Why I'm glad I'm fat

Thanks to "Tales from a Bad Eventer" for the photo!

"Thank God my ass is so fat" is not something that tends to go through my mind on a daily basis.  In fact my lifelong struggle between wanting to be hot and wanting to subsist entirely on a diet of cheese, pork products, fried food and elaborate desserts pretty much makes me tend to think the exactly the opposite, cursing my oh-so-American "curves" fairly regularly.  But I sure was grateful for all that extra blubber last night - and I bet you can guess why ;-)

So here's what went down - it's been pretty rainy for the past couple of days and we've all been jonesing for a ride.  Last night the rain had stopped, but not long enough for the arena to be usable.  So yesterday my stablemates Amanda and Maria Jose decided to at least ride around the barnyard on the walkways going by all the paddocks.  Somehow the fact that we would be riding in the dark except for the moon and a far away bulb throwing some freaky shadows, that it was still really muddy and that the horses hadn't been ridden all week failed to deter us, so we saddled 'em up, jumped on and started off.

First obstacle - horny stud colt on one side of the track, playful and bored horses bounding up to see what we were doing on the other.  Starbuck got a little exuberant and broke into a trot to get to the head of the line while Maria Jose's horse Compay decided to teach horny stud colt a lesson by throwing a few bucks.  Maria Jose wisely got off but Amanda and I kept going.

Second obstacle - scary corner where the horses could see their own shadows.  Starbuck wheeled around and tried to gallop back where we had come from, luckily dodging poor Maria Jose.  But I wheeled her back around and we were able to walk (well, prance) past it.

Third obstacle - terrifying hay bales covered with horrific tarps.  All three of the horses stopped in their tracks and didn't want to pass the evil hay bales.  Maria Jose tried to walk Compay in hand past it first but Starbuck and Melyne (Amanda's mare) were getting nervous so I decided to pass her.  There was a moment where Starbuck got stuck, then I tapped her with my crop and she shot forward, then sideways, then backward, then whirled around in a circle and started to gallop off.  During this I was mostly just trying to stay up there and do a little damage control since we were a little too close to the roof of one of the stalls for comfort, but I ended up putting too much weight on one stirrup so when she galloped off the saddle slipped down to the right side.  Between me hauling on the reins to slow her down and the saddle being way off center, she got pissed off and threw a few bucks and I went down on the third, landing squarely on my right butt cheek.  But she didn't get very far before I went down and it didn't even hurt (and still doesn't this morning), which is why today I'm celebrating my tendency to chunkiness.  Yay cheese!

Anyhow after walking her by the offending hay bale and its dangerous drapery several times and letting her snort at it a few more times, I got right back up and this time was able to ride by without incident.  We made several more loops of the stableyard and in the end really enjoyed our ride in the moonlight.  So I'm not happy I fell but I am happy I didn't let the fall ruin what ended up being a good learning and desensitizing experience and a fun ride with friends.

Going back in time to Monday, the day before all the rain started, I decided to give Starbuck kind of a light day and started just longeing her, but then got inspired and decided to ride her.  But to keep things low-key, I rode her with only the rope halter and lead rope instead of her normal bridle.  It's the first time I'd ridden all over the whole arena like that - the other times I've ridden her in a halter we blocked off the "non-scary" section to ride in, so I was pretty proud of us.  It took me a while to remember how to switch the lead rope from one side to the other without smacking her in the face with it, and it took her a while to realize I really meant her to go where I was asking her to go, but in the end we really covered the entire arena doing lots of serpentines and figure eights and walking right by the bar and pigpen and whatnot at a walk, then doing some figure-eights and circles at a trot and a couple of circles in canter.

Some positive things I took away from this: she didn't buck or dash off at a full out gallop or otherwise misbehave at any point, so that was a big trust-booster for me.  Also she had her head way down the entire time and was really actually using her hindquarters - you would have taken her for a western pleasure horse if it weren't for the saddle.  And finally, over the course of the 40 minutes or so that I was riding her we really progressed from "I'm completely going to ignore your aids" to "You don't really want to go over THERE do you?" to "I guess we can do that if you say so" to "OK, let's do it".  As much as I hate being bad at something, it's good to experience both the humbling sensation of not being able to do the simplest thing like walk in a straight line for 10 feet but also the cause-and-effect goodness of that kind of progress from time to time - it reminds me to not get so frustrated when things don't go like I want them to.

And finally last Saturday I had my first dressage lesson with my friend Virginia's old teacher Daniela who also taught a clinic I attended a few years ago - my friend Belén (owner of Lady Utopia, an even younger filly than Starbuck - and yes, that's her registered name) and I have decided to kick it up a notch and do some semi-private (just us and the teacher) lessons once every couple of weeks to see if we can make some real progress on both our riding and the girls' way of going this winter.  We got one of our friends to tape it and as soon as I have enough patience and time and computer resources to upload the videos I'll do a dedicated post on that.

Have a great weekend folks and remember, being chubby has its benefits! XD

Parelli!

Yesterday my barn next-door-neighbor Amanda and I ended up at the stable at the same time when no one else happened to be riding, so we decided to block off the non-scary half of the arena and to work on our new-found one rein Parelli skills.  And since Amanda's sister (also named Sara) was there, she was kind enough to take loads of photos and videos :D

What follows is pretty embarrassing as far as posture, seat and control of my horse goes - it's funny how when riding as soon as you have to start focussing on something new or different, everything you thought you had under control goes right out the window.  And for the first 15 minutes or so just getting Starbuck not to stop to eat the grass growing around the edges of the arena was a losing battle.  But we eventually got on the same page, especially after I remembered to look where I was going rather than at her, and before we knew it we were doing serpentines and figure eights and even a few mostly straight lines!  We ended with the thrill of a better connection and some nice cantering which was only punctuated once by a few bucks which I was able to stop short with a one-rein stop (yay me!).

It's not lost on me that when I'm riding her like this, we're effectively practicing her being able to say "No" whenever she wants to, and so I've got to be careful not to do it too often.  But I do feel like when she finally says "Yes" it means much more than when I'm riding her with a hackamore or a bit, and I know it will eventually do wonders for my riding position (the center of gravity is much farther back), leg and seat aids and for my dependence on the reins for balance, so until I see any nasty consequences I'm looking forward to riding her like this once every week or two.  In the meanwhile, enjoy the photos and video - at the very least they'll be great for "before and after" comparisons ;-P

When she was good...

Starbuck is a creature of extremes.  Remember the Longfellow poem about the little girl with the little curl?  Well Starbuck's about like that - when she's good she's just so damn good!  Here are some of the things we've been busy doing for the past couple of weeks instead of writing blog posts ;-)

• Using a neck rope / balance rein in combination with the regular reins for steering and stopping cues as well as trying to improve Starbuck's balance
• Riding (walk, trot and canter including figures of 8, backing up and turns on the haunches) in the round pen with only the neck rope and nothing at all on her head

• "No hands" downwards transitions and ever-sharper upwards transitions, even to a canter
• "Parelli class" using only a rope halter and one rein attached to the halter to steer relying on seat cues to stop

• "Parelli class" using no reins and only a carrot stick to steer relying on seat cues to stop

• Some lovely jumps entering with rhythm and impulsion and leaving at a nice steady canter without bucking
• No longer using the butterfly bit at all and back to using the hackamore 75% of the time with the snaffle only when it's windy or there's a lot of spooky stuff going on
• Actually tracking up!!!

I've been really having a blast lately, especially since Starbuck's performance is on a higher level than some of the newer horses and I can feel like instead of struggling to keep up with a mid-level class, we're actually up there with the leaders most of the time.  And of course riding bitless and bridleless is another huge thrill for me - I feel like the connection I have with Starbuck is much more honest and puts us on a more even playing field, which when she's amenable to my plans is wonderful.  When I ride with less tack I feel pretty confident that #1 I'm doing a pretty creditable job on her training and #2 she's really doing this because she wants to.

However Starbuck is, after all, a teenager and so like Longfellow's little girl, sometimes she's downright horrid.  At the start of the Parelli lesson she realized she had the freedom to put her head down and eat the grass growing at the edge of the arena, or bite other horses on the butt whenever she felt like it and it took me a good 10 - 15 minutes to get her to agree to what I wanted to do (ride around calmly in logical patterns without stopping for snacks, maiming or even threatening the other horses and their riders).  And last Monday I was working on activating her hindquarters and tracking up when a gust of wind blew over a jump standard which made a loud noise as it hit the ground, sending Starbuck off on her best rodeo bronc imitation to date.  I lost my stirrups but rode out the first three or four bucks pretty well, tried to turn her in a circle, lost my balance, got bucked into the air, landed hard with my pelvic bone on the pommel and with the next buck landed on the ground.  Boy was I pissed off that after such a major spook, when I got up I found her five feet away calmly munching on thistle flowers and looking at me like "Who, me?" - I know it's a blessing that she's able to instantly chill out after completely freaking out but just at that moment I wasn't amused.  Maybe it had something to do with all the arena sand in my panties.

Anyhow no harm, no foul - I got right back on sand and all and finished what I had planned to do for the day, and in the end I guess I got what I wanted - her hindquarters certainly had to be engaged to accomplish all that bucking.

Try Different Things

This is Gladys with my mom standing next to her and aunt (to whom I owe this photo) sitting on the grass

My great-grandmother Gladys was a pretty amazing woman.  Born to a middle class family in a small town in low-country South Carolina, one might have expected her to lead a pretty uninteresting life, but she was determined to live the way she wanted to - travelling to places like Bermuda and pre-revolution Cuba (we still have some of the letters a lovesick Cuban she met while she was there sent her), entering dance contests and marrying a man whose job (a highway construction engineer) would take her all over the state.  And even though she passed away when I was a teenager and as far as I know she wasn't particularly horsey, I still have her to thank (vía my mother) for one of the best pieces of advice anyone could have given me about training horses or life in general.

I don't remember exactly which context it came up in, but years ago my mom and I were talking one day about caring for children - maybe when I was teaching English and had some challenging younger pupils.  I've never been much of a hand at keeping kids in line and my mom is the exact opposite - children are drawn to her and she knows how to maintain their interest so that they aren't even tempted to misbehave in a way which seems downright magical to me.  So when I came to her for help she passed on her grandmother's advice to her from years ago - the three magical words "Try different things".  Of course, at the time this wasn't the answer I was looking for - what I really wanted was a sort of magic bullet to keep kids enraptured with my presence with little or no effort on my part.  But what I realize now is that this attitude was really the problem - if I wasn't willing to expend the effort to try to keep a child's attention, how could I possibly expect them to go the extra mile and pay any attention to me?

I now (thank God) no longer have to deal with children except at holidays and when we have visitors, but those three little words have stuck with me through the years and when I got Starbuck and started reading up on training methods, I was so glad to have that advice.  Because what I've figured out is that although I really respect John Lyons as a trainer and I've learned so much from him, his methods just don't work for us 100% of the time.  Same goes with Pat Parelli, Alois Podhajsky, Carolyn Resnick, Reiner Klimke, you name it.  There are all these books and websites with surefire methods for training horses and I love the fact that all of this is available and am constantly reading up on new training theories and techniques.  But sometimes these recommendations just aren't right for you, or the horse, or your situation, or whatever.  So maybe what ALWAYS works for Carolyn Resnick because she has an amazing sense of timing and great connection with the horse, won't always work for me because I don't have the same talents.  I often find that even the most inspired method from an amazing trainer just isn't working, which can get frustrating until I remember my three magic words and I try different things.  In the end, trial and error takes longer and requires a lot more effort than just sticking entirely to one training method but I learn so much and like to think that I don't waste too much time (or Starbuck's good will) persisting in an attempt which just isn't working.

For instance this bit thing.  I had initially hoped that by using a stronger bit, Starbuck would become more sensitive and reactive to my rein aids so that I could go back to using the hackamore with a light contact at all times.  And this seemed to work great for a while, I've ridden her for a couple of weeks with the butterfly bit and at first it was a downlight delight.  But last week we had a couple of iffy moments culminating in a rodeo ride around the arena at a full gallop with me losing my stirrups and hanging on to her mane for dear life - the only way I could finally get her to stop was when she nearly ran into another horse.  And it's not like I had the reins flopping around, there was a definite strong contact the entire time but she just ran right through it.  And even when she's not freaking out I've noticed her starting to need more contact when she's fired up.  So graduating to a stronger bit?  Not working for us, but no biggie - it's just time to try something different.

So here's my new plan - to keep her guessing I'm going to alternate between the old D-ring snaffle I started her in, the hackamore and the butterfly bit.  No more than two days in a row with any of them for at least a few weeks.  I'm going to work a lot more on activating her hindquarters to keep her from leaning on my hands - the second she starts to get heavy on the bit I give her the aid for shoulder-in or haunches in until she lightens up.  And finally, I have to be really really careful to not give her the kind of constant contact she can "get used to".  We already started yesterday with the snaffle - she was obviously a little surprised by the change but responded pretty well.  There were a couple of scary moments where it would have been much easier to pull on the reins rather than to give her more leg and use less contact, but it worked and she lightened up nicely.  Hopefully in a few weeks I'll be on here complaining about something completely different and this whole running through the contact thing will be forgotten.

And even if we are still working on this weeks or months from now, we'll just keep on trying different things.

Videos!

I don't have very much time before I head off to the stable on this beautiful, sunny Spring day in Mallorca, but I did finally manage to upload the videos from last weekend so here they are!

Starbuck playing with the new Parelli Big Green Ball:

Me riding Starbuck last Saturday:

Rainy Day

OK, I know I've been kind of lax on the blog front lately but I've had the flu, that's a good excuse, right?  I actually think that I was a little too productive for a few weeks there and now I have a little writing hangover, so I'm going to keep it short for a few posts.  Anyone who follows me on Twitter will know that for the past few days we've had some really rainy weather-- too muddy and slippery to do much work.  So I've pretty much just been doing some tack cleaning and hanging out in the bar where there's a wood burning stove and they make you thick spanish hot chocolate for a euro.

Both yesterday and today Virginia and I have walked Starbuck and Coco out to a newly cleared field so they could get out of their paddocks and get a little exercise-- yesterday we just set them loose and let them run and graze but today I longed Starbuck a little while Coco was grazing nearby to remind her that it's not always playtime when the two of them are together... at first she was pretty rebellious but a few changes of direction had her licking her lips and dropping her head and at that point I stopped her and let her go play with her friend.

Marina the barn owner has lent me a new lead line, it's the one recommended for young horses by Linda Tellington-Jones-- it's like a chain lead to be used over the nose but with a thin rope instead of a chain.  We'll see how it goes, I think I need to stop worrying about possibly hurting her and more about stepping up and being a confident leader.

Anyhow here are some random photos from today:

Barn kitty napping between my alfalfa and my hay- nice and dry under the plastic sheeting :-)

Another cute shot of bar kitty with Starbuck getting a little wet while she eats her mid-morning snack.

And another one... Cute!

It's kind of hard to tell but that's SNOW on the Tramuntana mountains- first time I've seen snow here in Mallorca!

This is the kind of food we eat at my stable-- lobster stew.  Not bad for 8€, huh?

Today!

Today we started the day with a candy cane, to celebrate Christmas Eve.  I broke it up into little pieces and left it for her to find with that prehensile upper lip of hers... sooooo cute!  I also gave Barn Kitty some treats:

Afterward we did some on-line groundwork-- working on Parelli's Circle Game to teach her to keep moving without having to constantly remind her, then some direction changes and transitions, then lateral flexion and yielding hind- and forequarters.  She's getting really good at yielding, today I tried driving with the end of the rope instead of applying direct pressure and she didn''t skip a beat.  We also worked on our figure eights... which I think is more of a challenge for me to communicate what I want then for her to do it!

After all that and a good long rest while working on ground tying, I took her into the round pen and mounted up!  Today I practiced mounting and getting down from both sides, so if I ever need to mount her from the off-side she won't freak out.  At first we just worked on moving forward from leg cues (keeping her going is still a major challenge) and after a while of that I kicked it up a notch by asking her to trot.  I DID eventually get a couple of strides of trot out of her but couldn't get her to repeat it, so my friends Ivón and José Luis helped me out a little.  Hopefully soon I can teach her the cue and we don't need an assistant, but I can't complain-- this is only the fourth time I've ridden her after all.

Sometimes she gets a little pissed at me for kicking her, pins her ears and then turns around and looks at my foot, it's super funny but I try to act all outraged so she won't try to bite my foot at some point and then I'll have to get really serious.  Hopefully she'll figure out that if she just moves forward, the pressure and then kicking will stop.  I try to be all discipline but she's just sooooooo good!

Here's a video at the walk:

And again at the trot:

Today

This is just a quick post to record how well Starbuck behaved today, Javi's help the other day really did the trick.  I think the other thing that helped was mixing things up a little and making a lesson plan before starting to work.  This is what we did, all in the space of about an hour:

• Friendly game with a new brightly coloured rag.
• Tie up with other horses near arena, groom and pick up feet.
• Lead around the arena at a walk.
• Porcupine game on hind and forequarters.
• Longeing on a short (2 meter) line at the walk and a slow trot- she did this really really well and only turned to face me once!
• Tie up with other horses near arena.
• Shower (Starbuck's stepping slowly and controlledly off the shower platform these days!)
• Then I gave her a brand and linseed mix and some fresh alfalfa as a treat and we were done!

So we'll keep trying to plan more training sessions like this one in the future and see if it pays off, we'll keep you posted!

Horseshoes

My friend Belen had the farrier come to shoe Cancunen, the horse she's leasing, and all the time he was explaining the different problems horses can have in their hooves due to incorrect or infrequent shoeing or poor hoof maintenance, it was really fascinating both to learn and to see how he worked.  Here are a couple of links and pictures that I've found useful for learning more about hoof care:

Natural Hoof Care (Wikipedia)

HorseHoofCare.net

TheNaturalHoof.co.uk

Anyway, after he finished with Cancunen I asked him to come look at Starbuck to tell me if I should start doing anything like giving her supplements or whatever before her first trim.  He helped me out a lot, for example he showed me a new way to pick up her hooves which is more instinctual for her than how I've been doing it:  I've been doing it like this until today (always working myself down by petting her lots on the shoulder and leg):

But the truth is that today I tried this way and it worked great, I guess since stepping forward is a more natural movement than lifting her hoof backwards:

So we did this a few times, then let her think about it but I think it was a great step forward, we even picked up her back legs a couple of times too, which I had never done before!

Then we took a break so I could clean out her paddock and finally worked a little on the Porcupine Game, a Parelli exercise which uses steady pressure to get you horse to move.  After a little work, we were able to go backwards and yield both the hindquarters and forequarters a few steps before I told her she was the smartest, most wonderful horse in the world and gave her a big bunch of alfalfa for a treat.  I'm starting to get into the rhythm of these lessons and am going to try to mix it up a little more instead of just working on one thing.

We'll see how it goes in the future, wish me luck!

Playing games

So I signed up for a program called ParelliConnect since there's a free trial month and I have to say I think I'll stick with it even after the trial is over (it costs something like 9€ a month).  On the surface it's basically Facebook for horse people, with interactive walls and the possibility to find and connect with other members, but what makes it unique are Pat Parelli's instructional videos available online and the accompanying e-learning lessons with written instructions, troubleshooting and additional videos to pinpoint specific areas.

From the Parelli Natural Horse Training website, here are some of the foundations of their training program, which uses 7 "games" or exercises in different levels of difficulty (on a lead line, groundwork at liberty, bridleless riding and finesse) to encourage a partnership between horse and human:

"

Rather than using reward and punishment, natural horse training motivates or discourages behaviors by leveraging the horse’s natural instincts. Rather than using fear and dominance to force or coerce change, teamwork is the operative model. Traditional horse training methods tend to use a single protocol for all horses; natural horse training includes horse personality profiling so the best approach is used for each animal’s personality type. Just as different humans learn best in different ways, so do horses. Standard methods expect – or demand – that horses adapt themselves to the human world they find themselves in — whether stable, ranch, trail or show arena. Natural horsemanship encourages the human to understand the horse’s viewpoint and to make adaptations that increase the horse’s comfort level. A scared horse is a hard-to-train horse."

You can read more here if you're interested or check out the following video of the seven games done in seven minutes (with a bonus of cute foal footage):

Inspiration

This video is AMAZING, I hope some day to have the same kind of bond of trust with Starbuck that this girl obviously has with her pony.  Hope you enjoy it as much as I have, by the way she used Parelli methods to train her pony herself :-D