Mixing it up a little

I had an absolutely brilliant session with Faith this evening, so much so, that I came away walking on air.

Despite being a rainy, dull, dark day, this evening turned out to be a lovely sunny autumn evening, which meant that we could get out of the stable, and back on to the yard to do some training.

Having recently bought an Alex Kurland DVD concerning the; ‘Why Would You Leave Me?’ game, I have been itching to get Faith out of the stable of an evening to give it a go. Now we had started on this before, but obviously, having not seen the DVD, I wasn’t aware of the pre-WWYLM game, which makes use of a circle of cones. The idea is that the trainer walks the circle with the horse on a leadrope, and at each cone stops, clicks, and treats. Eventually the horse cottons on to this and starts to become more ‘connected’ to the handler. The idea is then once the horse gets the idea, you can increase the time between clicks.

Alex Kurland adds a further dimension to this, so that the horse is doing more than just walking alongside the handler on a loose rope. She likes to think of the handler holding an imaginary box in front of their body, and the horse should keep his nose ‘in the box’, so he is walking along beside the handler with his neck wrapped around the handler’s body. The idea is that the horse will then stay like that without any contact on the rope. This then leads into exercises such as Three-Flip-Three and Hip-Shoulder-Shoulder.

However, on a purely personal level I don’t like the look of the horse being flexed like this for such a long time, and walking with this constant flexion. I think it looks uncomfortable, and certainly too much for a young horse like Faith. Don’t get me wrong, I think lateral flexion is important, and I would like my horse to give me a relaxed flexion that is free from resistance and tension when I ask for it. But for me, the constant flexion of the ‘nose in the box’ is not something I am looking for. Added to this, I also want to do this exercise completely at liberty to begin with, as I anticipate that this is really going to be one of the foundations for all the liberty schooling that I intend to do with Faith.

So anyway, my yard isn’t particularly big, so rather than setting the cones out in a circle, it had to be a kind of elongated rectangle. I have also just purchased some new cones, the kind that are slightly raised discs, and I happened to be using the fluorescent yellow ones this evening. I was a bit concerned at first that Faith would come out of the stable and be wary of the cones, and not want to approach them. However, my fears proved to be groundless, as she walked straight up to the first one, squished it between her front teeth, scraped it along the ground a couple of times, then handed it to me!

So we started doing the exercise, and we were getting it really well. We did have a few issues with Faith wanting to cut inside the cones at the top and bottom of the rectangle. However, I simply made it clear with hand gestures that I wanted her on the outside of my body, and she got it almost immediately! After going around the rectangle three times perfectly, stopping and click/treating at each cone, we left it there.

Then I gave Faith a ten minute break from thinking stuff, with a lovely groom, and I am very pleased to see that her winter woollies are starting to come through at last. This seems to mean another colour change, with her winter coat being a little darker than her end of summer coat. Lord knows what colour my horse will be in the Spring!

Then I did some Velcro desensitisation with her. She had obviously processed the work we did the other day, as she was really good with the Velcro being placed on her shoulder. After about ten minutes, I could rip the long Velcro strip apart in three stages, with her standing quite comfortably. Brilliant, just brilliant! I then called her to follow me back into her stable, and gave her a big jackpot and a hug. What a clever girl.

I was just so thrilled with her calmness, and focus this evening, even when she trod on the plastic cones a couple of times and trailed them under her feet, there was absolutely no startle reaction at all. I am ridiculously proud of this little mare.