Starbuckin'

Success!  We rode in the big arena today without Starbuck running off and freaking out-- I knew she'd be fine!  I did however have a slight lapse of judgement by asking my friend Virginia to ride her mare Coco with us.  Since we set these two mares loose in the arena from time to time to play, I think Starbuck just naturally thought that this was play time too.  So she started kind of biting at Coco's butt, I pulled her head away, she got pissed, things escalated and she started bucking, I mean SERIOUSLY bucking.  I was able to stay in the saddle for the first couple but in the end I realized things were going south, saw my moment and bailed off to the side before she could throw me between her ears.  Luckily I fell extremely well and was able to get right up and hop right back on-- I may not be a great rider but I sure have a lot of experience falling off!

Thanks to Virginia, who reminded me that I can use one rein to pull her into a circle which disengages the hindquarters and takes away her power to buck, I was able to stay in the saddle for the next round of crow-hops and Starbuck learned a valuable lesson: bucking doesn't get her out of having to work.  After those two brief rebellions, she calmed right down and did fine.  I can tell she feels a lot less constricted in the big arena, her strides were much bigger and freer and just the fact that she was confident enough to buck with me on top of her tells me she's feeling stronger and more balanced carrying my weight.  Also she didn't seem to have any urge to run around like a chicken with her head cut off and responded really well to the reins so I feel confident about riding her in the big arena from now on.  

Here's the video of the entire ride, it's too bad that most of the rodeo action is either off-camera or blocked by other horses, but you get the general idea.  I chickened out trying to get her to trot, so after a couple of strides I gave her a break.  Next time I'll be sure to have my crop with me so I'm not teaching her to ignore my leg cues.

Just a note to remember for next time: I dewormed Starbuck today too with Eqvalan Duo, I think that this next time I'll wait 3 months and use a less powerful wormer.  I'd also like to do a fecal analysis, when the vet comes to vaccinate her I'll ask her about it.

Offline!

No, I'm not talking about the internet.  I headed over to the stable today on my lunchbreak and decided to try saddling Starbuck up and riding her again, this time without anyone longeing or leading us.  So after about 20 minutes of roundpen work I hopped up onto her back and away we went... or not really!  It turns out that without someone on the ground moving her around, it's really hard to get her to move forward.  Which I had read like a million times but still wasn't so sure... everyone else seemed to be worried about how I would be able to stop her, but in the end that was SO not the problem: she just wanted to stand still.

So how did we do it?  At first I had my friend Virginia "leading" Starbuck around the pen but without any line, just moving her off with body language.  Then we tried just cueing her to move with increasing pressure: 1st a light leg squeeze, then a light kick and vocal cue, then medium kick and vocal cue, then hard kick, vocal cue and a slap with the rope on the neck.  But that wasn't working very well, so we tried walking in circles (horses have less balance to the side so it's much easier to get them to move to the side than forward and back) and then straightening up, which worked better but still not 100%.

Finally I remembered something I think I read in one of either John Lyons' or Elisabeth de Corbigny's books: you get them to yield the hindquarters left, then right, then left again, then right again but bending less and less each time until they walk forward.  With this I really was able to get the meaning of the leg cue across to her, and for the last 5 minutes or so she consistently moved forward with either a squeeze or a light kick.  During the ride I only used a leadline attached to a rope halter to steer, but at the very end of the ride we worked on giving to the bit with lateral flexion right and left.  I think maybe three more rides and I'll start using the bridle more than the halter, but I want to get some good impulsion first-- I hate lazy walkers.

The whole way back to work I was BEAMING, I really feel proud of myself and of Starbuck for reaching this goal-- and without any broken bones (knock on wood).  I know that we still have a loooooooooong way to go, but for me this is a huge step in the right direction.  And the best part is that she seems to be mentally 100% comfortable with me on her back and not "sour" at all about it.  I have to make sure not to screw that up by pulling on her mouth or not releasing pressure when she responds to a cue... lots of old "lesson horse" habits to break.  But that's a whole 'nother story.

I apologize in advance for the video-- it's really long since it encompasses the entire ride, and unfortunately my "tripod" is an orange tree where I don't have a full view of the roundpen, so there are lots of gaps where we're not even visible.  If you're interested, just kind of skip around until you see some action.

Our First Ride!

After the outstanding weekend that Starbuck has given me with amazing concentration, focus and progress on Friday, Saturday and today, I felt pretty confident about at least getting into the saddle for the first time.  So after a fairly strenuous workout of leading, longeing, yielding hindquarters and forequarters and sending work, I took her into the round pen and just let her rest while I did some preparation work; standing on a mounting block and rubbing her, tapping the saddle, putting a little weight in the stirrup, rubbing her belly with the tip of my toe and finally standing up and half mounting which is what you see here..

Afterward my friend Salvador helped me get Starbuck used to my weight (sorry girl, but this is Thanksgiving weekend after all) in movement by leading her around the roundpen with me just kind of half mounted like this and resting my belly over the saddle and she did great, no bucks or bunny hops or even any insecurity, she just took it completely in stride.  So I asked Marina, the owner of the stable, to help us out with our first ride and this is the result!  She's a little wobbly and you can tell we still need to work on finding our balance (I'm leaning forward to try to take some of the weight off her back), but I'm soooooo proud of her (and of me!) for being able to be completely relaxed and confident in movement with me sitting on top of her.

The other big change this weekend was that we moved Starbuck to new digs with a nice shed to keep her warm and dry this winter, so after our ride I made sure she had an extra big serving of bran mash, three freshly scrubbed out buckets of cool water and a bed of hay about 3 feet deep inside her little shed; she deserves some luxury after being such a good girl today!  Here's a fuzzy photo of her enjoying her new home:

Key Concepts: The Learning Zone

Traditionally, horse training in America was called "breaking" and at its best used methods like these:



At its worst, techniques like roping a horse to the ground like a calf or tying her to a post while she struggled to get free, sometimes flipping over backwards or breaking her neck in a panic, were used with a fair amount of frequency.  The idea was to show the horse that the trainer was bigger, stronger, badder and smarter than her so the horse would accept her trianer as "dominant" and submit to his or her wishes.  Sound familiar?  That's right, it's the same old dominance / alpha male theory I talked about a few posts back.

While certainly effective for forcing basic training on a large number of horses in a very short time (think Wild West), there's another reason that these methods are not only cruel but inefficient for today's horse training demands.  When faced with a situation where they feel intense stress or fear, horses tend not to remember anything but the stress and fear and exactly what caused it.  Have you ever walked up to a horse that as soon as it saw you carrying a riding crop freaked out?  This doesn't necessarily mean that the horse has been beaten repeatedly with a riding crop, it may just be that she experienced extreme stress and fear at some point when the crop was used (for example someone yelling at her while showing her the crop, etc...).  So if your horse is panicking while you're trying to teach her, probably the only thing she'll remember about it is that the last time you asked her to do such and such she panicked.

So how can I avoid this trap and try to make sure that Starbuck only remembers the positive things, conveniently forgetting my mistakes or any negative experience?  What I try to ALWAYS is make sure that she's in the learning zone, in other words attentive and aware of my requests but relaxed and breathing normally.  If I try to do something new and she starts showing even the first signs of wanting to run away (ears back, hindquarters shifting away, head raised), what I do is back off to something she's comfortable with and then little by little introduce the new thing until she can be calm while we do it.

I've learned from experience that this may be frustrating at first since it seems like you're going soooooo slow and we humans have the urge to start out with the hardest part first because then the easy part will be way easier, right?  WRONG!  For example the first time I put the leg protectors on Starbuck she was really NOT ready for them and I had to "trick" her in to letting me get them on because I was kind of in a hurry that day.  Thinking that now that she's got them on she'll just realize that they're not going to hurt her and get used to them, right?  WRONG AGAIN!  It took like 3 weeks after that first day of coaxing and friendly game all over her body with the protectors every single day for like 20 - 30 minutes for her to finally get to the point where she's cool with me putting them on.  On the other hand, I really took my time with the saddle the first few times and she had no problem whatsoever with me putting it on her after the first day, even tightening the cinch as much as I can!

Because of this, keeping Starbuck in the learning zone has become a major goal for me every second of every day and I try to never let my own frustration, impatience or fear show through or introduce her too quickly to new things I haven't correctly prepared her for since.