Pushing The Boundaries

So yesterday I continued working with Faith and the watering can. It became clear very soon after the start of the session, that Faith really did not want to play with water, no matter how far away it was being kept from her. Faith took herself off to the stable and put her head in the back corner, with her bum facing the door.

This made it pretty darn clear to me that she wasn’t happy with the idea of water anywhere near her, and although still being very polite about the whole thing, she was undoubtedly starting to feel defensive.

Now this left me with a dilemma. Firstly, as you may have gathered, I believe working with the horse at liberty, at least to some degree, is really important. I believe that allowing the horse to have the opportunity to remove themselves from the situation means it is less likely that they will feel the need to exhibit the ‘big’ behaviours of biting, kicking, barging etc. because they can choose to leave, rather than be forced into defending themselves.

I would also normally say that if your horse has got to the point where they feel the need to get physical with you, then you have totally missed the huge range of little signs they have been giving you , that lets you know that they really aren’t that happy with what you are doing, and please can you stop, or at least go back a few steps. Horses are amazingly tolerant creatures, and I do believe a ‘normal’ horse (ie one without a history of abuse) will go out of their way not to hurt you, unless you push them beyond the point of tolerance and make them feel threatened.

At the same time however, I am also aware that to let Faith simply opt out completely is not going to help her learning in the long run. Comfort zones and boundaries are there to be pushed, albeit incrementally, if our learning is to progress.

So I had to make an on the spot decision. Did I call it a day there, or did I hang on in there and try to make even the tiniest bit of progress? Rightly or wrongly, I chose the latter.

So I simply stood and waited keeping my posture neutral and relaxed, looking off into the distance, until Faith felt comfortable enough to turn around and stand resting a leg, and looking at me. With her like this, we started again. I dribbled a little water into the drain about twenty feet or so away from her, and when she continued to stand looking at me, I clicked and treated. Basically all I was asking her to do was simply watch me from her safe zone, and she was rewarded for that.

Also in my mind was Alex Kurland’s advice to administer the treat from where you wanted the horse to be. So although I may have captured Faith standing in the right spot with the click, by the time I crossed the yard to get to her, she may have stepped back. Therefore, in order to get her treat, I gave it to her from a position in which she had to step forward again.

After a few successful attempts at this, we called it a day.

This afternoon we picked up from there. Initially Faith was happy to be back out working on the yard again, but after a few minutes, clearly started to feel a bit worried and took herself back to the stable, although this time she did not turn her back on me.

We worked with her in the stable and me on the yard as we did yesterday, and to my delight, she felt confident enough to come out onto the yard again.

So we made what I felt was a pretty big step this evening. By the end of the fifteen minute session, I could pour the water on the ground in quite a splashy manner from about four feet away, and while not completely relaxed, she did choose to stand perfectly still while I did so. This is definite progress.

I still don’t know if I did the right thing by keeping a degree of pressure on. I would be interested to hear opinions on this. It is always a difficult thing to decide how much is too much, and how much is just enough. So much depends on the horse I guess, as well as how well you know her, and how willing you are as a trainer to be led by the horse’s reaction , and not by the desire to get results.
It’s a tricky one.

Watering Can Can

Right so hopefully now that the summer hols are upon us, I have been able to make a more organised childcare arrangement with Mum so I can have the time to work with Faith on a more regular basis.

So yesterday afternoon, I found myself at liberty to do some training with my filly. Actually, I guess now that she is four, she is officially a mare, but whe will always be 'the filly' to me!

I didn't really have a plan for what I should be doing, so I did ten minutes or so of rope desensitisation. Basically I want Faith to get used to ropes etc round her body, for when we start long reining, and also ropes wiggling around her feet and legs, for when I fall over when we are long reining, and let go of the reins. Basically I don't want her to take fright and run off, should she find a rope or a long rein around her feet. I've also owned a pony who was terrified of ropes etc. on the floor, and when you have a pony with a fear like that, you are often surprised at how frequently that situation will present itself. I think it's called Sod's law!

Anyway, we have already done quite a bit of this, and Faith is now entirely bored with me flinging ropes all over her neck and back and swishing them around her front and back legs and even allowing the rope to coil around them.

So after revisiting this, I was wondering what to do next, when Tilly, having taken a long drink, popped her head over the stable door, which Faith happened to be standing next to, and dribbled water all over the floor.

Well you would have thought Faith had had an electric shock. She is terrified of water. Here was our training opportunity, I fetched a watering can.

So we did a little targetting with the watering can. Fine. I then poured a little water on to the yard. Faith did not like that one bit, and took herself off to bed. I sat down and waited for a bit, and after a few minutes Faith re-emerged from her stable and looked prepared to play again. So I took the watering can a little further down the yard, and once again pured a tiny dribble of water on to the floor. Faith stood still, so I clicked and treated her. She wasn't terribly happy though, and after repeating this a couple of times she took herself back to her stable.

I wanted to end on a good note though, so when Faith once again poked her head around the stable door, I poured a little water out on to the yard, and clicked and treated her for standing still and watching. We did this a couple more times, then called it a day.

This is going to be a really interesting training issue, and if I can get to the point where I can pour water on her legs, then I know that Faith really has placed her trust in me. Anyway, as ever, there is absolutely no rush. We shall get there when we get there.

A Very Polite Young Lady!

So today I tackled two main training angles. The first was tying up practise, and the second was revisiting the leg hosing shaping plan.

I decided as far as the tying up situation goes, that instead of actually tying Faith up, I would put her on the extra long leadrope, passed through the tie ring, and just placed over the stable door. If she pulled back, the rope would run through, and I could catch it and just let it go through my hands, rather than tie her up properly, and have her brought up short.

So I had her attached to the rope slipped through the ring and over the stable door, and picked out her feet while she stood calmly and quietly, then for a few short moments, gave her a little groom, and gave her a scratch while she stood still for a few minutes.

We then carried on with the leg hosing shaping plan. As we had only got as far as the start of step two last night, I went back to the beginning and asked her to target the sponge, and as we progressed, I managed to get her comfortable with the sponge on and around her knee.

At this point we hit a snag. As Faith is a very polite young lady, and so good at having her feet picked up, as soon as she felt something running down her leg, she obligingly picked up her hoof, expecting me to be picking it out.

So my timing had to be extra good, and I had to make sure that I clicked her just before she picked up her foot, so that she understood that I wanted her to keep her foot on the ground. Fortunately, she cottoned on to this very quickly, and soon she was happy for me to run the sponge down to just below her knee.

Shaping Up!

Getting back into things after what seems like a rather long winter, has led me to consider the use of shaping plans in training. Beacause we don’t live in an ideal world, and because most people are in the position of having to juggle their horse training with other important aspects of life, I do feel it helps to have a certain degree of structure in what we do.

I found some excellent shaping plans on Ben Hart’s website www.hartshorsemanship.com, and chose a few that I felt were particularly pertinent to where we are right now, and where I am aiming for in the near-ish future. The ones I chose were preparing for veterinary examinations, safe leading, long lining, and shaping for confidence and trust.

Reading through these brilliant shaping plans also gave me the confidence to start writing one of my own for shaping for hosing legs.

Before we embarked on that, I gave Faith a nice groom, frankly the most thorough one she has had for a long while now. I have begun tying Faith up to have her feet picked out. Now I know Faith was taught to tie up before I bought her, but I have to say, I have always been a little concerned about the prospect of her panicking a bit if she gets spooked, and doing something unreasonably dramatic.

If I’m honest, I just feel so much safer and calmer when working with a horse that is at liberty. I know that if something untoward happens, both myself and the horse can quickly and easily remove ourselves from the situation, regroup, and come back to what we were doing when we both feel ready. It also makes me acutely aware, when training, of when I have perhaps pushed a bit too far, as Faith will simply walk off if she feels uncomfortable. With a horse as reactive as Faith, this has proved to be a strategy that has worked really well.

But given that she is very good to groom and have her feet done etc. at liberty, I felt it wasn’t too unreasonable to re-introduce the tying up, even if it was just for the few minutes when I was picking out her feet. Faith has been very good at this, and it is clear that she understands that if she takes the slack out of the line for whatever reason, she needs to step closer to the tie ring again to release the pressure. In a calm situation this has been absolutely fine, but I was still unsure what she would do if spooked.

Tonight I found out. The past couple of evenings, that yard has been rather wet when I have brought the horses in. Normally Faith is fine with this, but she has a tendency, if spooked, to suddenly start panicking a bit about her footing. This almost inevitably leads to a bit of a ’Bambi on ice’, type situation, which escalates until she is finally on something grippy (usually in her stable) at which point she starts to calm down.

So Faith was a little bit ‘looky’ tonight. I put her headcollar on in the stable, and let her loose on the yard for a few minutes to wander around and sniff the ground a bit and establish that all was quite safe. When she was calm and happy, I tied her up and picked out one front hoof, and one hind. Then something spooked her, and for the first time I saw her quite deliberately pull away. However, when she felt the pressure on the headcollar, her first instinct was to turn back towards the ring to release the pressure. This was good, but I could see from her eye that she was still very worried. So I just slipped two fingers in the noseband of her headcollar and encouraged her to stand just where she was, with lots of ‘aaahhhh good girl’. After about ten seconds, I unclipped the headcollar and let her loose on the yard again to release the tension.

So although that was all fine, and in fact pretty good for a horse that hasn’t really been tied up at all for two years, I think I might invest in Ben’s ‘tying up’ shaping plan, and just revisit the whole thing from the beginning, as much for my own peace of mind as anything else.

Having given Faith a nice groom, I thought I would embark on my own shaping plan for leg hosing, which, although well underway, has already reached page three without as yet even mentioning a hosepipe!

So steps one and two, which is what I was aiming for tonight, was to target a big yellow sponge, and perhaps to touch her with it on the shoulder while whe was standing calmly and at liberty. This doesn’t sound very impressive, but given that Faith scarpered to the far end of the yard as soon as she spotted the big sponge, I was very pleased to achieve these two albeit humble stages on the shaping plan! However, she was very brave, and after a few minutes of enthusiastic targetting, she was happy for me to rub her from the top of her left shoulder to her knee with the great big sponge.

So tomorrow I will reapeat the process, and perhaps attempt to move on to touching her right foreleg and shoulder, which is the side of which she is a little more protective.

Just a quickie!

Well it has been an eventful few weeks for Faithy-poo.

As Tilly had to be on box rest because of her lami attack, Faith had to get used to going out in the field on her own. Fortunately we have been able to leave the yard gates open, so that Faith could potter in and out of the yard and field as she likes, and Tilly still got a bit of company now and again.

So Faith has started to become a little more independent, and was quite happy to graze alone in the field as long as she knew she could pop back into the yard to see Tilly when she wanted.

We have also been doing some training with a spray bottle and some water, and she will now happily be sprayed all over, which makes things like applying conditioner/fly spray/ wound spray so much easier.

Our next little project is to work on being able to hose her down. Wish me luck!

Faith has a Guardian Angel

This bank holiday weekend, we finally got around to setting up the Paddock Paradise track again. I was so pleased to do this, as I think it is a wonderful system, and the horses are never more healthy and happy than when they are on it.

So yesterday morning I turned the girls out, and showed them that the track into the ‘firing range’ field was now open.

Unfortunately, i had completely forgotten about the small herd of goats that my neighbout is now grazing in her dog paddocks next to the track that goes into the firing range field. As Faith cantered past the fence, she spotted the goats and took fright, and ran straight into the internal electric fence of the PP system. The fence was on at the time, and as she came in contact with it, she tried to leap it, didn’t quite make it, and got tangled up. I was about 100 yards away at this point, and all I could see was Faith leaping three times in the air like a stag, to the accompanying sound of wooden fence posts snapping. On the third leap, she ran out of slack, and got pulled to the ground. I felt so sick.

By the time I got to the entrance of the field, she had somehow untangled herself, and was standing up looking for Tilly. I spent the next hour dismantling the track, and getting the girls back into their original field. I briefly got the chance to examine Faith, and there didn’t seem to be a mark on her, but she was too worked up to stand still enough to let me get a proper look.

So the girls spent the day in their original paddock, and Ipopped out every hour or so just to check that all was generally well. However, it wasn’t until Mum came across to sit with the boys in the evening, that I got the chance to get the girls in and give Faith a thorough examination. Miraculously, apart from a few small rope burns, she was fine.

I don’t doubt that Faith had an angel looking after her yesterday. The sight of her running into that fence and getting tangled was just one of the most sickening things I have ever seen. Needless to say, I shall be waiting until the herd of goats return home before I think about opening up the PP track again.

A different context....

We started off last night’s session by working on Faith’s separation anxiety. I walked Tilly in and out of the yard, and each time we left, spent a few minutes doing some in- hand work out of sight in the field, before returning to the yard again. Even though we haven’t been working on this for very long, Faith is already showing signs of being much more settled. Last night’s session was the longest we have done yet, and Faith was not box walking, and despite the warm evening, for the first time showed absolutely no signs of sweating up at all. There were a few neighs, and she seems to have a telescopic neck that helps to improve her view from the stable, but other than that, she was pretty calm.

A few months ago, I was dallying with the idea of starting ‘matwork’ with Faith. However, fairly soon after the purchase of a small rubber doormat, I decided for various reasons that matwork wasn’t really for us, and said item has sat in the tack room, gathering dust ever since.

However, I have recently decided that it would be helpful to work on building Faith’s confidence with putting her feet on different things. So to that end, the mat has been dragged from obscurity, and we have been having a play with it on the yard.

In the first instance, in a fit of having completely unrealistic expectations, I put the mat on the floor, and asked Faith to target it. To be fair, she did get within about half an inch of it with her nose, and scooted past it a couple of times. Clearly though, it looked to her like a gaping chasm had just opened up in the yard, and given the fact that she will still baulk at the thought of stepping over a very shallow drainage ditch, I don’t quite know what I was thinking in trying to get her to step on a doormat. Cue much slapping of forehead!

So I picked it up, and held it, and we did some targetting with it. No problem, Faith likes this game. In fact the targetting reached an absolute frenzy when Tilly got involved over the stable door, and the two girls got quite competitive over targetting the mat!

So then I decided to get Faith to target it nearer and nearer the ground. This worked really well, until I let go of the mat, and that was just a step too far for her. So we went back a few steps, and targetted it with me holding it while it was on the floor, and left it at that. It just goes to show though, that it is not the object itself that is the problem, it is the context that the object is in that can often raise difficulties. Faith doesn’t have a problem with mats per se, she just doesn’t like “mats lying on the ground looking like a horse eating hole” which is perfectly understandable!

I think the fact that it is black doesn’t help, so I might invest in a hessian, or raffia one as well. Hmmmm.