A chilled Filly

Sunday 28 December 2014

Bridleless on Bonitao

Lovely session playing with horse last night. We both went down and I played with Filly whilst Ritchie did a prepare to ride with Bonitao.
The session with Filly was mostly about the circling game again. She is improving quickly. We are mainly working on her "maintain direction" responsibility. But at an advanced level.
It's not about her keeping going at trot in a clockwise direction but about it being a nice smooth circle. She has a tendency to do ovals rather than circles keeping to close when away from the gate and pulling when close to the gate. Her idea is to get into a nice warm stable full of hay and I can't blame her. However she has responsibilities to uphold when she is circling and it is my job to gently coach her into upholding them.
If she pulls away on the halter that means she is pulling into pressure which is not a good thing for a horse that is ridden in a bosal. There are several ways to correct this behaviour. Meet the pull with an ounce more pressure to move her head back onto the circle is one but might mean she pulls harder. Driving the hind quarters out onto the circle is another and this also creates a better arc in her body that conforms to the circumference of the circle. Sometimes it is the shoulder that is pushed in with the neck out, then she is in counter arc which is really bad. So correcting this tendency to pull out on the circle is a fine balancing act of applying pressure to the zone that is causing the problem. It is not just about pulling on the head.
Where she come in too close the job is much easier. I just wave the stick and string around in a friendly game attitude. If she stays on the circle it can't touch her, if she comes in it can. It's her choice.
Once we had established some nice circles is was time to give into her desire for a warm stable and lots of hay.

I returned to the ménage to find Ritchie riding Bonitao. He's going really well at the moment. The bosal is helping us communicate the idea of collection to him very well. Ritchie was working on shoulder in when I got there. He tends to travel around the school with his haunches in so that he is not travelling very straight. To help correct that we are over correcting him at the moment.
Once Ritchie had finished riding it was my turn, just for a few minutes. I started by making sure that all my leg signals for turning were working well and also that he would stop on my body position. I felt so happy with this that I decided to take the bosal off and just ride with a string tied around the base of his neck. The string is only there so that if he looses mental connection with me I can get it back easily.
It was the first time I had ridden Bonitao bridleless, though I had done it often on Filly. But he was a complete star. We even managed sideways over a jump wing and sideways over a pole on the ground. His direct and indirect "rein" were great proving they really come of the legs and body position not the reins.
It was great feeling of freedom to be riding without reins again. I look forward to doing it often in the future

Monday 22 December 2014

Appreciation of beauty

Filly and I went for a nice walk yesterday. I decided time off from the school was a good idea and also she needs to walk on a variety of surfaces for the sake of her hooves.
It was a chilly but dry day and the track was reasonably dry. The odd muddy section but mostly firm and easy walking. It was noticeable that Filly seemed much much more comfortable walking on the varied terrain than in the past.

As we go up the track out of the yard we climb a short hill. At the top of the hill there is a path which goes off to the left. Filly had made it known in the past that she wanted to explore this track. Yesterday I let her. After just 20 yards or so we got to a gate to a field we could not go beyond. The views from there were lovely though. Now I don't know what horses know or feel about landscape beauty, to be honest I would have thought they couldn't care less. But Filly stood at that gate for a fair while just staring at the view. Not a frightened stare, she seemed very relaxed. When she was ready we continued with our walk. But everytime we came across what I consider to be a pretty view she insisted on stopping and looking for a while and resisted being asked to come along. Then after a minute or so she would look at me and we would carry on along our way with no fuss at all.

I would love to know what is going on in her mind at these moments. After all human experience of beauty in the landscape was only really acquired fairly recently. The Welsh mountains, which to my eyes are beautiful, were until recently considered by most as a wasteful landscape with no value whatsoever. So what, if any, is an animals experience of beauty ?

Saturday 13 December 2014

Strength to strength

Filly is now doing really well. Over just the last two weeks her feet have noticeably changed in shape, particularly the sole. All the feet are becoming much more concave (which is what we want) and the frogs are looking stronger and stronger. I wonder if this is because the hoof wall growth that started when she was at Rockley farm has nearly reached the ground. Hoof growth starts at the coronet band of course. Once started it then moves down the hoof as new hoof growth occurs. Exactly like a finger nail on humans. So although the changes in angle and density were started at Rockley we have had to be patient for them to get to the ground. They changes are not at the ground yet, there are several months growth still needed for that, but I think that as they are getting close to the sole they are influencing the way the sole is forming.

So we are back to playing properly with less concern for her lameness. I make sure no movements make her lame of course, but the range of things we can do are growing rapidly.
Yesterday we worked on her responsibilities on a circle. She was maintaining gait ok but her direction was not good. She was making ovals rather than circles. The classic circling game of standing still in the middle only happens when she is keeping her responsibilities. My standing still is actually her reward for doing the circle well. If she doesn't keep her responsibilities up then I will do whatever is needed as lightly as I can to correct her. Yesterday that meant spending a fair amount of time where I had to turn with her and correct her movement. But I was always looking for the slightest opportunity to go back into neutral and stand still in the middle thus rewarding her for her good performance.
The balance of when to correct and how firmly is of course the key to this and only comes with experience. It takes practice for both you and the horse. The "game" you are playing with the horse is getting the horse to work out what to do in order for the human to remain in neutral at the center of the circle.

I was watching a video of Pat Parelli the other day and he noted that the big mistake many make is not doing enough circling with their horses. He expects his to do forty (yes 40 !) laps at walk, trot or canter whilst maintaining gait, maintaining direction and looking where they are going. That's quite a standard to set us students to emulate.

As Filly needs lots of work on a circle at the moment to build muscle and also stimulate the hoof to promote its growth this is a perfect opportunity for us to get this really good. We also have a purpose for doing it. Not only to get her responsibilities stronger but to get her physically stronger.

Performing any game with the horse without a purpose is actually counter productive. The horse knows from are body language that we are doing it just to have something to do and without a real purpose and like a human would they resent being pushed around without reason. And when they resent you they loose respect for you and your leadership and either become dull and unresponsive or intractable depending on their particular horsenality.

Tuesday 9 December 2014

Overdue update

I finally feel motivated to update the blog. It's been a tough month or so. We had a farrier threatening us with the RSPCA for the "state of Fillys' feet" plus the ups and downs of caring for a fairly newly barefoot horse.
I'm sure the farrier was acting with the best intentions, though his stable side manner left a bit to be desired. Even though we were fairly convinced Filly was ok we took his concerns seriously and I had both a barefoot trimmer and a vet come out and check Filly over.
The trimmer thought she was doing pretty well fer her stage of rehab. The vet suggested she needed a small amount taking off the inside edge of her hind feet and maybe the toes, but the fronts were doing well.
Neither thought that the RSPCA were even remotely called for.

The ups and downs have been days when Filly was remarkably sound, followed by days of footiness. This has been a ratchett type of affair. Her bad days are now better than her old good days. For example a few evening ago she was lame at trot and canter in the school on both reins. On Saturday we had the osteo visit and she pretty good at all gaits but canter on right lead. This is odd as until recently left lead canter was worst. Like I said, ups and downs.
And then yesterday I played with Filly in the cold evening and she was very sound at walk and trot on both reins. The osteo had said that we need to build up her muscles again by doing lateral work and trotting poles.
We revisited basic sideways game along the fence looking for impulsion and relaxation. On the first traverse she stuck her head over the top rail of the fence and continued with her head up in the air as a result. On the second traverse she sorted herself out by stepping back from the fence a bit and did a nice sideways.
I set up a pattern of sideways along the fence stopping when the relaxation and impulsion were better than the last one. Then half circle around me and back into the fence to go the other way.
I also did a fair bit of work on the backup. Filly had always tended to raise her head for this which mean she did not engage her hind quarters. Yesterday I backed her with the driving game from in front of zone 1. I was looking for any sign of the head lowering. When it did we stopped and rested. I did not worry about speed at all, just head relaxing and lowering. I walked gently with her as we backed so this was not true YoYo game just backing practise.
We also did some 3 track work on the circle at walk to get those hind quarters working better. This was accomplished easily but we need to work on quality.
It was great fun to be able to play again without worrying about her soundness. 

Now as a record of her foot progress here are some before and after photos of her front feet. The first one of each set is the 25th July 2014 just out of shoes and the 2nd one was 2nd December 2014