Maisie Steps Forward and Dawn Does Plastic

It was beautiful again yesterday - almost 60 with a little wind. I took Maisie down a trail we hadn't been down in a long time, and she was looky and snorty and asked a couple of times if we could turn around. I just chirped to her and we went on. There were numerous downed/cut up trees on the sides of the trail - some trees came down last winter and had been cleared from the trail. More snorting. Then we came into the open by the soccer field and basketball court. I asked Maisie to walk onto the basketball court, which she's never done before - it's green concrete with white lines and is apparently of concern. I just kept turning her to face it and chirping. Then we'd turn and walk along an edge, and back again, and then turn. She would get right up to it and then wouldn't go any further. We did this for a while. She was frustrated and clearly would have preferred to leave, and would paw rather than move forward - this was a big improvement from the small rears she used to do when she didn't want to go forward. I didn't want to up my forward cue - I only want to use the cue I want her to respond to, no more and I'm not interested in upping the stress or fighting with the horse - so since what I was doing wasn't working, I changed things. I wanted to be sure to get past her nervousness about it before quitting, so as not to leave her in a bad place.

Maisie is a horse who will often tackle things in hand that she is nervous about under saddle. So I dismounted, and led her over. Using a few treats, I got her to first touch the court with one foot, then step on and back, and then two feet - just like trailer loading, really. Within a couple of minutes, she walked onto the court, stood there and walked off. Lots of praise! We walked around for a moment and then did it one more time - no trouble! So that was all, and we walked off down the trail - she's so big I had to find a rock to mount from, as my knees and hips won't take mounting from the ground any more. I expect the next time we walk up to the court with me aboard that she'll tackle it just fine.

That took a lot of time, so I didn't do what I had planned to do with Dawn, which was some mounted work in the arena reintroducing the bit and working on our backing, walk/halt/walk transitions off my seat and softening at the walk. It was getting late and almost dark, so we put that off for another day and did some quick scary object work. I got out my large black plastic garbage bag and hung it on the arena fence - it was flapping a bit in the wind. I let Dawn around near it and then up to it. She touched it immediately with her nose, even though it was flapping, and I clicked and treated. Then it started to slide down the fence - she thought this was a little concerning, but approached again on her own and got her click and treat. Then I stuck my hand under the bag and rattled it - the objective was for her to stand without being restrained in any way - it's OK if she spooks at something but I want the feet to stay still. After a few times she stood and was rewarded. Then I pulled it along the fence - same thing. Finally I took it off the fence and shook it, the first time gently and then a little harder. She got it the first or second try each time. Then I held it up to her and touched her nose with it. A few minutes later I was able to touch her nose and her muzzle on either side. Next we'll work up to my touching her with it elsewhere on her body, then rattling it and so on. We were done with our work for the day, so I dragged the bag off, rattling it as I went and Dawn followed along. We hung it on one of the paddock fences for me to come get it later - I didn't want to take it into the barn as there were horses on cross-ties. For her second scary object session, I was really pleased. Her eye stayed soft and calm and she was less worried than in our last session.

Dawn and I have also been spicing up our "crazy walking" leading exercise. On Sunday I added trotting and more quick transitions and turns. She really seems to enjoy this, and she's doing really fabulous trot forward to backing transitions on a loose lead - she's pretty agile. It's really fun and she seems to get into the spirit of things! We also got to do an important job together on Sunday. Fritz's owner was there with her little (I think 3 years old) daughter, who loves horses. She brought Fritz into the arena and wanted to lead her daughter around for a little, and asked if Dawn and I would stand in the center of their circle to help Fritz stay calm. Dawn stood rock still on a loose lead, with her ears up and a pleasant expression on her face - this from a horse that has often been aggressive towards other horses, even when they're not too close. Fritz's owner commented that Dawn looked like a different horse - happy and with a soft eye. I was really proud of her!

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This morning, I seem to have come down with a bug - some fever and chills, muscle aches, a sore throat, cough and a headache. The timing is right to have picked it up on my trip to New York. Those 1/2 mile round trips to the far pasture this morning weren't that much fun - at least the weather is nice. I doubt it's the seasonal flu, as I've had the shot, but it could be H1N1, but if it is I'm in the age group that should get off with a mild case (I hope!). I don't expect much horse work will get done today.

Horses Are Music

I'm an amateur musician - I've been taking recorder lessons and playing with a group for over three years now. Before that, I had virtually no musical background. The music school where I take lessons has a series of adult musicianship classes, that are free (!) to students taking private lessons. These classes cover things like rhythm, sight-singing (useful even if you're not a vocalist) and music theory. I took one class several years ago and now I'm taking another one. It's been immensely helpful with my music. We had class last night and some of the things the teacher said made me think about horses - well, pretty much everything makes me think about horses but this was particularly relevant.

We were working on rhythm, and in particular the difference between simple rhythm, where the beat can be subdivided into multiples of 2 - think 4/4 rhythm where an eighth note is 1/2 of a quarter note - and compound rhythm, where each beat is subdivided into three (or multiples of three, but that's a complication we don't need to go into). We worked for the whole 45-minute class on clapping different rhythms, and in particular in changing from a rhythm where each beat was subdivided into two (1-2, 1-2) into one where the beat was subdivided into three (1-2-3, 1-2-3), but keeping the same beat, so the 1-2-3 fit into the same time as the 1-2. Is this starting to remind you of something?

Our teacher said that many music students have a lot of difficultly with the switch between the 1-2 and the 1-2-3 and back again - say when triplets are in a piece that is otherwise in simple rhythm. He said often that's because we tend to think of the 1-2-3 as just a faster 1-2 and lose the pulse of it - if you do it right, it's almost like 1-2 is a pendulum and 1-2-3 is circular, with a bit of extra emphasis on the 1. Try thinking ap-ple and pine-ap-ple, with the beat staying the same - apple and pineapple fitting into the same amount of time - and you'll get the idea.

Now, here's where horses come in. I think one of the things many riders struggle with is trot/canter transitions - and it's the same thing! If we just ask for canter without thinking the new rhythm, we tend to get a faster trot or sometimes the horse just falls awkwardly into the canter. After my musical ahah moment, I think this has to do with the same problem that tends to trip people up in music. We walk on two legs and tend to think easily in twos. Threes are a lot harder. I always try to think the rhythm of the trot - 1-2, 1-2 - and then change my thinking to the canter rhythm - 1-2-3, 1-2-3 - as I transition. But what I may have not been thinking about is the circularity and pulse of the 1-2-3, which is exactly what the horse is doing! Think about how circular the horse's motion is at the canter (there's a diagonal element as well, but the circularity dominates), and how it has a pulse - outside hind, paired inside hind and outside front, inside front followed by suspension. The beat's on that outside hind, and the horse rolls through the other legs. This stuff may be obvious to you, but it's pretty exciting for me to realize and think about. So the route to good trot/canter transitions is to change the beat from the metronome-like 1-2, 1-2, to the circular, rolling 1-2-3, 1-2-3 (with no requirement at all to speed up or change the beat!) and focus on timing the new 1 with that outside hind leg as it steps into the canter. And even more - if I can shift my thought a moment before I cue for the canter, and then ask while that outside hind leg is on but just about to leave the ground so it'll be in position to step right into the canter, I'll bet the upwards canter transition will be much better.

Horses really are music!

What are your favorite horse metaphors/similes? The ones I've come up with, and done posts on, so far are horses are music, horses are the color of earth, horses flow like water, and I've been thinking about horses are mirrors. Do you have ones that you have come up with yourself or have read or heard that you particularly like?

Sunday Morning

It's a beautiful day - we're supposed to get up into the 60s. I decided to take a whole series of photos of my morning - I only take my own horses out to pasture on Sunday so there's some time to take pictures.

This was the view from my backyard as I took the dog out for a walk:

It was still dark when I came to the barn - although the light was very low, I like this ghostly image of the barn with the town water tower behind it:

As I was feeding the horses, the sky started to lighten up:


The manure spreader stands ready for filling:

Bob the barn cat (Mr. Tailless himself) was setting out on his morning business:


Blackjack's feed had finished soaking - the tub on the left has already been drained. Blackjack is the senior horse at our barn - he's in his early 30s - and has lost most of his teeth. He can't chew hay anymore, but we keep him going with a large quantity of soaked Purina Senior plus beet pulp two times a day.

Then I took my horses out to pasture. We're on our last few days of pasture grazing before we return to dry lot, and round bales. The water trough in the mare's pasture needed filling:

Maise was content, with Dawn in the background:

I love the mixture of dark and red hairs in Maisie's coat, particularly in the lighter area near her hip:

Dawn needs a good grooming! I like her fuzzy neck and ears:

Her coat is much redder than Maisie's, although she darkens up a bit in her winter coat:

Sugar was gleaming:

Noble and Scout were partly in shadow:

Joe through the fence:

This rotted fence post needs to be replaced, but I liked its texture, and the shadow it cast on the fence, with Dawn in the background:

The round bale holders are waiting for hay and horses in the dry lots:

Hope your Sunday is beautiful, and may it include horses!

Fun With Wordle and Lily in Retirement

Now just for some fun! There's a site called Wordle, where you can enter a blog's URL or a piece of text, and it will display word frequencies in a variety of formats and colors. Here's A Year With Horses so far:

And for a bit more fun, here's Lily at her retirement home in Tennessee - thanks to Melissa of Paradigm Farms for this fun picture of Lily (in back) and one of her pasture mates, Cuff Links, or Cuffie for short - they look like they're doing pasture drill team!

Have a great weekend, and may it include horses!

An Open Hand Can Close More Quickly Than a Closed Hand Can Open

I've been thinking about braces and softness. This morning when I was leading Maisie out to pasture, how I was holding the lead rope brought these thoughts to mind. When I lead a single horse who is relaxed, the horse is at least one arm's length behind me and the lead lays loosely across my open right hand with the tail of the lead just touching the ground below my hand and dragging along the ground. I use 10' cotton leads with lightweight brass clips and an enlarged area - not really a knot - on the end. They're cheap and durable and have the weight and feel I want. With a horse that is nervous or where I may need to do something with the lead or turn or move my body to interact with the horse, my right hand is the same but I drape the tail of the lead over my thumb and into the palm of my open left hand - if you know how to do a long-tail cast on for knitting you'll get the idea - which I hold slightly raised in front of my left hip. When I'm leading two horses side by side, I loop each lead (making sure there are never any closed loops to entrap my hand) and drape the loops over each loose hand. All my horses are trained to lead on a loose lead - if the lead isn't loose or my hand is closed it's because I'm asking them to do something specific.

Why do I keep my hands open rather than closing them on the lead? The heading of this post is a partial answer - due to the way our bodies and nervous systems work, an open hand can close more quickly than a closed hand can open - contracting a muscle occurs faster than you can relax a tightly contracted muscle and then engage the opposing muscle to open your hand. So say the horse spooks while I'm leading - I have lots of options - I can close my hand on the lead, I can let the rope slide through my hand - without getting a rope burn which is what happens when a rope gets pulled through your hand when your hand is closed - and I can move my hand to a different position on the rope - all without having to deal with the clenched hand as a starting point.

The other reason I don't use a closed hand on the lead is that it is a brace, and a brace isn't soft. I get a lot of information through the feel of the rope about what the horse is doing and thinking, even though with a horse behind me I can't see the horse, because my hand is soft. It's hard to feel anything through a clenched hand and arm. I really try - not always successfully - to have all my interactions with the horse be as soft as possible - I don't think I can expect my horses to be soft if I'm not soft myself. It's easier for the horse to be soft if I'm soft. But soft can also be declarative - I try to be really clear about what I want and follow through - soft isn't about letting your horse walk all over you or being wishy-washy. Soft can also be big when necessary - although if you're soft you can often accomplish what you want with much smaller movements and cues.

Softness is about attention. One of the most powerful things I'm always learning is that if there is softness in my body, I can more effectively pay attention to the horse and the conversation we're having, because the lines of communication between the horse and me are open in both directions. If I'm braced, I can't hear or communicate as well.

Softness is both physical and mental, and is about being aware of braces and working to eliminate them. As with my leading example, a body held with softness can more effectively keep riding if something happens - say a spook. If you're braced, by gripping with your knees or legs, or if you're carrying braciness in your pelvis or back, if your horse spins, bolts or spooks you are much more likely to come off, because your reaction time is slowed - you've got to undo all those clenched muscles before you can adjust to the horse's motion and begin to influence it - and because being braced tends to push you up off the horse's back. If you can stay soft in your body and continue riding through whatever motion the horse serves up - being "with" the horse and its motion - you've got a much better chance of staying on and being effective. If you brace up and stop riding, you may be dead meat, and you're likely at the least to increase your horse's level of tension/fear.

Bracing can also be the result of emotions we carry - there's a strong connection between fear, and other strong emotions like anger or frustration, and physical bracing. I think that is one reason it takes a while for beginning riders to start to develop an independent seat, leg and hands is that they're anxious and the anxiety expresses itself in braces in their bodies. I also think many horses "read" braciness in us as cause for alarm - think about a horse's "on full alert" posture - head and neck high and tight and entire body tensed - they think when we're braced, we're worried about something and maybe they should be too.

Softness is about breathing. If you aren't soft in your body and posture - and I don't mean soft like floppy I mean soft like unbraced and with a posture that is competent and relaxed and ready to move - you can't breathe deeply and effectively. If you can't breathe effectively your muscles and brain aren't as well oxygenated as they can be, which means that your thinking isn't as clear as it could be and your body won't respond as well.

Softness is about body awareness. Modern humans, being creatures of language and with the ceaseless background chatter they have in their minds - I always think of it as like the distracting scroll across the bottom of a TV screen, but even worse - have a hard time really paying attention to their bodies or anything else - we find it difficult to be truly aware and "there". I work all the time, all day long, even when I'm not with horses, on noticing and eliminating braces in my body, in how I walk and hold myself. When on the horse, a brace can be gripping with your legs, or not allowing your pelvis and back to move appropriately - think bouncing at the sitting trot. A brace can be forcing your heels down, locking your elbows and shoulders (the closed hand on the reins when riding with contact can still communicate softness if the arms, shoulders and back are soft), or clenching your jaw and neck muscles - we can brace with almost any muscle in our bodies. And when we brace, we both interrupt the communication to and from the horse, and we also impede the horse's ability to move freely while carrying us. If we have a habitual brace in our bodies, our horses, in order to adjust to us, will often develop a corresponding brace in their own bodies.

One of the most common braces is the one that's set up when the horse gets heavy on your hands - this is two-party transaction where the horse is pulling on you and you're resisting the pull by bracing, or vice versa - it's a brace with two ends. If your horse is pulling on you, or is heavy in your hand, you're a contributor to the brace. Learning to eliminate this brace and effectively influence your horse's posture and carriage without bracing - with a goal of the horse developing true self-carriage - is a really big thing and one that I'm always working on. But I think the first step on the road is awareness that there is a brace, and that you're part of it.

And braces can be mental - this is the really hard stuff, even harder than the physical things. To my mind, anger is a brace. Resentment is a brace. Fear is a brace. Impatience is a brace. Rigidity of thought and lack of openness is a brace. Letting the ends justify the means is a brace. I could go on, and I'm sure each of us has our own package of mental braces. The mental and physical stuff flow back and forth and influence one another. That's one reason I work so much with my horses on self-calming and the development of trust - if they feel better on the inside they are less braced and reactive on the outside. And a horse that can learn to carry its body with softness, from the inside, will feel better as well. I think it works the same way for us. It isn't just about the technique or the mechanics.

None of this is easy or quick to achieve, and at least for me, it's going to be a lifelong journey, a lifelong practice.