A chilled Filly

Monday 23 September 2013

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:

Thursday 19 September 2013

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.

Tuesday 10 September 2013

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 :)

Monday 9 September 2013

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.

Saturday 7 September 2013

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

Monday 2 September 2013

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.