Anna Blake's Blog, page 26

Making Peace with Anxiety

A caption for this photo? “Dressage rider doesn’t grasp the fundamentals of team penning.” How about “Dressage rider brings a breath of fresh air to The Cowboy Way.” Words matter.

The goal of affirmative training is to collect positive experiences for your horse. We never want to dominate or push too hard. Once the horse is in his flight mode, his sympathetic nervous system, then he can’t learn. A horse trained with fear and intimidation isn’t reliable. He maintains a level of constant anxiety around his rider, on his alert for sticks, flags, and things that hurt him. We want to think the horse is focused on us. Well, dread is a kind of focus.

On the other hand, if all we ever do is walk on eggshells around horses, we get a similar response. Horses get nervous when humans listen like wolves. Some of us are so cloying with our love-stare that horses play dead, fearing we might eat them. Some of us furrow our brows and gaze without blinking. It’s unnatural; kind of like being a mouth-breather only with our eyes. A stare down with a horse isn’t the same thing as a connection.

When you think about it, you know what it feels like, dominating or cloying, to be watched like prey, don’t you?

One standard for understanding domestic horse behavior is how feral horses behave. Are they sedate deadbeats living a life in paradise? There are still predators, still droughts, and floods, and fires. It’s certainly true if you listen to calming signals, the horse’s body voice, that horses in the wild have less anxiety generally than track horses or horses in therapeutic programs or maybe the worst, horses who live alone. But if wild horses didn’t share the same nervous system, if they didn’t feel anxiety, they would be extinct, wouldn’t they?

Luckily, we humans don’t have anxiety except for when people watch us, or when we make a life-change. It’s only common sense to feel anxiety sitting astride a thousand-pound flight animal. Humans are the true masters of anxiety because we have frontal lobes. We can stay awake all night spinning our minds about work or getting old or the price of hay. We have anxiety about what might happen, what has happened, and that we might mess up right now. You’d think we’d understand horses better.

And then one more thing about anxiety. We have it before weddings and vacations and the Christmas holidays. We have it when we’re young and healthy. Anticipation is a kind of anxiety. Some of us just love family meals and getting to see friends at parties and putting on new clothes for the first day of school. We have anxiety about positive things as often as negative things.

So much of life is a combination of conflicting emotions, one of the definitions of a calming signal. Take going to the dentist, for instance. We know it’s for our welfare and we want a nice smile, but we hate needles around our gums. We’re put in a vulnerable position with our feet level with our heads and there are strange, bad-tasting things in our mouths that poke and scrape. The people seem kind but we’re deer-in-the-headlights blind and not breathing well with rubber dams, mouth vacuums, and one or two stranger’s hands in our mouths. And something hurts every time, or there’s the anxiety that something might hurt like the last time. Do you still think bits are only as harsh as the hands that use them?

Anxiety is a promise or a threat, it’s happy or sad, good or bad, and even those extremes can turn on a dime. It’s enough to give you anxiety. Humans and horses share an involuntary instinct to stay alive and anxiety powers our very survival, which is good. Maybe we can agree on a simpler definition: Anxiety is being alive.

Accepting anxiety as a normal part of life means that life is happening, and we want to survive it. That’s an affirmation; that is the great adventure of risking one thing to get a better thing. Being alive is hanging in midair between today and tomorrow, knowing that change is inevitable. We might as well act as if it was our idea in the first place. Anxiety is our life’s passion coming into view.

What if fighting anxiety is the real problem? We can’t ignore anxiety by denying when horses freeze or by acting like we don’t care. If anxiety exists, it must be expressed. But could we stop fighting something so common? Could some of the extremes of bliss and terror be softened by noticing that anxiety works on all of us, just like gravity? Would the stress lighten if we accepted it and didn’t label it good or bad, but instead, ordinary and routine.

Redefining anxiety begins with being aware of the judgment behind the words we choose. How often do we give our power away by letting our anxiety have free rein? We have a choice about which narrative we use. If we want our horses to stay with us and make good choices in difficult times, we must start that habit in ourselves. Sounds simple, which should cause normal anxiety. If you have horses, you know that the Grand Canyon exists between the two words simple and easy.

Start by noticing the varmint. Dark anxiety could be dragged out from dank cellars and cobwebbed corners. Nothing embarrasses anxiety like broad daylight, where it looks puny and its warts show. But there it is, and it scares you or your horse. Or if you’re stoic, you say it doesn’t scare either of you. Your body language will tell the truth, so lie if you want to. But we take a breath and say hello. Acknowledging it is the powerful part. Take a good long moment, you and your horse, to suss out the situation. That’s the exact moment when we stop being adversarial; we become partners with our horses. Working together anxiety can be changed. This is when challenges turn into confidence, by the power of an affirmative word.

“Good boy,” and your horse starts to remember who he is. Now take a breath for yourself. “Good girl.” Clouds clear both from your mental skies. “Should we go play with the scary thing?” “You’re right, let’s wait a minute, good suggestion.” “I’m listening, can we think about trying again?” He shifts his weight, not taking a forward step. But he’s thinking about it. “Bravely done.” Now let that rub off on you, too.

All we are saying is give please a chance.

…

Anna Blake for Relaxed & Forward

Want more? Visit The Relaxed & Forward Barn School to see our class schedule, online courses and virtual clinics available on a revolving basis on Calming Signals, Affirmative Training, and More. Join our community there. Or go to AnnaBlake.com to find out more, book 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. Join us in The Barn, our online training group with video sharing, audio blogs, live chats with Anna, and so much more.

Working with riders of any discipline and horses of any breed, Anna believes affirmative dressage training principals build a relaxed & forward foundation that crosses over all riding disciplines in the same way that the understanding Calming Signals benefits all equine communication.

The post Making Peace with Anxiety appeared first on Anna Blake.

Photo & Poem: Forever Now

Walking past the mare, I let my hand follow the shape

of her body, her hair so short it has no texture in the

height of summer. My fingers slip under her mane first,

and remembering the full moon on night she was born,

watching with the rest of the herd as her dam gave a

deep nicker encouraging the foal to push up on her feet.

Tall now, following the crest of her neck to her withers,

wide atop her broad chest. Under saddle at four, that first

trot together, feeling her back lift me in each stride. Oh, to

be carried by this mare. Tracing the arc of her barrel, those

hard days losing herd members, both of us facing down

change. A pause, my hand comes to rest at her croup, our

hips close. Hold this moment, feel the earth beneath our feet,

inhale the still afternoon air. A sharp snort, the mare shakes

her head sending a wave down her spine to my hand. Looking

over my shoulder to glimpse her looking over her shoulder.

 

…

Anna Blake for Relaxed & Forward

Want more? Visit annablake.com to see our class schedule, online courses available on a revolving basis on Calming Signals, Affirmative Training, and More. You can book 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. Join us in The Barn, our online training group with video sharing, audio blogs, live chats with Anna, and so much more.

The post Photo & Poem: Forever Now appeared first on Anna Blake.

What Will Happen if You Don’t Ride Today?

It’s really hot here. How hot is it? I’m not saying. People get competitive. You’d just say it’s hotter where you are and then I’d have to recite our altitude, I’m much closer to the sun. You’d have a retort and the places on my body that are clammy would only get clammier. I’d still be hot, but I’d be in a worse mood about it. It’s the middle of summer. Even the sunsets burn even hotter.

We’re still recovering from the Fourth of July. Fireworks are illegal here, but apparently true patriots don’t care. My tradition for the holiday is to lay in bed watching the horses be restless all night, with the dogs are pressed against my side quivering so much the sheets are vibrating their way off the bed, and all the while telling myself that isn’t smoke I smell. It was a rough night that set all of us up for July fifth, when the new neighbors put a bunch of cattle on their twenty-acre pasture. So, my mare ran laps for a few hours, tail flagged, snorting, and beautiful, warning us of this dire threat of alien invaders, while the geldings stood at the fence, glassy-eyed and frozen on the spot. It would have been a lousy day for a ride.

Sometimes I wonder how many training issues, emotional damage, and injuries to humans happen when we think we must ride. And are we riding for their welfare, for our own, or because of some obligation from the vast but imaginary crowd of onlookers? As usual for the horse world, we have extremists on both sides. People who believe horses must be ridden every day for competitive soundness and mental focus and people who don’t ride their horses ever, saying that a relationship with a horse can be totally fulfilling for both on the ground. Some will say that competing horses is cruel, and it is if you train like a monster. But we aren’t all monsters. Others will say that horses get bored if they wander around and eat all day, which is what they were designed to do in the first place.

I notice there is always defensiveness on both sides of this conversation. Most of us hear a parental voice telling us what we should do with our horses when truthfully most of our parents would rather we didn’t have horses. So, we sit taller and feel worse about ourselves. Or it’s the culture in the barn, or expectations from strangers who know nothing about horses? Maybe you learned it on a video from someone who has an ulterior motive about your horse, or you got hung up on a cowboy fantasy. After all, movies about gray-haired women mucking probably don’t have the same theatrical appeal. Maybe feeling guilty is a habit, but now riding more is on the same list as dieting or beginning an exercise plan or volunteering in your community. It’s the list of things we would do if we were better people but, in the meantime, it’s the list of things that we fail at. Egads, how did horses get on that list?

I also notice there is a voice missing in the conversation.

Your horse doesn’t care if you ride him or not. Horses do care about living as close to “natural” as possible. Horses have three primary needs: free choice forage, the company of a herd, and room to move at liberty. These are the big three requirements and most riders, trainers, and animal behaviorists agree. Beyond that, good health care and farrier work. Something’s missing here, too. Riding doesn’t even make the top ten on the horse’s list.

Back in the day, we thought it was all discipline and dominance. We proved our toughness in the heat of summer. Do you know that horses get hot quicker than we do? Heat builds in muscle, and because they have a higher ratio of muscle to bone than we do, heat has a greater impact. Black horses want you to know color matters. His version of hot is different and now we’re back to “How hot is it?” The horse is right, dark-colored horses struggle more but research says that all horses heat up ten times faster than we do.

Back in the day, we thought horses needed to be worked six days a week. We thought young horses needed the discipline and competition horses had to hold their edge. We also had lameness issues in the extreme, early arthritis and tendon problems from starting too young and riding too much. There is no edge to hold, just peaks and valleys. We were about repetition and drilling, but brain science shows we will get farther by quitting when the horse does the thing once, and he gets time to mentally process it. Three days a week are plenty for performance horses and we tend their mental health. It ends up that the quality of the ride is more important than quantity. Will we ever learn that?

Back in the day, we thought we knew better than horses. We didn’t trust that they would remember how to be ridden if they have a day, week, or year off. Horses, and especially mares, would like you to know that they have profound memories. They have the largest amygdala of all domestic animals. When will we finally trust their intelligence?

As much as all of us love the romance we have with horses, one hard truth remains. Horses were not put on earth for us. They have a rich life of their own, rewarding bonds with herdmates, and the constant equine reality of a prey animal. Marginally domesticated, they remain true to their natures.  There are things about humans that horses like, but we aren’t the center of their lives. We are only a hobby.

How do horses feel about being ridden? I suspect they take that cue from us. It’s about as fun or miserable as we make it.

It’s up to us then. What would it mean if we gave horses a couple of months off a year? To give their backs a rest and to tune up our horse-crazy girl thrill. Horses would be sounder, and we’d be less complacent. It seems obvious they’d pick July and December off.

We could use the mental health days to make peace with societal expectations and the number of should obligations in our lives that don’t truly support us. Lighten the load of guilt baggage we carry daily. We could remember that standing next to a horse is a privilege that most don’t know. The rest is all gratitude. Ride or not, as you please.

It’s July and if we get defensive about how hot it is, imagine how defensive we get about horses. Soon, we’re defensive about being defensive. It’s really clammy around here now, but the geldings have a suggestion for that. Take a dirt bath, shake it off. No one cares if you ride.

…

Anna Blake for Relaxed & Forward

Want more? Visit annablake.com to see our class schedule, online courses available on a revolving basis on Calming Signals, Affirmative Training, and More. You can book 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. Join us in The Barn, our online training group with video sharing, audio blogs, live chats with Anna, and so much more.

 

The post What Will Happen if You Don’t Ride Today? appeared first on Anna Blake.

Photo & Poem: Her Place

A stick pony to start, with a wooden head and twine

for a mane. The tiny girl stomped unevenly, imagining

hooves at the end of her pudgy legs, her mother’s back

turned, hurrying dinner for the men. Later a spring horse

that the girl could climb on all by herself, jumping hard

up-and-down, the toy’s frame slammed and bounced

across the room, until her mother pulled her off with a

shrill scolding, worried for the linoleum. In time, the girl

went outside, found her way to soft-eyed horses who

accepted her awkwardness with grace. Each night the girl

begged off after dinner. Her mother had grown too tired

to resist. Left standing at the sink doing dishes, she worried

the girl would never learn her place. Resenting the gray mare,

shaking her head at the selfish girl riding past the kitchen

window, she watched the distance between them grow and

she worried that the girl had learned nothing from her at all.

…

Anna Blake for Relaxed & Forward

Want more? Visit annablake.com to see our class schedule, online courses available on a revolving basis on Calming Signals, Affirmative Training, and More. You can book 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. Join us in The Barn, our online training group with video sharing, audio blogs, live chats with Anna, and so much more.

The post Photo & Poem: Her Place appeared first on Anna Blake.

Calming Signals and Living on the Ulcer Continuum

Forty years ago, we didn’t know about ulcers. Some horses acted crazy and we tried to train them out of it. Colic was the number one killer of horses. We didn’t know what we didn’t know. Then around thirty years ago, we began to recognize and study ulcers. Research papers came out, scopes were invented, the connection between ulcers and colic studied. We got the harsh news that our management of horses, how we keep them, was killing them as surely as if we held a butterfly in a glass jar.

We also began to look back on horses we knew and felt hindsight guilt, the helpless feeling for good horses with obvious symptoms we didn’t know how to recognize before. It’s that guilt that spurs me to talk ulcers every chance I can. It isn’t me that brings the topic up all the time, it’s always a horse. They let you know, as plain as words on a page, if you listen to the horse’s body voice, his calming signals. I might meet the horse at a clinic because his human thinks the horse has a training issue, and they’re right. The horse can’t work because he is in pain. That’s when trainers become amateur vets. We are the ones who see the pain behaviors and if we are educated, we can help the horse. Bad behaviors are often a call for help and when the pain stops, the behavior stops. I’m not saying a trainer is qualified to diagnose; just that vets and trainers should both be concerned for the horse’s health first.

Research has yielded better management practices, supplements, and treatments for ulcers. For some horses, it’s as simple as getting a diagnosis and treatment. Horses will a previous ulcer history are likely to get them again. We estimate about 50%-90% of horses have ulcers, especially foals, but half the horses scoped and found with ulcers show no symptoms. Can we believe the numbers or are they higher? Some horses get treatment and the symptoms cease, while in some horses, ulcers can return immediately. In a minority of horses, the pain seems to never go away. I’ve worked with client horses whose pain behaviors have become chronic and unforgettable. I have a personal horse who has taken me to hell and back with disabling ulcers. Not to mention that ulcers leave scars, which are also painful. Some owners give up trying to help, claiming it’s their horse’s nasty personality. I don’t believe that.

A vet might suggest what I’m about to say is anecdotal. Interesting because I’ve been asking every vet I meet about their anecdotal thoughts about ulcers for years, “Since horses don’t have creative thought in the way we do, but do have a powerful memory, can a horse tell the difference between having an ulcer and the anxiety/pain of being in a similar situation and a previous painful experience?” Is it real or is it Memorex, as the old ad line goes. We have so little brain research that we’re left guessing. Before speaking at a recent conference, I went to listen to a university veterinarian talk about the current state of ulcer treatment. I asked my usual question and her answer was brand new. She said vets don’t think of curing ulcers so much as managing them. It felt affirming because in my work it looks like a continuum; at one end apparent pain-free peace and the other end, a thrashing colic episode. In the middle are a simple sour stomach, the memory of ulcers in the past, current ulcers, stoic horses hiding pain, ulcer scars, and whatever we still don’t know. Call it gastric discomfort but if we read calming signals, we understand that horse isn’t okay. Maybe the horse needs vet care and maybe he needs emotional support.

If training causes ulcers, can different training help them? Can compassionate training have a part in healing a horse? Can we find a way to use scientific research to understand horses both physically and emotionally; to deconstruct the big words in long sentences and extrapolate the facts into understanding that help the good horse in your barn? The damage of recurring ulcers leaves an emotional scar, but what methods of working with him can support him moving forward? From another perspective, it might seem that a horse is needing to heal an abusive past of aggressive training, but there is always a physical tie, perhaps lameness or the horse’s digestive system. Horses speak to us through their bodies.

Get your horse the physical help he needs; vet care, bodywork, a supportive diet, change his living environment. From the accepted procedures to the obscure methods, consider that as long as a horse’s head is connected to his body, there will a mental aspect involved in every physical challenge and fixing one doesn’t necessarily fix the other.

Is the hold-over pain a psychosomatic (literally, “mind-body”) condition? That would be a misunderstanding. Horses don’t make up the pain to evade work. Where a real physical problem exists, the psychological factors naturally contribute to the experience. Mental behavior and attitude make the pain better or worse. We can train in support of healing? The current cutting edge of horse training is the holistic marriage of new scientific information, updated psychology, and our ability to be vulnerable to growth.

The horse world is changing fast. We must ask the hard question, are we bending horses to our will and convenience, or are we helping horses gain strength and confidence by putting their welfare first? When we know more, we must do better.

Training traditions may be comfortable habits or create romantic images, but they may also be outdated. Hindsight guilt and hand-wringing don’t help. We owe it to the memory of those horses we innocently failed and to the future of our current horses, to not cling blindly to tradition. It’s up to us to invent new training methods that understand compassion and vulnerability are dynamic and powerful strengths.

…

Anna Blake for Relaxed & Forward

Want more? Visit annablake.com to see our class schedule, online courses available on a revolving basis on Calming Signals, Affirmative Training, and More. You can book 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. Join us in The Barn, our online training group with video sharing, audio blogs, live chats with Anna, and so much more.

Working with riders of any discipline and horses of any breed, Anna believes affirmative dressage training principals build a relaxed & forward foundation that crosses over all riding disciplines in the same way that the understanding Calming Signals benefits all equine communication.

The post Calming Signals and Living on the Ulcer Continuum appeared first on Anna Blake.

Photo & Poem: Midsummer

Midsummer, the mare stands square, hooves flat

and neck low, her muzzle faced into the corner

of a dark stall, her tail as still as the heat. Do not

disturb. Hat brim tilted for hot shade, dragging my

feet in small circles, searching dusty bins for one

more clamp needed to repair a gate. Water tanks

that were fresh in the morning, now lukewarm with

soft algae creeping up from the base, still rinsing my

hands, working them to my skull. Heat so dry that

a pale green sweat is welcome. Heat so still that birds

have gone silent. The bay horse stands apart in the

east corner, watching the shade from the tree inch

across the sandy ground, patient until the afternoon

clouds turn purple and roll out from the mountains.

A late breeze skims the pond, fluttering over prairie

grasses, seeping into our lungs, as relief always will.

…

Anna Blake for Relaxed & Forward

Want more? Visit annablake.com to see our class schedule, online courses available on a revolving basis on Calming Signals, Affirmative Training, and More. You can book 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. Join us in The Barn, our online training group with video sharing, audio blogs, live chats with Anna, and so much more.

The post Photo & Poem: Midsummer appeared first on Anna Blake.

Affirmative Training and the Rhythm Method

Remember when you first heard the term The Rhythm Method? I was almost certain it had to do with something bad and music. I was a virgin then, but I was confused about what that word meant as well, because, well, Virgin Mary. Eventually, I found out The Rhythm Method was actually something you don’t talk about and math. My curiosity died, even then I was a victim of bad math. The failure rate of The Rhythm Method is 25%, which is lower than my fail rate at figuring the tip after a dinner out. For all the birthing I saw on our farm, birth control didn’t come up and I lived in the kind of house where it would have been a mistake to ask for clarification. It seemed smarter to act like I understood and try to keep up.

We’re all adults now, but how many times do we skim the surface of a concept or behavior, give it a purely intellectual glance, and then think we get it. As over-thinkers, we can believe we understand something with no actual experience. We skip over something we judge as obvious and go on to whatever bright, shiny thing just caught our attention up ahead. Calming signals are a great example. We’ve seen these equine statements for as long as we’ve been around horses, but now we understand they have a meaning deeper than we were aware. We understand that the Flehman Response isn’t the horse smiling or that when a horse moves slowly, it doesn’t mean he’s lazy.

It’s a great day when we become aware of the gap between what we imagine and what we experience with horses. Now we want to listen for Calming signals, a complicated language with nuance, so we stand stock still, all brain and no situational awareness. We’re watching and throat breathing. Think a stalking coyote. So much of working with horses is doing two things at once, but our brains get dominant in our own bodies. No wonder we send an alarm to horses.

In the saddle or on the ground, we can be moving along, feeling at one with our horse, but then a thought crosses our mind, something like, “Do I trot now?” and our body goes stiff as our brain kills our rhythm. As if we can’t think and ride simultaneously. Or on the ground, a hand might bump the rope as you think about the first step. Our minds trick us into believing them instead of our bodies, and that’s where we lose our horses. They live in the physical world, not our imaginations.

How do we improve our skills to better support our horses? We look for deeper meaning in the things we take for granted. We take something we know and re-discover it. We gain more understanding and focus not by mental effort, but rather releasing thoughts and finding the feeling of it. We can’t understand horses by reading a book any more than we can learn to swim by standing at the edge of a pool.

I’m not going to suggest a rhythm method for family planning, but rhythm is absolutely the foundation for working with horses. Rhythm is the foundation of the dressage training pyramid. It’s common knowledge, but do you feel what that means. Not think about how you don’t like competition, not wander off into a rant about hyperflexion, but hold to feeling the importance of rhythm for a horse. When does your horse relax? We know that the best leadership equals safety for a horse. That feel like relaxation. We experience that when a horse is grazing or walking or flowing like a breeze in and through their herd. Safety has a rhythm that is affirmative.

Remember the feel of a horse spooking or bolting? It’s a total break with rhythm. If you absolutely must think rather than feel this truth, then remember science; that when a horse is frightened, in his sympathetic nervous system, his heart rate goes up and his breathing goes shallow. His blood pressure spikes and his digestion slows. Now feel those words, beyond reading them. Most of us notice a pang of guilt about now, for all of the times we escalated our cues because it made human logic in our busy brains and didn’t listen to our horse’s body giving an honest response of fear. We might feel compassion for all the harsh training methods that have damaged our horses. I wish more people did, but for our purposes right now, compassion is a mental exercise that is meaningless to a horse who lives in the physical moment. How does a horse read our body when we are feeling compassion? Does it read as anxiety or an un-natural stillness? Does compassion in our minds help a horse in the real world or is it more mental busyness?

Maybe getting hung up in our thoughts is the natural default for humans. We take everything personally, making it all about us. Even when we think (keyword: think) we are being kind or compassionate, if we do not walk out those thoughts in our actions, it’s selfish chatter.  And how our horses will benefit from our mental chatter is when we translate it to something affirmatively tangible.

Here we are, back at The Rhythm Method, Equine Version.

Part one is noticing yourself. Notice when you lose rhythm. Notice when your brain hijacks your body. Become aware because if we don’t notice, we can’t improve. Is it anxiety or fear? Don’t try to change it. First sink into the experience of discomfort without mentally judging it. Does your stomach get tense? Do your shoulders change? What does your vision do? Fully inhabit your own negative body minutiae because it is the place of opportunity. If we want to change a dynamic with our horses, if we want to give them something different in our relationship, it means getting our hands dirty. Rather than fuss with the surface, go deeper to the seed of the stuck place, like the lump in your stomach that’s taken control of your body, and use The Rhythm Method. Rhythm is defined as a strong, regular, repeated pattern of movement or sound.

Breathe rhythmically. Exhale that lump into release and create space for your heart with the next inhale. Breathe into the broadness of your shoulders and the fluidity of your spine. Into your feet as they load one step and then another in a movement that draws your horse along. Shift to speak the language a horse hears because rhythm is an irresistible force. Rhythm is the miracle cure; the literal activity the calms both of you but it’s up to you to prioritize it.

Improvement means change. What starts as an idea becomes reality when we embody the words from the neck down.

…

Anna Blake for Relaxed & Forward

Want more? Visit annablake.com to see our class schedule, online courses available on a revolving basis on Calming Signals, Affirmative Training, and More. You can book 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. Join us in The Barn, our online training group with video sharing, audio blogs, live chats with Anna, and so much more.

The post Affirmative Training and the Rhythm Method appeared first on Anna Blake.

Photo & Poem: Old Dog

A deliberate old dog pacing the yard fence

with gray dreadlocks and a stiff stride. A

mixed-breed badly constructed, a heavy

body on spindly legs, but no longer content

to nap. He has worn a path but remains a bit

bewildered, not trusting his eyes or ears, his

nose intent on the breeze. The distance calls him

just beyond. Restless and thirsty, a scoop added

at dinner to hold his weight. Call his name.

He appreciates the reminder with a wag

but doesn’t come. Old dogs do as they like.

It’s cooler after dark, but he can’t find his way

to the dog door, so he stands and barks in a

flat tone, one after another, plaintive and blunt.

Here. Here. So, I go there, welcome him up

one step and in the door. A drink, water trailing

from his whiskers across the linoleum, he goes

out the dog door. Soon he calls again. Here. Here.

Answer the bark, hold the door wide as often

as he wants. Come in, old man, welcome home.

…

Anna Blake for Relaxed & Forward

Want more? Visit annablake.com to see our class schedule, online courses available on a revolving basis on Calming Signals, Affirmative Training, and More. You can book 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. Join us in The Barn, our online training group with video sharing, audio blogs, live chats with Anna, and so much more.

The post Photo & Poem: Old Dog appeared first on Anna Blake.

A Funny Thing Happened During the Euthanasia.

We’ve been having llama line dances here for over twenty years. It happens at dusk and it is boundingly beautiful. The llamas and I have hiked the trails, ground driven in harness, and competed at Llama Agility. Then we turned around and the llamas were the favorite “obstacle” when we did horse agility here on the farm. Llamas are guard animals. Naturally, it’s their job to keep stray dogs and UPS guys off the farm. For years, the ducks (and their eggs) nested in their pen, safe from lurking coyotes. If llamas think you are being rude, they are fine with taking a cush (laying down) and refusing to get up, so like me, they teach affirmative training. Finally, you will never meet a more peaceful animal who likes to share breath more than a llama.

The herd has dwindled over the years and this week, we euthanized Holiday. He was a spectacular boy, tall with big bone and heavy fleece. He was majestic and liked the women. Holiday was eighteen, which is old for a llama, even if he is the youngest of my geriatric herd. Things took a turn for Holiday during the bomb-cyclone two winters ago. The llamas huddled together in a shelter, but the wind buried them in a drift. The others had freed their heads but not Holiday. His body felt lifeless, but I chipped the ice from his facial hair and tried to resuscitate him. We got lucky but he came away with a sore back. They all have some arthritis, but he had a small limp. It got a bit worse last spring; he was slower and spent more time lying on the ground. He had good days, but you know at this point that it’s degenerative, right? Still, he was already on borrowed time and it isn’t a tragic condition to live a long life, says this woman not much younger than him in human years.

I’m no stranger to euthanasia. One of my first jobs after leaving home was at a dog shelter where euthanizing was one of my tasks. Strangely, it helps if you really love dogs. Between being a horse trainer working with rescues and having a farm, death is a common part of my life. I try to make friends with it. Euthanasia never gets easier, but you can do better for animals if you can remember that it’s not about you. I try to breathe along with the scary part. Something as ordinary as death shouldn’t be able to steal all the color from life.

Warning: Dark humor ahead.

All great vet dramas begin on the weekend. Saturday afternoon, Holiday was struggling to walk. It took a day to find my camelid vet had moved and most of Monday, no one would come. Getting a llama in a trailer is as hard as letting a dog out a door, but Holiday was tilting his head around and pinning his ears at his own hind. No translation needed. I couldn’t move him.

Dear reader, take a breath. This is the worst part. Another vet didn’t call back, the frantic search continued. I finally got a new name after 5 pm. She texted back that she’d finished with surgery at 9 pm, and offered to come in the morning. I was elated.

Holiday had a good night, nibbled hay and cooled off by the time the vet arrived, but nothing is sacred; the comedy of errors that is daily life on my farm began to unfold. The new vet was good-humored as Holiday spit continuously as she did her exam. Llamas only spit when attacked, it was fair. I apologized and got a leg between them to catch the most of it. Her diagnosis confirmed what I knew. We had the talk and she asked if there is something he liked to eat. We doubted he would eat but it meant she wanted to continue at liberty, so I skipped off to get alfalfa pellets. Holiday dug right in, as bright as he could be. The vet asked if I was good to start and I smiled, “Yes, please.” He wasn’t eating because he could recover, he was eating because I succeeded in my 18-hour fight to find help. I remind you, this is not sad. It’s a gift and if I can make it easier for the vet, then better for Holiday, too.

That was the moment Arthur crawled through the fence panel. Arthur is a Nubian goat, both taller and heavier than my mini horse. He careens over with a self-important bleat to steal Holiday’s last meal, giving me a light head butt to get out of the way. The vet is trying to hide a smile on the corners of her mouth as Arthur shoves his head into Holiday’s bucket and wags his tail. Calmly, I move the bucket away, dumping some on the ground and return to Holiday, with Arthur in hot pursuit. Alfalfa pellets are sacred, you know. In the middle of this ruckus, Holiday gets a few more bites and doesn’t notice his first shot. Arthur gives the vet a shove in case she has an eye on his pellets. The four of us do an odd dance, each with a task and no real control. As the first meds begin, Holiday rests his head on Arthur’s back. It’s a soft landing.

If there can be a favorite part of this sad process, mine is the moment when Holiday becomes pain-free. If you’re steady, you can see his breathing go deep. It’s bittersweet; the plain truth of how much pain he’s have been holding. The vet and I give it time. Some while after that, Arthur finished the pellets. I swear, if Arthur were human, he’d kick back, cross his legs, and eat potato chips in church. Then crumple the bag and toss it in the aisle.

Death is nothing. We must learn that it’s their pain that matters. All the horses, just over the fence, blew great snorts. Herds will always offer calming signals for each other. The llamas were ready for turnout with no big show of mourning. I think we were all relieved. If they knew that I helped release Holiday from life, they were fine with it. Animals don’t share our fears about death.

Last night when I opened the pasture gate, the llamas cantered in past me. As usual, I waited for Holiday to limp in last. I remembered what a large cria he was, how he hummed back and forth with his mum before he was fully born. But there are alfalfa pellets waiting, Arthur is desperately bleating at me to hurry, and all is well.

“Excess of grief for the dead is madness; for it is an injury to the living, and the dead know it not.” – Xenophon

…

Anna Blake for Relaxed & Forward

Want more? Visit annablake.com to see our class schedule, online courses available on a revolving basis on Calming Signals, Affirmative Training, and More. You can book 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. Join us in The Barn, our online training group with video sharing, audio blogs, live chats with Anna, and so much more.

The post A Funny Thing Happened During the Euthanasia. appeared first on Anna Blake.

Photo & Poem: As if Love

She declared that she loved

her horse as if loving took

a sort of noble skill rare to

our kind. As if loving a horse

was a defiant act that few

achieve. Excused from the

menial tasks of picking hooves

and tending wounds, she

claimed an instant of shared

breath as the proof of her

prowess. As if her love was

special above all others, truer

than the common dream of

those ordinary girls. As if

love was a sacred promise

that has never been broken.

…

Anna Blake for Relaxed & Forward

Want more? Visit annablake.com to see our class schedule, online courses available on a revolving basis on Calming Signals, Affirmative Training, and More. You can book 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. Join us in The Barn, our online training group with video sharing, audio blogs, live chats with Anna, and so much more.

The post Photo & Poem: As if Love appeared first on Anna Blake.