Spring update

I have enjoyed writing about st, but I am going to leave the home study course there for a moment - I will explain why later.

So I thought it was time for a little update. Mr t as ever has defied vet science and my expectations and made it through another winter. He is still a bit ropey though, underweight, stiff, and now his hair is falling out. But as he has made it this far I am hoping that he will get to enjoy the summer.

Sofia in the mean time is fat and full of herself. She has adopted a little colt called Charlie and enjoys fratanising with the boys next door much to ts dismay.

We have also started riding again, just short walks as we have to take t with us. So has buy in large taken this in her stride. The first few rides were as if no time had passed between rides. She is slightly full of the joys of spring though and has done the occasional dance when something excites her. Her current thing is horses coming to the fence. This is sort of my fault, we had some new ponies cantering and bucking at us as we walked past the field,  causing so to fret and Spanish walk whilst t attempted a Calverley charge. I have no idea how I held them both but it must have been impressive as the builders who were watching gave me a standing ovation. What I should have done is get off once I was back in the yard and calm sof down, but instead I got annoyed and through tonts at poor liz and charged so back down the track to make her do it again until she did it sensibley. This was basically me bullying her, because, unlike t she was actually scared not naughty, and forcing her to go back alone only made things worse. I am now having to work hard to regain her trust here.

The fence in sedentary aside we have been doing fairly well. Tonto is finally getting the idea that he needs to walk next to softie in ride and lead and we have had some pleaser strolls. And I have been doing a bit of Stelling and bending and lfs on the circle with softie and t. Whilst t appeared to take an early lead on the learning front, it quickly stalled when he got over excited by treats and then generally resisted to everything I tried. Sofie however has made a gradual continual improvement on Stelling and bending - though she has some difficulty bending to the left. However I am not confident I am doing the right thing on lfs.

Which leads to the next exciting development - I have signed ourselves up for the full mastery program so that I can get a bit of help with st. So there will be more updates, but following the mastery schedule instead.

I think st might already be helping. I rode sof in the school for the first time yesterday and she was incredible.  Super responsive and collected and doing half pass and reign back on the slightest cue. She felt so good I got bold and did a little trot. She felt pretty sound! Fingers crossed we are on the path to getting better.

So an exciting summer of St awaits, watch this space

1.3 Understanding horses part 3 - horse personalities

Just watched a really interesting video on horse personalities. M talked through a couple of models.

The one I had never heard of was the Chinese elements model. In this model there are several personality types:

FIRE a fisted playful horse who loves to show off

WOOD a competitive horse who enjoys winning

WATER a nervous horse who wants everyone to be safe

EARTH a chilled out horse who is very grounded
METAL a no nonsense horse who just wants to get the job done









She also discussed the right brain (creative) left brain (logic) introvert/extrovert thing, but it didn't resonate as strongly, or at least I had heard it before so it didn't catch my imagination to the same extent.



So going back to the metals I am trying to think of examples. Max, the lovely cob I have been riding is very much a metal horse. He cares little about fuss and attention and is a fairly serious chap. Max,'s main job, the way he sees it, is eating and he is very focused on getting the eating done. Frodo was a wood horse. Soo competitive. I probably would have classed him as an introvert as well. Sam was all fire, needed to be at the centre of everything all the time, and very much a left brain extrovert.

Sofie is a water horse. She is emotional and worries and cares deeply about others and making sure everyone is safe. She also has elements of earth and occasional fire. I think she is more of an introvert but it really depends upon the situation.



Which leads me to the other interesting thing m said, these things change depending on situation and time. Don't get too caught up in the story, you will miss the truth.



This really reflects where I am with tonto. He used to be a fire/wood horse. Dominant, opinionated, competitive, but as he has gotten older and more poorly he has lost his confidence and is now more of a water horse, anxious and flighty (OK he has always been a bit flighty, but I was never sure how genuine this was, I think it was often a game to t). He has also chilled out a lot and sometimes is fairly earth as he potters around the yard just looking for hugs. I guess the only constant I can see is tonot is an extrovert.



And me - well I am an extrovert, and probably water with a but of fire most of the time.



There was then a video on how to motivate different horses. M talks about how her horses like receiving feedback differently. Some respond well to a laddish hug and a deeper praise voice,  whilst others prefer a hight voice and strokes. One gets overwhelmed if the praise is too energetic and works best with long breaks, others benifit from lots of energy. This is not something I have really thought of before. I know both mine enjoy praise and a fuss, but I think so might get overwhelmed on occasion and need more breaks. I have never really thought about changing my style to suit them. I will have to try some different things to work out what works best for them.

1.3 Understanding horses part 2 - mental states

I split this chapter as it is rather long, so here we are a week or so later to go through the second half of understanding horses.

I have just watched the video on the mental states of the horse.

1. resisting state
2. non-responsive state
3. responsive state
4. searching for release/reward
5. figuring out state

The first two are obviously bad - in some training techniques they are referred to as 'right brain' or 'reptilian brain' (neither of which have much resemblance to the actual neural pathways) but as a concept they are talking about the state in which a horse is highly emotional in fight or flight mode and is not in the best place to learn. Too much pressure/force is often responsible for this state.

Unfortunately for me a see a lot of resisting and non-responsive from both Tonto and Sof. I think I have to take a good look at my teaching style. I am too authoritarian with them, working too much in a pressure and release model offering little reward. When I take Sof in the school, she is instantly anxious when I work her on the ground, and I have to take some time to settle her. Often she shuts down into non-responsive which is her coping mechanism. I think with Sofie it is from previous handling, but I need to also be kinder to her. Mr T is in full on resisting. I've been trying to do some ground work exercises with him but he is very nervous and tries to run through me or push me when I put any pressure on him. I have managed to make some progress with Sofie, but hardly any with Tonto.

Marijke would like to encourage students to aim to have horses always in states 3, 4 and 5. Where you use positive reward, and have a horse who is highly motivated, sensitive, and trusting in you. I would really like to achieve this with both my horses. I have it with Tonto when he is at liberty, but mainly because I am not actually asking him to do anything. I have started to train with treats, but I am not sure I am using them quite right - both seem to just get over-excited by them and stop listening. I think this is going to be a challenge for me, it is completely different to the way I have been taught to train horses.

OK just watched the learning principles and feel a bit better about myself. Basically the way to achieve the positive learning states is to combine release with reward - which can be cuddles and praise which I already do, I just need to do more of this with some carefully timed treats I think.

Essentially if you want to work your horse in the mental states of 3 and 4 you need your focus to be on what they are doing right, and allowing yourself to ignore what they are doing wrong. This will mean you work more with reward and release than correction. I think this will be my mantra with sofie, what is she doing right.

1.3 understanding horses, part 1 - elements in horse training

So we are still on the theory modules (though I have a little confession and skipped ahead to the 2 modules so that I could start with a bit of basic ground work practical - still that is another post for a later date).

Module 1.3 is all about understanding the horse. It claims that for successful training you need four things:

• relationship
• respect
• communication
• motivation

For the relationship, you are aiming to make the horse like you, and you achieve this with unconditional love, by expecting nothing in return and just handing out with your horse. Now hear I hope Sofie and I are leagues ahead of most as I have spent a good year just hanging out, and prior to that I always spend at least 80% of my time with her grooming or chilling. She has plenty of unconditional love.

Respect is all about being a good leader. So it is not about intimidation and domination - but instead being a respectful leader, telling using clear boundaries, coaching and allowing the horse some autonomy when appropriate (telling, coaching, and handover). The telling is more directive learning, so more authoritarian but helpful when you are starting something new, the coaching is where you encourage and support the horse so that it can take some ownership of the learning and the handover is where you allow the horse to decide what it would like to do within the boundaries you have set. This can improve its spirit and your relationship. Funnily enough this is very similar to the adult learning principles I picked up doing my diploma in human learning and development. If I were to critique myself I would say I always aim to be a respectful leader, but easily slip into domination/bossiness when I hurry or get frustrated. I have caught myself trying to bully Sofie when I get frustrated. It never results in a good outcome so I must be really vidulent and stop myself.

Communication is something that some would argue is natural, if we learn the horses natural body language then we should be able to communicate with them in a natural way. But straightness training argues that you might start with natural body language you will need to do a bit of learning and conditioning to get the highly sophisticated movements we desire. Makes a lot of sense to me. On a quick reflection of my communication style - I think I aim to be clear but often end up confusing Sofie, so my body language could do with some refining.

Motivation is all about working out how to influence your horses behaviour. Straightness training works on the operant conditioning principle. Where you can either reward -/+ or punish  -/+ to encourage desired behaviour and deter negative behaviour.

• + reward - offering a 'good boy' or treat when the horse does something good
• - reward - releasing pressure when the horse does something good, for example opening the hand and releasing pressure on the forward down
• + punishment - correcting the horses behavior by taking action, tap with the whip or back up when walking into your space. It is OK to do this so long as you are calm and unemotional, intimidating the horse is a no-no
• - punishment - is taking something away that the horse likes - this is much easier to do with humans than horses, so its not a tool that is often used for horse training.

I remember covering this in psychology many years ago - its nice that some of my lectures are coming in handy. I am going to aim to use more of the rewards than the punishment as I think Sofie will respond better to these. I am also worried about using + punishment because I know I have lost my temper in the past and can intimidate. This is not how I want to train Sofie. I might need to use + punishment a bit though as she can be very pushy, therefore might need some correcting. I am going to have to learn how to do this firmly but gently. Interestingly, during this module different training methods were discussed to explain how they work on the opperant model. Paralli was discussed and it is generally using + punishment and - reward. It was explained that Paralli can be dangerous in the wrong hands as the + punishment can extend to intimidation (to be fair this is true of many training techniques) but it sort of chimed with me. I have long felt uncomfortable watching Paralli and I couldn't put my finger on why, I now realize it is because I didn't like the constant pressure and I had seen too many occurrences of intimidation, with clearly stressed horses. I should caviate now, I'm not saying all Paralli is bad, I've just seen a fair amount of bad Paralli and I have just understood why it made me feel uncomfortable. Its punishment, but not being transparent about being punishment which means that some people unwhitingly abuse it.

Roz Richmond clinic

So today was rather exciting - I went to a Straightness training clinic with Roz Richmond.

We had a bit of theory in the morning, which to be honest didn't really add much more to what I had already learnt in modules 1.1 and 1.2 followed by observing some one to one sessions in the afternoon.

It was peeing down with rain all day today so I was very glade that the clinic was being held in a lovely yard in Hampshire with an indoor school - it was worth the drive.

The first lesson was with a little welsh pony called Star who arrived full of beans and rushed everywhere dragging her owner with her, just as well she was only 13 hands really. It took her a while to settle, forward down was difficult so Roz worked her on the circle and after a bit of ardgy bargy (she would rush and fall in on her shoulder pushing her handler) she worked out that she needed to go slow and relax and bend. It was like a little lightbulb went on in her pretty head. After this she worked pretty well through out the session, until the very end where she was clearly just getting a bit tired.

The second horse was the yard owners. He had a history of being very pushy and difficult to ride, to the point where his owner had turned him away for a year. Fairly early on he put up a fight, invading space and showing his displeasure with biting, but Roz stood her ground and showed him the boundaries and after this he started to soften. He clearly struggled and was not able to give the LFS to the extend of the first pony but he was clearly trying his hardest.

The third horse was a beautiful couloured cob type. He intinally seemed like a quite straightforward horse, but when Roz started on the ground work he started to show that he was worried and rushed, and then pushed during the exercises. I like that straightness training allows the horse to communicate its feelings. Again after a while Roz got him working on LFS but when she handed over to his owner she was really struggaling.

Groundwork is really tricky. Roz managed to make it look straight forward but all of the owners found it difficult. The smallest movement communicates something to the horse and equally you have to pick up on the smallest signals, and you have to do all of this whilst watching three things at once and doing independent movement with your hands, feet and core. A work out all round!

So the clinic was great, but I am a little concerned about going solo with my two. The owners today benefited from an experienced instructor, I am worried that without this I am going to struggle. Still I guess I can just give it a go and see. Perhaps reviewing footage of it will help me. A very short spin on the yard with Sofie seemed OK, though I think she might have been falling out on her shoulder. I'll have to give it a proper go in the school with a camera later in the week.

So all in all and interesting day :)

1.2 straightness training

So I realize I went straight into the mechanics of imbalance in the last post without really explaining what straightness training is. This is basically because I am using the blog as a form of homework, and module 1.2 talks more about how straightness training works and the pillars/tools which underpin it.



Four areas of straightness training
So far I have talked about physical imbalance, but straightness training is more holistic than that. Straightness training looks to balance four areas:

• physical - is the horse right or left bend (see previous post)
• mental - are they able to learn
• emotional - are they emotionally unstable
• spiritual - has there spirit been suppresses - learned helplessness

It is hard at this point to really know where Sofie's imbalances really lie. I know that she has some physical issues, and I think she is also quiet emotional at times with it - hence the melodramatic rearing and shoving when she gets uncomfortable. I think she has also been forced to do things in the past which can either make her angry or shut down, so I think I need to keep an eye on mental and spiritual.

Tonto def has a lot of physical problems, which effect him emotionally and can mean he is not always in a space to learn. I think his spirit is pretty strong atm as he spends most of his time at liberty with complete free will to do as he chooses.



Why straightness training
The first part of this particular module discusses why we should use straightness training - in a nutshell to balance the horse so that he can be the best horse he can be. It is probably worth reflecting at this point why I have chosen straightness training. I guess the first driver is to get my horses as sound as possible - help them physically. But I suppose I also want to improve my bond with Sofie, connecting on a mental/emotional/spiritual level. When I have worked with her on the ground I pick up huge waves of nervous energy - it would be great if, through straightness training, we become much more confident together.



Sequence of straightness training
Straightness training is a fairly methodological approach to training horses with a pre-defined order of activities which build on each other. The sequence goes as such:

1. standing exercises like forward down where the horse stretches its nose to the floor releasing its back muscles and lateral bending where the horse stretches the muscles down the side if its body
2. circle - where the horse is encouraged to bend and step his hind legs under his body
3. straight line - lfs - which stands for lateral, forward down stepping under (see 6 keys below) where the horse is encouraged to hold its frame whilst traveling in a straight line
4. shoulder in - where the horse moves on the straight line with its shoulders off the track, an increase in bend and learns to carry himself on the inside leg
5. haunches in - where the horse moves with its haunches off the track, again an increase in bend and asking more engagement from the haunches where the horse will need to step through with the outside hind leg to achieve this
6. roverer (I have no idea how to spell this!) - is the haunches in when the wall is the other side of the horse - more technical difficulty
7. half pass - is haunches in across the diagonal of the school with no wall involved
8. piroett - is haunches in on a very small circle
9. piaff - extreme collection
10. levar - sitting rear thing for the extra advanced strong horse (you can tell that I am not putting much effort into 9 and 10 as I don't foresee little fat Sof getting to these levels)

The thing about the sequence is each exercise builds on the first. The recommendation is that if you get an exercise 66% right, you are ready to move to the next stage. You can also up the anti by going up the gears, starting in walk and moving up to trot and canter.

I have a little confession - when I tried this with Sofie and Tonto in October I rocketed through steps 1 and 2, missed out 3 entirely and charged onto stage 4. No wonder both horses got utterly fed up with me - Tonto snarled and refused to play ball and Sofie started barging and rearing. Lesson learnt, slowely slowely catchy monkey. I can't see us graduating to trot anytime soon - plus it probably wouldn't be wise with Sofies ligaments anyway.

5  pillars of straightness training
There are five training pillars that you can employ for straightness training - and generally you approach them in the same order I think.

1. groundwork - first at stand still stretching muscles
2. lunging - getting the same strengthening exercises but now more independently and at a freer gait
3. in hand - working the horse from the ground but introducing independent reigns - the horse needs more muscle to have the necessary level of collectivness for in-hand work (eg slow gaits in in-hand canter)
4. ridden - the horse is now strong enough to take a rider - and the aids can be gently transferred from ground to rider by working in tandem
5. liberty - no physical constraints on the horse whatsoever - an advanced stage where you can really see the horses strengths, weaknesses and engagement with straightness training

I guess the pillars are used in this order for training a horse from scratch - obviously Tonto and Sof both have ridden experience so its not quiet the same. However, I think I am going to try and follow the same steps as they make logical sense in terms of strengthening the horse. They also fit with the straightness training sequence - it is easiest to to the standing exercises in hand and the circle on the lunge ect. I will be taking Sofie for ridden walks alongside the training - but I will work in the school with her on the ground at first. Tonto will probably never be ridden again due to his arthritis, but I will still try the groundwork part with him as it might alleviate some of his aches and pains.

6 keys of straightness training

There are 6 key areas for quality movement in straightness training

1. forward down - so that the horse engages his whole back
2. lateral bend - so that the horse can bend to either side
3. stepping under - so that the hind legs are balancing the horses center of mass
4. bending the inside hind leg - so that the power comes from the haunches
5. bending the outside hind leg  - so that the power comes from the haunches
6. bending both hind legs  - so that the power comes from the haunches

The first 3 are connected, the horse cannot step under without forward down as it can not engage its leg, and it cannot step under without lateral bend equally, the horse cannot do forward down without stepping under so they are all connected. The final 3 can be seen as additions to the first 3, but without the first 3 we loose the quality of the movement and so the exercise is futile. Half-holt is normally used to re-balance the horse, ensuring the the LFS are correct - light bulb moment!

It is funny how much of this I have tried to do before without really realizing what I was doing. I guess because I hadn't really thought about the underlying mechanics I missed the point of the exercise. The number of times I tried to do shoulder in with Tonto and though I was getting it right, but he was going along with a u-back and a false bend - curse you hindsight! 

Why collection

In straightness training we are ultimately working towards collection because the horse naturally carries most of his weight on the fragile front legs - which are not really that suitable for carrying the extra weight of the rider. By teaching the horse to collect and use his back legs, we are protecting the horse from injury, in the font legs and also in the back. In order to achieve collection we need to bend the hind legs underneath the horse, so that hips are lower than the shoulder and the base (the space the horse stands on) is shorter. This will transfer the weight of the horse towards the hind legs and free's up the shoulders and the front legs. Obviously this is quite different to the natural balance of the grazing horse so it takes time to build up the horses strength and flexibility.

....


woot woot module 1.2 done :) I have to say, I am itching to get into some practical having done so much theory. Alas the next module is understanding the horse so I think i am going to have to wait a little while longer.

In other news I took Sofie (and Tonto) on their first hack since our winter break. Sof was so calm. What a special little lady she is.

asymmetry Sofie action video - start of straightness training

right reign trot

right reign canter

left reign trot