Anna Blake's Blog, page 40

Leading from Behind and Green Grass

Pia, a lovely intelligent mare who has no issue with grass.

*Public Service Announcement* Your horses pay me a small stipend to remind you of things so obvious to them that they doubt the human ability to reason. They want me to mention that it’s spring in the northern hemisphere. The spring grass is very tender and sweet. The aroma is intoxicating. They say even humans, who have no real sense of smell to speak of, must at least see it, for crying out loud. Dew-covered spring grass is better than apples and carrots, you idiots, it’s the drug of choice.

A reader request: “This leading from behind business. Sounds intriguing, but the absolute only place my mare will lead is to the nearest snip of grass or weeds. In our defense, she lives in a dry paddock, with a couple of hours a day turnout as conditions permit… I suspect the girl has some degree of food anxiety, maybe, from years of being boarded and getting just two feedings a day. All to say I just can’t compete with any bit of green morsel. You’ve mentioned that the eating may be a calming signal because I’m asking too loudly. Which begs the question, how DOES one ask for something beyond weeding the fence lines and arena??

*Continued Public Service Announcement* Your horse says they have no issue with grazing in any way. It’s your issue entirely, even if he gets sick. Horses are designed to graze most hours of the day. It’s natural to think of the next meal while eating this one. He concedes that you take good care of him, but this is ancestral survival instinct passed down from infinity.  He wants to remind you that you knew he was a horse when you bought him. He’d also like to remind you that bluntness is an under-rated superpower.

This is our challenge, isn’t it? How to be more interesting than grass?

Reader, I do think your mare’s past plays a part, as does her ulcer history and the current situation, even with free-choice hay, she reminds you, is sticks and dirt compared to fresh grass. Because most of us have been taught grazing is wicked disobedience, we jerk their heads up. Naturally, their grazing takes on a frantic quality. They think they’ll be punished each bite. How could a horse not give a calming signal?

Then there’s what horses might read in us when we try to train something new: Desire, passion, want, frustration, impatience, and perhaps a small dose of general craziness. In other words, the exact way horses feel about a spring graze.

Adjust your thinking. Let the horse take you for a walk. Say, “You go first.” Leading from behind is a conversation, an exercise. It’s more about exploring than training. Leading from behind is curious, peaceful, and done on horse time.

Leading from behind is more complicated than you imagine because it’s counter-intuitive to usual training, but at the same time, simple enough that we over-think it should be easy. It’s not about them doing something for us. Horses need time to think about that. We’ve taught them that we’ll pull on their faces if they take that step, we’ve micromanaged their heads. We tend to help too much and do it for them, which is more head-handling.

Horses want us to know they’d be crazy to trust that cue. And for some mysterious reason, every other training insecurity, past or present, seems to come up, too. For them, the question we’re asking is bigger than a step. Respect that.

Remember the fundamental law: All forward in a horse begins in his hind end. Leave his head alone. If it takes twenty minutes for him to offer a step, keep reciting this truth. Breathe, let him figure it out without interruption. Offering choice to a horse who isn’t used to it might feel confusing to him and challenge his confidence.

Some walk right off, especially if they were ground driven in training, while other horses who were started in other training methods, will start awkwardly at first. The horse doesn’t know what you want, but his brain is engaged, so reward the him for thinking. The conversation has begun. Watch his calming signals and if he says you’re too loud (by shutting down,) get quiet. Let a weight shift be a big deal. Horses learn in hindsight; they know they’re right when we release the cue, so take breaks.

Part of the point of leading from behind is that we don’t correct them, we just say yes. If that isn’t possible on grass, practice somewhere without grass. Use an arena, put obstacles out. If you want to be nice, put handfuls of hay around for the horse to find. This is supposed to be fun for them, crank up the music. Lighten up. Training doesn’t have to be so serious. Horses think we get a bit coyote-like when we think too hard.

Imagine this: Horses could feel freer on a lead rope than liberty work feels when there’s a whip. The goal is a walk of autonomy. It’s a confidence builder but it means more than that to horses. It’s about the freedom to choose. Can we let them be their most natural selves next to us? From the number of people who write to tell me of amazing improvements in other seemingly unrelated issues, I know this matters to horses in some primal way, perhaps healing things as old as the desire to graze.

At clinics, participants have a choice of groundwork, riding, or a combo for their lessons. Recently, we were at an indoor unfamiliar to the horses, with mirrors, obstacles stacked at the end, and lots of odd noises outside. We had a wide range of horses; youngsters and rescues and performance horses, but all the participants wanted to start with leading from behind. We had the best time letting the horses be curious. Every inch was explored, every horse-in-the-mirror was spellbinding. Situational awareness is life-or-death for a horse, but we can trust it to them. The release of stress was palpable all day, as the horses showed us their beauty, courage, and intellect.

…

Anna Blake at Infinity Farm

Want more? Join us at The Barn, our online training group with video sharing, audio blogs, live chats with Anna, and so much more. Or go to annablake.com to subscribe for email delivery of this blog, see the Clinic Schedule, or ask a question.

Working with riders of any level and horses of any breed, Anna believes dressage fundamentals combined with an understanding equine calming signals build a relaxed & forward foundation that crosses over all riding disciplines.

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37. Grandfather Horse, When Animals Have Pets…

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36. Horse Trading and Online Dating

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35. Do You Think It’s Time to Clean the Truck?

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Photo & Poem: Bond

 

He said show her who’s boss. Standing with her head

in the corner and hooves nervous on the straw, a wild-eyed,

pregnant pinto pony, no taller than the quiet girl in a boy’s

t-shirt. The dad said she has to respect you, setting them

up for a fight. He goaded the girl forward, her dream of a

pony shot with dread. She took a small step, longing to touch

the mare’s mane but the mare swung her hips over, a hoof

took to the air grazing the girl’s cheek. His angry yell, no

time for foolish weakness, the stall door slammed trapping

the red-faced girl in her father’s anger and the mare’s fear.

When the barn was silent, tears brought gasping sobs, the girl

slumped in the opposite corner, hand to her face, shamed and

defeated. The mare watched through her forelock, shifting her

hind for a better view, one unseen step toward the wild girl, and

then another. The mare pushed breath slowly, the girl frozen

as the mare’s pink muzzle touched the scrape on the girl’s cheek.

…

Anna Blake at Infinity Farm

Want more? Join us at The Barn, our online training group with video sharing, audio blogs, live chats with Anna, and so much more. Or go to annablake.com to subscribe for email delivery of this blog, see the Clinic Schedule, or ask a question.

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The Argument for Curiosity: From Fear to Courage

Cadence teaching contact.

I rarely have any idea where I’m headed. I get in a car with a stranger outside of baggage claim and go to a horse facility I’m not familiar with. I don’t know the participants or the horses, their histories or skill level. It’s fine though, I’d wind up giving a different clinic each time, anyway. I always have a plan, my clinics are based in a “concept”, so we’re all tethered to an idea, but then the horses take over. That’s the challenge with wanting your horse to be a partner; they get a vote, too. It must be mutually beneficial.

It’s rare when a horse is at his best when I see him on the first day of a clinic. There’s been some serious grooming and a trailer ride to a place they may not know any more than I do. There might be stalls or maybe pens, but it isn’t like home and it’s already full of strange horses who are all on edge for the same reasons. There are strange smells and odd shadows. It’s a busy place. They may not sleep well; they may not even lay down. They have no idea if they are ever going to see their herd again. There are youngsters and new partners and rescue horses, each a unique individual. We all hope there’s that a certain sort of mature mare who’s used to this kind of weekend and will flick an ear to tell everyone to snap out of it and take a breath, for crying out loud. If not, I do my best.

On top of it, each horse’s human is usually a little excited. Humans come because they love their horse and want to do the best possible for them. They’re eternal students of the horse; they try hard, feel vulnerable, are there for all the right reasons, but still a bit nervous with anticipation; they probably alarm their own horses a bit. It’s complicated.

Some people think it’s wrong to put a horse in this kind of stressful situation. I get their point. When a horse is afraid and in his sympathetic nervous system (flight/fight/freeze), he can’t learn. The problem is that we can’t save horses from stress. I define stress as being alive. Wild horses feel stress from drought, pain, and changes in their herd. Here in the domestic world, we have vet emergencies, natural disasters, and an infinite number of unplanned opportunities. Horses need to be able to get by in our world, so they will be safe if the unthinkable happens. What if they outlive us?

One solution is to train horses to be relaxed and confident. After all, it’s not like horses need to be trained to canter. They’ve been doing flying changes in the pasture all along. We might use transitions as conversation starters, but the real topic must always be confidence. How to allow our horses the autonomy to be confident partners? We humans like to think that training could work like mind control; that we could teach them to lay down their instincts somehow. That won’t happen but we can encourage them to be problem solvers, resilient and engaged.

Disclaimer: there was a time that I thought teaching a horse to relax was nebulous hogwash. Training confidence even more so; after all, my own confidence came and went like a stray cat.

If stress is the nature of being alive, how can we make it work for horses, rather than against? People say what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, but that isn’t the same as confidence. It’s worn bravado. Maybe your brain is wandering off to your own bad memories now. The mistakes and scares; the times your horse spooked or hours later, the trailer remained empty. The trainers who yelled at you to calm down. The times you were told you were ruining your horse, but you were doing your best, and then you felt even worse about it. The nerve-wracking challenges out on the trail or in front of the judge. Everything you’ve read or the videos you’ve watched that make it look easy, but the horse looks sour. The memory of every wreck you ever heard about; the injuries to horses and people that haunt you still. All the contradictory training tips and all the bad advice from railbirds. Or professionals.

Is this how horses feel when they get flooded by too many cues, too many contradictions, too much micromanaging direction? If there’s anything as anxiety-inducing as being a horse, it might be “training” one.

When people ask what flooding means I’m reminded that water always seeks the same level; that we are as flooded as they are a lot of the time. The reason to understand how horses think and learn is that repeating bad training techniques, that are ineffective, damages a horse’s emotional wellbeing as well as not solving issues.

Great, you say. Now what?

Where does courage begin in horses? Think of every foal; their ears forward, their eyes wide, as they negotiate the world. Isn’t that brave? A horse that’s curious is engaged and thinking. He’s using judgment and when we reward thinking, we’re affirming his intelligence. It’s time to let your horse get curious again, even if it takes him a while to trust it.

My favorite way of encouraging curiosity is leading from behind. It’s letting your horse call the shots, so it’s harder for us than it sounds. It wakes up stoic horses, it gives reactive horses choice. It’s an activity that means something bigger to horses than us and that might be the best reason to let him lead you. Give it a try and if you’re worried that you’re training it wrong, re-frame that. It’s meant as an exercise in curiosity for both of you.

Leading from behind requires a human, despite being worn down by self-over-cueing, to turn stress into a prettier color. It’s getting honestly engaged with our horses rather than using a technique;  more creativity than answer by rote. It’s the practice of being in the moment and letting less be more. We “train” less and they solve the challenge on their own. Our biggest job is to breathe and acknowledge their intelligence.

Curiosity grows into courage and confidence. It looks like safety when a predator shows compassion. It looks like trust when a horse stands in his own autonomy.

…

Anna Blake at Infinity Farm

Want more? Join us at The Barn, our online training group with video sharing, audio blogs, live chats with Anna, and so much more. Or go to annablake.com to subscribe for email delivery of this blog, see the Clinic Schedule, or ask a question.

 

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34. Victim of Love, The In-Your-Pocket Horse

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Victim of Love, The In-Your-Pocket Horse

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33. How to Get a Stinky Old Dog

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How to Get a Stinky Old Dog

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