Before husband left for his out-of-state job I had noticed an interesting phenomenon when it comes to the dogs. At night our dogs are crated downstairs. When husband got up to feed them in the a.m. they would start barking in excitement if they heard his closet door open (located upstairs but these dogs are Corgis with super sonic hearing). Or if they heard the master bathroom toilet flush. Or if they heard his tread on the stairs.
When it was I feeding them, not a peep was heard. I could come down the stairs and no barking or excitement would start until I opened crates. Even though it was the same time in the morning as when husband fed.
Hmmm…..
After husband left, of course feeding them became my full-time job. And I knew right away that this fanatical barking when they were feed in the a.m. or when they were sent to bed in their crates with their goodie Kongs, was not going to be permitted. All it took was a No! and that crap stopped.
When husband came back he was amazed (sorry, no insult to hubby he is a great guy and very smart!) at how quiet they had gotten.
The point is animals recognize individuals and they know exactly how far they can push that one person. And yes, they will take advantage of it.
People recognize this and that is why Natural Horsemanship took off in it’s movement. The idea of dominance, herd ranking and relationship status seemed logical and it worked. Where it took a wrong turn was that dominance slipped into abuse. People started chasing horses around in the roundpen just to prove they could – not to achieve a training end.
We have to always question our motivations and reasons for using training methods. It is just so we can feel better and superior over our dumb animal friends? Or is it because we can deepen our understanding between animal and human, gaining a training result in the process?
I had posted a shortlist of what I would be working on with Z. She is now going calmly at walk and trot under the saddle. I think the rushing was due to the roundpen work she received when she was gone to the trainer.
Horses can easily start to believe they are just supposed to rush around in a circle – whether that be on a lunge or in the roundpen. And I simply do not like it. It’s one reason that I am very careful when I lunge that I start the horse off from me and onto the circle at a walk.
I also usually have my whip on the ground so I can adjust tack and not thwack the horse in the eye with it while I’m messing about. It’s not uncommon for a horse to see you pick up a whip and then suddenly bolt off! This is another thing I do not like. So again, I am careful to train my horses to accept the whip all over their body, not to fear it, and to be okay with me picking it off the ground.
I mention these two things because they are common mistakes beginners make, and even I have caught myself letting the horse take off sometimes a bit too sprightly then they should have.
Z has calmed under saddle and is doing quite well at walk and trot while being lunged without the saddle. Today, I started her lunging with the saddle immediately, skipping the warm up step of being without. Now that she seems calmer under the tack, I’ll most likely be skipping the pre-saddle warmup unless she shows she has a lot of energy (which I expect we’ll get once the weather has a cold snap).
The next thing I am working on is her lining up to the mounting block AND relaxing until it is time to mount. She deliberately places herself just far enough out of reach so she cannot be easily mounted. I am dealing with that now with giving her time to position herself, and if she does not, tapping with my whip to move her up or over.
While she is in a good position, I work the reins with the signal I’ve taught her to relax her head downwards (Mark Russell Riding in Lightness). Yesterday, was a better result as she truly relaxed, with softened eyes. Today, was okay but not as relaxed. This will take a bit of time and why I am working on it is because I want her not to anticipate energetic work and get herself wound up – this was a problem with Dear One especially when you were at a show.
My shoulder has become much improved since injuring it and my upper arm last May, but yesterday I wrenched it mounting up (it was like a hot knife being plunged into my shoulder blade) so I am still a bit awkward. The right hand is also weaker – my left now stronger, so I need to work it more when I’m brushing her.
We did a bit of walking under saddle today – getting caught up to where we quit work in August, but I still have a long ways to go to bring myself up to speed.
A few weeks back I did some round pen sessions with Z that were videotaped for another person to view. For some time, I have not felt totally comfortable with the “how and why” of the round pen. I felt that it provided too much chance for abuse, placing psychological pressure on the horse to the point that he had no choice but to submit.
After doing those sessions, I thought about it long and hard and decided I would never go back to doing traditional round pen work ever again. I knew that I did not want my horses to do things because they had to… but because they wanted too please me.
This may seem like a subtle difference but it’s a difference that changes the dynamic of the horse-human relationship from slave-to-slavemaster, to friend-to-teacher.
Generally, I work my horses in the RP in much slower ways, working on the small details that hopefully will show in the larger scheme of the work. Today I posted two new blog entries for Z’s recent round pen sessions (done my way), called Movement 1 and Movement 2 at Common Sense Horsemanship.
When I went out and called Z, Dee also walked the entire pasture to the gate to greet me! I am so in love with this horse; I try not to think that she is on a lease only and I could lose her if the owner decided to end the romance. Thank you PGFarms for letting me borrow her!
In the round pen I tried to connect with Z but she was sleepy and non-motivated. We ended up just hanging together after all.
I wonder if yesterday, and our connecting in such a way was tiring for her? I know when I make a huge emotional change that I often feel exhausted afterwards.
When I came back to get Dee, I called her and she again walked all the way down to the gate to greet me! In the round pen, I tried the exercise I had done with Z last night. It is loosely based upon the videos and books by Klaus Hempfling.
She is in a halter with a long cotton leadrope. I ask her to follow the direction of the hand that is holding the cotton line. What I’m noticing is that the horses want to follow my torso/chest rather then the hand. If I bring them apart from each other, they inevitably look at my body. Hm…
With Z, I moved my hand to the position in front of her head and let her pick where her head was going. Z picked up immediately that something was strange about me mimicking her head position and the situation evolved into a slow dance of her moving me and then me moving her. It was incredibly focused and she licked and chewed gently the entire time!
What I need to remember is that Dee is NOT Z. Though my relationship is building incredibly fast with Dee, she is not as tuned into me as Z and of course has some baggage which Z does not.
Dee followed me but whether that was from knowing how to lead or that we were engaging each other was harder to discern. I did notice that her body position grew softer and more relaxed.
During our parallel lunge work with the cotton rope and halter, she is so stiff at the trot. I have been thinking how I may approach that and it may be a perfect candidate for Endo-tapping though I will probably play around with targeting and clicker training first as I am more comfortable with this method.
Rode today – all walking – but I’m getting to know her more and feeling more confident about her under saddle.
Yes, indeed we rode! Not very long and just at walk but so it begins!
We also got some Liberty Work done – third session – and just working on her responding with confidence and smoothness to my requests. My eventual goal for this is to help her learn to relax while moving and transitions… if you watch closely you can see the high head carriage, stiff neck and tension in her body.
Video 1
Video 2
They are broke up to two video parts of the same session due to time constraints but overall it was about 20 minutes or so. While I broke to explain things to the camera, I won’t in the future as this was just for videotaping explanations. I was very suprised and pleased to see she was already connecting with me so much – this horse is smart and wants to please.
Some thoughts I wanted to write about how I do Round pen work:
I’m not a fan of the round pen and have stated before why. I won’t repeat all that but one thing I do want to write is my biggest issue is using it as a rodeo place to “break” your horse. This is sooooo not needed and IMO ends up damaging the relationship far more then it helps the horse get “tamed.”
If you do a search for Round pen on Youtube you will see lots of folks chasing and lunging their horses in the round pen until the horse has become a robot. If you enjoy having a robot to ride, well then go ahead and do it this way. However, I do it differently:
- a place to observe how the horse reacts when not constrained with a halter, leadrope, bridle and/or lungeline. The horse (if the person doesn’t chase them about) has choice – do they want to connect, respond or defy you?
- the horses’ reactions reveal the holes in the training, the horses’ comprehension of what you are requesting, or the cracks in the human-horse relationship. However, this can only be observed if you don’t get all worked up about “controlling” the horse in the RP.
- Observation can help you find out the horses’ weaker and stronger side, the preferred bend, if they react differently (Dee for example, is quicker to respond when bending counter-clockwise and over-reacts because this is her difficult/stiffer side) when seeing you from one side, if they know voice commands, how they feel about the whip, and how they feel about you approaching parts of their body (i.e. front, side, back, left, right).
For example, sometimes a horse will react quite differently from a human approaching their 4 o-clock then their 9 o-clock.
- Help the horse learn to respond to body cues as opposed to voice cues. This translates to saddle work when you want the horse to respond to seat cues. If the horse starts to learn in liberty to pay attention to your body, you can transpose this to riding.
- teaches the human just how much they have to do (INTENSITY) to get the horse to respond. Most of us give too strong a cue when a lot less will do. Working in this way you can start teaching yourself how much you have to do to suit each individual horse. It’s also important to realize that horses are unique …. what would work with Z, I would not do with Dee.
- games and rewards for paying attention can be done to encourage the horse to connect with you. In this video, I’m using scratches and verbal praise, and have used treats in the past, thouugh I try to mix this up so they don’t rely upon treat rewards all the time.
One of my big issues with Parelli, is people do the games way too long and frequently. If your games are all repeats to the point of boredom, your horse is learning nothing but boredom and how to tune you out. Unfortunately, I have seen several well-trained Parelli horses who became either spoiled or rebellious due to the tedium of their training. Mix it up! Advance! Your horses’ aren’t robots!
- Warmup the horse in a method that also RELAXES the horse… after this warm up we went and rode for a bit and this is how I hope to continue our work together with even more emphasis on relaxing and moving quietly and easily.
