Day 1

Yesterday was the first day of my colt starting class at La Cense. I'm using Rosie, Jamie's Quarter Horse mare, for the class and I think she's going to do awesome.

Out of all the horses there yesterday I think only one or two were as calm and collected as she was. Of course she was a little tense and had some nerves due to the new environment, activities, and other horses running around like mad in class but overall held it together really well.

Yesterday was just the settling in phase of the class and we didn't do a whole lot. I played with some basic yielding to pressure and desensitizing. If I were to assess Rosie's nature I'd say she is a mild RBI/LBI and therefore is great in that the life in her feet is very manageable... but I have to be careful not to blow past her thresholds of fear and recognize that while she may not be obviously appearing afraid by moving her feet, jumping around, or spooking it doesn't mean she's confident with what I'm doing. When I began slapping my stick and string on the ground she tensed up the underside of her neck, it became hard for her to look at me so she bent away, and kind of got mildly "stare-y" eyes. While she's not super sensitive I do think that there will be greater reward by really respecting the discomfort she is displaying and handling it before moving onto something else so as to build a really solid foundation.

Eric did have us work on a bending exercise that I think is really useful in helping teach the horse to bend and correlate lead rope/rein position to foot falls and control. Eric is big into making sure that every time you pick up the rope/rein you are asking the horse to do something. I think that this is an excellent plan to have. I'm still not perfect at never fumbling with my tools and/or inadvertently asking the horse to do something I really do try to shoot for having quiet body language and subtle, consistent use of my aids and requests. So back to the circling thing, it's a circle where you are walking with your horse and encouraging them to bend their ribs away from you and their noses in. For some reason I struggle to coordinate myself for this and often cause the horse to fall in. Eric really helped give me a good example of how it should look and some pointers on how to do it and achieve softness.

Eric also had me show him my desensitizing game in motion, which is having her walk on a circle while creating stimulus. Sometimes a horse will freeze in spot if they're afraid and people overlook this as obedience. By asking them to move their feet often times it can unleash an explosion that was just bubbling under the surface. You may ask, why would you want to do ever do that? And it's because if the horse is frozen in spot terrified that's really not compliance, obedience, confidence, or anything positive. It's an accident waiting to happen for a time when you least expect it. If the horse can't handle pressure very negative consequences can follow. So by asking the horse to move his feet you make sure their feet aren't stuck and more importantly their minds aren't stuck. So I asked Rosie to walk on the circle and began slapping my stick and string around and wrapping it around her legs and such. While she didn't panic she wasn't 100% confident with it either. I don't expect her to be absolutely fine with everything I do, but it was important for me to see yesterday her trying to keep it together and maintain a rhythmic walk even though she was skeptical. I really wanted to continue creating pressure until she relaxed all the way and really made a visible change but then Eric said he thought I should be having her bend to me (the earlier circling exercise I mentioned) while creating stimulus.

I explained to him that I felt the exercises should be separated. Desensitizing as one exercise and the bending circle another and eventually combine the two. My reasoning is because if I am applying pressure (with a flag or stick/string) and force her to bend and look at me I feel that it's not really allowing her to handle the experience and do what she needs to do to feel safe and get connected back to me. If the horse isn't afraid and is mentally connected then asking it to bend it's ribs away from you and soften it's eye toward you will be easy. If I apply pressure and Rosie needs to speed up, or straighten out her body, or raise her head, or simply can't look at me because she's unconfident than I want her to experience all of that so I can read it and know when to release the pressure and help her get comfortable. If I also ask her to bend and look at me it's seems it's just combining too many elements at once for such a young horse without a foundation of trust in me. Especially for an RBI type that will tolerate a lot and generally look like everything is A-OK even when deep down inside it's not.

Eric said he understood that to some degree but still wanted me to work on bending her. So, I still decided to separate the two exercises. I feel that's what's right and I think that in a matter of days it will be easy to combine the two exercises. If she can handle pressure and bend than that's the ultimate point - no matter how you get there I suppose. I think because Rosie always appears docile she's a horse you could easily rush by accident.... the rush might not create an explosion but it's not really preserving the integrity of the relationship nor encompassing the true principles of natural horsemanship. Which is horsemanship based on horse behavior and psychology before anything else. If it's not doing that that it's simply regular training methods and that's not what this program is supposed to be about. I really respect Eric as a horseman, he's help me a lot with my horses in the past, and I do want to do what he tells me and to fully understand what he's asking. I'm trying to remain open and remember that he has many more years of experience than I do and just because something doesn't seem correct to me right off the bat doesn't mean it isn't... on the same note, if something just feels wrong to me I think I should listen to it and at least explore it further. One thing I like about Eric is he's not a dictator and is open to discussion in a no-pressure atmosphere. I think it's great!

We also asked our horses to put each foot on a plate one at a time. Eric says it will probably be on a test in the future, 15 seconds a foot to get it on the plate. Yesterday Rosie did everything but put it on the plate. She smelled it, picked it up, kicked it, slid her foot underneath it, covered it in sand, and then finally we got the right front on!!! This exercise is supposed to show how you can control your horse's feet with a direct and indirect rein (using the lead rope on the ground). It's a good one for practicing being particular without being critical.

On a side note, Rosie was one of the better horses in class I thought but, by far, the hairiest horse in class!! Wow! She looks like a woolly mammoth! Some definite brushing is in order. She's also borderline thin so Jamie and I talked about adding grain and upping hay in her diet.

Can't wait for more of this class. Lots of thinking going on! :)

Pictures to come soon too! :)





"The way he (a horse) learns is, number one from confidence, then understanding, then the achievement, the result. And if you play it backwards, the result can be no better than how well he accepted and he can't accept anything until he gets confidence that he's going to be safe." -Ronnie Willis