Adverse Conditions

If you don’t have something working really well in ideal conditions, you don’t have much hope of them working out in adverse conditions…

I’ve heard Harry Whitney remind people of this as a fundamental answer to various questions they ask about trouble spots with their horses. It pairs well with another quote, which was my own take home from two days in June watching him at Mendin Fences (TN):

In my experience, most people don’t know what it looks and feels like to have a horse truly mentally centered and present with you, and so most people don’t really get there, and this is a reason many people can’t seem to get a real change come through. The horse was never really centered up and present.

It’s been a priority to address Wyoming’s mental centeredness since I’d met Tom Moates early last year.  Tom has been learning from Harry for years, and attention to the horse’s mind is a central focus for him as well. This doesn’t mean I’ve been successful it. We’ve made some significant strides in helping her become more relaxed, less angry, and significantly more cooperative than the other approaches I’ve tried over years. Yet I sensed a trouble in her that I had not gotten to the other side of, even as of this summer and the clinic we hosted in July.

In mid-August, during Harry’s five-day clinic in Floyd (hosted by Tom),  the question came to each participant: what is it you most hope to address this week with your horse?

I had one request: show me what it looks like to get Wyoming mentally centered and present.

Harry was willing to guide us through this, and on day one, our lesson hour was spent, from the field to the work space, on learning what she looks like when she is fully present and how to require that she make that a way of life for now. 

Additionally, my job was to make the times she was present and relaxed as sweet as possible. This is the place that feels good. At first, any time I asked for her attention, she would start throwing out options I might ask her for, like walking a circle. It was as if she had a hard time believing I could ask for her to be relaxed, ready, and present and then just breathe a moment and find peace in that space. Probably I don’t find as much peace with these creatures as I could, and a change here will serve us both. This was all we did.

At the end of our session that day, Harry suggested I take her all the way back to her paddock walking backward and not taking a step she wasn’t “with me.” It took a lot for me to stay that present and focused. 

It took a lot of focus on day one to walk backward to the gate connected at every step to release Wyoming from class. But I was committed to the process. Harry helped me to be able to see when she was present, and bring her back when she wasn’t. The entire week I did not take a step without expecting she would come back to being mentally centered. This is not to be confused with being “hyper focused” on the human at every second for fear of punishment. There are training methods where a horse is ambushed or punished for looking around. Though I use a flag for some of this work, it is built around creating an indirect distraction or sound or movement that draws the attention back to me. The key difference is intention: the actions is not at her – not a threat toward her. I need to become more important or interesting than the other distractions. Working with Harry, we don’t use fear or force as a motivating factor. Doing this takes a shift in thinking.

Once this becomes a way of life, the horse can look around and notice the environment because they have learned to quickly make note, let it go, and return to the place of peace which is back mentally centered with the human in the work. It is part of learning to let go of a thought that doesn’t serve the horse.

Wyoming is a highly sensitive horse that has her attention split, keeping everything around her in check in order to survive each day. When she is distracted keeping tabs on everything within five miles, she can throw out autopilot training moves, but she cannot stay present in the active conversation I want to have with her. I don’t want push button autopilot. This has not served us at all. I want actual communication, in real time, addressing the present moment we are in. In order to do this she has to let go of the other things and stay with me. As Harry helped us make this a reality, secondary issues began to dissolve on their own. 

During the week we addressed some different challenges I had been working on. We loaded her onto a trailer that was darker and had a step up entrance (instead of a ramp).

I worked on “knot work”- addressing the claustrophobia from early halter trauma that’s been present in some form the entire time I’ve had her. The day we explored knot work, I expected to see at least some extreme reaction to the halter, but it simply never came.

I rode her in the round pen; I’d had trouble in the past getting a forward thought to walk on without driving her. We came up against a little drama here, but worked through it in short order, and had a nice shift in riding as well.

Finally I felt a shift that seemed a significant change and I’ve continued this work at home. If this mare is not mentally present or centered up things do not go well. She gets annoyed at having her thoughts interrupted when she’s concerned about other things. Sometimes she still gets dramatic when she shares her feelings about her own ideas being interrupted or blocked. When she is mentally centered she is like the wonder horse I’ve always wanted. She is soft, adjustable, responsive, and willing. 

I’ve been riding her at home in my round pen, enjoying great sessions where we are building like one would a green colt, forward, steering, stopping and backing. 

I am trying to start this journey in as ideal conditions as possible. I continued to prioritize mental connection. I can put on the halter without fuss, load her on the trailer, and ride her in the pen. Each day more positive experiences and progress. Last week, Matt and I took her on a solo adventure, loading her on the trailer for a short drive to our local recreation area. We unloaded her, took a walk, then loaded her and returned home. It was a great success.

My next plan was to bring her to visit my farrier for Khaleesi’s shoe visit on Friday. I want to keep building on experience a real horse can have and farrier visit seemed a great next step to me. I trim Wyoming’s feet myself, and if we were able to get some trim work done or not was not important. Simply the experience of going on the trip successfully was the goal. Keep it simple.

What I did not account for was hurricane Helene.

Adverse conditions.

First, Hurricane Helene turned tropical storm was making her way through the South and though we never had the destructive storms, we had almost 2” of rain and gusty winds. All this boils down to prey animals on high alert. The mares were spring loaded by the time to get going came.

Second, the weather was crummy enough that though I was minimally willing to do what seemed necessary to have this adventure, I was less willing to go out early enough to assess her mental state, and intervene to find a working mindset before even considering loading. I gravely underestimated the effect of these adverse conditions. I might normally have planned a few minutes to shape this up… What I really needed in these conditions (in hindsight) was an hour of focus… and still, it might not have brought success.

Third, we had a soft deadline. I highly value my farrier and drive an hour over the mountain to haul to him. He was at home, and happened to be flexible. Still, night would fall at some point, and though I had a time window, it wasn’t endless. Time restrictions always feel like pressure. Pressure brings fear of failure which often makes for poor decisions.

To make a painfully long story shorter, Matt and I did the things that were successful in the past for about an hour. Over that time I watched the stubborn mare I used to know show up stronger to the forefront and dig in her heels. The more we insisted she join us with the trailer plan the more she resisted.

I made a pretty good mess of it as I became desperate to get it done. Matt was a phenomenal help, and he never got frustrated though things were not going well. When our best efforts and closest moments dissolved into escapes off the ramp in panic, I saw I was doing more harm than good and creating problems I was going to have to fix. I knew the frustration I kept at bay was getting closer to the surface, and I knew that would only make things even worse. 

I made one good decision to set aside my own stubbornness. I made the call to abort the mission, put her back in the lot, and take the horse who needed shoes before we had to abandon altogether. Wyoming did not have to make this trip. 

It was hard not to consider this admitting defeat and total failure. Because that’s exactly what it felt like, and I am not one to admit defeat easily. I told myself years ago I would NOT allow work with my horses to become a win-lose scenario. I am not in this to make my horses into losers. How I want to function is a growth model, and it’s a long journey. I was recently reminded by Adam Grant in his book Hidden Potential:

though straight line growth feels faster in the short term, it’s been proven many times that growth curves and loops are the only way to get farther over the long term.

For a straight line thinker I have to remind myself of this intentionally, often.

The mare was not with me, and we were way too deep in adverse conditions to swim out- especially considering it wasn’t necessary. Hopefully this was a loop in the long term trajectory that would carry us farther than my preferred straight lines of success ever would.

My biggest miscalculation was to think I could get her out of the field after a half day of being jacked up by her environment, and then load her as if we had already mastered this because we had a few successful trips in ideal conditions. If I would have stopped to ask myself if she was mentally centered up sooner it would have been obvious that she was not. For some reason I thought I could overcome this deficiency by sheer willpower. Strangely enough eight years of trying to overcome her inattentive mind to get her to do anything never worked. Why I thought I could revert to my old ways and get a different outcome is… mostly embarrassing.

After over thirty minutes of this idiocy, I saw it clearly. I realized she was minimally mentally present and that was my biggest problem. She wasn’t running me over or creating a danger and so I accepted it as good enough- but she was still highly distracted. After starting the process and getting very poor results I took her away from the rig to address her mental connection. 

This was the most challenge I’ve ever had getting big enough for her to let go of every outside distraction a stormy day could bring. She would look at me and immediately avert her eyes, head, neck or even her body, to a sound or rustle or leaf in the air. To her this was survival and self-preservation. I couldn’t keep her mind for more than two seconds at a time. I worked very hard to get very big and very loud and very active and I could get maybe five seconds. If so I would take a few steps do it again and get a few seconds and take a few steps. In this mode I got her all the way onto the trailer, but as soon as matt touched the butt bar she would explode off because even though I could get her body on, her mind had not settled there. 

It was a lost cause. I might have stopped after I realized she was not capable of staying present, and I should have realized that within five-ten minutes. I could have asked that question sooner and I might have realized that I was into depths we could not swim successfully. Possibly if I’d have addressed the mental state better in the first few minutes I might have had a chance. I don’t know.

As always there are the growth opportunities. I get to experience once again as a reminder what many people I care about are also experiencing when they get some momentum with their horses and then skip over – sometimes purposely and sometimes without realizing it- to the deep end and get into a bad situation. Not only is it humbling for me to hit a place I cannot overcome in one fell swoop, it’s good for me to have to experience what people around me are going through. I am willing to go through challenges in order to learn things that might be able to help others. And so as James tells us in his letter: Count it all joy when you meet trials of various kinds! For you know the testing produces steadfastness, and let this have its full effect that you may be complete, lacking in nothing! 

Also, it reveals to me me the dark, stubborn, frustrated part of me I hope to identify and eradicate. If I could have done so, I would have picked up that horse, hog tied her into that stall, and forced her on the journey. At some point I lost most of my compassion for her and the real sense of threat and pressure she felt.

In ideal conditions I have grown so much! I have tons of patience and empathy for what the horse thinks and feels. I can say I am here to help you and mean it. When the conditions squeeze me, what comes out? Eventually frustration and the desire to beat her with my flag until she complied by force, broken mind and broken will. I did not go there, but it was because I know that doesn’t work- not because of my stunning maturity and grace. It’s good to be reminded of the garbage that remains in the darkest corners that still need cleaning out. Lord help me, and thank you for exposing it without me acting on it.

Something encouraging I considered in my personal debrief: this mare has a history of going to fight mode unusually quickly. She has threatened violence when she feels treated unfairly, with punishment or force. Friday, her stubborn will engaged, refusing to be loaded on the trailer, however, she never threatened with dragon ears, rearing, or nipping. She refused, but she didn’t fight.

In the end, the conditions didn’t seem adverse enough to me to create this trial. I was wrong. Also, I had thought that our ideal conditions work was going well and it was. But I’ve learned from Harry that me, and many of us who are pursuing excellence and a higher working connection, are not aware enough yet of the subtleties in the ideal conditions that his eye would be. I can hear him say: you’d better get that working better because it won’t hold when things get adverse. The same as he has observed: most people don’t know what it looks and feels like for a horse to be fully present and truly mentally centered.

It seems many of us have to feel in mortal danger before we dig into what seems good enough. Apparently, for each person, there is a different threshold for working good enough. All foundations have a certain amount of weakness. Will it result in a tragic wreck or only sub-standard performance? It probably will depend in part on what kind of conditions you face. For Khaleesi, these adverse conditions were not a huge deal, for Wyoming they were a deal breaker. I want to be someone who digs deeper even when things are not downright scary and grow even when things seem good enough.

I still having a long way to go. This means more time in the ideal to expose foundational cracks and more gradual steps into incremental adversity so the cracks are patched up before being totally overwhelmed beyond hope without a rescue effort from the coast guard. Someday I hope to see morelike Harry. Because of his experience and attention to details, time for him is shorter in the shallow end, and he has more tools and experience in the deep end- I suppose in some ways Harry is the coast guard.

Today I am grateful that horses have memories and experiences, yet they also shift quickly with their experiences. I am pretty sure I caused problems I’ll have to fix, but if I show up fresh the next day, I believe she will as well, and if I bring my A game she will respond. Nothing is beyond repair, even though repairing damage I’ve caused isn’t a good way to proceed. 

Epilogue.

The following day we had a break in the rain and I spent some time with Wyoming to assess the damage. She was more difficult to halter in the field, but once I had her on line she came with willing softness and keeping her attention centered was easier in the calm sunny afternoon. I struggled to load her as easily as previous, but Matt had been watching and asked if he could try. It took some communication and patience, but he was able to load her twice fully on where she felt relaxed and calm. We did not close the bar, but took the progress and moved on.

Matt then kept her attention and held the rope while I attended to her feet which did need a trim. She did so well we also put on her saddle and did some work in the round pen. All of this went well and Matt took the lead (literally) on much of it. He has a grace and patience for that mare I sometimes struggle with, and she responds well to it. 

Yes there are some setbacks, there was a price from the poor choices and miscalculations I made, but these things will pass, the growth will continue in loops and curves. As always… Hope continues.