In an effort to write more often – I have created a new category of posts. I often feel the need to write long, thought out posts that summarize my philosophy. This sometimes prevents me from getting my smaller thoughts,observations and realizations on “paper.” Daily Gleanings will help me do just this. These are the thoughts that go through my head as I replay my day as I’m falling asleep every night… The moments that come to me as I’m driving, or cleaning a stall, and so on…
Yesterday, I worked with a mare that has been ridden lightly, but not by me. When younger, she lived in a dog kennel with another horse, who had to be put down when they were rescued because he was a danger to himself and self destructive.
Some things I noticed while working with her:
She is an extremely quiet mare, and everyone loves how sweet she is, but I suspect part of that quietness is that she is a bit shutdown and has “tuned out” the world… My guess is that as I work more with her, we might see something other than just sweetness as she becomes more comfortable being more expressive.
While doing groundwork with her in the arena, she at times seemed to get uncomfortable with the “openness” of the space. She would almost spin out of control and get faster and faster… I had students in the arena also, so had to mold that energy a bit to keep all safe, but it reminded me of a story of Mark Rashid’s in which he wrote of how horses process trauma. Essentially he said that sometimes they just need a good run to process a traumatic event, which is what they would do in the wild, but we humans usually do not allow that, or if they are in that adrenaline, endorphins up space feel the need to chase them, which doesn’t allow them to work through the process themselves… I’d like to explore this with her, just let her loose in the indoor see what she does….
She is a complex mare, and I think there is a lot more hiding under the surface with her, which is why I have waited to begin working with her until I really felt that I could put in the time – basically, I didn’t want to open the can of worms until I was ready to deal with it…
She definitely looks to humans for physical security, which is good, considering her past, but we need to work on her feeling more confident and secure so that she doesn’t feel the need to invade my space all the time. Mark Rashid’s #1 and only rule is that a horse is not allowed to run him over – and I agree with that… (Can you tell that I’m in love with his approach and writings?) We worked on dealing with navigating obstacles while having a consistent distance between her and I that was my “personal bubble” – no landing on top of me..
She is extremely sensitive and responsive, and fun to work with!
I was working on getting her to walk quietly over a tarp and something important dawned on me that will change how I work with a lot of horses. I was asking her to walk over the tarp between me and the wall. I was about ten feet from the wall, so not super close, but it was too intense of a pressure for her. Essentially, I was applying pressure on both sides of her ( me, and the wall) and then expecting her to not try to run through me to avoid the pressure. That was an unfair deal for her, and was setting her up for failure, but is the way a lot of people approach this type of obstacle… When I changed the approach, moving to the wall my self and then asking her to walk over the tarp to the inside of me, I allowed her to succeed. Her try was that much more genuine that way also – because she could more easily escape the pressure if she wanted to. I created a much softer, more willing horse, and the exercise was much safer for both of us, just by changing it up a bit… Big lesson learned for me…
Leading With Intention - Equine Training 