The title for today's post is from a blog post by Jane Jackson of Bookends Farm. I learned about her while listening to a positive reinforcement podcast called Equiosity. Jane has a very sensitive horse who is on high alert all the time, even on her own farm. My OTTB, Beege, is much like that too. He's the Mother Hen of the herd, although not the leader. He likes to know where everyone is at all times and is constantly on the lookout for danger. He's a Danger Ranger. The other horses are more relaxed. Except roofs are Odin's nemesis. More on that later.
I've been trying to make sense of Beege's behavior for a long time and wondered how to help him make sense of the world so he can be more confident and maybe, just maybe we can go off property and have some fun together. I listen to a lot of podcasts, read a lot of training materials, ask questions of professionals and experienced horse people. Most people don't know why I keep Beege. Some days I don't know either but the truth is I haven't figure him out and I want to. Anyway, one trainer whose methods I admire very much said that her test for riding a horse is if they can be okay with a flag. Flags are Beege's nemesis. I've said before I think he was "flooded" by a past trainer who thought that eventually Beege would figure out that a flapping flag doesn't actually cause any pain. Well, it doesn't but Beege never made that connection; his emotions kept escalating and he never gained control of them until the flag went away. By Odin's example Beege is learning to be more confident around flapping flags but he's still afraid. He enjoys targeting them but he doesn't like the flag to touch him. He needs to be in control.
Back to Learning to Be Brave. Jane Jackson was being interviewed by clicker trainer host, Alexander Kurland, and described her method of getting her sensitive horse, Percy, to be more brave. She spent almost a year (weather permitting) trying out her method of asking him to pay attention to her, stop worrying about everything around him, in other words be brave. I just started the method with Beege this week. So far he's wondering why we're doing such easy boring exercises. The answer is because I want him to be confident about what I ask him. Tomorrow I will introduce a slightly new exercise but in the same "zone". Jane describes what she did in this article: http://bookendsfarm.blogspot.com/2019/02/percy-project.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+blogspot%2FzKal+%28Bookends+Farm%29
In the meantime, Odin and I continue to work on squeeze games, both over his head and through narrow places. Today he willingly stood under a roof. It's getting easier but we still need to take our time and we will.