Anna Blake's Blog, page 22

She Said Her Horse Was Pensive.

L. and her gelding, Andante, are boarders here. I always ask how the ride went as they return to the barn. One day L. tilted her head and said he’d complained about her hands. Horses are always right about hands. It’s frustrating when you listen to your horse and hear something you don’t like. Recently, I asked about the ride as they untacked. Pensive, she said, after a pause. It wasn’t a word she’d used before, but it might be the best description ever, if you’re a horse.

This Belgian-TB cross has been at my barn for most of his life. He was insecure in the beginning, terrified of vets, and sometimes spooky under saddle. L. had her fair share of unplanned dismounts. Like most horses, he didn’t start out steady. It takes time for a horse and rider to find their true stride. It’s been my good fortune to watch them over the years, the third person in the arena. It’s us learning from him now.

Some folks believe that draft breeds are slow, stubborn, or maybe not as bright as other breeds. Pensive is the right word. Andante is a thinker, he likes taking the time to reason things out. He might move slowly at first, seem to sound it out in his head almost. He gets quiet but he isn’t distracted or being evasive. He’s relaxed and focused; in a mental place where he is able to learn. We know that when we give him the time he needs to be comfortable with something new, he is responsive and light, often volunteering even more than we ask. Going forward, he remembers it with reliable calmness.

It isn’t just draft breeds who like time to think. It’s light drafts like Fjords, Friesians, and Vanners. Ponies and Appaloosas are on the list, and donkeys and mules are famous for hating to be rushed. We think they’re stubborn or hard-headed, often giving a second louder cue just as they were about to do what was asked, but the second cue almost feels like a correction for answering, so they go quiet, losing confidence.

Some breeds like Arabians and Thoroughbreds seem to like to answer quick, almost as if they are guessing and want to get it over with, but if the horse is tense in his body, isn’t that answer slick with anxiety? Wouldn’t we get a better answer if we pretended they were draft breeds and encouraged a slow answer in the beginning, also?

How much time is reasonable for a horse to respond to a cue? I notice I pause in my mind now to consider my own question. I pause as I form my words because I don’t want to blather out my first thought or leap to a false conclusion. I hope to be clear and give the right answer. I notice a certain pensiveness before I answer and I’m not the one balancing a human on my back.

Is a quicker answer from a horse the better answer? Or is the speed of a horse’s response to a request an answer in itself? If he understands what he is being asked, a horse will usually oblige willingly, even quickly by our judgment. If a horse doesn’t answer a question he knows, our first thought must be for his soundness. Reluctance is a sign of pain. Is he not answering but frozen looking to the distance? Give him time, he sees something we don’t, and repeating the cue louder isn’t going to improve our vision or make his concern go away.

Most of all, if a horse pauses in the process of learning something new, the investment in giving him time to think and volunteer an answer will engage him in the process. He will have a positive experience problem solving if we allow him the time to find the answer himself and it will build his confidence. As you wait, remember that teacher who made biology interesting or gave you a love of reading. With a nod to their patience with you, don’t assume your horse is stubborn or lazy. Seeing the worst human traits in a horse says more about our intelligence than theirs.

If we push for a fast answer and the horse freezes a bit, maybe afraid of being wrong or just nervous, it should make us wonder if the problem might not be ours. Maybe we need to learn to resist being hurried, too.

How can you tell your horse isn’t thinking? His eyes have a deathly stillness. His body feels hollow. It’s as if he is playing dead. Horses don’t think when they’re afraid.

How can you tell your horse is thinking? That’s a stupid question. I’m supposed to say there are no stupid questions, but just look at him. His eyes are soft, and his ears are inquisitive as he breathes out softly. If you cannot recognize the intelligence in a horse’s face, regardless of breed, it’s you who are stubborn or lazy or just untrainable.

A few years ago, L. and Andante were a bit stuck. I suggested perhaps it was time to evolve their groundwork, it hadn’t changed in years. L. made the routine more interesting but Andante changed things up, too. He began lifting his hoof on the mounting block, like a slow-motion pawing. We didn’t ask. In the beginning, L. moved the block to his side but then he’d turn and do it again. Soon he was stretching both legs on his own and L. was lightly scratching his coronary band. We didn’t understand at first, but he trained us. Was he resisting her ride? In a few moments, he stood square and she was in the saddle. It was more like a team pep talk. He did it at horse shows with strange mounting blocks just the same. Horse conversations are always behaviors and not words, but that doesn’t mean their body voice is less informative.

It’s been a brutally cold week in Colorado. A water tub in the turnout pen froze solid and it took help to tip it and get the huge ice cube out. It’ll take a month to melt. That night, as it was getting dark and I was bringing horses in, my toes were stinging in my warmest boots. The other horses were already slurping mush and digging into fresh hay bags. Andante was the last. I don’t use a halter; he surely knows where we’re going. On this bone-chilling night, he paused and pawed the top of the ice block. I stopped walking and turned. He lifted his huge hoof up again, and rested it, his ears forward.

As I moved to his shoulder, “Really, you want to talk now?” If horses have taught me anything it’s that dullness and impatience are the language of a lesser mind.

…

Anna Blake for Relaxed & Forward 

Want more? Join us in The Barn. Subscribe to our online training group with training videos, interactive sharing, audio blogs, live-chats with Anna, and the most supportive group of like-minded horsepeople anywhere.

Ongoing courses in Calming Signals, Affirmative Training, Fundamentals of Authentic Dressage, and Back in the Saddle: a Comeback Conversation, as well as virtual clinics, are taught at The Barn School, where I also host our infamous Happy Hour. Everyone’s welcome.

Visit annablake.com to find over a thousand archived blogs, purchase signed books, schedule a live consultation or lesson, subscribe for email delivery of this blog, or ask a question about the art and science of working with horses.

Affirmative training is the fine art of saying yes.

The post She Said Her Horse Was Pensive. appeared first on Anna Blake.

Spring Fever, Bad Behavior, or Flight Response?

It’s February on the high prairie at the fringe of the Rocky Mountains. The pond is still frozen so there is an unnatural quiet, no bird chatter, no wings in the sky. After months of feeling that light is somehow a product of ice lighting the ground, the sun feels just a bit warm again. It’s still below freezing, but a winter jacket is too warm. An hour later, the temperature hasn’t changed, but it feels like a polar front, and fingers sting inside of winter gloves. The angle of the sun is shifting, a month from Spring equinox. The sun has been low in the sky even at midday. In the summer, the sun is so direct it would fry an egg, but now it’s just peeking through prairie grass, teasing us. The ground is still winter-dead. This is the time of year that storms get more violent, but we beg for any moisture, we measure the angle of light, the moments lengthening before sunset.

In this quiet dawn of a new season, lost in thought, I hear a jarring sound somewhere between a fat cat being shut in a door and a low moist dragon fart. Stop and listen: a half-mile over on the paved road, sometimes semi-trucks let out a backfire rumble while downshifting. Sometimes a Harley pulling onto the road makes an internal combustion growl that carries from a distance. The sound comes again, deep and raw, followed by the clang of metal remarkably close by. Oh. it’s just my mare finishing breakfast, slamming her hind end into the feeder, and snarling like a grizzly bear. Her companions, like me, have frozen mid-chew. Seasonal Tourette’s, I think. Not a mechanical explosion, after all. Walking over, I give her a light scratch on her hip and draw back enough loose winter hair to line a bird’s nest. Yesterday there was none.

For folks who live in town, the weather is small talk, but weather can be life and death news while caring for livestock during changeable seasons, even on a small farm. As we’re busy cleaning tanks, chipping frozen manure, and waxing poetically about how tough we are, living in the real world, it’s a good time to remember that we actually live inside of climate-controlled houses just like townies. It’s the horses who live in the real world, each of their senses sending indelible messages that we can’t imagine. What does it smell like when the ground comes back to life? What does it feel like to shed dry winter hair in a full-body itch? Is the angle of the sun a reason to gallop in full flight, kicking hooves to the sky? Is this level of awareness exhausting for them, ever on alert? Even at times that humans are the most aware of our environment, our senses are muffled and dull in comparison.

A reader asked about the difference/intersection between a flight response and springtime forwardness. I think she’s asking in a politically correct way about why horses go nuts in the spring. She said, “… it got me thinking about how some people love the roller coaster and others of us can’t understand why we would put ourselves into what feels like panic mode. Or how I have found my excitement about engaging with a horse can escalate and sort of tumble physiologically into a non-specific fear response.”

I think her question about roller coasters might be the answer to how horses feel. We have the same nervous system, after all. When peaceful activity turns into a full-out bolt, we feel disoriented and left in the dust, mentally as much as literally. Maybe the analogy of a roller coaster is what it means to be a horse living in an unpredictable world.

Think of the process of encouraging a horse’s confidence. There is that time when you might be leading from behind or just taking a horse to turnout, allowing curiosity to rule as he sniffs his way down the aisle of the barn, then edging his way to a path, his eyes taking it all in as his neck stretches low. He’s alive in his environment, his ears pointing out interests beyond our meager senses. Does the earth breathe differently when seasons change, can his whiskers sense the beginning of grasses before they are visible? Did he see a flicker of movement in those trees? Are fawns being born, leaving the scent of afterbirth in the air? That’s when he’s the only one who notices he’s a few steps too far from the herd.

We’re thinking about work or dinner plans or riding goals, but an instant later, your peaceful little nature walk has exploded like a field of landmines. You think he’s spooked at nothing, both jerked into a tug-of-war over the lead rope, and your horse seems to be frightened by the sound of his own hooves pounding a staccato sound on hard soil. He thinks he might die, and real or not, Seasonal Tourette’s can feel like a bloody profanity, spit to the wind for no good reason, as the line between curiosity and fear disappears entirely.

Humans want answers. What did he see? Why did he spook? We want an intellectual explanation for an instant in the environment that never rose to meet our limited senses in the first place. We don’t understand our own emotion-based fear response, but we seek a logical answer for our horse’s behavior because thought is a self-soothing activity for us. We can feel safer if we can find reason in chaos. We wander through potential answers while as usual, our horse remains fight animal, marginally domesticated if at all, living outside our climate-controlled brains, looking for the next danger. Lost in our thoughts and living a moment in the past, we never catch up. Autumn is no less alarming for horses, life is change.

Horses are never truly domesticated. That’s what it means to be a flight animal. On the days when the world becomes alive in a different way, a change of weather or herd or location, and they seem to have a case of Seasonal Tourette’s, but isn’t that a reasonable equine response?

This is your seasonal reminder that your senses are not a good match for a horse. Their reaction time is seven times faster than ours and the existence of our frontal lobe is no advantage. It’s less important to immediately know why, and more important to not make the horse wrong for having better senses than we do.

This is your seasonal reminder that it isn’t about whether we like roller coasters or not. If we live with horses, we’re on one.

…

Anna Blake for Relaxed & Forward 

Want more? Join us in The Barn. Subscribe to our online training group with training videos, interactive sharing, audio blogs, live-chats with Anna, and the most supportive group of like-minded horsepeople anywhere.

Ongoing courses in Calming Signals, Affirmative Training, Fundamentals of Authentic Dressage, and Back in the Saddle: a Comeback Conversation, as well as virtual clinics, are taught at The Barn School, where I also host our infamous Happy Hour. Everyone’s welcome.

Visit annablake.com to find over a thousand archived blogs, purchase signed books, schedule a live consultation or lesson, subscribe for email delivery of this blog, or ask a question about the art and science of working with horses.

Affirmative training is the fine art of saying yes.

The post Spring Fever, Bad Behavior, or Flight Response? appeared first on Anna Blake.

An Allergy, Spyglass Tunnel Vision, & a Valentine

 

 

Most of us start with an allergy. Our noses get stuffy and our eyes are red and teary all the time. We’re allergic to not having a horse and it’s chronic. We start sniveling when we’re kids. We cry if we can’t have a pony, we cry when we get a pony, and we cry if we have to say good-bye to the pony. Mostly we cry because we love the pony. It happens if we have one pony or twenty, if the whole family rides, or if the family looks at you like you were left on the front stoop by a band of gypsies. Or gypsy cobs, no one remembers.

Either way, we’re single-minded about horses. It’s as if we see through a telescoping pirate spyglass from then on. We scrutinize his eyeball, wondering if we got the wrong horse. Most of us do, of course, but we keep our worst fears to ourselves. In extreme cases, you’re kindly told by trainers and friends you have the wrong horse, and the smart ones manage to switch to a horse who is every bit as challenging but in a less dangerous way. We’re livin’ the dream.

The seller agrees to deliver your horse to the new barn, and he walks right into the trailer. A while later a different looking horse runs off the trailer, flying on the end of the lead rope like a kite, white-eyed and sweaty. Meanwhile, the horse thinks he’s just been kidnapped and taken to an undisclosed place, met by a white-eyed sweaty woman who seems to have an allergy. She is not entirely recognizable as his soulmate.

The undisclosed place is a boarding barn that’s only a forty-five-minute commute from home. The horses looked healthy and there were lots of riders there and a kind trainer. They don’t charge extra for feeding supplements, which reminds you that you should get supplements; those cute, individualized serving-sized ones they print your horse’s name on. This barn is a great choice because the monthly board is only about half your mortgage payment.

You decide to let your new horse settle in. You take time and go slow, waiting almost 18 hours to try a saddle. You might have a dozen saddles but none of them fit. Or you have no saddles, so you go out and buy a brand-new saddle that doesn’t fit. While you’re at the tack store, maybe a new winter blanket that has special breathable waterproof fabric that folds up into a quart-size ziplock, a special saddle pad that has the same substance they use on rockets to protect them when returning to Earth’s atmosphere, and sure, a new halter. The total doesn’t quite come to what you paid for the horse.

The next day, you’re in the saddle, scrutinizing the ride. He jigs at the mounting block, he has a problem with his trot, your inner thighs burn, not that you were tense in the saddle. Come to think about it, he doesn’t seem like the horse you bought at all. His eyes look a little wild, so you tell him that he’s home now. He looks away and screams a bone-chilling nicker. You tell him everything is going to be fine, as you hack phlegm onto his bedding and wipe your nose on your sleeve. It must be the hay. No, not the fairy tale you planned, but you take the blame because you’re besotted. You hope it’s your problem because you can change.

The first trail ride includes a two-mile sprint back to the barn. On the first attempt at jumping, only one of you clears a single pair of cross rails. He looks at the tarp like there’s a goat under it. And there is. You hit the ground before you know you’ve left the saddle. Not the only time either. It was so easy to be brave before your unplanned dismount, the moment you gained a fraction of the common sense non-horse people have. While your body mends, you consider changing riding disciplines but decide to plow ahead. You decide at three in the morning because that’s when all the good horse decisions are made.

Maybe it’s time to get help from a trainer. You make the appointment, fill out the check, and the trainer climbs on your horse. They dance like Fred and Ginger, his neck soft and his stride long and true. The trainer says you need a new saddle. On the high side, your horse seems peaceful when you lead him away, so now it’s lessons all the time, maybe even a show in the fall. You go ahead and buy a horse trailer. Right after you get the truck big enough to pull it. Just one more reason to have a bank account in your own name.

About then the barn manager calls on a Sunday at dawn. Your horse has a deep bloody gash or is three-legged lame or it looks like colic. You drive all the way without taking one breath, beating the vet by forty-five long minutes. Soon your horse is out grazing, and the vet will send the bill because he has another call, not that you’re in a hurry to see the weekend rate. You have a life-threatening allergy attack on the way home, but at the same time, feel a need to celebrate by taking some of that allergy medication that comes in a bottle with a cork. Before noon.

Time flies by, so many details to focus on. Your spyglass lets you see one thing at a time; problems to solve, details to study, choices to make. Not that you’d want it any other way.

It’s winter today, another Valentine’s Day, almost his birthday. That ragged old blanket needs a buckle replaced. How old is your horse now? You lower the spyglass, un-squint your other eye. Tunnel vision softens and you see a few gray hairs on his brow. His back has dropped a bit, you have no words. He moves more cautiously on frozen ground. So do you.

You’re different now. You’ve learned to fall and awkwardly pick yourself up, more than once. You’ve had to make peace with fear and forge bits of patience together, not that you’re prone to psycho-speak, but you like yourself better with a horse. How many days have you cared for his needs, found compassion for his shortcomings, praised his courage, and not acknowledged your own? How far you’ve come. The two of you and this precious life you share, not that you’re the sentimental type. But how extremely far you’ve come together. You slide your hand up to his wither, feel that familiar congested pressure in your sinus.

There’s really no choice. Your good horse will need a place to retire, so you’ll buy him a farm. And he’ll need some company in the pasture.

…

Anna Blake for Relaxed & Forward 

Want more? Join us in The Barn. Subscribe to our online training group with training videos, interactive sharing, audio blogs, live-chats with Anna, and the most supportive group of like-minded horsepeople anywhere.

Ongoing courses in Calming Signals, Affirmative Training, Fundamentals of Authentic Dressage, and Back in the Saddle: a Comeback Conversation, as well as virtual clinics, are taught at The Barn School, where I also host our infamous Happy Hour. Everyone’s welcome.

Visit annablake.com to find over a thousand archived blogs, purchase signed books, schedule a live consultation or lesson, subscribe for email delivery of this blog, or ask a question about the art and science of working with horses.

Affirmative training is the fine art of saying yes.

The post An Allergy, Spyglass Tunnel Vision, & a Valentine appeared first on Anna Blake.

Can Horses Forgive Us?

The reader said that an essay I’d written “brought to mind how many times my involuntary predatory instincts have surfaced and expressed themselves over the years with my horses. It made me wonder about the horse’s capacity to forgive, and the time trajectory for establishing trust. …if a horse is capable of trusting humans in their present life, after negative human experiences in their past life.” 

That’s the downside of learning, isn’t it? The day comes when it dawns on us that we can’t keep scaring horses and calling it training. It’s a breath of clean possibility. Humans might be capable of evolving in our relationships with horses after all. Not that we have ever been intentionally brutal or even mean; just that we have fallen short of our best intention. Humans scrutinize the past and any misguided stumble is magnified and demonized, even though it’s how you were told to do it. If only you’d learned to read fear and anxiety sooner. It seems obvious now that adversity was never going to make a horse trust you.

The flood of emotions: guilt, shame, embarrassment, and just to round it out, why not add the failure of not being rich, young, and ever thin enough. Sorry for the attempt at levity. Aren’t we just a little too good at taking the blame, when we’d be the last one to take credit for our sacrifices and efforts to do better for our horses? We are the ones whose hearts catch in our throats when our sway-backed arthritic elders lift their heads and nicker to us, as we bring mush, warm from the house, for the fifth time that day. 

This question is so important. We tend to anthropomorphize horse emotions. We live in the real world when we must deal with metabolic disorders or chronic lameness, but when we get to the nebulous mental questions, we make up stories we want to be true, as if horses had human brains. Stories with no more reality than the ignorant lunacy that horses will be spoiled forever if we don’t command their respect immediately.

The short answer is yes. Except in extreme cases, horses are capable of trusting humans again. How horses answer us reflects how we interact with them. Kids are treated like treasure by mares who routinely buck adults off. Other kids are treated like poison by ponies who have been teased or mishandled. Horses stand for some farriers but not others. We call that their BS detector, proof that our intention matters more than our job title. And best of all, thousands of rescue horses find their way to new homes.

Yes, horses can trust again. But I wouldn’t use the word forgive. Words matter when it comes to understanding how horses think. They do have simple emotions like fear, rage, confusion, and loss. I’d add trust, defined as a feeling of safety. Humans have those primal emotions, but also complex ones like guilt, shame, embarrassment, and respect. We’re also capable of mixed emotions and ambivalence. We can have love/hate feelings, we can be sarcastic or duplicitous. Complex emotions scurry about in our frontal cortex and horses simply don’t have the anatomy. We should be envious.

Better than forgiveness, the question might be what kinds of activity create the positive brain response in our horses that might incline them toward trust? 

Horses live guilt-free lives but are motivated by fear. They have a strong memory but can’t hold a grudge or plan revenge. The biggest truth about how horses relate in the world is that while we’re lollygagging around in our frontal lobes, talking about brain function, reading blogs, posting to social media, and just generally loving them, horses are constantly involved in their environment, engaging each sense, scanning for predators, longing for safety. They are not waxing on about loving us. They think about themselves.

If you are looking to train a horse in an affirmative way, the first step is ensuring he lives in a way that supports his nature more than your convenience. He needs a near-constant food source, the company of others, and room to move. Rescue horses, or any horse experiencing change, will need time to adjust, but let good care be your training foundation. Is he safe? It’s a primal need and we must understand that pain or anxiety that wasn’t resolved by fear-based training won’t be fixed by kind words. Good intentions matter but only if they translate into the horse’s currency. Warm blankets mean nothing to a horse isolated from his herd.

Memory is strong for horses. They don’t forget bad experiences, but we don’t have to breathe new life into the past by constantly bring it up. We can be polite and ask rather than demand. We can wage peace by giving the horse time he needs to believe us. Rather than constant correction triggering his flight response, we can choose to stand out of his space, let him volunteer for the halter, and let him sniff his way down the barn aisle. Horses are motor-reflex animals; hard-wired to save themselves from danger. Giving him choice and time to answer literally changes his brain chemistry, building new dendrites that will release dopamine, the “antidepressant” neurochemical. They have another neurochemical, serotonin, to make peace with the past in time.

If brain science ruins the romance, just understand that curiosity is the external activity that means a horse is creating new neuropathways. Curiosity equals mental health. It’s science’s way of saying you can train an old dog new tricks. It’s never too late for new neuropathways. We can create new experiences for horses that dim the memory of bad history. To the degree that the horse is given time to decompress, trust can grow and flourish. We create new neuropathways in our brains the same way. We should praise our good efforts and let the criticism rot in the dark.

How do horses respond to our complex emotions like guilt, shame, embarrassment, or pity? What about the love bonfire burning in our frontal cortex? These complex emotions are strong, but horses have nothing comparative. I’d guess horses read those vague emotions as anxiety.

Horses never think about healing us. They are involuntarily concerned with their survival in our nerve-wracking, over-thinking world.

Horses don’t want to rescue us from the anxiety of our frontal lobes. But they do give us calming signals to let us know we don’t have to try so hard. Horses recognize a tense jaw and might suggest we stretch our necks because grazing is good. Horses are not capable of understanding our frontal cortex athletics around guilt or shame or low self-esteem. Horses are incapable of being our therapists. But horses do understand anxiety. They look away because it relieves some of the pressure. They pull inside where it’s safer. They snort, a reminder to breathe, and then lick and chew. They mean to affirm our peaceful side. Can we let it be simple?

 

… Anna Blake for Relaxed & Forward 

Want more? Join us in The Barn. Subscribe to our online training group with training videos, interactive sharing, audio blogs, live-chats with Anna, and the most supportive group of like-minded horsepeople anywhere.

Ongoing courses in Calming Signals, Affirmative Training, Fundamentals of Authentic Dressage, and Back in the Saddle: a Comeback Conversation, as well as virtual clinics, are taught at The Barn School, where I also host our infamous Happy Hour. Everyone’s welcome.

Visit annablake.com to find over a thousand archived blogs, purchase signed books, schedule a live consultation or lesson, subscribe for email delivery of this blog, or ask a question about the art and science of working with horses.

…Affirmative training is the fine art of saying yes.

The post Can Horses Forgive Us? appeared first on Anna Blake.

A Short List of Things Horses Do Need Us to Teach Them.

For all our love for horses, humans are still predators. We don’t like to hear that. We’re defensive; we’ve seen abused horses. Our minds go to the most extreme images; bloody flanks and torturous bits and that isn’t who we are. Nope. Not what we do. At the same time, we struggle with what others think of our horsemanship. We hear voices whispering that we’re spoiling our horses, or we so desperately want a certain thing from our horses that our eyebrows are set in a permanent furrow. Maybe we just want to love them into behaving for the farrier. Then our gut tenses at the thought that our horse might die in twenty years.

Last week, I wrote about the things horses don’t need us to teach them; this week is about what they do need us to teach them. Horses communicate in calming signals, the body language of animals. For horses, most of the signals are expressions of anxiety. A calming signal is a message that they are no threat to us; that we don’t need to be so aggressive or loud. They are asking us to calm ourselves. It’s the opposite of the roaring threat of a lion, it’s a nervous plea for peace. If we love horses, why do they feel so threatened by us?

A life-long horsewoman sent me a quote from a book about interpreting human body language that was an eye-opener to her. In the book, Truth and Lies, Mark Bowden and Tracey Thomson state, “Therefore, our physical behavior displays the constant interplay of power, between us and everything around and within us.” (p.24)

She asked my opinion on this different set of words and relating them to how our horses perceive us. I think it’s a great definition of being a predator, but I have to be honest. This definition reminded me first of how powerful teenage girls can be. It’s easy to picture an alpha male with privilege strutting about mansplaining, but what about the passive-aggressive power of women who insinuate or nag. I think about peer-pressure a lot for a woman my age because feeling the judgment of railbirds is a constant question my clients ask. How should we deal with naysayers? How do I tell others that I don’t want to dominate my horse? I wonder about another question: What do horses hear as we struggle with our own anxiety around inadequacy, fear, and intimidation?

Humans are filled with contradictions, but being a predator isn’t up for debate. It’s an involuntary instinct but if you ask us, our love for horses is involuntary too. We have schoolgirl passion and grown-up fear and insecurity. We’ve been taught that horses must respect us, but we aren’t willing to fight them about it. We know that fear makes both horses and humans unreliable.

Horses don’t dally with this intellectual jabber. Partly because they don’t have that dallying part of their brain and partly because being a prey animal is a full-time job.

Reminder: Many calming signals are an expression of stress about a mental conflict. Perhaps two intersecting thoughts that are in conflict, and confusion about how to proceed. Horses show calming signals, not as a refusal, but a request that they need more time to think, which is an evolved moment for a flight animal. They might look away or pretend-graze when standing in a dry lot. Do they sense our impatience and worry that we will be more aggressive? Is that what our bodies tell them, in contradiction to the fairy tales we tell ourselves?

What if having conflicted thoughts is the biggest thing we share with horses? It would explain so much. Consistency is important in our work with horses, not that we halter the exact same way at the exact same time every day. Consistency in our own emotions and response is the foundation of trust we offer horses. Perhaps it means we redefine ourselves by who we are, not what we want. 

A Short List of Things Horses Do Need Us to Teach Them:

1. Teach the horse that we will be emotionally reliable. Knowing horses have emotions of their own, we spare them suffering our human ones. We choose to control our predator natures and not throw temper tantrums at horses, or kick buckets in the barn aisle, or swear at gates that stick. We can cry about it at home, rant to our friends later, rail against the dark forces in favor of love, but we heal ourselves, so we can hold consistent good humor around horses, and use affirmative training methods, engaging curiosity rather than intimidation. Teach the horse that his feeling of well-being is the only priority. In a chaotic world, we must be peacefully dependable so the horse feels safe with us.

2.Teach the horse that humans can listen. That we’re not to be feared. Knowing that we can watch too intensely, that we’re noisy with our hustle, that we can stand too close, and that we love too hard, we can teach them that we’re not that person who thinks they know better than the horse. Not the person who makes stories up, but instead listen to each unique horse with compassion. We teach a partnership where both sides take care of themselves, with the support of the other. Rather than leaping in to fix the horse’s “problems,” we’ll work on our own issues while giving the horse the space to figure out his questions in his own time. We’ll teach him self-reliance rather than insecurity. We teach him autonomy, the peace that comes with confidence.

3.Teach the horse that humans can respect their nature and instinct. We acknowledge perhaps we’re born with a certain passive inbred superiority but we will work each day to see the world through our horse’s eyes. Rather than telling romantic stories, we commit to creating a world for our horses that support their need for constant forage, the company of other horses, and enough room to run. We hold that responsibility sacred, even if it’s inconvenient and costly. Rather than restricting what we love about horses, we make peace with it. We refuse to fight but rather give the horse the benefit of the doubt, knowing their answer is honest and without guile. We give up control because when nothing is a fight; when nothing is wanted or demanded, we create a peaceful space that horses will choose to share. Most of all, we need to teach horses that humans are capable of trusting a horse’s instinct and intelligence.

 

…Anna Blake for Relaxed & Forward r

Want more? Join us in The Barn. Subscribe to our online training group with training videos, interactive sharing, audio blogs, live-chats with Anna, and the most supportive group of like-minded horsepeople anywhere.

Ongoing courses in Calming Signals, Affirmative Training, Fundamentals of Authentic Dressage, and Back in the Saddle: a Comeback Conversation, as well as virtual clinics, are taught at The Barn School, where I also host our infamous Happy Hour. Everyone’s welcome.

Visit annablake.com to find over a thousand archived blogs, purchase signed books, schedule a live consultation or lesson, subscribe for email delivery of this blog, or ask a question about the art and science of working with horses.

…Affirmative training is the fine art of saying yes.

 

The post A Short List of Things Horses Do Need Us to Teach Them. appeared first on Anna Blake.

A Short List of Things Horses Don’t Need Us to Teach Them.

If Edgar Rice Burro were to title this Bev Doolittle-like photo, he might call it Beauty and the Beast. He lives with this mare, but she is always fussy about something. She’s a huge control enthusiast and it wears him down. The mare has no ears to speak of and an overly dramatic tail. She may be capable of a good mutual neck-chew from time to time, but she’s a little too prancy for his taste. Gray mares are insufferable.

I’m sure you can guess what Clara thinks. The donkey is coarse, and for crying out loud, he doesn’t even care to pick up his feet. His ears are so unwieldy that they probably poke him in the eye on windy days. Although Edgar can open any gate on the farm, she’s certain he isn’t nearly as smart as she is. Because really, no one is.

Maybe you look at this photo and say, “Gadzooks! Perfect head position.” Edgar nods a thank you. Contrary to Clara’s opinion, he’s just as right as she is.

Equines don’t sit around talking about humans and we should be glad of it. If they did, I think they might call us control enthusiasts and not as smart as we think we are. They’d complain that we fight their common sense and work to diminish their strength. They might say humans have an exaggerated definition of what needs training. Clearly, humans are mistaken about who needs training, says every mare of any color.

Here is short list of the things horses do not need us to teach them:

1. How to walk, trot, and canter. They are born knowing how, landing with three gaits on the first day. Sure, the canter was wobbly, with too much up-and-down and not much here-to-there. It takes a while before foals connect to the earth enough to make large strafing runs at their mothers, but they are born to run. At the same time, why do horses fight our hands when we ask for a trot? Why do we think so many horses have problems with their canter depart? Especially when they lift to the canter effortlessly in the pasture.

2. Horses would like us to understand that they know how to hold their own heads. That we’re silly to focus on the 10% of their bodies in front of their ears when their hindquarters are the real deal. Of the total body mass of a horse, why do we need to micromanage that last 4 inches of the muzzle? How did the vertical angle of a face become the prize, more important than conformation or biomechanics? It isn’t a rhetorical question for horses. For a horse, a flight animal, it’s all about balance, front to back. Can he catch the earth and move? Balance is the most important ingredient in how relaxed and calm a horse can be, even at a gallop.

In the photo, Clara feels confident with a long neck and a soft poll, the result of a big strong butt, even if the donkey blocking the view of her best asset. Her topline muscle is stronger than the muscle under her neck; she’s lifting her back, engaging her abdominals, so light she floats into motion. Edgar has a straighter shoulder angle, a shorter topline and he uses the muscle under his neck like any self-respecting donkey; he canters with his nose straight out because he’s not a horse, he’s happy to remind you.

Thoroughbreds are built like greyhounds to run with elongated straight bodies that take longer strides, winning races not by taking more steps but by going farther in each stride. Belgian draft horses are built like bulldogs with short necks and broad shoulders built to lean into a harness and pull heavy loads. Some Friesians are tall and lanky, others broad and stout. Arabians vary so much that Egyptian lines can look like a different breed than Polish lines. Variety in the same breed can be extreme. So why do we think an Arabian can jump in the same height a Warmblood does? Why do we ask Quarter Horses to look like Andalusians in the bridle? Why do we try to force horses into a cookie-cutter frame instead of celebrating diversity? It doesn’t mean that Shetland ponies don’t love a good race, or that draft breeds can’t dance in the moonlight. It means it isn’t up to us to position a horse’s head. They have been doing that since they were born, and they know just where it needs to be. They understand that a relaxed back and a push from their hindquarters is what defines their head position, not a bit or human hands. The correct head position is a result of freedom of movement, at liberty in the pasture or under saddle. A soft poll is a gift of balance and trust, not a demand for contact with aggressive hands.

3. The last thing on the short list is the one we humans do by instinct that horses fear most personally. We think we must teach horses to give to pressure. They certainly don’t do it naturally, any more than humans do. That’s what all the domination tug-of-war is about. Why do we train generally peaceful animals to fight the reins? Not just fight them, why do we train them to lose the fight? It shatters their confidence to relinquish control of their bodies. Then their anxiety makes them dangerous to us. You’d think we’d figure out cause and effect at some point. Wouldn’t it be better if we stopped bothering their faces; if we trained ourselves to not pressure horses and instead, work in partnership with them? “Who died and made you boss?” said every mare, stallion, and gelding fighting for balance and autonomy. Head position is only language, balance during a moment in time, as is their sentient right. Instead of disobedience, think Calming Signal. Respond with softness; let the horse know you are not a threat.

Want to try an experiment about forward? Look here: Give him his head.

A few moments after the photo was taken, Edgar Rice Burro has his neck stretched out long and low to take full advantage of the fingernails working the dock of his tail. By then, Clara has heard an inaudible sound or senses a whiff of blood in the air. She tenses her poll, lifting her nose, her job is never done. She snorts and scans the horizon for lurking coyotes or predatory plastic bags galloping along with the prairie wind.

 

… Anna Blake for Relaxed & Forward 

Want more? Join us in The Barn. Subscribe to our online training group with training videos, interactive sharing, audio blogs, live-chats with Anna, and the most supportive group of like-minded horsepeople anywhere.

Ongoing courses in Calming Signals, Affirmative Training, Fundamentals of Authentic Dressage, and Back in the Saddle: a Comeback Conversation, as well as virtual clinics, are taught at The Barn School, where I also host our infamous Happy Hour. Everyone’s welcome.

Visit annablake.com to find over a thousand archived blogs, purchase signed books, schedule a live consultation or lesson, subscribe for email delivery of this blog, or ask a question about the art and science of working with horses.

…Affirmative training is the fine art of saying yes.

The post A Short List of Things Horses Don’t Need Us to Teach Them. appeared first on Anna Blake.

Contact: Wait Too Late… Then Panic

 

Dear Fellow Primates: It is our instinct to grab. It is our instinct to talk in imitation-semaphore with our hands, to eat with our hands, and react to fear or alarm with our hands. We start when we’re babies being offered a finger to grab and we never let go. We use our hands to fuss, fumble, and fidget and we do it so naturally, we don’t notice.

Horses, however, do notice every small movement on the reins or on the lead rope. Reins work like a megaphone from our hands to their most fragile mouths, metal on bone. Last week, I wrote about it but if you ask a horse, the bottom line is, bit or bit-less, they don’t like their faces pulled on. Horses might put humans into two categories, the ones who don’t know they have bad hands and the ones who do know and are working on it.

Think of the woman in the knife-throwing act. She stands stock-still as the knives slam into the wood right next to her face and she doesn’t flinch. Horses wish we were more like her. Egads, most of us cover our faces during pillow fights. Instinctively.

A good riding instructor agrees with horses on the topic of hands. Truthfully, nothing is more challenging than developing kind, giving contact. We think training horses is the act of teaching horses to give up their flight instinct, but in trade, we must overcome our instinct to grab. It takes time to surrender instinct to trust.

Want to learn a cheat in the meantime? A shortcut your horse can appreciate right now? I’ll explain it in the way I would work on an issue with a horse. It doesn’t work to tell a horse (or a human) that every move they make is wrong. Constant correction diminishes confidence and encourages a bad attitude. As affirmative trainers, we say yes to the horse, so when training ourselves, we must find ways to do the same, with the happy knowledge that horses and riders are works-in-progress forever, if we’re lucky. Then deconstruct the problem into smaller pieces and start by finding success with fundamentals.

You’re riding, the sun is shining, the stride of your horse rocks your spine in a soft rhythm, the reins are soft, and all is well with the world. The next instant it’s a fight, you’re pulling and he’s bracing, and it doesn’t matter who started it. Barring a spook, what happened? Because a spook isn’t a reason, it’s an excuse. Start by finding the core reason. Commonly, we get in trouble by missing our mark. We wait too late and then panic. We feel rushed and react loudly with our hands. It could be turning a corner or changing speed, would you have needed to pull a rein if you had prepared sooner?

Step one is understanding how horses move. If they are moving freely forward, horses can be very agile but if we confine their movement with the reins, they lose balance. If they’re moving with restriction, they get awkward. Bi-peds can pivot but having four legs is cumbersome in small quarters. Think of turning a truck and trailer, the horse’s front and rear must both negotiate the turn. If you don’t plan for the room needed, you’ll overcorrect with your hands.

One of the most common times we pull on a horse’s face is asking him to make a 90 degree turn from a halt, mounted or in hand. We pull their heads to the side as if we were steering a parked car. Forward motion is needed to turn a car or a horse. It’s a hard-fast rule. A horse must be moving before we ask for anything else. When your horse is allowed to move forward, riding feels like gliding on ice, he can be light and agile. Constricted reins are like leaving the parking brake on. Drag and resistance for both of you.

Deconstruct to a solution: If we prepared ahead, the last-minute wrestling wouldn’t happen. Practicing transitions is a place to start. Pick a mark up ahead; a post on the long side of the arena or a rock beside the trail, but plan to turn there. If your horse’s nose is already at the mark, it’s too late! Pick another mark. But if you prepare before that mark, ask your horse to stride on and simply turn your waist. Your reins haven’t changed, your horse has turned, and you haven’t broken your horse’s rhythm. That’s the secret. You must ride in alignment with his movement. A break of rhythm in you is a loss of balance for your horse.

Pick another mark ahead and prepare for a halt. Ask your horse to go forward, and then count three strides with your sit bones, melting into the saddle with an exhale on three. Don’t pull, if you miss your mark, adjust on the next go, give your horse time to process that you’re not pulling on the reins. Congratulate yourselves and try again. Pick another mark and prepare to trot at that spot. Inhale, relax your shoulders, inhale deeper, and in the rough vicinity of the mark, allow your horse to lift to the trot. Allow his poll movement to balance, follow with your hands and then pick another mark up ahead, and exhale down to a bold walk.

You’ll miss the marks in the beginning but if you are a few strides off, who cares? Cheers all around; it’ll improve as the two of you find balance in the transition. That’s what it means to be a work-in-progress. You’re learning that working with your horse’s movement is more important than the position of a rock or a post. Practice kindly. Eventually, your horse will trust your hands, as much as you respect his mouth.

You know you’re doing dressage, right? There might even be letters on the walls. In dressage, we believe the art is in the transition, that how we ask is as important as what we ask. Preparation is the building block to better hands and a relaxed and forward horse, whether trail riding or any other discipline.

Authentic dressage isn’t about breeches, but a helmet is only common sense. It isn’t about what kind of saddle you ride in, but the ability to communicate through that saddle. We endeavor to ride the inside of the horse, and we do it from the inside of our bodies. Dressage was born centuries ago to encourage the strength, suppleness, and confidence of the horse. Dressage happens when two souls find oneness in movement.

I’ll be talking about Dressage Fundamentals for Every Horse at The Barn School this Sunday.

… Anna Blake for Relaxed & Forward 

Want more? Join us in The Barn. Subscribe to our online training group with training videos, interactive sharing, audio blogs, live-chats with Anna, and the most supportive group of like-minded horsepeople anywhere.

Ongoing courses in Calming Signals, Affirmative Training, Fundamentals of Authentic Dressage, and Back in the Saddle: a Comeback Conversation, as well as virtual clinics, are taught at The Barn School, where I also host our infamous Happy Hour. Everyone’s welcome.

Visit annablake.com to find over a thousand archived blogs, purchase signed books, schedule a live consultation or lesson, subscribe for email delivery of this blog, or ask a question about the art and science of working with horses.

…Affirmative training is the fine art of saying yes.

The post Contact: Wait Too Late… Then Panic appeared first on Anna Blake.

Calming Signals: “But My Mare Likes This Bit”

I arrived at the clinic grounds Friday afternoon so I could meet the organizers and check out the facility. They’d also set up a lesson for someone who didn’t get into the clinic. The rider was warming up in the arena when I introduced myself. Her mare was beautiful, strong, with a dappled coat. She also had worried eyes and a bit with long shanks, most likely a high port; the sort commonly called a correction bit.

I hate this part. I always ask that clinic participants wear helmets and use lower-level Dressage-legal bits; a simple snaffle or Mullen, or bitless bridles are fine, too. This rider wore a helmet but maybe she didn’t know. When we’d exchanged greetings, I asked about the bit in the least confronting way I could. Because we are all defensive when it comes to our horses. But the rider smiled and told me she’d searched high and low. This was the first bit her mare liked. The problem she had wasn’t the bit, she said, but that her mare, who used to be rushing all the time, didn’t want to go forward now.

This is what you expect me to say to her: “That harsh bit is cruel.” It is, but that isn’t the real problem. Neither is not wanting to go forward, obviously. What horse would willingly walk into pain? Now the great debate about bit or bitless kicks in and we’ve all become part of the problem. We’re talking about tack instead of listening.

Here’s how it starts. The mare tosses her head, fussy with rein contact. Our immediate instinct is to try to pull her to stillness. Now she’s lost balance, but it’s about now that riders lose confidence, too. It gets worse, so naturally, we try another bit. Traditional training even supports the counterintuitive idea that a horse “progresses” to stronger bits as a natural course. Why would a good rider on an advanced horse need more control? But if our rider asked for advice, this was probably what she got. Add to that, most gaited horses are trained in similar bits. Don’t even ask me how I feel when I see a kid on a horse with one of these bits. Finally, I have a kind memory of one of the most dysfunctionally shut down horses I ever worked with, who years before had come home from starting as a two-year-old, in a spade bit. Take a breath for him.

How many times do we solve one problem by creating another? Head tossing isn’t the mare saying I don’t like this bit. Horses don’t think about snaffles or shank bits. Most obviously, no horse ever asks for a harsher bit. Assuming the vet has confirmed her teeth aren’t sharp and she isn’t in some other pain, the horse tosses her head to say she’s uncomfortable. She’s warning her rider that her confidence is shaky and she needs some help. The horse and her rider aren’t even conversing on the same topic. The rider is talking about bits and just like always, the horse is fearful for her life. They might as well be Abbott and Costello in Who’s on First except that horses have no sense of humor where their emotions are concerned.

In this case, the mare didn’t like this bit better; her head had stopped being fussy because it hurt more to toss. It’s like someone putting duct tape over your mouth. It does succeed in making you quiet until you beat the door or stomp your feet. More rope needed for you.

The real question is how does it happen that the two of us look at the same horse, one seeing a horse who likes her bit and the other one seeing a horse filled with desperation? I teach calming signals, how a horse expresses their feelings, as the most important key to building a partnership with a horse. But there is something I hate about calming signals, too. Learning about them often starts with a bitter pill. Usually, something we read as cute or affectionate or maybe just peaceful is something much darker. Shutting a horse down might be the cruelest thing because we take away the beauty that drew us to horses in the first place.

It takes no special skill to know what pinned ears mean, or when a horse bares his teeth at us. But it isn’t just how many calming signals have we missed before the horse rebels. The challenge is that reading positive signals is harder than the angry ones.

How do we tell horse likes the bit? Bits are metal on bone. Bits take away autonomy; their Horse-God given right to flight. For those of you in bitless side pulls or rope halters, they can be just as intimidating. So far, we’ve blamed bits and not our hands, our bad advice in the past, or our lack of trust. That is the big picture.

Horses will never enjoy a loss of balance and freedom. At the least, use a bit does not interfere with the natural movement of her head. Learn to read the stoic response as well as the reactive ones. You want to see a soft poll, relaxed lips, and alert curious eyes. You should want your horse’s permission, not resistance. The old domination paradigm was to force a horse to give to pressure. We answer resistance by downsizing the bit and getting riding lessons from a good trainer. The best we can hope for is acceptance. The horse accepts the gentle bit, and we accept that our hands always need to improve. Let the negotiations begin!

These days there are all kinds of photos of people riding without bridles at all, and as usual, each horse has an opinion. Look closely, not all are happy. We need to listen to our horse. It’s not a choice between a brutal bit or nothing at all. It’s about never allowing yourself to become complacent about what a bit means to a horse. We must both agree to give up control.

How did that lesson go? I did what I always do. I tied a neckring about the mare and handed it to the rider with the request that she hold it with her reins, but adjusted so the neckring keeps contact with the mare’s shoulders while the reins remain long, not impacting the bit. The mare doesn’t immediately trust that her mouth won’t hurt and the rider doesn’t immediately trust that she can control her mare, but they are closer to being in the same conversation. Closer to being partners.

 

… Anna Blake for Relaxed & Forward 

Want more? Join us in The Barn. Subscribe to our online training group with training videos, interactive sharing, audio blogs, live-chats with Anna, and the most supportive group of like-minded horsepeople anywhere.

Ongoing courses in Calming Signals, Affirmative Training, Fundamentals of Authentic Dressage, and Back in the Saddle: a Comeback Conversation, as well as virtual clinics, are taught at The Barn School, where I also host our infamous Happy Hour. Everyone’s welcome.

Visit annablake.com to find over a thousand archived blogs, purchase signed books, schedule a live consultation or lesson, subscribe for email delivery of this blog, or ask a question about the art and science of working with horses.

…Affirmative training is the fine art of saying yes.

The post Calming Signals: “But My Mare Likes This Bit” appeared first on Anna Blake.

The Word Inside an Exhale: EASE

It’s January first. The calendar has flipped over and I’m happy with the new numbers. New Year’s is an excellent holiday if you like fresh starts and I certainly do. Like most horse people, I’m a perfectionist, and besides, there is always something on a list I didn’t get done. I know a change on a calendar is only a line in the snow. It’s the same world it was twenty-four hours ago. It’s just our habit on this special day, to lift our eyes to the months to come.

All our horses are a year older today, for purposes of record-keeping and vet calls. The youngsters are closer to being started and they fill us with hope for the future if we can manage the rest. And the elders clock one more year to a total that comes with a bit of anticipatory grief. Horses don’t live as long as we do, something we will never make peace with. The midlife horses hold us up. Nothing less. We’re famous for getting their age wrong because we want time to stand still; our time with them right now to just stay in place. We aren’t any more fond of change than horses are.

In the years I boarded, I’d shower and rush out to the barn just as my geldings got their breakfast. Usually too cold to ride, it was just to check in, stick the end of my nose in their manes, and be warmed by confirming their existence. That the barn was still standing. For all the chaos in my life, if I could rest a hand on a horse, I’d get through it.

I’m decades on the farm now and not much has changed. I don’t shower first anymore. I tuck my pajama pants into my muck boots, grab the heavy barn coat and a few hats, so I can drag a cart through the snow and tie up fresh hay bags. It’s the chore none of us ever tire of doing. I keep an eye on my feet; the ground is frozen hard, and you can take a tumble on a pile of manure if you’re not careful. Horse people of a certain age admit that they don’t bounce as well as they used to, and that applies to getting bucked off our own feet, too. Seems our horses aren’t the only ones a year older. But a pause to look east, my breath coming out as steam, while the sky colors itself pink and yellow waiting for the sun. This precious life…

Every time I write about what horse people are like, as I did last week, I hear from you, dear readers, and there are high fives all around. Okay, not high fives because we’re introverts. Not your entry-level introvert, either. We are isolationist introverts who think no one else feels like we do. So, some readers comment in wonder that I can describe us so well. Maybe you haven’t read my memoir? It’s true our families and co-workers think we’re nuts. We may not watch much TV because our lives are reality shows already. And we may listen to the weather reports more than talk shows, but we are not so buried in a haystack that we don’t know we’re fringe-dwellers. We have no regrets. Horses make sure we’re used to embarrassment and laughing at ourselves, even as we’re proud of the impracticability of “owning” them.

A few weeks back, we were having a conversation at the Barn School about aging with horses. We shared hacks to make the work easier, a rare nod to our mortality. It’s stuck with me. I’m tough as a goat. Like you, I’m stubborn and I won’t quit as a matter of pride. My first sentence uttered as a child was, “I’ll do it myself” and it would be fine with me to be buried out behind the barn. But there is a new word in our vernacular about farming: Sustainability. We protect our pastures like treasure but what about ourselves?

So, there I was, breathing my way into my restorative yoga practice on Zoom. I may be a horse person but I’m not a neanderthal. Besides, Covid-19 made me an online horse trainer, having yoga this way made sense. We were breathing and my lists were beginning to fade. My yoga teacher suggested setting an internal intention for our session. I confess, sometimes I pick a thing I’m angry about, just make peace with my feelings, but this time I wasn’t quelling a rant. I was so exhausted; 2020 felt like being dragged behind a truck. I put a good spin on it, but the weight of the year landed in that exhale and a word rose in front of me: Ease.

It surprised me, of course. I’m a horse person. We don’t think that way; it wasn’t my word. It might have been a message from my long-departed Grandfather Horse. He’d pick a time like this; it wasn’t always easy to get a word in edgewise with me. I considered this odd word, remembering that the turning point in our years together was when I stopped pushing so hard. Ease. The Grandfather Horse had a way of looking at you when you figured out something obvious to him. It wasn’t entirely kind, but we were in it for the long run, he held the hope that he could bring me around, and he eventually succeeded. Maybe it was his word. Ease.

The week before, I’d bought an ATV. It’s the first motorized help I’ve had on the farm. I wanted one decades ago when I was hand-raking thirty-five tons of sand in the arena. As one does. No one knows how many tons of manure I’ve pulled in my muck cart, snow or drought. Instead, I spent the vast fortune I made training horses on necessities like fostering rescues. It was common sense to me because doing things the hardest way possible is the only way I know. The ATV salesperson talked about riding motorcycles his whole life, and for a moment I remembered mine, but then I said, “Tell me, what is the challenge of riding something with an ignition?” He laughed and right away, asked if I had horses. Yes, I’ll be using this pretty blue trike, staying in low gear, to haul manure. With ease, now that I think about it.

So that’s my word for 2021. A word that goes against my nature, but I’ll give it a try. Like most things horses have taught me, it will involve a change in me. Maybe it’s time to make peace with the world outside my own barn.

Thanks for reading along with me these last eleven years, but especially this challenging one, 2020. Writing is nothing without readers, and your comments back have lifted me up. I appreciate your valuable time. Along with my gratitude, you can guess my wish for you all in the New Year: Ease.

 

… Anna Blake for Relaxed & Forward 

The Relaxed & Forward Barn School* offers small group, online courses taught by Anna, and using your own horse.

Classes starting soon include:

Equine Calming Signals
Affirmative Training
Living the Question: “Independent Study with Friends.”
Back in the Saddle: A Comeback Conversation
Authentic Dressage: Fundamentals for every horse.
Human Calming Signals: What horses see in us.

Join us at The Barn School and stick around for “Happy Hour.

*Recommended by horses who like to work from home.

…Affirmative training is the fine art of saying yes.

 

The post The Word Inside an Exhale: EASE appeared first on Anna Blake.

When There’s No Room At The Inn…

Even on holidays, our family dinners don’t look like other people’s.

Neither do our hands or shoes. We look different; we have chronic hat hair from helmets or broad-brimmed favorites that never quite keep us out of the sun. We buy half our clothes in the men’s department which explains why we are unrecognizable the one or two times of the year that we get gussied up. We arrive late with visible dog hair, only to debate the relative worth of zip ties versus baling twine. Not dazzling dinner conversation. Then we’re the first to leave so we can get home in time for the night feed.

We’re introverted, not that we care but we must make a living so we venture out in public trying to fake being normal, till we can come home and muck. We’re independent and tough. Unafraid of blood or mice. The app we use most on our phones is for weather because it’s never small talk if you live on the land. We cry barking tears when the old one-eyed barn cat wanders off to die. It’s just that he reminded us of that tabby we had when we were three. We’re quiet about it, but we love hard. We appreciate a good swear word like hot sauce on eggs. We know the value of horse friends because who else can stand us?

We marry for life, or never marry at all. Sometimes we get it wrong but pick ourselves up and try again. We’re not quitters. We have kids so we can buy ponies, or we choose to not have children and never regret it. We set a course for our lives that usually involves a few bumpy dirt roads and dead ends. Horses teach us most of what we need to know. You can take us at our word. We’re the first to offer a kind hand. Some of us have big noisy clans and some of us have more dogs than family. Maybe we never quite fit in in the first place or maybe we eventually outlived our relatives. Most of us exist outside the boundaries of one kind or another. We still keep a quiet eye out for our neighbors.

When other people call us contrary, we share a sideways solidarity glance with the donkey. When our horses gallop to greet us, others might be intimidated by their size but not us. They take our breath away every time but for an entirely different reason. Other people say we have idiosyncratic personalities or peculiar behavioral characteristics. I suppose it could look that way if you didn’t have a goat. Compared to goats, we manage to look like fairly solid citizens.

We’re horse people. We are perfectly suited to homestead Mars or endure a pandemic.

But this year has been exhausting. We can juggle the first five or six challenges, but we passed that back in May. While we were all focused on the news, life continued. There has been such an immense loss. We thought because of the pandemic, we might get a pass on the normal grieving parts of life, but no. Instead, we had real-life as usual, with Covid adding an extra suffocating dark layer, every day piling on top of the one before, until we are numb. So much blame and back-biting. We’ve redefined divisiveness. We’ve heard the word unprecedented so many times it’s come to mean ordinary. There are no winners, just survivors.

As social media has raged on all sides, we quietly fought back by posting photos of stinky old dogs with cloudy eyes. Of horses chewing hay because we know that peaceful sound heals. We’ve raised money for rescues and people in need. While our horses liked having us home, we all had to find new ways to be relevant. We changed ourselves. We wrestled with technology in a love-hate free-for-all until we cheered each other in Zoom courses and made friends around the world. We’ve shared breath with our horses and with each other.

If the romance of drought, rising hay prices, and frozen manure aren’t enough, horse people are also first responders and essential workers. We’re caretakers and contact tracers. We are friends in the very best sense of the word, and we have never needed each other more.

This time of year, who hasn’t felt some version of there being ‘no room at the inn’? In this year of isolation and missing our loved ones, it can feel like we have no place to belong, but humans are herd animals. While some people have nativity scene figurines arranged around tiny stables on their mantle, while some of us are bundled up throwing extra hay for a cold night, we all look up at the same midnight stars. It’s time to see our differences as assets and respect all people who pioneer and persevere, whether developing vaccines or stocking grocery shelves. On this holiday that praises family, can we extend that word to include friends, communities, and this imperfect beautiful farm that we all share? Peace on Earth.

 

… Anna Blake for Relaxed & Forward 

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