though that given our rate of progress that would be perfectly possible by next summer ! That's at least a year sooner than I expected so I am very pleased with progress

JRFS December 2013

Another great week at JRFS with Filly

The journey down was not great. Filly loaded very well at Manor Farm, but once we got on the road she got very agitated. In the past she has settled after around 1 hour or so, but this time that didn't happen. Going along the motorway she was really bad. She seemed very upset by any lorry going past especially as it was now dark and there were flickering lights around. What to do ? Go home, continue to JRFS, keep driving.
We tried the option of keep driving and went up and down the motorway between junctions to avoid getting further from home. By now we had been on the road for a fair time and had to stop for a pee. In the service station she was particularly bad. Being stationary was no comfort. About then we decided to go home so we could at least unload her there rather than face another journey home from JRFS. It was pretty emotional. We started driving again and noticed that she seemed a little more settled so turned around and headed to JRFS. As soon as we got off the motorway she settled right down and munched hay. For the next hour she travelled as well as we have seen her.
Stopping at JRFS was a different prospect. She got very very agitated. Josh got in the trailer with her and slowly she calmed down to the point we could lower the back ramp. We did not want her last memory of the trailer to be bad. Then Josh asked her off the trailer and immediately back on. She loaded fine. A couple of more YoYos on and off the trailer and I took her to her field for the night.
Loading and un-loading was now her last memory of the trailer and we hoped that would help the return journey.
Saturday came around and it was time to go home. I played in the school with her and got her really soft and responsive. Then it was time to load up. This did not go well. She loaded ok in a left brained confident way, but in the same confident manner unloaded herself again. Then refused to go in again. I got pretty firm with her, not because she would not load, but because she was pushing into my pressure.
Josh was hovering in the background. Trailer loading is one of his favourite disciplines and so he gently took over from me.
Now we really found out how pushy Filly was being and Josh had to get very very firm. She would rather push into him than load and that was something he was not going to allow. James once told me that there are certain things it is better to have others do with your horse rather than yourself. Not because you are not capable but because your emotional involvement will distract you from doing what is needed. This was one of those cases.
At no stage did I see her go right brain. But she was not going to yield to the pressure Josh was giving without making her feeling known. Basically she got angry. As Josh kept pointing out this had nothing to do with trailer loading and everything to do with personal space and not invading it. This was a Filly I had not encountered for a while but had seen when I first started working with her all those years ago.
On our last visit Josh had mentioned how he had noticed her push into my space occasionally but so subtly I had not noticed. I guess we had a kind of mutual truce going on, not true softness.
In the end Josh had her loading very nicely, stepping back two steps then back in again etc. Then it was my turn. She gave a few half hearted attempts to push into me, but with Joshs' demo firmly in my mind I now knew how to respond appropriately and she was soon loading for me as well.
The journey home was not great even avoiding motorways, but marginally better than outbound. When we stopped she was weaving pretty well in the trailer so I climbed aboard and helped her weave by pusing and pulling on her withers. Suddenly the fact I was helping made weaving seem less attractive and she stopped. Unloading was fine. Then back on and off a few times before putting her to bed.
Two emotionally tough days during which I learned a huge amount.
Thanks for the help Josh, more beer and a dinner coming your way :)

Aikido at JRFS

As many of you will know I am interested in aikido as a way to improve my horsemanship. At least that is how it started, but then I got hooked on aikido to add to my list of hobbies  :roll:

It was Mark Rashid who introduced me to the idea, first through his book then during a clinic I watched where I had a chance to chat with him personally. After that I joined a local DoJo and got really really lucky. Both of the main instructors at the DoJo were interested in my reason for joining and did some research of their own to help me.
It then turned out that I had joined the only club in the UK which really concentrates on the internal form of aikido where the focus and intention are emphasised rather than just the mechanical movement of the technique. There are other clubs which do this but apparently none with emphasis of the one I attend.

After a year at the club I really began to see the benefits to my horsemanship, especially with soft feel, focus and intention. So the last time I was at JRFS I suggested that I invite my instructors down there for a "trial" day. Today it happened.

We started with Josh giving a great demo on his Mocho whilst he commented on the meaning of "follow a feel" to horsemen. He played in all four savvies including bridleless which really emphasised the power of focus. The instructors, Tony and David, seemed pretty impressed by all this and there was much nodding of heads in understanding and agreement at what Josh was showing and explaining. This was pretty remarkable in itself as neither Tony nor David have much experience with horses, limited to the odd ride on holiday I believe. For them to understand what many would describe as
advanced topics in horsemanship so readily showed how close the ideas in each discipline actually are.

Once Josh was finished it was their turn to have a little play with Mocho. We stuck to the real basics of hind quarter yield using intention, lower the head with porcupine and back up using porcupine off the halter. They then found that actually it was quite difficult !

The difference between a horse and human is that horses never lie. If they did not ask quite right they did not get the response. I know for a fact that when I am training in aikido at my low level my opponent will react correctly even if I don't get it quite right. This lets me practise and improve as they ask for more and more perfection before the react. But a horse is always a 5th dan black belt horse and will always act like one irrespective of your level of horsemanship.
They did both get the tasks completed and in the process gained an insight into the horsemanship world. David in particular really enjoyed it. He send it made him feel all tingly when he got it right.

After lunch it was their turn to show aikido to Vicky and Josh. They started with a demo of bokken (wooden sword) work to demonstrate contact in a very amplified way. In aikido we use the bokken in forms similar to the non-weapon work to be able to really see the movement.
From that they moved onto non-weapon work with the three of us. I could see that Vicky was a little sceptical at first as I suspect she thought it all looked very choreographed. Then she had some very gentle techniques applied to her :) Very soon both her and Josh began to see the parallels as the subtlest movement by Tony or David effected their balance, or made them follow a feel in a certain direction. The 45 minute session turned into 90 minutes as more and more ideas flowed and everyone became more engaged.

So passed a fascinating day. It was great to see what happens when  expert proponents of two seemingly very different activities come together and find common ground from which both sides could take lessons. By the time we left Vicky was talking about having them down to JRFS again in the future to do a session at a weekend clinic with visiting riders. I really hope this can be made to happen sometime when the weather has warmed up a bit. It would be great to see how far we can take this marriage of aikido and horsemanship in the future.
 

An unfortunate incident and an important lesson

A few days ago I was preparing Filly to be ridden in the outdoor school. I do a prepare to ride every time. It was going pretty well but she was a bit spooked by a guy who was loading stuff in a van next to the school. I just took note of this and worked with rather than around the problem.
We had got to the point of saddling up and the saddle was on her back the man lifted a long step ladder off the roof of the van. He was stood the other side of the van where she could not see him and from her point of view this ladder just floated up into the air. Big spook. But the saddle was not done up so as she spooked she felt it move and bucked. This made it move more so she bucked until it came off, then stood there snorting.
Great. She has now learned to buck something off her back, not something I ever wanted her to learn.
So back to the colt start plan "accept the saddle" section. Having got the saddle on her I went about getting her confident with it again. I sent her out on a circle and she did a fair few little bucks. When I moved her up into canter she was doing an odd gait where the front legs cantered, but the hind legs stayed next to each other so that every stride was a little buck. Fortunately there was a little jump (and I mean little) set up in the school already. As the jump is the same gait as the buck I sent her over the jump to put her bucks to use. This made her think about her gait a little more.
After a while I could see the gait getting more regular and her ears stopped flicking back to the saddle and showed more interest in "looking forwards. The jump helped with the forward thinking as well of course.
Once she was forward thinking then she had a short rest before testing it out again on the other rein. It took very little time to get her forward thinking and so we just continued with a normal prepare to ride session. My current emphasis is sideways with impulsion at trot.
The following ride was quite normal and good fun. No bucks, just a normal ride.

Thank-you James for teaching me to always prepare to ride, what to look for when preparing to ride, how to get a horse confident with a saddle and recognising that confidence.
The anniversary of James death has just passed but he still lives with me everyday and he is still teaching me to be a better horseman. Surely that is the mark of a great teacher.
_________________

JRFS October 2013

Our holiday is over :( . But, boy, did we learn a lot at JRFS this time. I think everyone is familiar with JRFS on this forum by now, but in case you haven't heard of it here is a quick description
JRFS was run by James Roberts, who was one of Pat Parellis' proteges, until his untimely death in a car accident last year. It was a colt start station and also ran courses, called experience weeks, for anyone who wanted to attend. Parelli or not.
Since his death his staff and fiancée, Vicky, have worked very hard to keep the place going. There was a transitional period which was difficult, but I am pleased to report that it is really running well now.
Josh, James apprentice, has been to Australia twice to train with Rob McCauliffe and is now a certified colt starter and 2 star PP. Becca is mainly instructing there. Vicky is recently qualified as a certified Coleen Kelly Rider biomechanics instructor.
So the range of training opportunities has, if anything, increased since James died and his legacy lives on.
I'll concentrate on my experience there last week to give a flavour of what it is like.
We arrived Sunday night. It was the first time we had trailered Filly and Bonitao together. We have a camera in the trailer so could watch Filly dancing for the first hour until she settled. We found rough winding roads where she had to think to her feet made her calmer. Traffic jams were not so good :( . Bonitao was tolerant of her antics to start, but then started to give her hard looks when she acted up.
First mistake was to turn them out together. We had never tried this before and were keen to do it where we had savvy folks around to help if it went wrong. Well they were very very happy together overnight it turned out. If Bonitao is not firing blanks (he is gelded) I am suing my wife for paternity ;) . So we separated them. Bonitao spent 2 days calling for Filly.  Filly spent around an hour calling for Bonitao and then forgot him. That's women for you ;) .

I had sent a list of what I wanted to work on to JRFS before we arrived. At the top of that list was "Vaquero horsemanship". As soon as the staff saw this they decided that the only instructor for me was Josh as that is what he is studying as well. The upshot was that I got to ride and train with Josh for 2 1/2 to 3 hours every morning. It was great to have Josh ride alongside me as he explained and demonstrated the intricacies of this style from the back of his horse, Mocho.

Day 1
We did the normal prepare to ride and I rode in my usual rope halter. Josh was explaining how to get each individual foot in my hands and how to time the pressure and release on the reins to move each foot in turn. As he said most folks he sees gets the timing of the release wrong. For example, on the direct rein they release the inside rein as the outside foot crosses over rather than as the inside foot stretches out. When he put it that way it was obvious as to when to release, then it was just practise.

Day2
We tried the 5/8 bosal on Filly. After a few minutes of uncertainty she became really happy in it and so much more responsive. The only thing worrying her after that was the tickle from the horsehair reins on her neck. We worked on more direct rein, backup (timing my hands with her front feet) and also getting little nose tucks as we walked forwards. It took me a while to get the mechanics of not holding a steady rein for very long, but providing little bumps if she failed to yield. The hardest was timing the release of the bumps with her yield. It's easy to feel the yield with steady pressure, but harder with a trembling hand.
The real improvement that day was her backup. Getting the timing of my hands to coincide with her feet really made her backup deep and powerful.
Josh also had me calling out footfall of the hind legs as I walked around. We started with just calling when a hind foot was in the swing phase and moved onto calling when the hind lifted and placed again. I was really pleased to have studied Mark Rashids Footfall DVD !

Day 3.
We now started to concentrate more on the ground work. Josh had me walking with Filly in tight circles in zone 4/5 asking the inside hind leg to really swing under her body to get a deep stretch. She had some trouble with this so we went to the patience pole.

The patience pole is a great bit of kit. It is a pole around 7 feet tall sunk 10 feet into the ground and secured with concrete. It cannot move ! On top is a car wheel hub which can rotate freely. On the hub is a carabiner. A 45 foot line is passed through the carabiner. One end clipped to the halter, the other end and coils in the trainers hand. The inbound and outbound rope are wrapped around each other a few times to create friction. The horse can now be circled on a diameter of your choosing and it will be a precise circle. The system is great for softening up zone 1 as the horse cannot gain so much as an inch and quickly realises it is only pulling on itself. It also allow the trainer to circle with the horse and come out a little on the circle. Then using a pan fish pole you can ask the horse to yield out whatever zone is not on the circle. This really helps to get precise straightness on the circle.
I had seen James use the pole many times before. Josh thought I was good enough now to use it myself. The first 10 minutes were chaos until I got the hang of the system. The trick was to pull out on the rope to keep the line taught on the carabiner so that the hub turned. Failure to do this resulted in the rope wrapping around the pole.
Filly got pretty emotional about this. She was having to give up her ability to subtly push on my with various zones as I could now get out there and push back with the flag. For an LB horse this was hard to take. However we got there in the end.
The result of the patience pole work was amazing. She became even lighter off my leg than before. She actually seemed happier as well which surprised me, but I guess I had just become even more of a leader for her.
We worked  more on the little vertical flexion responses in the bosal at walk and trot. Then we did a long canter session to get her more rhythmical.

Day 4
Another session on the patience pole where she was much happier. Today we worked on trot rhythm. The pole is purposely placed on a reasonable slope to give up and down sections on the circle. The game for her was to figure out that she got a rest when she maintained a rhythmic trot all around the circle.
More of the zone 4/5 leg stretching work in the school revealed that she was still pushing on my energy bubble. At this point Josh took her for a while and they had a protracted and fiery exchange of views on the subject of yielding softly. I had done much of this in the past, but a) I am not yet a trained colt starter and b) even James used to say there are some things better done by others to your horse as you have to much emotional attachment to them.
I am now way more aware when she is making tiny tiny pushes on my bubble and take steps when she does. Again this actually seems to be improving our rapport.
Riding was basically more of the same. Lots of clover leaf pattern asking for little vertical flexions at walk and trot. Rewarding good ones with a loose rein.

Day 5
She was a different Filly today. Much softer and less attitude. Coming back out of season after her night out with Bonitao probably helped.
Basically more of the same but becoming more particular. We found she could hold the flexion for a stride or two which she has never done before. Her canter had also become much more rhythmical and relaxed.
What this day really demonstrated was the difference a week of riding under the instruction of the likes of Josh can make. It helps that this style of riding is Joshs' passion and I believe the I am his only student in this. As he pointed out I am now very limited in the number of instructors who can teach me. We reckoned maybe 3 in the UK including Dave Stewart who is only here 3 months a year. The only problem with Josh is understanding him sometimes as we spent so much time laughing together we could barely speak. The others in the indoor school could hear us having fun.

This is just a summary of my riding with Josh. Of course the day is 10 hours long and this only took up about 3 hours. The rest of the time was spent watching Josh colt starting and listening to his explanations of what he was doing (again through the laughter !).
We also watched Vicky developing more advanced horses.  She rode our horse Bonitao most days to advance him for us (Ritchie cannot ride at the moment due to a hip injury). On Friday I rode Bonitao with Vicky giving me a lesson in rider biomechanics and also showing me what I have to continue working on with him.

I am almost reluctant to praise the place too much as I want to be able to go there myself regularly and don't want it booked out. However I would strongly recommend my friends on this forum who can get there to visit the place and see what it has to offer for themselves. After all for £300 for a week of intense instruction what have you got to loose ?

First long hack out on Filly

After all the walking it was time to hack Filly out properly. My wife Ritchie came with me with her horse Bonitao online.

I did all the normal "prepare to ride" in the outdoor school. "Zone 3 driving" to get her confidence being out in front and establish good transitions, "falling leaf" pattern to establish hind quarter yields and follow a feel and, of course, "rope around".
A quick ride in the school to check all the above whilst ridden and we were ready to go.

Filly has never liked the first few steps of the yard, which was a good thing today. It allowed my to establish my leadership and practise the strong focus I would need on the ride.

The walk up through the village was "challenging". As luck would have it we met with a lawn mower that started as we rode past, immediately followed by a mini-digger putting in a new driveway. You get the picture. Compared to that crossing the main road and walking along it for a while was easy.
Once over the road it was up a long lane to the woods for our usual route we had done online. In general it went very well. I kept her mind busy by doing leg yields across the road and the occasional sideways. She crossed the railway level crossing with hardly a glance. We had one interesting moment in the woods where she backed up with more impulsion than I have ever seen her use before for around 20 yards. A strong focus and gently asking for forwards and order was restored.
She felt a little lame going down hill, but I have learned that some of that is emotional stress, not physical. However when it came to going down some steps, and as she had been relaxed for a while I decided to get off and walk home with her. Partly to reward the relaxed behaviour and partly as I was worried about her carrying me down steps.
Not one to miss an opportunity we played YoYo down the steps. Basically this meant that she had to stop on each step and not just run down them.
I learnt how much training can be fitted in on "simple" hack and had really good fun to boot.
As for Ritchie and Bonitao. Filly made it very plain that she wanted to be in front so they had to keep up with a thoroughbred race horse on a mission. Even at walk she is quite fast. It will be interesting to see if our LBI/RBI Bonitao is as keen to go out on our next excursion  :twisted:

A long walk with Filly

Came off a night flight yesterday. I know better than to ride after a night flight, I'm just not alert enough and emotional control is harder. Therefore I decided to blow the cobwebs out with a long walk. Total distance turned out to be around 10km in the end.
I wanted a long walk to give Filly a chance to really settle and relax. To start she was very excitable and difficult to control, which wasn't great alongside the road. But we got through it and survived.
She still wouldn't settle. She seemed to think everything was out to get her and for a while I couldn't figure out how to help her. The most annoying habit was to walk on ahead of me despite me continually asking her to come back to my shoulder. So I upped my phases a lot. In the school the highest phase of pressure I use these days is spanking the ground with the string, I hardly ever have to touch her. But the trail is a different environment and that has different rules of engagement.
So I went from my usual phases to much higher ones. Rope wriggling to get her to back up to me was stronger and when that failed the next phase was a very sharp slap with the end of the lead rope on her chest.
That did it. She immediately backed up into a nice position and walked alongside me for a while before forgetting herself and pushing ahead again. Going up the phases she again got a slap with the rope. And again she relaxed and walked alongside me.
It then finally dawned on my sleep deprived brain that what she had been looking for all along was a strong leader to keep her safe. While I wasn't providing that she took on the role of being a very nervous leader herself. My mistake had been in not wishing to add energy to a highly energised Filly, but in fact that is what she needed to bring her energy down and to be able to relax.
We continued the walk doing a million transitions. Walk, stop, backup, changes of pace within the walk. This was the only game I could think of to play on a narrow path where circling, falling leaf etc would not have worked.
We returned to the yard with a much calmer and very tired Filly. Lessons learnt and stored away for use when riding her. Be assertive, show I am the leader and don't be afraid to add energy to a situation in order to reduce energy.

Day two with Chiggy

Day two with Chiggy.

A quick play session yesterday as I had to go to work in the evening.

I decided to work on various squeeze games and use them to advance some of the other games.
To start with I played with YoYo over a pole. This added the squeeze element of having a pole under his belly. To advance the YoYo I was asking for one foot at a time to go over the pole with a rest in between. So this might mean that he had just one front foot in front of the pole and one behind. I find this a very useful exercise for getting the subtlety and in the communication. Asking just one leg over and then stop takes good timing from me and good timing of the response from Chiggy.
We also played the classic squeeze game between me and the school wall. Good for advancing the response to porcupine during the send, neutral during the allow and driving game with the hind quarter yield. Chiggy had a little trouble "giving me" his hind quarters again today, but after about 5 minutes we were getting the turn and face element pretty good with him barley passing the line through me and parallel to the wall.

We also did a fair bit of work on leading. He tended to want to stay behind me the whole time with his nose just behind my shoulder. This position does not feel like we are walking with a partnership to me and I prefer the horse to be on my shoulder with his eye or poll. To help correct this I played the "where are you game". When he lagged behind I just turn away from him and use the stick and string to ask him forwards to the right place. But it is done in a playful way. "I can't see you on my shoulder so I look around behind to see where are you" and ask you forwards. This game caused him a few "moments" but after a very short time we were travelling as a team and he was transitioning nicely with me.

We finished by backing into his stable, and exercise I love to do. It gives purpose to the backup, and various yields to get the horse roughly lined up with the door. It also helps them maintain the responsibility of "look where you are going" even when going backwards ! In addition backwards actually causes engagement of the hind quarters. James liked this as it meant the horses last impression of you was one of engagement whereas going in forwards and turning around gives a last impression of disengagement.

I am still pretty sure that he has be involved in NH training before, but also very convinced that he is a willing and very able student. I hope the owner likes what she finds when she gets back from holiday :)

Meet Chiggy

This is a copy of a forum post I made today about Chiggy

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

There is a new horse at the yard. An appendix quarter horse. 9 years old and very friendly. Real name Chicago but known to his friends as Chiggy. The owner bought him a few years ago and has been riding him in english style but when she what Ritchie and I do with our horses expressed an interest in learning more.
Over the last month or so we have had many chats about the style and this culminated in a little lesson/demonstration with her and Chiggy a few nights ago.

It took 2 hours which set me wondering why traditional lessons last 45 minutes and NH ones 2 hours. It was obvious when I thought about it. NH works at the pace of the horse whereas traditional works at the pace of a busy human. NH allows much more dwell time than traditional and if it going to be a ridden lesson there is prepare to ride to be completed first. It saddens me how many folks drag the horse out of the stable, throw a saddle on and mount up. Suddenly 50kg to 100kg of weight is taken by muscles and tendons that have been given no chance to get circulation in them. You wouldn't ask a human athlete to do this and to do it to a horse in my mind it downright cruel.

We covered the first 6 games in that session but with emphasis on how the games relate to ridden work. I feel that this is important when introducing a newcomer to the style. I've heard on forums so many ask what the 7 games are about and not get a good answer. I wrote a post on another forum about the 7 games which got positive response, maybe I should put it on here. It would be great to develop a definitive article on them between us all and put it in the sticky section to point newcomers at. I digress !

After that first session the owner was delighted with the way Chiggy stood close to her without invading her space. He had been in the habit of rubbing his head on her and had caught her face with his on a few occasions. I wasn't even aware this was an issue until after the session. This just shows the power of NH to cure all sorts of problems as a side product of the usual training. I also started to suspect that Chiggy knew most of this stuff already. Either that or I have turned into Pat overnight ;) I had never made such rapid progress with a horse before. I mentioned how smart he was to the owner who said "really, everyone at the last yard said what a stupid dim horse he was". Not a bit of it.

The owner has now gone on holiday for two weeks and said I can play with him in the meantime. What a privilege.

First session was last night. We rapidly went through the what I had done in the first session. I now felt I was playing with a level 2 horse and expected and got that sort of attitude and response. We tried him over the tarp and after a 2 second sniff he walked calmly over it. We had a little battle over hind quarter disengagement using the driving game, but as it would have been a few years since he was last asked to do this I think he thought the hind quarters were his property again. Once they were in place we worked on "follow a feel" using the indirect to direct rein falling leaf pattern. A few tantrums but after 10 minutes he was doing the quietly and calmly at walk with both hind legs and front legs crossing over well.

We then tried "place the feet". Very very few horses I have tried this with have been this good ! The feet were soft and compliant in my hand and stayed nicely on the toe for a few seconds after I let go before being gently replaced where he wanted them. I know the owner had done a little work on this but she said it hadn't been a problem from the outset. I was by now so suspicious that this horse had been trained in NH before that I rang Josh to ask him if they had ever trained Chiggy. He has all the hallmarks of a product of JRFS. Still awaiting his reply.

This is not a stupid horse. This could be a superstar horse given a little time. Unfortunately I am too heavy to ride him I think. But given the chance for a quick ride I would jump at it.

Second day of bridleless riding

This is a copy of a forum post I made. It describes last nights ride nicely 

Short video of ride 

Second bridleless ride last night. This time with my wife, Ritchie, watching. I did not set out to ride bridleless, in fact I had been practising riding with spurs again. But after a while I felt she was ready so took my spurs off, I'm not brave enough to ride with spurs bridleless yet, and after a couple of reasonable follow the rails I again felt the urge to take the halter off.
Basically a repeat of the last ride. Some follow the rail, some clover leaf and a few circles with a single carrot stick to help.
Transitions were much better this time, just relaxation in my seat having the desired effect. We did have a few druthers towards the gate but rather than really fight them I just maintained zero brace, allowed her to turn towards the gate but then kept the circle going back to where I wanted to be... on the rail.
What was really interesting was the observations form Ritchie. She noticed how much more relaxed Filly was with the halter off. She really let her head drop down and blew out. She never drops her head when ridden with a halter, even if the reins have not been touched.
This ties in with past observations as to how worried she is by anything on her head. During her colt start at James he took the Parelli hackemore off for her second ride and replced it with a simple halter and clip on rope reins. He said then that anything on her head inhibits her forwards thinking even the knot that ties the meccate reins to the halter. When we got her back from James we had all that trouble with head tossing at trot which was extreme. This was overcome by avoiding touching the reins and give her lots of reassurance.
The cause of all this is not hard to work out. Before I owned her, but whilst I was allowed to play with her the woman who ran the yard insisted that she was turned out in a chiffney. Snag was that the yard staff were not well trained in its' use and more than once I heard of one of them yanking on it. Even when not using a chiffney she was kept on a tight lead rope and her head yanked around if she did not walk properly for them. Of course this just lead to more extreme behaviour on her part and more swearing and yanking. I can hardly blame her for being worried about anything on her head.
She was then backed, in the race horse meaning of the term, with a bit in her mouth. Shame they did not remove the two wolf teeth and five baby teeth that needed to come out first but that would have cost money and why spend money until you know if she can run ? It must have hurt to be ridden in a bit like this.
We have come a long way since then of course but obviously have some way to go to get relaxation whilst being ridden with anything on her head. It's been a year of proper riding so far to get as far as we have and I wonder how to get her feeling relaxed with something on her head. Just time and patience maybe ? But in the meantime I feel bad that she is uncomfortable when I ride her. Bridleless riding is not the whole answer as she has to be ridden with a bridle of some sort most of the time.
Does anyone have experience with this sort of problem and have any good suggestions as to how to make her happy ? Or maybe just encouragement that time will heal the problem if I ride carefully and considerately in the halter.
I find that I am less and less motivated to achieve any goal other than a true partnership with Filly, in the bridle horse tradition, based on respect and above all mutual fun. This issue is currently the one really holding me back

Filly and Spurs

After the very nice ride bridleless the other day I was hoping for more of the same.

However when I rode two days ago it was obvious that we weren't going to be taking the halter off. She was really testing my leadership and wanting to go to the gate. She was also not responding to my leg when it came to hind quarter yields and I had to reach down and use my finger nails to back up the steady pressure from my heel. It may have been that she was tired or just in the mood to test my leadership but if she is ever to become my bridle horse for colt starting and horse development we need to have a better understanding of our jobs.
Having mulled over the problem I decided that maybe riding her with spurs again would help. Last time I don't think she was mentally ready for that step and it got a little "interesting" :) .
So yesterday I went to the yard with the intention of just doing whatever was needed to prepare her to be ridden with spurs.
Ground work consisted of lots of friendly game with the spurs. I used them to scratch all those itchy spots. Rolled them over her belly and flanks until she relaxed and then used them with porcupine pressure to ask for little hind quarter yields. All went very well.
So I mounted very carefully with the spurs on. Her attitude was immediately different. She was willing, relaxed and only a little defensive if I actually touched her with the spurs. Her sensitivity to my leg aids was amazing. Just tensing my calf muscles was enough to get a response. She obviously knew I had and effective phase 4 now and didn't want to provoke me into using it. As they say "to get a light phase one you need an effective phase four". I guess I touched her less than half a dozen times with the spurs, their mere presence was enough.
We only did walk and I only rode for 15 minutes or so. In that time I achieved what I wanted to and saw no need to prolong the ride to where it might get sour.
So why was she so much better?
I have often noticed with Filly that if I play firmly with a real leadership and playful attitude in my body language she quickly becomes not only more compliant but also calmer. I guess she is a horse that craves strong leadership and feels safer and more relaxed when that is what I offer. Being firm with her and very clear about what I want actually increases the bond rather than driving her away.
Try that with Ritchies horse Bonitao and watch the rapport vanish rapidly. Thank heavens I am in a program that emphasises the difference in the horsenality of different horse and teaches you how to cope with each type.

Bridleless on Filly

Yesterday it finally happened. I knew it was coming, but wanted to be absolutely sure of success.
After my normal prepare to ride, where I am currently working on more 3 track on the circle at trot and also getting her to accept more pressure without reacting badly to it, I got on.
The main topic was real refinement of follow the rail. I am really after at least two laps of the school with no rein intervention from me. Afterall to get on Pats Mastery course you need to demonstrate 14 laps with your arms folded !
To achieve this I did use one carrot stick to reinforce my leg before using the rein. This went really well, and whilst I was using the carrot stick occasionally I found that after ten minutes I had not used the reins once. This was 30 minutes into the session so I had used the reins earlier.
James always emphasised acting on any green lights the horse gave you. In my mind this was a strong consistent green for taking the halter off. So off it came. She gave a nice lateral flexion to help me and immediately it was off shook her head as if to say "AT LAST". We then went back to follow the rail with some nice walk trot transitions. Trot to walk did require the gentlest use of the carrot stick the first few times to bend her to the fence just a little. After that all transitions came off my energy. We had ten minutes of really good fun. I got the confidence in her to leave the fence and do the clover leaf pattern, Very nice except to expected to stop everytime we back to the fence. Too much point to point pattern I guess, but at least it gave me confidence that even left alone she would stop.

What is odd is that I felt more comfortable and at one with her without the halter than I did with the halter. Similalarly I feel more at one with her at liberty rather than online. She really comes into her own when there is nothing on her head at all.
Down to the pub afterwards for a beer or two where I met the girl who had done Fillys' early riding before she was mine. She was really amazed and excited. She said she thought no one would ever be able to do that with her as she had been so difficult in the old days. But then they weren't using NH methods ;) . She now wants to try this on Filly herself. Spreading the ideas one person at a time seems to be working at our place.

I am so excited about this. It was one of my dreams to do it and it only took about 8 months of proper riding on her. A long time by some standards I know, but I needed to feel confident in my own abilities to carry it through. Although this is the first baby step with Filly into bridleless I think it is probably a defining moment in our friendship.

Filly Stretch

We had another visit form Dustie, our horse osteopath. She was very concerned about Filly's right shoulder. She has some scar tissue there from an old injury which makes stretching the leg back difficult for her. So we need to work on that to loosen it up.
But how do you get a horse to do yoga ?
The answer seems to be by using positive reinforcement training, sometimes called clicker training.
The idea is to associate a particular cue with a particular behaviour. For this behaviour, stretching the leg, I decided on the cue "stretch".
So the sequence is
cue : "Filly Stretch"
then I place the right front hoof on the ground as far back as it will go
As she puts more and more effort into the attempt I use a bridging cue "good, Good,GOOD"
When I get the maximum effort required for that attempt then I click with my tongue which tells her that a treat is coming as soon as I can get it to her mouth.
The reason this works is described by the work of B.F.Skinner as described very well here Reinforcement and in any website devoted to clicker training.
The result is that she is now willingly letting me place her leg on the ground quite a way back. We are now working on getting her to stay in the stretch for longer to get more benefit. I have even be doing it in her field at liberty and yesterday for the first time she took a mouthful of grass with her left leg forward and right leg back whilst she waited for the click. Ultimately I would like her to graze with her legs this way round so that she maintains the mobility in that shoulder on her own. I feel this could be someway off however.

A great ride

Today I followed the plan and had one of the best rides I've ever had on Filly.
As before I laid out a circle with a cone in the middle and 8 markers around the edge. I can't visualise an accurate circle to save my life so the markers really help my focus and consistency.
We started with all the normal prepare to ride stuff, but I concentrated on the circling game with me standing next to the cone.I also made sure she stayed on a proper circle and not an egg shape. We also did some 3 track and 4 track work at walk and trot just to get her used to a little sideways.
After mounting we had a couple of minute intense conversation on the subject of indirect reins. I just stayed focussed, ignored her protests until she did a couple of nice relaxed steps. Then we soaked on that for a long time with lots of licking and chewing from both of us.
Once done we went onto the "follow the rail" to get relaxation at walk and trot before going onto the circle I had marked out. Today the circles were amazing. Having got rhythm and relaxation and forwards on the circle holding the reins I just dropped them onto the saddle horn and rode very light gentle circles without them. We did indirect reins (without reins, but you know what I mean) around markers to go back the other way. That was all at walk.
Back to rhythm and relaxation on the circle at trot, drop the reins again and she was an absolute star on very circular circles.
A couple of side passes over the central cone, one of her favourite games, and the school work was done.
We celebrated with a nice gentle walk out along the local lanes with Ritchie walking Bonitao in hand for support. The most relaxed hack out I've ever had on her.
They say life is as good as your last ride. Tonight life is good :) :)

Play time with Filly again

After Filly's box rest the vet came back out to check that no sequestrum had formed. I'm pleased to say that there was no sign of any problem with her leg.Box rest was at last over.
What I did not want her to do was go straight to the field and go crazy. After 14 days box rest that would be just asking for a pulled muscle. To overcome this I waited until the outdoor school was empty and we went in there to blow off some steam.
As I wanted a gradual build up to let her muscles warm up we started with just walk and trot on a 22 foot rope, which gave me some control over speed.
But I knew she was going to want to run at some point and did not want her cantering on such a tight circle. Fortunately one of our tools is a 45 foot rope so we transferred onto that. Now Filly could run, but I could control her a bit to stop her doing anything stupid in her excitement like trying to jump out of the school. I don't usually use gloves when I play with horses as I like to keep maximum feel on the rope but for this exercise I used them. Rope burn is painful and needed to be avoided.
And, boy, did she have a good time. She ran for joy with lots of leaping and twisting. I was very glad we didn't just put her in the rock hard field. For about 5 minutes she just had fun and I enjoyed every moment with her though being a little worried she would hurt herself.
Once done she just came and stood next to me as though to say, "Ok that's enough, field now please". The turn out was then totally un-eventful.
Since then I have been gradually bringing her back to being ridden. We spent several days playing online, then a long walk down the local lanes for variety and a few days of liberty. The liberty was really good fun. She now mimics my legs. So if I strike of in the imitation of a horses front legs at canter she canters alongside me. Great fun.
I've ridden her twice recently and it went pretty well. I've even started riding without holding the reins, just using two sticks and my body and legs to direct her. The aim is to get enough confidence in her to take the halter off altogether. Hopefully that will be soon. We just need to get better transitions from forwards to halt sorted out and then it will be time.

Filly back on box rest

Poor Filly. She really has been having a tough time recently.

A few weeks ago we found that she had a sore back and so took the descision not to ride her for a while in order to allow it to recover and to get our osteopath over to look at her.  (Top tip. If you find a good osteopath don't tell anyone else. She is now so booked up it takes ages to get an appointment !)
The osteo said it was not the riding or the saddle that had caused the soreness but probably just the exuberance she puts into play sometimes. Believe me it is exuberant. When she get like this I just let her work it out of her system for a little while, then gently start redirecting her and getting her to connect to me. Within five minutes she is as attentive a horse as you could want, but shutting her down when she really wants to play would have the precise opposite effect.
So no riding had happened for a while. Then the weather in the UK, believe it or not became hot bringing with it a load of flies. I think she then got bitten on her eyelid which swelled up so much she couldn't open that eye. We bathed it and kept her in out of the heat as much as possible. I also put her fly mask on, which I had avoided as she dislikes it so much.
Monday night I spent at Aikido where etiquette quite rightly says no mobile phones. To be honest our DoJo is pretty relaxed about this if we need to be contactable for work, but prefers them off if possible. After the session at around 10:30pm I switched mine back on to get a message that Filly had been kicked in the field and was now in her stable. I dashed to the yard to see her and found a small raw area on the front of her right rear cannon bone. She was fully weighting it whilst resting the left hind. Didn't look too bad so I went home to bed.

The next morning I went back to the yard to check on her. The eye had swollen up again and I also heard the saga of the night before. A gelding had gotten into the mares field and in the ensuing rucus Filly had been kicked. When the staff finally managed to sort things out (they had thankfully come back to the yard when they heard there was a problem) they brought Filly in. I was told she was hopping lame and would barely weight the leg at all.

What with the eye and the leg enough was enough. I called the vet. I then actually had a pleasant sunny wait for the vet, just spending time hanging out with Filly in her box and the yard staff for coffee. The vet arrived, by which time of course the eye swelling had gone down and she looked even better on the leg. However, given the site of the kick straight onto bone he decided we should get it x-rayed to rule out the possibility of a hairline fracture and disappeared off to get the x-ray machine.

He came back some hours later with an assistant. After Filly's initial suspicion of the apparatus we managed to get some good x-rays of her leg which showed a) there was no hairline fracture and b) she had broken the leg in the past and it had healed naturally and well !

So the initial panic was over. However the vet still wanted Filly to stay in the box for the next ten days in case a sequestrum formed. Rather than describe it here is a nice link to a website which gives a good explanation Sequestrum .
So we are keeping Filly in in case a part of her bones is damaged and will x-ray it again in around 10 to 14 days to see if there is a problem. If not she can go straight back out and also be ridden. If there is then it's 6 to 8 weeks of box rest while the bone heals itself.

Now the main problem is keeping her entertained whilst she is confined to quarters. It also gives me a chance to work on all sorts of little projects I have been putting off. Haltering her whilst kneeling down for example. Actually we cracked that one today :)

Filly hangs out with a freind

Apparently she stood for nearly an hour like this. She does not know it is a reflection of herself of course as horses are not self aware. She just thinks it's a really good and patient friend

Riding with Vicky at JRFS

I had a great time at JRFS last week. Went down on Tuesday afternoon and very reluctantly came home on Friday evening.

I wound up riding a lovely quarter horse called Dalton with Vicky, James Roberts fiancée, teaching me. Her riding is immaculate so she was exactly the person I needed to help sort me out. She was basically very supportive saying that I just needed a few tweaks to get things right. At the time I just thought she was being kind.
We worked on my basic position a bit, getting my heels down and toes out a little, loosening my shoulders etc. At the end of day one I felt I had made some progress.

Day 2 and I got to ride two horses. Brennan and Dalton. The snag with Brennan was that the English saddle was too small for me and the stirrup leathers way to short. This was not a part of the lesson, just an opportunity to ride a different horse for a short time. I really struggled to get into canter. Eventually I shifted my weight right back so that I was sitting on the point of the cantle. The next attempt and straight into canter. Whilst this was not an ideal scenario it really brought home to me the importance of the relative position of my weight to the T14 vertebrae. Something James had always spoken off, but to feel the effect first hand was very instructive.
The snag with riding in this saddle was I developed a huge sore on my left calf. No pain no gain I guess.

Day 3 and I had decided to raise the stirrups a little. This really helped and I felt much more in balance and connected to Dalton.

During all this we were also working on riding with collection at walk, trot and canter. To ride a well schooled horse really helped to get the feel.

Obviously I wasn't doing to badly as I then got to ride Dalton out on a quiet hack whilst Josh and Shelagh rode two young colts on their first ride out. All went very uneventfully.

When I got home I was keen to try out my new skills on Filly. I started by raising the stirrups two holes. The difference was amazing. We had a really really nice ride. Very nice balanced canters. Upwards transitions that were coming from my thighs alone. Downward transitions... that's a different story and we need to work on them. Not that she was running off, just maintaining gait and direction. Not a huge problem and one it will be fun to work through with her.

All in all this was a great experience. Vicky was right, there was not much I needed to change to get a huge improvement. It was impressive that she spotted this. Rather than trying to change everything she just spotted the key faults that would release the rest of my body into a better position.

One great ride and one "exciting" ride

Last Monday, prior to going to work I went for a quick ride on Filly. The plan was to take her to the outdoor school and basically just follow the rail. In the end it became much more than that.
After a normal prepare to ride with and emphasis on circling game and maintaining gait (a good preparation for follow the rail) I mounted as usual. It became immediately apparent that this was going to be a special ride.
Lateral flexions were very very light. Asking her to move of was just a squeeze of my buttocks, no leg at all. And so we went to follow the rail.
Filly had other ideas and I listened. She knew about other more interesting patterns such as clover leaf and point to point. She made it very clear, in a gentle way, that they would be more fun. Rather than tell her no I rolled with her ideas and directed patterns randomly. So we might be on the clover leaf pattern which on approaching a fence became point to point as she got to stop and take a breather. I tried to keep things consistent enough she didn't get worried, but varied enough to keep her brain occupied.
Once this was going well we started adding in changes of gait to up the interest even more. So a clover leaf at walk, then point to point at canter, then follow the rail at trot. She seemed to really enjoy herself, maybe because I was having so much fun and my body language showed it. At halt she regularly swung her head around to say hi and have her forehead rubbed. All in all one of the best rides I've had on her.

Now for the exciting ride. Ritchie and I arrived at the yard intending to work in the school again with our horses. But it was booked for a lesson. Plan B. We tacked up and took them to the big field to do prepare to ride. The field now has very long grass which Filly liked as she could take a mouthful without breaking gait. The grass is now too long to do any proper riding in so it was decided to take Filly and Bonitao for a hack down the local country lanes.
That is when it got exciting. Filly was hyper aware about everything. My only defence was to maintain a strong focus and do things to make her think about her feet. Thus we did lots of leg yields from one side of the lane to the other, straight for a bit and then back the other way. If she got more tense then leg yields became full sideways using the hedge to stop forward motion. Anything to make her concentrate on the job in hand. I discovered that she can trot sideways. For many folks on the outside I guess it would have looked like a horse barely in control, but all the manoeuvres were instigated by me, though maybe not always the gait they happened at. If she got really difficult then we just did hind quarter yield circles until she relaxed and we could walk straight for a little while.
I wouldn't call it a fun ride, but it was a satisfying ride all the same.

German Active Yard and Second Ride in Field on Filly

Lots to tell since my last post a month ago.
To start with we have been on holiday to the Schwabische Alb ( wikipedia ) in southern Germany. The reason was I was competing in a gliding competition there at a site called Hahnweide. Great fun, great people and some good flying. Although one flight was particularly memorable. Due to a mistake I made earlier in the day a wound up starting a 381km flight at 3pm. Way to late. The team at base and the organisation were getting worried by 7pm when then had not heard from me. They assumed I must have landed out by then and were worried it was not a good landing. Being out of radio range they could not contact me. In the end a team mate managed to get through on my mobile phone and I assured them I was still flying and would be home soon. The search plane was called off and I landed back at 8:20pm just half an hour before sunset !!

We only flew on 5 days out of the 8 so this left time to explore the area. First we went to pick up my wife's saddle which had been sent away to be fixed at the factory which just happened to be only 40 minutes drive from the airfield. Very interesting. The factory makes only western saddles. I am sure we have all heard the debates as to whether Pullman, Parelli, Continental etc are better. Well they are all made in the same factory, by the same folks according to designs of the contracting companies. I have had folks tell me that the stitching is better on the Continental compared to the Parelli. They are stitched on the same machine by the same craftsman. The only saddles that stood out in the workmanship stakes were the Pullman where far more of the saddle is hand made rather than by machine. To my eye the workmanship on all the saddles was superb.

We then went to find a yard to keep our horses at in the future. We are thinking that when we retire we may well move for at least part of the year to the area. We found a great yard after some searching. It is what is known in Germany as an Active Yard. All the horses (60 in this case. Mares and geldings) are all kept in one herd on a large concrete area. The area is split up a little so it is not just a big sea of concrete but several smaller areas all linked together. There is a covered area with straw in it to act as a shelter in poor weather, but the horses do not have separate stables. The clever bit is in the feeding. All the horses either wear or have implanted a small id microchip. This chip can be read by sensors connected to a computer. The feed is given out in small "walk through" stalls. There is a barrier which prevents entry and a one way gate that allows exit from the small stall. A horse goes up to the barrier and a sensor reads the chip in its' neck. If the computer determines the horse is due some food the barrier raises and the horse enters. The correct amount of feed is then released into the feeding trough which the horse eats. When finished the horses exits through the one way gate. There is a similar system to provide access to hay. Again there is a stall which the horse enters but this time the computer opens a shutter which gives access to the hay. Of course this can be on a timer to make sure the horse only gets a certain amount and then the shutter lowers. Thus the food intake can be easily tailored to the individual horse.
The horses quickly learn to wander around the yard "testing" the feed stations to see if it is time to be fed. This keeps there minds active as they have to in effect forage for their feed. It means also they can have their feed rationed out throughout the day and not just fed in a big bowl all at once.
The horses I saw were very very content. There was lots of herd interactions going on but apparently they have very few injuries and very happy horses.
I was also impressed with how friendly all the folks who had horses there were. They have a lovely club room and were frying pancakes as we arrived. Very soon we were eating pancakes, drinking beer and I was trying to chat about horses in German.

Having been away for the better part of two weeks I have just got home from riding Filly. I had taken her down to the big field yesterday for some gentle play and grazing, but having come off a night flight did not feel like riding. Today however we went straight back down there, did all the prepare to ride in the field and I rode her. Ritchie brought Bonitao down to keep us company and give Filly a companion to keep her calm. Frankly she didn't need him. Soon we were off exploring the field a long way from Bonitao with no signs of nervousness from her at all. Walk, trot and a lovely little canter which she offered. To be honest when she offered the canter I was a little nervous she was going to relive her attempts at being a race horse. But she just did this lovely bouncy little lope and seemed to really enjoy herself.
I got off grinning like a Cheshire cat. Live is as good as your last ride they say. Tonight live is very good.

Riding Filly in the big field

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

Relaxation at Canter

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

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

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

Getting the Feel lighter

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

Mud Fever again.

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

Massaging Filly

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

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

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

Spurs, Filly and finding Lightness

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

Colleen Kelly

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

Turning

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

Downwards Transitions

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

Tail Swish

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

Getting horses attention

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

Impulsion

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

Stretching and relaxing

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

Disunited Canter

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