Whoa & Go

Video of Starbuck and Lola, the teenager who rides her once a week or so

I've been having the feeling for the past couple of months that we're seesawing, especially as concerns the "whoa / go" quandary.  It seems like some days I have a gas pedal, and other days I have brakes.  But I nearly never have the two in real working order at the same time.  She'd always been heavy off the leg but really light in the hand until the beginning of this year when she discovered she could run through the hackamore and aside from turning her in a tight circle (not always a good idea, especially with late winter rains creating slippery spots all over the arena) I didn't have much success convincing her to stop when she'd run off after a spook.  In addition, on certain days she'd be so fired up that I had to hold so tight to the reins that I would have to take my rings off.  So on Marina's suggestion, I got a butterfly bit (more lever action, unjointed, slightly harsher) which at first worked like a charm.  Until it didn't anymore and she started to run through the butterfly bit as well.

So I decided to mix things up and use a mix - butterfly, snaffle and hackamore - and also ride a bunch of transitions to get her used to stopping when I told her to, every time I told her to.  And in my opinion this went really well, and when José came to give us our "dressage lesson" I was proud of the on-the-marker transitions I showed him at the start.  But then he had me take up more of a contact than I'd been used to (although when I see photos and videos, it's really not much) and I had to really use my legs just to get her to keep going, and it was nearly impossible to transition upwards to a trot and canter.  Since then, I've been working on trying to maintain the contact but lighten my leg aids - as a matter of fact when I started my lessons at Sa Fita my instructor tried his hardest to get me to wear spurs.  And with Marina's help I've been working on getting my leg farther back so it's centered under my body (that ankles - hips - shoulders lineup) and also in a more sensitive area where my aids can be lighter.

Starbuck and Lola again

Mostly I think I use my legs wrong and so have been trying hard to not keep nagging her with them the whole time, but old habits die hard and I know I fall back into them, especially when we're in a group lesson and have to keep up with the rest of the horses.  But lately we seem to have made some progress, and I find I can be a little lighter sometimes and go longer and longer between squeezes.  For example, after my last two classes in Sa Fita, my instructor didn't say anything else about spurs but did ask me if I didn't want to consider using a harsher bit.  And last week, she "ran away" with Lola again after a jump and got halfway across the arena before Lola could stop her.  So yay!  Gas pedal!  But once again - no brakes.

I see a parallel here with the "good girl / bad girl" thing she does, where she'll be marvelous for a week or so and then suddenly be really really naughty for a few days.  I certainly hope that this is just another instance of the "learning rollercoaster" - that as we get better at the leg aids and concentrate more on "forward" than on anything else, we get a little worse at the rein aids and vice versa until both are finally more or less consolidated.  The only thing which makes me doubt is that I haven't read about this phenomenon in horse training books, blogs or other online resources, which makes me think it might just be me not knowing how to find a happy medium (yet).  Regardless, we'll keep working on it - I think transitions are key and am going to try to follow Carl Hester's advice to try to work more than 100 transitions into each riding session.

And after all, the French riding master François Baucher used to say "Hands without legs, legs without hands" so maybe Starbuck and I are just taking him a little too literally.

Videos and Progress

Here, for your viewing pleasure, are two videos - one of the first day of the Gredos ride and the other of me longeing Starbuck with two reins - each one attached to one of the side-rings of her halter, then passed through the D-rings on the roller and both held in one hand while the other hand used the whip for impulsion.  I was inspired by Gaby and his son José who both have years of experience starting colts but in very different ways to try this method which just like Vienna reins, a Chambon or Side reins encourages the horse to stretch their neck forward and down (thus working the back muscles in a more effective and relaxed way), but with much more "give".  I really noticed a little bit of difference in her head carriage and all my desensitizing with ropes really paid off - she didn't get worried about all these new lines all over her back at all.

My next step is to be able to work her this way in the big arena with the lines still attached to her halter before finally graduating to attaching the lines to the bit on her bridle.


In other news, we had a fairly nice return to normality after the Gredos trip.  When I got back on Monday I went out to the stable and mostly just played with Starbuck first on the longe line and then at liberty, then on Tuesday afternoon I rode her for a fair amount of time working on lots of sitting trot (still at intervals of 10 strides in posting trot then 11 strides in sitting trot) and getting a little more energy in her walk.  On Wednesday evening we had a lesson but she was so tense and rebellious (mostly sore from Tuesday's ride but a little bit bitchy for bitchy's sake) that I was stressing way out (it's vicious circle time, folks!) and decided to dismount.  But as soon as I got out of the saddle I snapped on the longeline and longed her at a brisk trot and asking for lots of canter transitions until she calmed down and had her full attention on me, then I mounted back up and cooled her down at a slow trot and then walk while riding.  The lesson I want her to learn is that getting me out of the saddle does NOT mean a break for her and that if she'll just chill out and pay attention she gets less homework.

I am noticing how much stronger she is and how much more stamina she has than only a month or so ago, she can work much longer without getting tired.  On the one hand I'm thrilled by this since it means that she can carry me more easily and will have less muscle aches, and that I can ride her for longer periods of time and doing more intensive exercises.  On the other hand when she's hot it takes a LOT longer to cool her down and at some point will just be nigh impossible by "wearing her out".  But luckily I'm also improving as a rider and so will hopefully be able to ride through her crazy patches and tire her out mentally rather than physically.

Friday I got off work late and went to the stable without any plans to ride - I didn't even change out of my jeans, just zipped my half-chaps over them and went to work.  I longed her for a while but she was so tuned into me and relaxed that I decided to end the session riding her at the end of the arena, which was lovely!

Saturday morning I had another lesson but I had to break away from the rest of the group before too long, the rest of the ladies in the class have a lower level than I do (most of them still canter on the longe even with the lesson horses) so when Starbuck acts up I get nervous that she'll spook or piss off one of their horses and they won't be able to control it.  So we went off to the other side and did our own thing which after a while went so well that towards the end of our ride I even took her over to the scary side of the arena and did a few circles there.  She freaked out and did her spook thing but I was ready for it and much more relaxed, and thus able to ride it out and get her back in line.  The best part was at the end of the group lesson when all the students were switching horses and adjusting stirrups and such Marina snapped the longe line on and longed Starbuck and I for about 15 minutes.  Which means that Starbuck gets in the habit of doing some steady work without looking for trouble and I can work on my seat and posture without having to worry about steering.  Marina's even suggested that we could make a routine of this and take advantage of the "class change" time to work a little on the longe line a few times a week, which I'd be thrilled about!

Great strides

This morning I was updating photos on Starbuck's Facebook fan page and got to thinking about how very far we've come this year...  So I wanted to revisit them with a month by month summary:

• July: 

I notice Starbuck for the first time; her paddock is across from my friend Virginia's horse Coco's paddock and she's pointed out to me as "that German filly" since her mother was a Hannoverian.  She has duck feet and is dirty, skinny and top-heavy, with her head and neck visually overpowering the rest of her body.  After I spend a little time with her once or twice rubbing her and hand-feeding her some apples and carrots, she starts to nicker to me when I walk by and watch me when I'm with other horses.  So I ask Marina about her and am told that she was purchased as one of a set of several horses and that they don't have time to train or do much of anything with her, that they tried to bring the farrier out to trim her hooves but she was too panicked to let him and that they were hoping to sell her.  To help out Marina, I start grooming her in hopes of improving her appearance and do a little work teaching her to give to pressure from the halter, lead quietly, be showered and stand tied without pulling back.

• August:

I get attached (surprise!) and Marina suggests that I buy her and train her myself, quoting a ridiculously affordable price and assuring me that she'll help me along every step of the way.  I mention this to my husband, who offers to give her to me for my birthday.  After thinking long and hard about my capabilities (emotional, economic and otherwise) and considering other options like leasing a more experienced horse, I couldn't resist the temptation and on August 15th, Starbuck was officially mine (and this blog is born)!  In August I start to teach her to longe and get better at leading.  While longeing on one of the first days Starbuck bolts and runs over me, pushing me down and stepping on my foot.  It's a good wakeup call and I start paying way more attention to our movements and defending my space.  It's the first and last time she's run over me so far.

• September:

We get lots better at longeing and start working over cavalletti.  We also do lots of sacking out starting with a dressage whip with some cloth tied to the end, then with a plastic bag and finally with a saddlepad... We work on longeing using the saddlepad and a surcingle to get her used to the feel of the girth and use a lead line to simulate a bit and teach her to open her mouth on cue.  We also continue leading work, upping the anty by first exploring the "scary" parts of the stable yard and then walking to a nearby orange grove in the company of other horses.

• October:

This was a big month for us: I was able to lift and pick out Starbuck's front hooves, we put on the saddle for the first time, Starbuck got her teeth floated and we really improved our transitions on the longe line.  I also get a bridle and D-ring snaffle bit and put it on Starbuck for the first time, which took some getting used to!  I practice rubbing her and leaning over her from on top of a mounting block and putting more and more weight in the stirrup.  It was the first month where I could realistically think about riding her and at the end of the month I made up a list of goals planning to ride her in November.

• November:

We take advantage of a rainy day to sack her out with an umbrella, we keep improving our longeing and I was finally able to lift and pick out all four hooves.  I finally bite the bullet and build a roundpen, where we do lots of work at liberty and I feel like I really start to gain more respect.  I watch some Clinton Anderson videos for new control-and-respect gaining exercizes and notice the benefits immediately.  Once I feel like I can control where she goes on the ground 95% of the time, I work up the courage to get on her back for the first time; first just leaning with my belly over the saddle and putting all my weight on her, then by being led around the round pen in this position by my friend Salvador and finally getting all the way on and being led by Marina!

• December:

Starbuck is bit by bit gaining the skills to be my dream horse and I hope to be gaining the skills to be her dream owner.  After a major backslide the first crisp and windy week of December when she started acting like a crazy wild thing again and dragged me over one day while longeing, she got even better and started paying way more attention to me in our groundwork training sessions, working on transitions, small and large circles, ground driving through figure eights, cavaletti patterns, ground tying and more.  She is also finally calm enough about having her feet handled to have the farrier come out and trim her hooves, I find a lovely synthetic English saddle for sale for a pittance and I start riding her once or twice a week.  She now more or less understands the leg cue for transition from stop to walk, can maintain a walk with continued intermittent leg pressure and works at a trot with some help from the ground.

All in all a year full of progress and lessons learned; here's hoping that next year will be just as wonderful!

'Fraidy Cat

As much as I absolutely hate to admit it, I have some fear issues with horses.  I've fallen off, lost control and been bit, kicked and trampled enough times to know that injury is a given-- the only wild card is how serious.  I'm also discovering that my 30-something year old body is not as resilient as my teenage body was, and falls which I once would have classified as anecdotal now develop into weeks or months of nagging pain and unsightly swelling.  On top of everything, I've set out to do something-- train a green filly to be a 100% dependable, bombproof trail horse-- that I honestly have no idea if I really can do and which many people with a lot more horse experience than me have advised me not to try.

So yeah, I have to deal with some fear.  In a lot of ways, this is good, basic survival mechanism stuff and I sure am glad I'm not as death-defying as I was at 18.  But from time to time I'll notice that I don't really feel like working on the "spooky" side of the arena, or walking Starbuck past the barn stallion when she's in heat and he's feeling studdy.  Or we'll take a few too many "vacation" days without actually working.  And when I really start soul-searching, I'll figure out that it's not usually laziness, it's fear.  Fear of her spooking and running away, of the stallion breaking out of his paddock, of either of us sustaining a disabling injury, of not preparing her well enough, of losing my motivation... even of what people might think when they see us doing an exercize that's not going as planned.

This type of fear camouflages itself as laziness or apathy and leads to procrastination, excuse-making and justification.  It's insidiously demotivating, since it's oh-so tempting to tell myself that I've had a long day at work and that she could use some rest anyway to get out of a workout on one of those days where I'm sure all those invisible horse-eating monsters will abound.  But admitting that I don't want to work with her because I'm afraid... well, that's not so acceptable.  Not to mention that it sets a horrible example for Starbuck, who needs to be exposed to as many "scary" situations as possible as often as possible by a calm, responsible leader.  So how to deal with it?

Well, I think the first step is acceptance.  I need to accept that there are some things I'm afraid of and admit that some of these are perfectly valid.  After that, I need to set an internal alarm so that every time I say "Oooof, I really don't feel like doing so-and-so" I look deep inside myself to see if my reluctance is really motivated by fear, and decide whether that fear is rational or not.  And when I recognize my inner 'fraidy cat, I need laugh at myself for finding one of my own personal invisible monsters, go ahead and do what I didn't want to do and then make a note to do it again, and again, and again.

In other words, I need to sack myself out the same way I do with Starbuck: figure out what freaks me out and then keep doing it until I'm no longer phased by it.

Today

Today Starbuck behaved so well!!!  We made two big advances which I'm really super pleased about:

1. She calmly lifted ALL FOUR HOOVES for me and let me clean them all out.  FINALLY!!!
2. She completed a full circle going in both directions at the canter.

I can't really say enough about how important the first one is for me... this means that I can finally start giving her the hoof care she needs and deserves.  Cleaning, moisturizing, rainproofing, trimming and maybe even shoeing at some point... I feel a little guilty that it took so long, but I know that I've been working on it every day and except for the first tries she's been in the learning zone the whole time and that the best part is that she now won't associate having her hooves lifted or cleaned with anything bad or scary.

As far as the canter thing, this is something we've been working on for quite some time.  Obviously Starbuck has been able to canter since she was like two days old, but it's one thing to canter in a straight line in a field and another thing altogether to canter in a fairly small circle and with a bunch of tack on.  In all our previous attempts she would start cantering and then lose her balance a little and fall back into a trot, but today I was able to urge her on to a lovely and controlled canter for a full 40 foot circle before she came back down to the trot.  So this means that she's finding her balance and learning how to control her body, and that now all we have to do is keep working on getting a little more distance out of her every day!

I also wanted to share this picture of Marina (at the left) and some of her students enjoying the first oranges of the season... the stable is in an old orange grove and yesterday one of the boys climbed up one of the trees and threw down a bunch of slightly green, acidic but superjuicy oranges and we all sat in the sunshine and peeled and ate them-- they were delicious!  All in all a lovely day and I feel confident about making real and visible progress.

Raincoat

Today I wanted to try something a little different so I got out the tarp I use to cover my bale of hay and decided to sack Starbuck out with it.  First I put it on the ground in her paddock and she went right up to it, sniffed it and walked right over it on her own!  So I led her over it a few times and stopped on top of it, then backed her over it until I was satisfied that she was 100% cool and wouldn't suddenly decide it wanted to eat her.

Then I folded it up into a little square and rubbed it all over her body, unfolding a little bit every time she got comfortable with the previous step.  This is where we called it a day since it was getting dark and they were about to bring around supper (good luck to me trying to get her to do anything with the feed cart coming by)!  But we got up to the last fold, with the tarp folded in half and she let me rub it all over her including putting it over her head, under her belly and around her feet... tomorrow is a bank holiday in Spain so we'll work on this some more until she's all the way cool with the whole unfolded tarp.

Thanks to barn buddy Miguel for the photos!!!

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.