Taking things for granted

Here is a photo from yesterday as four dogs and I went to pick up Punalu from the hospital after over two weeks! We are happy to have her back.

The vet said Punalu had over 100lbs of sand in her stomach! Punalu is a big horse, but that is almost 10% of her bodyweight in sand! This is incredible, and had to take years to accumulate. What I find more incredible, though, is that she was at my place for a little under two months when this happened, with NO signs of trouble. Granted, she was just being boarded here, and not being ridden daily, but there were zero colic symptoms. She was seen by a vet within an hour of the first foot stomp that indicated she did not want to eat. Punalu was living with what I have to imagine was extreme discomfort for a very long time without any complaints...and at the very least, without missing a meal!

I think that this demonstrates something even bigger about horses that we talk about a lot, but sometimes is really hard, at least for me, to drive home in lessons. Horses are incredibly resilient and obedient. They will try to avoid trouble at all costs, even if this means working or interacting with humans at a huge emotional or physical cost. Punalu's is an obvious situation, in which she was willing to do her job despite 100+lbs of sand sitting in her stomach, possibly for years. Now, Punalu happens to be tough as nails when it comes to personality, but I think this applies to a much bigger range of issues, from soreness because of poor teeth, ill fitting equipment, bad riding, all the way to horses feeling huge amounts of anxiety just from being around a human, much less having a person on top of them, and still performing.

To many, this quality in horses that allows them to sacrifice their own well being to get the job done, in hopes of staying out of trouble, is the reason people choose horses to ride. They take for granted that with a minimal amount of training and understanding, horses can provide them the four legs they need to fulfill whatever the person wants to do. It is seen as permission to use horses however one wants, because, wouldn't the horse complain if it was really that bad?

But to me, this quality feels like the exact opposite. Knowing what I do about a horse's capacity to shut out discomfort, whether physically or emotionally, makes me feel even more responsible for their wellbeing, and drives me to want to be an even better horse person. I am the one who chooses to have horses in my life, not the other way around. I choose where they sleep, what they eat, and who they interact with. I am the rider, literally seeing the horse from above. So, to me it becomes a profound responsibility to do the best I can. At the very least, I want my horses to feel that there is someone listening if they need to complain. That comes with relationship, with trust, and with time. And most of all, it comes by showing a horse, over and over, that their feelings are important. This doesn't mean they do whatever they want. All of you know I have pretty high expectations for behavior! But it means that in showing them what is expected, their feelings are not squashed. It means always doing the best we can to understand what they are experiencing, and never becoming complacent because a horse is "broke." It doesn't mean that we stop doing what we like to do with horses, whether competing, trail riding or working, but it means doing it with as much compassion, clarity, understanding and education as we can, so that hopefully it, at the very least, doesn't make our horse's day worse. Even though we still want our horses to perform, it means prioritizing their best interests, even if that means changing the goals of our performance, whatever that may be.

It means not taking for granted that we are humans, and humans ride horses. I'm thankful every day that a horse would ever let me touch it, much less sit on it and direct its ideas and actions. I think the day we start forgetting that this is an amazing gift, one that we should aspire to deserve, is that day we should stop riding horses.

Go for it

Usually I use this blog as a place to discuss things that I am experiencing or experimenting with, and then I apply them to things that I commonly see as struggles among my students. Often they are one and the same so it isn't too much of a stretch!  With this blog, though, I am going to discuss something I talk to a lot of people about, and I believe is more about humans than it is horses. I want to talk about taking risks, trying new things, and being accountable for how we are with our horses. 

Almost on a daily basis someone tells me that they feel stuck because they don't want to make their horse worse or mess up the horse's existing training. Usually this is followed by them telling me that it is still falling apart!  

Usually I keep the advice I give out to individual encounters, because it's hard to give specific suggestions that will apply in any situation. But I think I can break that rule when it comes to this issue. I think it is important to go for it. To try. To take risks and to think outside your comfort zone. Be careful with your physical safety, but not with your strategy. Just because you haven't seen me or your trainer do it, or you aren't sure you can execute the idea perfectly, doesn't mean you shouldn't give it a go. I do new things everything I go to work. That is how you grow, stay inspired, and become better and produce better horses. 

It is important though that two things happen when you are trying something new or uncomfortable. Firstly, you must ensure that what you are trying to do is true to your philosophical ideas about horsemanship. For me, this means that it is true to what the horse needs in that moment. That it is clear to the horse and in their interest. What I'm doing may need to be firm, just as it may be quiet, but either way it must be asking for the horse to try, think and be responsible. I should not be carrying a horses weight, physically or mentally, and should not be forcing a physical change without also asking for a mental one. 

Secondly, in being true to your conceptual goals, you must be accountable for your decisions.  Every time I work a horse, I try to do it as though someone I respect is watching. It is so easy to cut corners when no one is watching, which is one of the reasons it is so common for people to tell me that what I'm seeing in a lesson isn't common at home. Because at home, no one is holding them accountable for what they are doing. That is the difference that I see between people who make rapid, consistent changes at home, and those people who continue to struggle making a big jump. It doesn't have anything to do with technical skill or riding ability. It has everything to do with the person's ability to make decisions that reflect the sort of horse person they want to be rather than getting frustrated or in a rush and regressing back to what is comfortable for them (and probably not comfortable for the horse!).  

This certainly doesn't mean things will be anywhere near perfect! It just means that you are moving forward and pushing yourself rather than staying still. And with this, you must be sure to be confident and sure in your decisions, rather than worrying if it will work. It definitely won't work if you aren't going for it with all of your ability!  Sometimes in clinics or when people are watching me work at home I try to remember to mention if I'm doing something that I've never done before or that I'm not sure if it will work.  The truth is, that's all the time!  If it weren't all the time, I would be the same horse person I was five years ago, and I certainly am not that.

That being said, if I try something new, at that moment I am sure that it will work.  If it doesn't, I usually feel that pretty quickly and am not afraid to move on to something else. Most of the time, though, it does work, and I don't think that's in any small part to the fact that I'm following all of this advice. I'm confident it will work, and that the horse can come through, and before even starting I've evaluated if I'm being true to myself and my horse, and working as if someone I respect is watching. 

As a teacher, I would absolutely rather see someone come for a lesson trying new things and trying hard, even if I have to change their direction some, than someone who is paralyzed because they are afraid to fail. So, give yourself permission to mess up!  Why not? It takes a long time to get good at anything, and you have to put yourself out there for big rewards. If things get worse before they get better, so what?  Treat your horsemanship like a journey and an exercise in self growth, not a competition, and you will find things inside yourself you didn't know where there, and your horses will thank you. 

Two at a time

A post from facebook that was well received, so I'm reposting it here.  

I've been trying some new stuff with a couple horses I have in for training I thought I would share. They live together, and the owners have a really difficult time catching them when they are out in the pasture together. I did a little experiment, and realized that if I put them in separate pens, but still with multiple other horses and just over the fence from each other, so they could still feed off each other, within a day or two I could have them catching quite easily. But put them back together, and they would regress quite a bit, even as the rest of their work with me improved, and after they had been very easy to catch in with other horses. So I decided to try working them together, first in the round pen, at liberty. I spent time setting up a search, in which I was in the pen with the flag, with both of them loose, asking them to be on opposite sides of the pen and focused on me. This was fun, because it didn't take long before the appy mare (who is the more confident of the two and has had more work with me than the grey gelding) figured out exactly what I wanted, and was helping the gelding figure it out. Once they were confident with this, I spent time working each of them at liberty as if the other wasn't there, asking the one not being worked to hang out, stay attentive, and ignore the other horse, and ignore all of my movement while guiding the other horse. Then, I spent some time doing all of this again out in the bigger arena. I've seen HUGE improvements in their catching! The first couple days after this, I went in to the paddock with the flag, and set up a search, which only took them minutes to figure out (and they separated, and looked to me). I worked them at liberty in the paddock before catching, just the same as I'd done elsewhere. At this point, they are just plain easy to catch, and at the most I have to ask for their attention with a little cluck. I'm still revisiting working them together in the round pen from time to time, as the grey gelding can still get a flustered and I have seen a lot of benefit to his confidence, both in himself and being comfortable while I work the other horse, that not everything is about him, and in his ability to prioritize me over his mare friend. The softness that is coming into both of them during this work and other work has been great! Plus...it's just way less of a pain to catch them, which was really the point of the whole experiment.