Today I feel like jumping up and down, shouting, telling the world that I finally get it! Get what, you might ask. Well, for nearly three years my trainer has been kindly reminding me to be more creative, observant, feeling about how I work with my horses. Unfortunately I tend to be task oriented so being creative has been difficult. And when you're focused on a particular task it's difficult to observe how it's going and to feel when you need to change things up.
What changed? Time, for one thing. Like I said earlier, I've been under the tutelage of Meghan Valenti Horsemanship for nearly three years. I've also done a lot of research on my own. I follow Mary Kitzmiller (Extreme Mustang Makeover winner and more) Horsemanship Facebook page, I've read countless articles and I have a few go-to books. My favorite is "Three-Minute Horsemanship" by Vanessa Bee. She is British and has several books out. This one in particular speaks to me because it immediately addresses the fact that as working adults, some days we literally have about 3 minutes to be with our horses and she reminds the reader that no matter how you spend time with your horse, you are ALWAYS training them. She also does a great job explaining why the exercises are important, how to do them, how you know you did it right and how to know if you need more practice. I've used this book a lot with my easily-startled OTTB, Beege.
I also have a couple Cherry Hill spiral bound exercise books — one for groundwork and another for arena exercises. She also offers clear explanation on why the exercises are necessary. The exercises are one page each, just like the Vanessa Bee book. Some books go into great deal about theory and those are useful for horsemanship development but I need the step-by-step instructions that these books offer.
And finally, I've been watching Elisa Wallace's (world-class eventer) 2018 Georgia TIP Challenge youtube videos. She chronicled each day of training her makeover mustang, Dorado, right through the end of the challenge, which wrapped up this weekend. Each video is 10 minutes or less and they are largely unedited, except for time and narration, so you see when things go wrong, you see when things go right and how she revisits each step without drilling exercises. I will probably watch this series through more than once.
So today is the best example of how I put this mass of information into sessions with my horses. I've had a bad cold for more than a week and have been feeling wimpy so yesterday for my weekly lesson, we fit Odin with my English saddle and practiced standing in the cross ties. He's been doing well hanging out in the small grooming bays and respects pressure from the halter. It was a good time for me to hang out with Odin while Meghan fiddled with the gullet on my saddle. Plus she and I got to catch up, which isn't often possible during a regular lesson.
Today I decided I was going to ride, even if only a couple laps in the round pen in my English saddle. I tacked Odin up, took him out to the round pen. During the warm up on the ground, he kept breaking from walk to trot. Here's where I left my usual task-oriented self and became creative, observant, and feeling. The task-oriented me would've been impatient with the warm up, disregarded what I was seeing (wanting to trot) and would've gotten on anyway, which may have ended up being a bad decision for both of us. The creative-observant-feeling me decided that I didn't want to ride a horse that was so eager to trot and was having trouble relaxing in the walk. So I spent more time warming up. I asked him to trot and didn't let him walk for a few laps in each direction. After that he seemed content to walk. I got on then.
Steering is still a bit of an issue with him. Odin was willing to walk forward without my having to push him but he doesn't like to walk next to the arena wall, or in this case, the round pen panels. I tried a few bending circles in each direction That seemed to go pretty well so I got off. No drilling! I untacked him and took him through the outdoor dressage arena, stopped at X, then continued out to where the trailers are parked. He's still not super comfortable around trailers. Yesterday we practiced targeting the wheel well on the trailer. Today I just wanted him to graze in the narrow space between trailers. I needed to fiddle around with the divider. He didn't seem alarmed when I opened the door and got in. He almost seemed interested in following me in but the trailer wasn't connected to the truck and I didn't encourage him to follow me so he contented himself with grazing. I banged and clanged the divider, took a picture of the bent hinge mount, banged and clanged more, popped up in the window and said hi to him, jumped out, startled him so did that again until he wasn't startled. All the while he was connected to me via a long lead rope held in my hand. He's a good boy.
We finished the day by practicing moving his shoulders. He's very sticky so after he crossed over once then twice, we ended. I realize that this is something we will need to work on because he has a bad habit of pushing his shoulder into me when he's nervous about something. Practice we will but no drilling.
I felt very connected to Odin today, more connected than ever so this new creative-observant-feeling me is working for both of us. I worked with Beege too but that's another post for another day!