Hope Horsemanship

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  • Get busy livin’

    Get busy livin’

    September 11, 2023

    I have three horses who lack for a forward thought and I can see how it’s shown up with different looking issues in each of them. One of them I haven’t had all that long, but the other two I have. Is this something in me? Am I causing this problem in horses because of a way I’m working with them?

    During the week at Harry’s clinic in August as it became more clear to me how important that forward thought is, I saw not only my herd, but a client and friend’s horse that I’ve been working with about a year all exhibiting facets of this issue. If there is something I’m doing that is causing or increasing this issue, I sure wanted to address it!

    Harry considered a moment and answered:

    No, I don’t think you cause it as much as you’ve missed it. You haven’t recognized it for what it was and addressed it is all.
    Working on the soft forward thought with K while being coached by Harry Whitney; Floyd Clinic, August 2023, photo: Tom Moates

    In the last blog entry I wrote about how I began working to generate a forward thought in Khaleesi. I am seeing some nice progress with her at home. I love now seeing moments where she will stretch that neck out in front of her relaxed and take on a forward walk without carrying the tension about she has in the past. The biggest issue with a lack of forward thought in her was the amount of tension in her body in movement. I don’t think she was deeply distressed by our way of being together, but she wasn’t moving freely and relaxed. This change will allow her to feel better about our time together and that will improve our connection.

    As for Hope, I have been working with her this summer with the goal of engaging her mind in a way that will help her become more available and less shut down. I have seen gradual but significant changes in how she walks and holds her body. I had not previously addressed her mind as lacking a “forward thought” in movement as much as I saw she simply was not mentally present to begin with. It is somewhat challenging to take a horse who doesn’t have good balance, has suffered from EPM (unclear what issues are blocking her ability to comply physically), and appears to have been mistreated over her life in direct pressure and punishment training… it is challenging to take that horse you have a ton of compassion on, and to make a big enough “meltdown” with the flag in her stall to get her to simply look up from the ground at you and have to deal with you in her world. To get big enough that she will come out of the only place she probably has felt safe and has retreated into for years now… (inside herself). The initial stress of that interaction on her is real. I’ve found it difficult to generate that pressure at first because the stress does affect her. Yet it takes that much to get her to come alive, be present, and then try to offer her the best place of security and sweet spot you can give when she does.

    I have not had the tools to do this for much of the two and a half years she’s been in my care. I suppose it’s good that I’ve left her to benign neglect for the last year as she was not well, because I didn’t know how to help her, so letting her rest was probably not a bad season. It seems she’s come to a holding pattern where she hasn’t told me she’s ready to die, and yet she is still quite unwell. And I can’t see leaving her alone there any longer. As the quote goes (from the Shawshank Redemption by Stephen King) It’s time to get busy living, or get busy dying.

    So I’ve begun to enter her world with enough pressure, and demand she come out of that far away place, to look up once in a while, and to come, and be.

    I’ve considered this forward thought idea and it struck me that she has been chased around, probably kicked and pulled in western lessons, punished for slow or wrong responses, that she has given up trying to think with humans. I observe that her “go-to” is to freeze and go away down deep, and if I insist she not tap out in that way she will start throwing me what might have worked for her in the past about turning herself into a pretzel. Watching her it seems like I either get no thought at all, just a vacant frozen robot, or she’s giving me two thousand things with thoughts bringing around like a pinball in stress and fear. Something I have not seen is a simple, clear, forward thought.

    She came to me with her spine literally compressed and roached up toward the end of her back; her neck, compressed and tight, was unable to move freely, and her body compensating to function. Imagine that braced up wall that either came from I can’t or I won’t got cemented more strongly in place and riders and instructors kicked and drove her forward into it- I heard she began rearing which is not a surprise since her forward was blocked that would be a potential direction for the force imposed upon her… up. Upon coming to live with me, I saw a compressed ball of a horse that has been smashed into that wall she was now trapped inside.

    I thought we’d simply help her free up and she’d be fine. I now wonder if this change in how she moves is like becoming an entirely new being, taking years of painstaking work as the changes happen. And the mental part of it cannot be left out if we are going to succeed in helping free her.

    Hope walks forward with her front feet dragging the toe, she backs with her back feet pushed against the ground, dragging backward. If she’s stressed she crosses and uncrosses her front feet threatening to fall over in a pile of spaghetti like she doesn’t know where her legs are or how to move her feet.

    Occasionally, I have observed her heading somewhere with interest and she almost looks normal. She can’t totally pick those feet up, so they paddle slightly and sometimes she looks slightly off like a lameness is present, but if she is headed somewhere with interest, not being chased by the herd or stressed in any way there is a glimpse of the real horse she might become. It’s in these moments she’s not afraid, not shut down, and I’d say she has a forward thought. Her body is freely going where her mind is sending it!

    As I’ve continued our work together, and she is trusting me ever slightly more, to come out and join me in the land of the living, I’ll get her outside on the lead line, and only ask her to stand quietly but ready. I watch her stand there facing me with a panic buzzing through her. She begins crossing those feet, getting unstable, and starts offering me things- circle left? Circle right? Back up? Oh gosh, what what what what??? And I respond by slamming down my flag not at her but on either side of me to block all the different thoughts that are now pouring out like chaos to do anything to avoid punishment. One of these has to be the right answer!!

    I have to get big to break through the chaos of her brain, which seems counterproductive when I have so much compassion on her and what she’s been through, that I want to pet her and say “there there… just relax… it’ll be ok, I don’t want to stress you out- you’v been through enough..” but I now see how that has not worked at all to help her. It’s like someone whose gone into another mental space, and the only way through is to make a big enough disruption they have to be slammed back into the present and see they are not back in the warzone, they are right here with you, now.

    I have seen her finally come center, look at me, and stop the chaos. Where I can pet her and give her a sweet spot to relax and release all the fear tension she carries- well, at least what of it she can.

    When she begins to go around me to circle, one might think she’s having a forward thought. However she’s moving in flight and fear, and her brain isn’t quietly thinking about forward, since I have insisted she not go into freeze mode, she’s in panic flight and her brain is all over the place. She’s all bunched up- just like her spine looked when she came to me.

    After she came to being momentarily centered and quiet, I started with getting her to LOOK and put her attention to the left and right, not walking off, only asking: can you move your attention. This is interesting because it’s hard for her to not look at me. If you were worried if you took your eyes off the teacher you could be ambushed and not be ready, you’d have a hard time looking away too! Without a question, when she first came to me, out of ignorance of what I was doing, I added to that experience of worry with her. So we have some recovery to do. 

    Once I can get her to look away – that would be the direction I’m about to ask her body to go… I start to suggest a walk. I do this with my energy, with my body, with a cluck cluck, with the flag rustling (not at her but in general at my side), and she doesn’t pick up on it. This is not driving, and she hasn’t been asked to take her attention and though to a direction, look that way, then lets head in that direction you are looking. She is more used to keeping her eye on the handler and moving her body the way she is being driven.

    Asking her first to look where we will be stepping

    In this case I begin to pet and rub her with the flag, to help her relax- I’m here to help you and I won’t ambush you. Then I lift and lower the flag in a calculated way, smooth and not like a driving as much as a signal, it’s gentle but clear… on the third time I drop the flag with gravity to land on her rump and she scoots forward- not relaxed yet, but I was shocked to see how she carried herself momentarily almost with grace. Then I rewarded her and rubbed her again with the flag- told her how awesome she was, standing still. I want her to think about moving forward- not to drive her on and on. I want her to be curious, and not afraid. I want her to start thinking and making decisions, not reacting. And I want her to have some time to respond thoughtfully not in fear of punishment.

    The dropping of the flag onto her rump is not scary (I can tell because when she’s in fear she gets all befuddled) and it’s new to her. It’s not whippy it’s like dropping a stone on the ground (but not as heavy as a stone), it has weight but not a feel of being chased. And it makes contact- not floating around threatening. These things I have played with and observed they make a difference. The horses have told me they do- in how they react to them.

    Now I ask her to look, I ask her to think about walking, I rub her with the flag and if I lift the flag up into the air she can walk off and I’m amazed at the difference in how she moves this way. I return the flag to her body while she walks and I rub her with it, I want her to stay present and not check out into auto pilot mode, and the flag is a “here and now” sensation that helps to keep her present. It should help her relax and encourage her to be connected to me, and to know the flag is a help – not a threat.

    Flag lifts to help her come out of freeze and to think to try something (forward would be great!)

    I still don’t know what Hope’s future looks like. She is far from healed of the many broken things in her mental and physical systems. She still has good days and not so good days. However her good days seem better levels of good. She can be found closer to the other two horses when in the field. I see her trot and canter into the stall from time to time to join the herd for a meal and some work-play. I notice she stays present more than she used to, her eyes aren’t as dull. And from time to time I see her laying down but it is less often. She still has not so good days too. Days when she seems less balanced, more lethargic, and more shut down. Days she drags her feet more and can’t seem to stabilize in standing still.

    I’m going to continue to demand she be here more and more. I hope I can give her the experience that this life doesn’t have to be terrible when she engages. I hope that her mind can come into a place where she finds peace, and balance, and that she can feel good.

    But I don’t need her to.

    Recently Emma Faith came over to give Hope some love and to pray for her to get better soon. Emma now prays for Hope’s healing every night.

    I’ve come to terms with the truth that she may never be the horse that helps me teach other people about horses as I thought she might be when I brought her home, and I may never put a saddle on her again.

    Yet she has taught me deep things about my own expectations, and what a gift it can be to invest in something that may never bring a return. I’ve learned the reality of connection to mind and body, and the complexity of trying to do the “right things” and yet not getting the “right outcome” like you’d hope. I’ve learned that the “right thing” is not always so obvious! And I’ve been learning sometime the compassionate thing to do is firm up, and get big to break through the walls to connect – even when it seems traumatic for a moment. When done in love, not in self-service, it can be an expression of love. I suppose Hope has continued the process to humble me as I stand before her wanting to help, not willing to give up, but not having clear answers, and the willingness to step forward into the place where I must accept:

    I don’t actually know what to do, but I am going to try, and stay open to the reality of what is in front of me (even when it’s confounding and difficult) and walk this out no matter the outcome. Even when it’s painful.

    A year from now I might look back on this chapter with more experience and wisdom and bemoan what I don’t know today that I don’t know, but for now, onward we go into the best I’ve got. And the knowledge that love does win, even when the victory is not what we expected.

  • For want of a forward thought

    For want of a forward thought

    For want of a nail the shoe was lost.
    For want of a shoe the horse was lost.
    For want of a horse the rider was lost.
    For want of a rider the message was lost.
    For want of a message the battle was lost.
    For want of a battle the kingdom was lost.
    And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.

    This proverb dating back to the 14th century came to mind as I considered my week with Harry Whitney (and Ronnie Moyer, and clinic host and friend Tom Moates).  It is amazing to consider what something seemingly insignificant can affect. A simple nail missing begins a cycle of events that ends with the loss of a kingdom. Missing a thought in a horse has in fact culminated in otherwise undiagnosable lamenesses, plenty of distressing behavioral concerns, and depending on circumstances can lead to various potential train wrecks that cause damage to horse and rider. 

    For want of a forward thought the relaxation in movement was lost.
    For want of relaxation the physical balance was lost.
    For want of balance the strength in movement was lost.
    For want of strength in movement the soundness was lost.
    For want of soundness the usefulness of the horse was lost.
    For want of usefulness the horse and rider partnership was lost.
    And all for the want of a forward thought.

    Last week, finally, the appointed time came when instead of finding Harry Whitney working with folks and horses and sitting with only a notebook around the round pen or arena, it was my turn. I brought a horse and got in the circle myself, in hope of being guided into some changes.

    I love this candid while we were setting up the group shot – within a week we were so like a family 💛

    I brought Khaleesi who isn’t complicated, who I don’t have large pressing problems. Khaleesi the magnificent, my special K. The horse who gives me grace and fills in for me when I fall short. The horse who recently carried me to a solid finish at the Old Dominion 100 mile single-day endurance ride. It’s not difficult to see the problems with Wyoming. If I ask something of her and she threatens to kill me, that seems pretty much pre-school in identification level. Helping Wyoming to a better place will take some finesse, but the thing about a horse that obvious: you don’t have to wonder how you’re doing. There is probably more risk to my safety involved at times because she has big feelings that can be explosive, but no one has to be very adept at reading horses to know what she thinks.

    As for K, she’s gotten along with the training I’ve offered and she’s become obedient. Yet I know there’s more available to us that I’m not accessing, and I know I could offer her a better deal if I knew what that would look like.

    Khaleesi waiting for her turn in a stall at the clinic

    It takes a bit more understanding to see the difference between obedience and willing responsiveness. It takes someone with more observation and experience to recognize the difference between light and soft. I figured out that I had a fair amount of obedience, but responsiveness and softness I was pretty sure I did not have. If I’ve gotten it from time to time it is more rare than I want. I wanted more and I knew Harry is someone who could help me even see what that could look like.

    On my first day in the round pen with K, Harry observed two fundamental things: first he noticed I wasn’t all that important to the mare. This did not surprise me yet I wasn’t sure how to address it. I’ve heard a helpful suggestion that we should be demanding of our horses, but never critical. This line is not so easy and it can seem to shift depending on the horse and their understanding or education level. Some people struggle being demanding… not me. I’m great at demanding a lot from my horse- problem is I merge right over the line into critical and that creates a negative association, an ill feeling. Therefore I find myself swinging purposefully too far into a place where I’m not so clear, not firm enough, and not expecting enough. I let her futz around in an attempt not to be too critical and she begins to see that she can blow me off if she futzes around toward my request generally even if she is in no great concern to comply. Like a teenager who says: Yeah Yeah, I’ll get to it when I’m ready. Thing is, she is capable of being more present and attentive and she was able to relax and responded to me expecting her to simply connect with me, NOW. This doesn’t mean I have to get her to DO something as much as it means she should be mentally centered and ready.

    Photo: Tom Moates

    Next Harry mentioned he hadn’t seen her have a forward thought yet. The forward thought concept held the keys to the kingdom. This was something I’d been fascinated by and unsure how to work on for months. It was, I believe, the first question I asked auditing my first Harry clinic in California (February 2023). Harry how does one create a forward thought?! He smiled the now familiar wide smile and said if I watched they’d work on that. Still, I had a long way to go from the round pen in Vista, CA to the square cow pen outside the barn in Highland County, VA.

    Considering horses are generally “forward-a-holics” they move forward more often than any other direction; this means seeing what a horse moving with a forward thought looks like, and being able to identify what a horse moving forward without a forward thought looks like. I’ve ridden many miles with a horse not having a forward thought, and my tools to work on that were creating in many instances a bigger problem instead of solving it. 

    Harry Whitney encourages his students to lead and guide their horses instead of driving and punishing them. Boundaries and consequences are real, but they are really different from punishment and driving with direct pressure. I had learned basically “natural horsemanship” tools over the years and it’s amazingly simple: if you want your horse to move forward, you ask it to go, then if it doesn’t go you add pressure in the area that will “drive” the horse forward. The driveline is generally easy to find in the rear half or third, or even behind the horse. If you apply pressure at the front of the horse it’s less likely you’ll get the horse going forward. 

    The problem with this work, is a horse can run forward in flight from something they are concerned with or bothered about. In this case the horse’s mind is actually on the thing worrying him from behind– not set on where he is going – which would be forward. A horse moving worried or in tension lifts its head up (a little, or a lot) holding those levels of tension in the body (if you are worried you are about to be hit, slapped, ambushed, or otherwise attacked don’t you brace for impact?). Tension is no one’s friend. We know in a wreck, fall, or even assault, if we were able to absorb impact without tension we would fare better, but our sympathetic nervous system has to be overridden in order to change! We can sometimes, in great moments of self-control, override our own reactions but it’s virtually impossible to convince a horse not to brace for impact or attack and stay relaxed as I pop your hind end with the lead rope because you didn’t move out when I asked.

    Yesterday I knew my little herd was concerned over something environmental I could not sort out. They were returning to look out the big doors from their stalls eyes focused on the distance. When I was finished there and released them they walked out of the barn politely, then once out in the field both Wyoming and Khaleesi began to pick up some speed and were clearly on alert. They sure looked pretty, but their heads were high and they were NOT relaxed in movement. They did not have a soft forward thought out there, they had stress and tension because something in the environment had their flight response kicked up a notch. They also did not move in a straight line… they meandered like drunken sailors in arcs and zig zags as their brain pinged around potential concerns in the environment.

    Horses agitated by environment…

    Meanwhile Hope was behind as usual. The two had settled a bit into a place to graze seeing there wasn’t anything dangerous to run from immediately. Hope sauntered out of her stall at a walk looking around, then saw the chosen grazing spot and with a forward thought headed right toward the herd. She wasn’t worried and she wasn’t in flight. She knew where she was going and she took her body right in the direction her mind was pointed. Her neck was forward and her line was straight as an arrow.

    Hope with a forward thought.

    If you have a horse whose head and neck goes up in movement, especially if it needs to be tied down by any mechanical device (or even “held down” by rein pressure), it is highly likely that horse is moving in stress or anxiety and brace of some sort. The effort to tie or hold the horse’s head down as a solution will increase anxiety because the horse now is anxious or tense and also unable to move freely- being literally tied down. A horse who is forced or trained to keep its head down but never helped to understand better how to move in relaxation is going to end up eventually with injury or shortened career than otherwise. The horse may learn to hold that physical shape to avoid fear, confusion and pain, but the tension will be as great or greater than if the head were moving like a giraffe. It regularly amazes me what they are capable of… even in a state of being handicapped by tools and tack. Horses are stunning creatures of strength and grace. Imagine what they are capable of when given the power to move in softness, understanding, and giving willingly in freedom? It blows my mind to consider it.

    Khaleesi is Arab, TN Walker, Saddlebred and Racking Horse. This is a mixture of breeds that might suggest a horse genetically inclined to moving with an elevated neck-head position. I asked Harry about this and as he worked with her on day three from authentic curiosity…

    Another thing I love about these clinics is there truly is never a dumb question. I have heard questions in these clinics I thought might actually be dumb questions– and every time been amazed by something unexpected in the answer. I’ve learned to ask anything I’m curious or in doubt about.

    …The answer to my curiosity about different breeds holding their heads and necks in different angles came out of watching Harry work with K in real time: it was completely clear that when she relaxed her body she lowered her head and neck, when Harry was able to get her to walk off with a forward thought, not in anxiety, her neck stayed relaxed and her body moved in freedom (and significantly more balanced). I think each horse has their own place of holding balance in softness so we are not looking for a particular angle or position, only watching the body to see when the neck gets longer as the muscles release and the movement frees up. Her neck only came up higher (it contracts or shortens when this happens) when she began to worry, get distracted (what was that noise over there? Did a horse call? Is that a deer?), or stress over the request to transition up into a higher gait. Her entire body changed when she switched from relaxation to distraction or stress. It was not a change for the better.

    Harry taking some time to explain a concept (probably for the gazillionth time)

    Roughly three to four years back I went through a period where K had intermittent lameness, we were increasingly pulled at endurance rides for mild lameness- often the vet couldn’t really tell where it was coming from, which foot? I never argued about these pulls, I could see she wasn’t traveling right, but I also struggled to sort out how to help her. I had vets do radiographs and nothing in them seemed an obvious problem including sole depth and bone surfaces or angles. I worried about grasses (this likely played a role when she was on too much rich grass and some of the lameness would clear up if I pulled her off the grass and hand walked her a few days). The heaviness on her forehand could have paired with sensitivity from the rich grasses to create discomfort. The lameness would come and go, but in that period it was more recurring especially at the trot (she was almost always sound at the walk) so I spent a year walking her everywhere. 

    I walked her up the mountain, I walked her down the mountain. I walked her around the mountain, in the woods, through the valleys, and along the river. In this time I did my best to learn about true straightness, better balance, and this began to solve some problems. I got some good guidance from Emily Kemp in these years to bring her into better physical balance and it really helped. She had more stress and anxiety at higher gaits and speeds (this is true of almost every horse), and so by committing to walking everywhere and finding the best balance and straightness possible at that walk (I wasn’t bored and wandering around at a walk, I was active considering my own body, joints, tension, balance as well as hers). 

    In some part I had inadvertently begun to help her relax and spending so much time walking freely also lowered her stress and anxiety. Stress comes from many places but it is always a condition where the mind and the body are disconnected, and in that case the horse is also disconnected from me. Though I was doing better on the physical front and it made great strides to reversing the mysterious lameness, it would be limited wherever anxiety and tension appears.

    Tension in the body is also brought up when the horse is feeling pain (ulcers, joint or muscle soreness, inadequate hoof protections for the horse’s needs, uncomfortable saddle fit, worry about the bit and how the rider uses it, metal clips connected to the metal bit clanging, a particularly tense rider inhibiting freedom of movement…). If my walking work was going well but my saddle was pressing or pinching there won’t be true relaxation available.

    Stress is also mental. Leaving home and leaving the herd are often stressful for horses. Confusion and inconsistency in handling is incredibly stressful on horses. Training that uses punishment keeps them always concerned they might do the wrong thing and get swatted by a lead rope, a stick, or chased by a flag. It’s hard to be relaxed when you are worried about what seems to you an ambush by a training tool (and until we are perfect in our communication which I have certainly not achieved, some of this is inevitable if we train in this way). 

    Fear or adrenaline of unfamiliar or distracting environments are huge factors for prey animals. Because we are high level predators I think we discount how great an impact this is. I’ve seen my share of horses running around at an endurance event who are moving fast, but without their mind present. They are either stressed, distracted, in pain, fearful of any number of rational or irrational things, or have been trained when in doubt go faster which bring on usually more tension in movement. I find my normally calm easygoing horse more alert and hot minded at a ride, especially on the start. Fortunately for me she starts from such low energy that her heightened state is still pretty under control. I am excited to have new ways to seek out relaxation as she presses into her work engaged in what’s going on around her.

    So what can we do?

    I was amazed at what 20 minutes with Harry Whitney in the saddle in a round pen accomplished. I feel incredibly fortunate because though he was coaching me personally through how to help her relax, be present, and learn a new way of moving he could see it would take me till Christmas in on my own especially because I hadn’t experienced this feeling and was having a harder time building on tiny moments she found it. She had to find it. It can’t be “trained in.” A horse can stick it’s head in a certain position through a training and still not be mentally present or relaxed. This is the rub- to know the difference.

    Jaime watches Harry and K in the round pen (Photo: Tom Moates)

    Harry worked with her and then invited me back to feel the change. 

    Harry helping K find a place of softness

    Christmas had come.

    Moving in relaxation was like a newly greased bearing that could go every direction without resistance. Moving off a forward thought when it happened was like a new German engineered engine was installed. I didn’t even know it was available until I rode it. Now I could feel the difference when it wasn’t there, and that made it easier to say: Hey hey there, we don’t have to go back to that! There’s a better way lets try again and accept only that.

    We have not had one questionable vet check in the last two years for lameness. Still, that funky step, that tossing up of her front end on an upward transition or that off balance movement appears like a ghost of Christmases past here and there. I am not afraid of it anymore and treat it exactly like that… a ghost that has no place here. The problem is fleeting, but I know it still lives somewhere in there to rear up in a moment then be gone again.

    I was pleased to see it show up in the round pen a few times as we worked in front of Harry. It’s helpful when problems you want to see addressed actually appear in a place to have them seen and considered. Though the mare was clearly NOT lame, she would do a circle looking quite lame and I could hear the murmur of questions from the group watching. I knew what they were considering but only Harry’s reply came clear through his mic: oh that mare’s not lame, it’s tension. When she starts carrying more tension it creates that imbalance of movement. 

    Sure enough, as we worked out the tension the lame-looking imbalance would dissipate. Also due to the many hours and miles of riding in tension in the nine years she’s been mine, there is a physical imbalance that occasionally means she strikes off with more power on one hind leg than the other. When she does this it also looks like a lameness. Seeing this also fascinated me. Once Harry explained what was happening, again, it was impossible not to miss it. 

    The beauty of this is now that I have seen it and felt it, and I can’t un-see it or un-feel it, I also can see it from the ground. Now I begin our work, after our connection is established and I become important to her with her focused attention, and I ask her to walk off onto that circle and if she does it soft and relaxed we walk. If she doesn’t, I check the connection (was she distracted? Did I put too much energy into the request and disconnect us with too much or too jerky communication?) and ask again (did she need to remember what it feels like to do it in softness? Longstanding physical habits take many repetitions in a new way to change). I now don’t accept something as simple as walking off with a head popping up, neck contracting, and tension in the body. I don’t have to punish her, I simply say no thanks to that and we try again. If I had to, we could repeat that 100 times until she gets a good one, or a change in the better direction, and reward that. It’s going to feel good to her too which is the beauty of this work.

    They key is that as I make it available to her, as I expand her list to know that is possible, she will seek it out more often and search it for herself because it will feel good to her.

    At home, seeking relaxed and forward walk
    Pretty good transition up staying soft

    Horse training often does not feel good to the horse. If we are (as Harry says) moving the meat and not the mind we end up with a horse who can look basically right, and do the obedience, yet feels pretty crummy about it all and move about in various levels of tension trying to get their body to do the thing we are looking for.

    Moments from video of transitions I don’t want. This is not soft and does not carry a forward thought.
    Brace in her mind and body creates upward movement and tension. You can see I am already dropping down my body and request to start over.

    This work focuses first on how does the horse feel? Is their mind centered yet not shut down and zoned out? Are they standing in tension or relaxation to begin? Are they breathing? Are they worried? What can you do to connect with them and help them to feel better first? If they feel better and are relaxed they trust, if they trust they will try. If they feel the freedom to try, to get things “wrong” and have us guide them instead of punish them- and yet be firm enough to keep them engaged when need be, they begin to feel good about being with us. When they begin to feel good in movement, they begin to gain in strength and power in relaxation, this leads to increased confidence in themselves and in us. This is the magic of working from the mind first.

    Here she is more lengthened and going truly forward (the flag is rubbing not driving)
    Another sticky braced moment, neck up and tension higher.

    There were many discussions over the week about how exhausting it can feel to be so aware of every moment and every time the mind begins to leave while we are with the horse, every time they take a step in tension and to stop and try again. The demand for consistency in ourselves is incredibly high if you want a horse that moves relaxed in strength. To carry that kind of awareness when you are used to zoning out with friends on a trail ride chatting about everything except what’s actually there in the moment, this is a big shift. How often are our own thoughts not present, and then we would like our horse’s to be. We must be as engaged as we expect them to be. I suppose if you own a horse because you want to go ride with your friends and talk about everything except being there on the horse at that moment in that place is a choice we all have the freedom to make… I’ve ridden many miles like that. But I know the difference now and I find I can’t anymore. Not because it’s “bad” but because what’s available is so much greater. There IS magic in connecting on this level with such a generous and intelligent creature who has so much more to give, but won’t give it to me if I’m mindlessly riding along like a dummy. There is a cost.

    I want to find as many moment of soft relaxation as I can and then carry them into movement.

    I’m hungry for the deeper levels and the higher places we can find together. Especially after Harry helped my horse see what she was capable of and then offered that to me, to us as a gift to enjoy- not to squander or let slide right through the sieve my minds can become if I am not staying aware.

    Because of that gift, though I agree it takes more effort at first to be that present all the time, but like anything if intentionally practiced, it gets easier, and in time, becomes a way of life. We get better as we engage. An entire kingdom available to us that begins with a thought. For me and my herd, it seems to require a forward thought.

    Moments of morning reflection at the guest house
  • Twisted.

    Twisted.

    There was a time when a beautiful day was not complete if I couldn’t ride my horse. If I had to work or was otherwise occupied it was hard to not imagine myself in the woods with my mare and be sad about whatever it was that kept me from that experience. My work is pretty great. I run a rural area music education program teaching K-12 age violin students. I am also on faculty at a local college teaching violin and chamber music. So it wasn’t about having a dead end job that was torture to log hours at. It was about where my mind was, how it became mysteriously separated from my body on particularly nice days, and about the tension of having a mind and body in two different places. I had quite lost my mind and was struggling to function without being present in the good work I had in front of me because of it.

    I currently have this island of misfit toys herd that I adore. I jokingly tell people I have a good horse, a bad horse, and a sick horse. It’s an oversimplification, and thus isn’t entirely true, but it makes for good conversation. 

    Anyone who follows my writing can connect the dots: my good horse is Ireland’s Khaleesi, the mare I took in as a feral four-year-old in 2014. I started her for better and worse, learned with her and grown alongside her. She is my endurance horse, and in June we finally conquered the single-day 100 mile race on one of the toughest courses the sport offers. I can get done just about anything I need to and she fills in for me a lot. She is a highly confident leader and makes me look pretty good much of the time. She is a beautiful gift to me and I enjoy her constantly. My challenge with magnificent K is I’m decent at getting things done with her in the natural horsemanship direct pressure style of working together that has left places our relationship can improve. The hard part that requires some vision is going back to learning new pathways together when things “work out pretty good” the old way. I know there’s more for us, but it’s going to take some time creating new experiences.

    The lovingly identified bad horse is Wyoming the wild (by the way I also have a bad dog I adore, so this seems to be a pattern for me!). She of course, is not at all a bad horse, she is my complicated challenging horse who does not fill in for me, who is not confident in herself or my leadership, and has required a lot of consideration, thought, growth, experimentation, and help in order not to give up on her and find some wilderness area to release her back into and wish her good luck. She’d probably survive; she has the skills. In fact, all she thinks about is her own self-protection and survival since she doesn’t trust it to me, yet. And why should she? Truthfully I haven’t proven adequate of that trust to her yet, and so I refuse to give up and am determined to keep growing into the kind of leader a horse like her requires. She is constantly demanding I get better. She has been a valuable gift to my development.

    The horse I hate to label but truthfully, in fact, IS the sick horse is darling Redemption’s Hope. She’s a discarded quarter horse that went through many hands before ending up in my barn. I took her knowing she was a shut down tangled mess, without realizing how big a mess was really in there. My plans for her were to help her feel better, learn the world of humans wasn’t such a terrible place, and voila, she would be a sweet natured horse kids or adults with less developed skills could get to know horses and learn to work with safely. She did that work about a year while her health devolved into such places where I have more than once been certain she would not survive. She has been the most expensive horse I’ve ever owned through vet bills and nutrition supplementation and support care in general. 

    I have come to see the gift she has brought me is an opportunity to love and support a creature who has zero ability to give back, and for an extended period of time. We are entering a third year of her very slowly coming into some kind of stable health, but due to the neurological signs from the EPM (I believe), she may well never be ridable, or even a horse who can physically respond to a request in a normal way again. I simply don’t know yet. Only time will reveal what little Hope’s redemption story will be.

    Loving Hope has cost me emotionally and financially. I am limited with my herd, at the moment I cannot expand to more than three horses and she is taking up valuable real estate. She has taught me the long process of showing up every day to what often feels like a hopeless situation and staying engaged. She has taught me what it is like to invest and care and love with no reliable expectation of gaining from that relationship. How often are we given such an opportunity to love in that way? I haven’t always seen it, but recently it shines of a glory I cannot fathom, how did I get so lucky to have this horse come to me and teach me this important lesson? The lesson of showing up even when there seems to be little hope, to love anyway. This does not come naturally to me. I needed some help, and she came.

    All of this came to mind recently as I rode my good horse around a local recreation area along the Jackson River. I am fortunate to live in a pristine and beautiful area that is still so rural and unpopulated we have not one traffic light in the entire county, the animals outnumber the people, and our pubic national forest land is somewhere like 75% over private property. I am insanely blessed, and also quite intentional about living here. I went out solo, rode about 7 miles around this beautiful park and in the couple of hours never saw another human. It was exquisitely perfect and I reveled in it not taking one moment for granted. It was perfection in the experience of riding a fabulous horse, on well kept trails, in a place of untouched beauty.

    As I pondered this, I realized something has happened to me over time. 

    I enjoyed this ride, however, today it occurred to me that I equally enjoy the time I spend working with Wyoming the Wild, even when a decent percentage of our time together she is threatening me because I’m pressing her comfort zone (necessary to give her the experience of seeing she can trust me and her life is not actually in danger). I am helping bring her lost mind back to the present reality in order to help her feel better about her life, and about our connection. At the moment in our re-started education program I have begun again at the point of not being able to put the halter on her without her feeling threatened. So I don’t. If one cannot halter a horse reliably I think that reveals just how far we are from being a riding partnership. 

    I don’t know what will become of Wyoming the Wild one in her education. I am stubborn and I generally refuse to accept that a horse cannot come to an understanding and work with a human- there are just ones where the bar is set too high for many (sane?) humans to consider reasonable… I am considering that she could be one of these special creatures. The alternative, which is also possible, is I’m just not skilled enough… but each year I’m finding that less and less likely the root problem. Let me assure you no pride in my skill level… She certainly has required I gain experience and understanding in order to succeed in helping her. I know how much I have to learn is deep and wide, but my hunger to grow covers a multitude of sins in the process. I don’t think it’s only my inexperience anymore. She’s a unique and complicated horse. How have I gotten so lucky to end up with her? I don’t believe in coincidences, I know she is just as much a gift as the good horse is.

    I have found that anymore I do not care nearly as much that I’m able to ride this horse as that we come together. I do want to be able to ride her, but I have found I love the time I spend with her, learning to show her she does not have to protect herself from me, that I am here to help her, and she is just perfect just the way she is, right now today. We will simply keep spending time together until things come right and then we will see what that looks like.

    I thought of the time I spend with Hope now, every day walking her slowly and intentionally, watching how she struggles to lift her front end and thus her front legs paddle around not to drag the ground. How can I help her to think about lifting first even her eyes off the ground and begin to think lighter in the the front? How can I help her start to rebuild her atrophied muscles that would support her body in better balance? We do tiny weight shifting requests just to begin the form of thinking the change that someday will mean she can walk normally again. How can I work with her so she isn’t stressed out which is when she begins to panic and her feet begin to cross over unnaturally like a horse who has neurological damage (she doesn’t do this if she is not in a panic).

    What creates this panic state for her? Her life has given her the experience that humans will demand things and then punish for non-compliance. Somewhere along the way I believe this horse wasn’t saying: No, I won’t… but she began to have physical limitations that meant No, I can’t. And when that happened her reaction leads me to guess she was punished. Now when I begin to ask things of her I can see the stress and worry set it. She either completely shuts down and is non responsive, or she begins to offer up anything she can muster getting her limbs all crossed and in a pretzel. The answer is not to quit asking anything of her (though I basically did this for almost a year thinking she needed the rest and recovery which may or may not be true), but instead to begin to ask her things she can do and to give her the time to think and do it, and not to punish her when she takes a long time to get there. She has been taught not to think but only to respond and quickly- my hope is that I can teach her she can think, she must think, and I will help her along the way.

    What I am realizing is I am finally beginning to find the real gift in being present in the reality of each horse, and asking how I can help them. My own mind is letting go of the idea that I have to have a riding (or teaching) goal for each horse and each day we do not get significantly closer to that goal brings frustration or irritation. As I let go of that way of thinking, I find not only peace in the process but a deeper joy in every moment we share. Even the struggles of which there are many right now. I am able to see opportunities where there were only roadblocks. I am curious about things instead of annoyed by them. 

    I recognize fairly quickly when I am getting all twisted up again.

    I have riding goals for Khaleesi. These are good. I believe the road I am on with Wyoming will include riding her again- and successfully – as well. I have a goal that Hope will someday have a body that works again in balance and be able to help humans to learn more about horses in some way.

    I think having goals is important. 

    Sometimes we have to adjust the goal.

    With Wyoming, I had the goal to be able to safely trail ride her including loading her on the trailer to transport. This year I’ve seen that she has way more deep anxiety that if I don’t address, none of that is going to function in strength. I’ve done the “grown up” thing and adjusted my goals to honor her needs… 

    This is where it gets so dicey and on a good day I can laugh about it…

    I adjust the goals to helping Wyoming get feeling better working with me and pat myself on the back for being such a highly developed horse person who truly puts the needs of my horse first and is willing to patiently work with them in the way they need.

    And then I find myself occasionally frustrated and annoyed when we have an “off” day and she comes at me with more violent snark than the previous day… or I had gotten to lay the rope over her back and she relaxed, whereas now if I stand in her zip code with the rope in hand and she pins her ears and threatens.

    Why? If my only intent was truly to help her, there would be no frustration. Frustration comes because I’m not getting my way and that reveals that I’ve made the new goal the central thing and I’ve once again gotten all twisted up around the good thing that isn’t supposed to be the ultimate thing and now I’m frustrated that she isn’t getting better!!! I am not making clear progress toward the goal of her getting better so help me mare you MUST GET FEELING BETTER WHAT IS YOUR PROBLEM!?

    Lord. Help me. Every. Day.

    I still get twisted up.

    Do you ever get frustrated? I heard that a prey animal’s basic job is to frustrated a predator. Think about this… Predator wants a meal, so it chases the prey animal. Prey animal wants to live so it does all it can to evade and outrun the predator. The very definition of being frustrated.

    Frustrated: feeling or expressing distress and annoyance due to inability to change or achieve something.

    When we feel or express frustration we are acting like a predator. In the human world the definition of predator is: a person who ruthlessly exploits others.

    This is not the dynamic I want in my barn. This is not the dynamic I want in my life. Therefore I have sought to become more aware of when I feel that frustration rising in the dark space of my heart and it is now a warning signal: you have become twisted again. Stop. Regroup. Begin again and ask: how can I help?

    The good news is we are all given a certain amount of self-control and if we begin to use it, we can strengthen it! Each time that twist shows up in my relationships I can notice it and make a decision to change myself and my approach. I can decide not to be a frustrated predator.

    Not controlling another (horse or human) to manipulate or force into what goal I have that day is a much slower road to my goals, but it is the only way to my ultimate goal. I know there are many who won’t understand (why take the slow way of freedom and love? It’s incredibly ineffective), but when we get there it’s a million times sweeter, and the roads and detours are more peaceful and full of life.

    It always begins with me. Untwisted.

  • I thought I understood…

    I thought I understood…

    When it comes to any relationship, boundaries matter. I think Danny Silk has some great books out about powerful individuals, the importance of connection, how to love well (even your enemies) and the trap of confusing boundaries and punishment. He has a great book titled “Unpunishable” that addresses what he calls our culture’s addiction to the punishment paradigm and how to let go of this in our human relationships. I’ve read the book. I’ve put effort into understanding and walking this out in my own life.

    Then there are relationships with horses. I remember hearing Mark Langley say that boundaries are fixed and they don’t chase you. If you think you have a boundary with your horse but your boundary is in fact chasing your horse then it is not a boundary. 

    To make a finer point, I’ve heard Harry Whitney give an illustration about electric fences. I’m pretty sure Tom Moats has written about this too, but since I’ve recently read a handful of his books I can’t remember which one it’s in and who might have borrowed it… Harry explains that horses graze peacefully near an electric fence, very close to it, even sometimes reaching under it as far as they can without touching the strand. Most horses familiar with an electric fence are not afraid of it although no horses like the shock of coming into contact with it. Their experience is that the fence will not surprise them, ambush them, or chase them. Certainly the fence can be moved into new positions, but once the fence is fixed, the boundary is firm, clear, and potentially most importantly: not personal. There is no question if a horse gets shocked by the fence it was unemotional and non-judgemental. The fence isn’t angry, frustrated, fearful or otherwise emotionally embroiled in the process. No horse need be shamed or considered a “bad horse” for touching the fence and getting shocked; not very smart, maybe, but evil or bad are not part of the equation. Horses figure out quickly that the shock is a direct consequence of running into the fence and once they do it a couple times, it’s usually enough for them to avoid the strand in the future.

    Harry helping a horse with fear around its ears in a clinic in Vista, CA 2023

    This all makes perfect sense to me. 

    I thought I understood what a boundary is…

    Then I began to press into dangerous territory by interrupting Wyoming’s very strong thoughts — which opened the can of snarky-threats where she began to threaten me with dragon ears and teeth bared. What do I do about the violent threats?

    I had to think this through and I regularly found myself changing my position on what to do about it. Clearly this is NOT OK. I don’t care how you feel Wyoming, you cannot threaten to harm a human and continue to live here. In Mark Langley language “That is not available.” And in Harry-land “Let go of THAT thought mare.” 

    I thought: there is a boundary needed where that behavior is not tolerated and has an electric fence style wire that is tripped when you go there. On the other hand, it’s not as simple as setting up a “snark fence” that sends an electric shock clearly, effectively, and unemotionally at exactly the right time when the snark threat shows up. I have to set and enforce the boundary, and with my human limitations this could easily end up being unclear, questionable on its appropriate firmness, and most importantly could be rife with emotion no matter how hard I try not to be. There is a thin line between a boundary and a punishment, and this particular horse is quite sensitive to knowing which it is, and punishment always makes things worse between us.

    In June when I started over once again, I’d see her go volcanically violent when I asked for her attention on me while she was in her stall, and I’d stand still outside her reach as she would snake her ears and snap her teeth a few inches from my face. I’d say: thanks for giving me your attention, this is a start… And she would cuss me out in equine, threatening to chew me up and trample my carcass when she had the chance. But, I reasoned, I had all of her attention in that moment. Of course the hope was to get her to feel better about it, and I don’t think that interaction felt very good for either of us.

    The problem seemed to get worse. There were times I would be doing something completely unrelated to her in the next stall and I had to pay close attention to the eyes in the back of my head because she’d stick her nose over the gate threaten me even when I wasn’t asking her for anything. Even my presence began to get under her fur. It seemed to be increasing, so maybe allowing her to have these fits was not the best way forward. If I want to help my horse let go of hard thoughts, I reasoned, I need to find a way to basically say: LET GO OF THAT! When she turns to violence. The violence needs to not work out for her. Right now, I’m not so sure if it is or it isn’t working for her in her mind. So I tried answering the violence with what I hoped was a boundary. If I had my rope, I’d be ready when she circled back to rush the gate with her teeth bared to meet her with the rope as adapt as I could get with my timing in the hope she would begin to think whenever she had snarky-violent outbursts, she ran into something when she came at me and it was not pleasant. Like an electric fence ideally, one that only came on when you have a bad attitude. 

    I would have to be very consistent, as unemotional as possible, and match her in firmness as closely as I could. I wanted her to learn there is a boundary here and violence will never be tolerated.

    I had a couple lucky opportunities meeting her exactly when she came at me but it seemed to only make her more angry and more threatening, and if she backed off it was harder to see a change for her to soften and relax. I could get her to act less on her wish to chew me up and spit me out, but I don’t think it changed the fact that she wanted to. This approach didn’t seem to help her feel any better about being with me. In fact if anything I think she got better at planing quick sneak attacks in the hope she might get through the barrier. I liked the idea that I was trying to clarify that this aggressive behavior was NEVER acceptable, but it didn’t appear I was making real progress with this.

    It did not seem to be working out for me.

    The next shift back came one day when I was innocently cleaning the middle stall and Wyoming came over the gate with her head and began snapping her teeth at me. I wasn’t looking for her attention or demanding anything of her. This also means I was completely unprepared to meet her violence with what I hoped was a decent attempt at a boundary like a rope or a flag, or any useful tool.

    So I just stood there. 

    I stood there and watched her, inches from my face. She pulled back, did her little ramp up circle, snaked her ears and stuck her nose at me, teeth clacking away. I stood unmoving and completely unemotional, and slightly at a loss. I wasn’t “working” with her, I was just at the barn at that time. I simply observed her and paused in curiosity to watch what she would do thinking that I had screwed up the consistency of meeting her behavior with a clear boundary every time. Now what?

    As I watched she repeated the cycle which always included pulling back, doing a little circle, reflattening her ears, and throwing her head over the gate at me, teeth clacking. However, as I stood unmoving and completely curious (not upset, frustrated, angry or afraid) each time was less enthusiastic until finally she threw her head over the fence, froze with no bared teeth, softened her eyes and her ears perked forward. Now it was her turn to just stand there starting at me, curious.

    An example of Wyoming feeling softer and relaxed.

    It was this experience combined with the revelation about the cowardly lion who desperately wanted courage, that had me re-evaluate my attempt to “boundary” this behavior by meeting it with a tool of some sort. 

    First, I realized as I stood quietly out of her reach, there actually WAS a boundary. It was the gate that separated the stalls. That boundary was secure and clear. The truth of this scenario was that she cannot hurt me while the gate stays in place, and it’s screwed to posts with brackets, so it’s not going anywhere. 

    Second, my attempt to meet her violence with some kind of equal “boundary” with a rope or flag she would ideally “run into” wasn’t the wrong direction entirely, but in reflection I had to be honest with myself: I was meeting her fear with my own fear. I wanted to believe I was unemotional, but though I was decent at stuffing the emotion in the moment, it was there. I was afraid if I didn’t curb this behavior someone (probably me) was going to get HURT. I don’t think this concern was unreasonable or wrong, but regardless it was an underlying emotion. No matter how hard I tried, the boundary I wanted to put in place was smelling to her a whole lot more like a punishment.

    Third, though I wanted her to “run into her own pressure” somehow when she came at me, having the rope or flag or stick meet her physically was still “at” her. I started experimenting with creating a big sound instead where she did not like the shock of the noise, but it didn’t hurt. These details are obvious to me now, and really important, but I suppose that’s what a life of learning is about- the mistakes and the fixing of them and the growth from them.

    I know that we cannot meet fear with fear and ever find a better place. We can build a wall of self-protection and we can find ways to not get hurt when we meet fear with fear, but we cannot build connection that demands vulnerability and we cannot strengthen relationships. I pondered all that I’ve read and learned about these things and asked myself the million dollar question: so then, what must meet fear to dissolve it and heal the brokenness? 

    Only LOVE.

    Don’t give up on me here as you assume I am about to suggest going into the shark tank with no protection and singing to the creature who has promised me physical harm a refrain of Kumbaya as my only hope. That is not what I mean by love. Love in fact, must have boundaries because connection is worth protecting. I believe Wyoming when she’s told me she is in enough fear to hurt me if I press her, and me being attacked is not good for either me or Wyoming. If I love her and I’m seeking better connection with her, I will not put us in that situation.

    Danny Silk asks the question: how many pet rattlesnakes do you have? None.

    Because wise people don’t bring dangerous things into our houses- the place we feel safe, can be vulnerable and expect not to be attacked if at all possible. This is a boundary. No rattlesnakes in the house. We can love rattlesnakes and not invite them inside to play. Rattlesnakes can be loved at a distance.

    While Wyoming sees me as a rattlesnake and I see her a threatening dragon, we need to find a way to connect without expecting we will be in each other’s vulnerable place. My job is to find a way to connection with her, to answer her fear with love, and ideally have us not get hurt as we work through this process toward more trust. Both of us need more trust in the other. She has learned that I am wiling to drive and punish when I want something from her or when I am afraid, and I’ve learned she threatens violence when she is out of her comfort zone.

    During this process something began to change that was helpful. Wyoming went from always trying to kill the flag to relaxing when it touched her. The flag became the first tool she not only started to accept without violence, but if I did touch her with it she immediately quieted and would relax as it rubbed her. If the flag was floating along nearby, that made her nervous, but once it made contact she calmed down and began making suggestions where it might scratch and rub her. This gave me the ability to “pet” her without getting in the strike zone. This enabled me to begin to build trust not to punish while staying across a good boundary which kept us both more safe.

    Response to me asking her to give me her attention…

    Thus another shift in approach began for me. I kept myself outside her reach and began asking for her attention. When she would circle, turn, pin her ears and come at the gate I would say under my breath to her (in order to remind myself what she needed from me) Courage! and I would give her a hug instead.

    Me offering the ‘hug’ as a response while staying at a responsible distance for us both.

    Once again, I’m not a total idiot. The hug looked like me lifting up the flag and getting right in there and petting her as close to her head as I could (usually on the neck at first since she wasn’t a fan of the flag strips in her eyes and ears, but that is also changing). I could be a foot out of reach, completely without fear, and only responding with love.

    She considers my response…

    The love was saying: I know you’re afraid and you don’t trust me not to punish you. I know you haven’t felt very good about us working together, and you are like a porcupine walled up with layers of self-protection. It’s exhausting to manage your entire space like this all the time. Let me help you. Give me a chance to try things differently, to connect and care for your needs. And then see if we can work together as a team. Here, I’ll start.

    She softens as I refuse to meet her fear with my own fear and choose not to punish

    I realized that I have wanted to express that to this horse for years. I wanted her to trust me and allow me to help her. However when I was working with her in the punishment paradigm of direct pressure my words and actions were, to her, incongruent. I wanted to say: I am here to help you and I care about you, but my actions were saying: if you don’t do what I’m asking I will hurt you. I need you to comply with my program regardless of how you feel about it because I am the human and you are the horse and this is how it works.

    The flag-hug plan is showing positive changes in our time together. One immediate shift is I can walk around the barn and in her stall again without wondering if she will get flipped to angry-mode even if I’m not paying any attention to her. That was a disturbing phase we went through demanding me to be on high alert (more than normal awareness)— I’ve never been concerned about simply being in the barn with her ever before. I had not trusted being in her space enough since June to trim her feet and they had gotten way too long. Now I’m able to work on her feet and I do it a little each day. I do this without halter or lead rope right now as we are still trust building and she does not trust me yet to feel good about being haltered. For the time being I’m choosing patience on that as we sort out more pressing things.

    She loves being scratched with the flag so lately, our routine goes like so: I greet her, she comes into the barn “aisle” area on her own and I give her some good scratches with the flag. I do a little cleaning and trimming on each hoof and intermix flag scratching. After I get that work done I switch to using the flag to ask her to do something, take a step forward or backward, move away from me, look a different direction (this is beginning to influence her thoughts when they are softer which is a great step!). These things are very small and the scratching reward for giving me something simple is a part of the way we are building trust. All of this she can do and stay in a good feeling place. Almost no snark-threats come from these activities.

    Next I push a little deeper by getting in front of her and ask if she can let go of her vigilance to give me a moment of her attention, center up, and straight on me. I get different degrees of “not really” at this point. I have a little distance, and can effectively block a straight on snark-attack with my flag hug right between the eyes. She doesn’t love that kind of hug yet, and it redirects her to choose a response less violent- sometimes she stays with it and tries again a little softer (she IS trying!), sometimes she chooses to go back into her stall and disconnect with me entirely. That is ok. She gets to make that choice, and it opens the door for me to close the door, allow her the “safety” of her bedroom, and then to stand outside the door and knock so to speak. 

    Right now this is our most intense level of interaction, but I think it’s also where the most important work is being done. In her stall, with a boundary in place for both of us, I will press in to a deeper ask where I know she’s going to be less comfortable. If we never press into here, she can’t have the experience to see it’s going to be different than she expects. With a horse, one cannot use words to explain, we have to change the experience. I can’t change the experience without creating the situation she is afraid of and showing her it will not destroy her.

    I ask for her to let go of whatever else has her attention and give her full attention to me. She reverts to dragon attack, threatens me and doesn’t even stay long enough to bite at me over the gate. She dismisses me immediately and turns her hind end to me going back to the more important thing. At this point I make the biggest slam noise I can with the flag against something (plywood wall, or an unopened bag of shavings is pretty loud too!). She hates this noise but it is not a threat of pain. I am not coming at her, I’m not driving her hind end around, I am staying outside her stall. In essence I’m setting a bomb off right outside her door. I want to be worthy of her full attention. I hope to draw her over because nothing is more important than the sound of a bomb going off right outside your door. Appearing enraged, at first she comes back with her dragon act and each time she dismisses me to turn away I make the sound as full and loud as possible until she realizes this will happen until she makes a different decision. If she threatens, I give her a flag hug. Eventually all I have to do is make a clucking sound with my tongue and she squares up looking directly at me over the gate and each day sooner and sooner she relaxes and looks at me curiously.

    Well ok then? What is so important then you need my full attention?

    I just want a connection with you. Thank you for that. 

    Then I pet her on her forehead with my hand as she relaxes there, and I open her gate so she can choose to stay or go- this is the last part of our time together so I want it to end with her feeling soft and relaxed, but also as I am leaving, she can put her attention wherever she likes. 

    Most often, if I have the horses locked in their stalls, and then I come (not to interact) only to release them, Wyoming is respectful enough to walk past me, clearing my space before she bursts into the field at a full on canter to be freed at last. When I release her after we have connected she stays in place for a time. Sometimes, after I walk off to leave, she will leave her stall at a walk, sometimes she circle back into her stall and munch hay, but she never blasts off, because her mind and her body at that moment are united where we had connected.

    This is a place of peace, a place she feels good. 

    And that is what we both want for her.

  • Strange Companions

    Strange Companions

    Once in a while I get an odd song stuck in my mind. It comes without a reminder (as in, I haven’t heard it in a very long time). Lately I’ve found that the more annoying the song is, and the more inclined it is not to leave, I should pause, and ask… why?

    A recent example of this was before the Old Dominion 100 I kept hearing over and over on my walks with the dogs (which I use for deep contemplation and so was frustrated to be constantly interrupted by this tune) “She’ll be coming around the mountain when she comes…” Finally I paused to ask… why?

    As I entered in instead of trying to push it away the song quit being so annoying and seemed to bring me encouragement about coming around that big mountain loop: the OD 100. The song began to give me hope of success of finishing the ride and also that, I’d come when I came, which would be a foreshadowing that we were not going to be coming around on any fast timeline, we’d come when we’d come. I wasn’t riding six white horses, but the imagery of being successful was built into it for me. Once I smiled and said thank you, I appreciate the encouragement to have confidence in this big mountain I was about to circle ‘round, the song wasn’t quite so plaguing.

    Last week a new song, on my same walks entered the scene. As always I began with an eye roll and asked it to please go away, I have important things to process and contemplate. The lyrics refused to bend “We’re off to see the wizard! The wonderful wizard of Oz…” (I’m sure you can continue the tune, sorry about that). Once I realized it was happening again, I gave up and entered in… why?

    The answer I drew from the question as I walked was to contemplate what Dorothy was doing. What’s the general plot, the “moral” of the story so to speak, and more importantly the point seemed nag at me: consider her companions on the journey.

    So I did. I even spent a few minutes researching because I only vaguely remembered. Except for the Cowardly Lion (who could forget him?) I had to do a search to find who else joined her and what they were seeking from the wonderful wizard of Oz, who as I remember was not so wonderful at all. 

    In a quick google dig and the memories from childhood, I recalled that this little troupe was seeking someone to solve their problems, but it was actually in the journey, in the process, that the pieces they needed came to them. It was a story about love and kindness and helping others along the way, and about good triumphing over evil I think (the wicked witch of the west and all…). I need to watch the movie or read the book if I’d like to get more serious, but for today that’s what I’ve got.

    What did the companions need? When I pondered this at first, I couldn’t sort out why it mattered in my life right now, until the next time I visited the barn and it hit me like a house in a Kansas tornado. 

    They line up with my horses.

    My classroom this summer is the barn. And my teachers all have different subjects. It was blaringly obvious to begin that Wyoming is my cowardly lion. She is afraid of just about everything on some level and she roars in threats of violence if she can’t for some reason run away, but I don’t think she wants to fight. Who were my other two then?

    She’s so ready to threaten when she is uncertain.

    As I pondered it was plain. Hope is my scarecrow. The scarecrow wanted a brain. 

    This is not to say Hope is a dummy in any sense, but I have held a hypothesis for a while now, that part of the deep damage in her, and part of the hang up in her healing, is her almost complete shut down to the world outside of herself. That’s in fact one reason I wanted to take her on, because I wanted to see what it might be like to help a horse that was so shut down. I think over her years previous, her thinking center had been shut down so severely that she was trained not to think or use her brain but only respond to cues. Thinking takes a little time and some training doesn’t allow for time so any delay is punished. This teaches a horse that thinking is going to get you into trouble, act, and act fast if you want to avoid the rope popper, whip, crop, or spurs. I have seen Hope in a desperate panic if she doesn’t know how to respond. She will try to just freeze and disappear internally then if you insist she stay present, she will throw out all kinds of varied things in order to just DO something. She has a brain, but she has been trained not to access it. She is deeply disconnected. Also one issue the True North folks helped her through is evidence of EPM (Equine Equine Protozoal Myeloencephalitis, if you’re interested you can click here for details on this: EPM in Horses) EPM attacks the horse’s neurological system crossing the blood brain barrier. She still shows lingering effects of loss of stability and balance from this that I hope in time will continue to diminish as she heals. I don’t know if her health issues will resolve (at all actually, I hope they do now that we’ve done about what we can for her acute issues), but I believe they won’t be resolved if I don’t help her dig down and begin to trust her brain and give her the time and patience to try.

    That leaves Khaleesi who is, of course, the Tinman. 

    Years ago in looking at personality types I pegged her as a typical “metal” horse so this makes a lot of sense to me. A “metal” horse tends to take time to develop a skill, but once they get it, it’s solid as a rock and they tend to be very dependable creatures. They seem to take a pride in a job performed solidly if not with flair the way a “fire” type horse might. They tend not toward the fancy, not toward the fastest and most competitive like a “wood” horse. They are your solid good citizens though not as laid back as an “earth” type. They don’t carry a lot of fear like a “water” type horse, and they don’t need constant motion either. They tend to be thoughtful and dependable. This is my beloved K. The one I can always count on to be there for me and consistently carry out her task. 

    The Tinman wanted a heart. Of course Khaleesi has heart! She has a ton of heart in there, but the one thing I sense we don’t have is that deep trust connection. She seems to carry a lot of weight on her shoulders. She trusts the job, she certainly trusts me for everyday things, but I have felt there is something down there she keeps walled off as she dutifully does her work. This is not a problem I have to “fix” and it’s not exactly “wrong”. I don’t have to get every to part of her horse mind, body and spirit… however could I do better? Definitely. 

    The driving and direct pressure/punishment paradigm I trained her with my best intentions have created an environment where there is a limit, I think, to our connection. She is my super star right now in the barn, but she gives me an opportunity for grad school. There is more we can do and be together if I will grow into those places, maybe she will still have the dependability of a job well done, but also engage that great mare heart she has in our connection, and maybe I can be more worthy of that part showing up, maybe I can carry some of her concerns and free her up to shine.

    So serious and so reliable, my metal horse Khaleesi.

    Coming to the barn-school with this imagery has shifted my approach in a slight way that I think has been helpful. Certainly with Wyoming who is the class I spend the most time in lately. Certainly every horse has basic equine needs, being a good leader for the horse has some fundamental pieces that are necessary for all horses to thrive under. Yet horses like people have unique needs as well depending on their personality and their experiences. It would be much easier if there truly was a three-step program that always succeeded to have a happy thriving powerful horse, I have found even in my small herd it’s simply not realistic to think that way. 

    All horses need the space to access their mind in training, have emotional control and stability, and be supported physically toward good health. I suppose a good horsewoman or man is adept at seeing where the broken parts are, which system has the greatest weakness, and finds ways to bring strength there, walking the horse toward ever more complete wholeness. Maybe along the way we can also find our own way to being more whole. Maybe we can find our way back to Kansas…

    Photo Credit: Madison Barnett
  • The Way Down

    The Way Down

    The story of Wyoming and me seeking a better place hasn’t been easy for me to update very often because there isn’t much of a clear line path to tell. Some days I have sight lines toward an island in the sea… and some days I think we (or probably just I) will drown out here with not a ship or speck of land in sight… and then… what are we doing out here in the middle of the ocean?

    I am getting pretty good at avoiding the deep end of the pool. I am also fairly decent at navigating the deep end of the pool with a horse I have some connection with if we get there by some twist of the current. However with Wyoming, I look around more times than not and see the wild ocean swells and wonder if we’ve come out here to die together or to rise up out of the stormy seas like crisis friends knit together forever.

    Maybe that sounds dramatic. It seems pretty matter of fact in the barn at least a part of most days. More real I’m pretty sure, than it would be for someone with the experience that brings expert timing and feel, accurate instant reading of what’s about to happen which leads to meeting the action perfectly instead of just behind it (or missing things altogether). But everyone has to learn somewhere and in learning- we must necessarily do what we do not know, or it isn’t learning, it’s practicing. 

    Ideally for some, the lessons can be planned more graduated into bite sized steps. That hasn’t usually been my way, and so why would this be any different?

    I was listening this morning to an interview with Molly Sanders and Russell Higgins on A Learners Journey. I highly recommend the pod, and Molly has a great inquisitive nature seeking out interesting guests to discuss the facets and layers of horses.

    In this interview (link to interview here: Youtube interview Molly Sanders & Russel Higgins) Russell shares a metaphor where a person is climbing a mountain and is only 2/3 of the way up and looks around to see the route has ended and there is no way to continue forward. There is a feeling of disappointment and decision there, and looking down the mountain there are many more people who stopped around 1/3 way up and decided that was quite far enough. They’ve set up camp and have no interest in continuing higher up. Well one reasons… I’ve gotten farther than those people at least. But the one on a quest is determined to get higher up the mountain with the hope of seeing the vista from the top, and cannot be bothered with comparison and the uselessness of that story. So she has sorted out that the only thing to do next, is to go back down to the bottom and take a different path. That means going past the people below to begin again. How humbling it feels to have risen to a certain height only to find once there it’s limited and doesn’t take you where you had hoped. Starting from the bottom again can feel demoralizing, and yet with the experience of the mountain you’ve gained, the next path you choose with more knowledge and hopefully it will bring you closer to where you hope to go.

    This resonated with me as it is a great illustration of my life with Wyoming. I’ve often climbed up to some figurative low-level trails that have dead ended with her. There were no good camping spots there however, and I often slid back down even if I tried to hold my footing. This particular round of seeking a better place and full of hope, has taken us so far back down the mountain I might have even tunneled underground with the dwarves for a bit in order to find a better starting place for us on the next attempt.

    In the three weeks of working every day, I have taken a horse that I was managing around pretty acceptably for the most part, and uncovered an animal that had been harboring deep concerns and layers of self-protection that certainly has me questioning at times if I am actually creating a monster or helping to dissolve one.

    I have had to get creative and am almost exclusively working with her without a halter and in various states of freedom. I’ve spent days working from her stall, the open design being very helpful. I’ve locked her out of the stall so she’s been in the slightly larger open space of the front of the barn (with the barn door wide leaving her lots of options to leave which she never does). I have played with the flag which, in the “positive” column, has gone from an item she was intent on murder every time she saw it, to something that helps her find peace when I rub her with it. In fact she really loves it when I scratch her belly or butt with it from time to time and melts into a puddle of horse-putty (only to harden again when I change the activity at all). 

    This is an ocean of new wild territory for me most days and I don’t exactly know what I’ll do when I show up at the barn. It has been suggested to me that my logical “straight line” (ahem, predatory?) thinking, will not serve me so well here. If I want to see progress I’m going to have to work on things from different directions. Humans do have the eyes that focus forward, straight line toward the prey or the goal! Horses have eyes that do the periphery well, and you can see them grazing gradually in arcs toward things they are unsure of, though they can set their mind toward a thing and walk straight to it when they are relaxed and comfortable about it (or as I’ve had happen last week when they are calculating the probability of actually taking it out with a direct attack…) 

    This reiazliation that I have to learn quickly to come at things less directly came from the logical human clarity that I cannot get her to accept the halter willingly and without worry, so if I’m going to do anything with her I should at least get that settled… only with Wyoming that has not been an easy first step. I spent practically a week straight line sorting out HOW TO DO THAT.  This resulted in my smaller goal (get the halter on comfortably) disproportionally larger than the true big picture (to get the horse “feeling better”), so hammering toward the halter question was within a day, counter productive to my actual aim.

    I was getting in my own way. Again.

    The balance of this is important. Not having any goal is a road I have traversed and I don’t recommend it. It only circles around the low paths meandering through brush never going anywhere of any use and often retracing spider webbing tracks with no useful destination and not helping the horse or the human much. However, the flip side is deciding I’m heading to the peak and trying to make a straight line there over boulders, through thickets of thorns, and cliff faces without the intelligence of seeking out the more winding navigable trails that the animals before me have worn lightly in. This way always leaves me banged up and you can never actually beat the mountain this way. I’m learning to accept that sometimes a detour can appear to be a mistake and in the end take you round the back way, faster and with less danger than being stiff necked enough to insist on climbing the sheer rock face. 

    I didn’t have to make the choice to head back down the mountain this year to try again. We had slid down the rocky ground we had gained which wasn’t ever that far, right past curious onlookers, and we had been stuck down at the base for a time already. This path I’ve heard from others is a promising one for the kind of needs this horse has. Yet it’s not been a clear cut thorn free journey. I’m packing a trail saw and leather gloves, and it’s been somewhat slow going hacking through some rough layers.

    At the moment it looks considerably worse than it did two months ago while we languishing in base camp trying not to disrupt the surface much. Today I hold the opinion that this mess was always there, it was buried by our truce. The truce where I learned over time how to enjoy this mare without asking anything that could bring up her ill feelings and concerns, or threaten her self-protective mechanism that I hadn’t actually seen were so thickly built by now. They were always down there, and as a core they don’t leave her in a very good place for a life to exist. That’s what I think. By the time this is over I might have to adjust these thoughts, but I only have the experiences I have for the moment to work with.

    Though her threats at violence are coming out more regularly and I have in wisdom sought out ways to work with her that keep me with some boundary (a fence, a gate, a flag, etc) that she can express that deep ill feeling she carries and it can come out so volcanically that it helps for me to have something in between us to block it in case I miss the lava flow. This also allows me to to observe her and try to see what is really happening without only having to focus on the potential I might need get out of the way quickly or block the dragon’s rapid fire. She is in a mode right now feeling more exposed and vulnerable, where she’ll shoot first and ask questions later. 

    These outbursts are still connected to letting go of hard thoughts, but also as I ask her for anything- right now the major request I have is one soft step, it could be forward or backward, with whatever tool I can work with that day. It could be to the side. One step. Some days she seems ready to take me out over one step in a relaxed state. She is deeply convinced that is worth going to war over. This is no way to live.

    I have a fair amount of emotional control, and I am quite wary of her seriousness but not afraid of her either. I don’t punish any of her outbursts no matter how violent, but try to block as equally as I can and as timely as I’m able. I try to make my requests as soft as possible, as clear, and wait as long as it takes for her to think and try something- rewarding the slightest try that is soft and not a try to take me out because that will make the request stop too (if I’m incapacitated!). 

    So it has become a dance for me to learn of blocking with boundaries that are clear and just as big as the enmity she throws at me, and to immediately return to calm soft request, or recognize when she needs to simply have a moment to think, to give her an opportunity to make a better choice and see if she will seek it out (sometimes she does!) or to see she can wait softly and nothing bad is happening. I’m sure I don’t have it all synced up properly and some days I might make it worse. 

    Some days I find a better place! Within the violent snarky outbursts there are moments where Wyoming thinks her way through something and finds a place that has peace. There are moments she relaxes all the muscle tension and her eyes grow soft and I can pet her and she lets go and can breathe maybe for the first time truly freely. I always hope for that before I leave the barn. Some days we get there, some days we just get “not so bad” and that place is so much better than the “really bad” we were at 45 minutes earlier that I’m glad for a place we can truce for the day and try again the next day.

    Here is what I have observed recently.

    Every time I drive up, if she is already relaxing in the barn she stays there. If she is in the field she comes running in. I don’t think this is the the action of a horse who wishes I would never return, not the actions of a horse who hates the work we’re doing. I’m amazed at how she is so engaged to come interact with me- even when it seems only to release that venom she is carrying around. It is tricky for me because part of her interaction right now is sorting out her violent feelings, and so though simply being in the barn has not yet shown her aggressive with no cause toward me, I still am more aware than ever that she is in a season of sorting out deep things and may not always have appropriate time and place filters so it’s my job to stay alert. It’s like once in a while the thing that triggers her she has almost little control over until it’s done. More times than I can count she turns toward me in the work (when I am ready to put up a boundary or behind a gate) with snaked ears and flashing eyes only as she gets closer to me seems to decide she can let go of that on her own and by the time her nose is over the gate her ears flop and her eyes are soft and she just looks at me. It reminds me of a trigger that gets hit and then in the process of attack she realize it’s actually not necessary and melts back to normal. Talk about Jekyll and Hyde.

    Many days I work with her free to leave the barn and go out to pasture, eat grass, and disconnect altogether. She has never done this. When she works in her stall it is because she chose to go in there. Currently I sometimes lock her out of the stall so we don’t get stuck in the stall work. What is fascinating to me is that her brain in the beginning was in the pasture, and her body in the stall. Now that she has the opportunity to join the two by going into the pasture- she does not choose to do that. 

    The flag has come around to being a tool I can use to defuse now yet still create a boundary she is respecting. The rope however is still in the death category, and as over time I would like to be able to work with her in halter with a rope attached, I had to sort out how to approach her with a rope and not get my arm chewed off. The flag I can touch her with at a distance and even if she bites at it I’m still a safe few feet away.

    I took the halter off the rope to start this process and grabbed my 22’ line. I began in the stall tossing the line up in the air to land across her back or neck and then reeling it in. None of this is painful, but she acted as if her life would end and she had to kill the rope. She has been on a lead rope for eight years worked in a halter. I cannot believe I created this fear of ropes in her this week. 

    Is it possible that she had been internalizing these concerns from being driven with (I have never tied her bodily up with a rope but I cannot know that no one did in the “gentling” process before me) the rope and halter are certainly able to force her to do things she wouldn’t prefer- like run in circles around a human or get on a trailer. I’ve spent years driving horses with the end of a lead rope if they didn’t do the task.

    I wondered if her fear of me and the punishment (being driven with a tool for non-compliance) had been enough to create reasonably obedient behavior for the past handful of years. I always knew she wasn’t right, wasn’t relaxed and unconcerned, but I hadn’t thought her deep fears could be this violent. 

    So I went ahead with the rope toss because I saw with the flag that once she came to experience enough times and believe for now the thing was not going to attack her, she became calm with its presence. I have to get there with a rope too. Only this one seems even more ingrained.

    I experimented with a few things because I’m learning. One thing I did was the tossing and bringing back the rope so she could see it would not hurt her and it would leave. She eventually slowed down her attack of the thing and began to get more curious. Curious is good, you can’t be curious and terrified at the same time I’ve read that at least… She began to sniff and follow the rope as I pulled it back along the ground. Then sometimes I’d leave it on her and then send a loop to gently bump the rope up or down her body, when it was on her back or rump she began to take more calm steps and was able to walk out of the rope. If it was on her neck she began to drop her head and let the rope fall to her ears, then she learned how to release it to the ground. She was beginning to become empowered. 

    A next step I tried was coiling up a shorter lead rope and holding it out to her with my hand at the bottom in case she tried to bite the rope- and see if I could touch her with that, it was not looking good so I thought a bit and zip tied the coil to the end of a stick and string stick so I could rub her with the rope from a distance. This also seemed to help make some change of her worries.

    Tom suggested that though my tool work is helping her to see the tools themselves might not punish her, they still need to press into the realm of directing her (without pain) and then back to rubbing or not directing. That will be a really important distinction. 

    This has been a real challenge for me. I often start with the presence of a tool, or just my own presence, and her concern shoots up and self-preservation kicks in, so I begin with the message: hey, you can relax, I’m not going to hurt you and neither is the tool. I can get some softness there, but it’s not really where we need to go because I am going to need to direct her, influence her thoughts, and work together. This has to happen if she is going to continue to live in my herd for both our safety and her well being. I cannot take care of her needs if she is a threatening wild animal and there could come a point when I determine I won’t keep her in that state. (We are far from there now, but that is the long truth of this story).

    As soon as I begin to interrupt a thought (like the last post explains) or heaven forbid ask her to work together with me toward a direction (take a step without threatening to harm me) she changes back to porcupine. Thus I must help her find peace, but also we have to find peace together, not only in her own shell behind her own walls learning that the tools and myself are not only not a threat but we will never ask anything of her. I mean you can’t have a healthy teenager who has a fabulous good attitude when you give them all they want, leave them to do whatever they want, and they carry no responsibility to the family- or to your better judgement of when they might need their hooves trimmed or to have health concerns attended to.

    What the balance of this is, well, I’m learning that I hope. Trial and error style.

    Currently I’ve been working with the rope now that we’ve gained enough ground that she accepts the rope as less threatening, but she’s not so keen on me using it to suggest a request… I try to get her to leave her stall and work her in a larger area with the rope loosely looped once or twice around her shoulders/neck area. To give somewhat a picture my “goal” is not to allow the rope to be tight and claustrophobic but only as potential for light feel and some direction. I can’t really control her with it, and it’s a 22’ line so I have a lot of rope to give her without it getting tight. What I don’t like about this is it’s hard to be entirely clear about a request, so my aim at the moment is she gets a gold star for ANY try to move herself with a rope ask, any try that is not including lunging toward me or threatening violence.

    The other day, a particularly challenging day, one of the only times I have seen her calculating, straight on facing me in a hard stare, just what the cost might be to take me out (this is rare) and I wondered if I had gotten myself into a vortex of ocean current I wouldn’t be able to swim out of… I kept asking for that ONE soft step with the rope only loosely draped around her, not secured with any knot that either one of us could get too caught up in, she came through. 

    I was truly about to bail that day thinking I had gone too far with this direction, pushed her over to the point she was going to kill or be killed and giving up- sending her back into the stall and leaving her alone might be the way we live to try another day. But I am stiff-necked and I knew if I did that- yes, we can keep working and it is not the end, but it would have been a terrible setback teaching her that kind of intense behavior DOES work out for her purposes which would turn that into a tool she would pick up more and more readily, which would mean some more serious concerning work ahead possibly more intense than I wanted to have to go through. So I prayed quickly for wisdom and I stood in there asking as confident and calm as I could be and ready to put in the boundary (but not holding it in place when she wasn’t threatening because then I am the aggressor…) and held my ground with the simple non-threatening as possible request.

    When she did take the step and relax somewhat I was relieved and that was a day that though I won’t say she came complete to a soft peaceful state, it was pretty darn good all considering where we’d been. And I led her over to her stall door, got one back up step when she began to crowd me at the door (and she quietly complied!) I softly let her in… then went home to wash my big girl panties so they’d be ready for the next day.

    After a few other chores, I opened up the gates and let all the girls out to graze. Two walked out and found some grass, but not Wyoming. She walked out then trotted to the water trough (she also has water in her stall bucket), and then as I was out of the barn in the front, getting ready to leave she cantered around and back into the barn alone. I walked back to peek in a window to see her in her stall, alone, standing quietly, the rest of the mares out in the pasture. 

    Has that become a place she’s found peace due to the work we’ve done in there? I don’t know. Not yet. But I observe and I continue to take notes, I hope in time there will be more clarity as things settle in to more distinct patterns.

    Meanwhile I keep in touch with Tom Moates who is a saint to read my detailed descriptions, occasionally see video clips, observe pictures, and offer me encouragement and ideas to consider. The encouragement I particularly appreciate because there are clearly moments I think “I am now, or have by now, ruined this horse.” Tom seems to be able to find the phrase or moment I shared that he sees as the little crumbs of positive progress. 

    Down deep, I do know everything I am seeing comes out of that volcano I knew was there in some form, often smaller eruptions, before. I am not creating them today. I am however determined to expose them hopefully in non-lethal increments if I can be so wise, but not so small they do not have any value at all and only create a kind of low-grade illness. 

    I have heard a saying: What is revealed can then be healed. There is a lot being revealed this season. Certainly I’ve done things that might have inflamed or created experiences she could use to dig more solidly into her position, but this mare, in being left alone while I knew I didn’t know how to help her, has nursed and tended the poisonous garden and it has gotten more firmly entrenched by the very fact it hasn’t been exposed sooner. In other words, I think doing nothing has caused more harm than I realized.

    These couple weeks have been messy, sometimes downright ugly, and also tiny glimpses of peaceful and sweet. I am glad for the time I’ve been given this summer for this work, and the relative privacy for us to feel our way up the mountain on a newer, not so well worn track. There are signs along the way that give me hope we are going the right way, but they are still faint.

    That’s another observation I’ve come to in life: the really clear well worn paths often do find dead ends and many people camp out, unwilling to leave the ground they have gained for a place higher up the mountain. The paths that take one higher are usually less traveled and they look more overgrown and treacherous in the beginning parts, but after a time, once you’ve invested because of what you’ve come to know and not how you feel about it, they begin to open up into wider spacious places, and there are brooks along the way, and some stunning scenery. But they are never for the faint of heart.

    I spliced together a few minutes of examples of some of this work as a little bonus video here for anyone who made it through the blog!

    Note: I want to clarify that I am attempting to walk a pretty fine line for me where I am not “desensitizing” Wyoming to my tools or to me. I don’t want her “bomb proof” or shut down in order to cope with scary things. I think some of this work can look similar if one isn’t being quite conscientious, or if one doesn’t truly understand the difference. I don’t think I always get this right, but one of the main distinctions I’m trying to get clear is that the “answer” to Wyoming finding peace is not to hold still under the pressure, or to “act right” on the surface (like don’t come at me with your teeth) although it would be lovely if she can stand quietly and relaxed and I don’t want her to approach me with violent intention. I want her to be able to move and walk with the rope, the flag, or my hand touching her. In Wyoming’s case one of her “shut down” reactions is to drop her head to the ground; when she does this I know she is feeling so much pressure she is checking out. I don’t want her to check out, so in those cases I need to notice it’s too much and find a way to back up a touch, or sometimes I need to add more pressure so she HAS to come back to me and face the scary thing and come through to see it WILL be ok and she doesn’t have to hide. This takes understanding and wisdom. I at least know what I want to do, even if I don’t always do it perfectly. The bottom line is in the intention. I don’t simply want her physical body reaction to look right, I want her to feel better after facing the thing seeing that it doesn’t have to hold her in terror. There is a difference, and I think most people I’ve talked to struggle to see it at first, or even to believe it exists. When one can see it, the difference becomes important.
  • The Good Citizen

    The Good Citizen

    I sometimes hear horse-folk say the most important thing we can do for a horse is to train it to be a good citizen. They have rational reasons behind this, especially like: “I may not (God forbid) be able to have this horse it’s entire lifespan.” Implying a horse that is not a good citizen is more difficult to re-home (which is true… most horses are tricky to re-home, throw in any complication — physical or behavioral — and this becomes exponentially more challenging). Then there is the embarrassed owner who finds the equine health professional’s life in danger just trying to help… In the end there is great agreement (which is actually rare in horse-folk) that anyone should be able to handle a good citizen with no trouble at all. I usually smile and nod along, because to disagree makes you seem like an idiotic crazy person. I mean how could one disagree on the one thing everyone generally agrees on? Just ruin world peace while you’re at it why don’t you?

    My “not so” good citizen

    It’s not so much that I disagree as I’m fuzzy on the details. I think a more interesting conversation would be had about what the definition of a good equine citizen actually is. It’s easy to nod and assume we agree on a proper way to handle a horse in the first place, but that is far from true. I’m pretty sure I don’t want a horse that “is obedient” to a request from everyone exactly the same way. I’d bet the farm that no one is going get hurt handling Khaleesi no matter what you do with her… however, how you ask, and your ability to read a horse and interact appropriately is going to impact what you get out of her. Shouldn’t it be that way? 

    I have an illustrative story of a farrier years back who tried to help me out by checking on a lost shoe one day when he couldn’t get in touch with me, but was in my area. He was trying to do me a favor by grabbing a halter and going to see if he could tack the shoe back on for me. He left a message I got later, quite frustrated that no matter what he did including bringing a bucket of grain, he couldn’t catch her. Stupid mare. (I think she thought he was a stupid person thinking she would be lured by food!) I am pretty sure if you asked him, even today, he’d say my horses are not good citizens. But K never trusted him, and he used fear and intimidation with horses, telling me more than once that a good horse (his definition of a good citizen) has a healthy fear of humans and that’s the way it should be. He was considered one of the best farriers around, but we had to part ways. And I was glad he couldn’t catch her that day. 

    I thought this blog would expose my disagreement with the good citizen idea, but as I process, I see that it’s more the definition that separates us all. My ex-farrier thought a good citizen has fear of humans. Some call their horse a good citizen and then say things like “you can’t do anything with the horse on the ground but once you get on them it’s all just fine…” What I’ve been coming to see is the most important thing (as I’ve heard Harry Whitney say) to teach a horse, is that they can let go of a thought. 

    Over the two weeks I’ve been working daily with Wyoming to help her feel better, a simple truth has begun to rise in a new clarity. This mare has gotten good at hanging on — with a death grip — to her own thoughts.

    There was a time I observed: you can get along just fine with Wyoming as long as you never require anything of her. If you exist with her on her own terms you can be best buddies. She’s friendly and fun, and the life of the party. However if you require something of her, she switches pretty quickly to what Tom calls “snarky.” 

    A day with some visitors, Wyoming put herself dead center of all the attention… life of the party!

    Regardless if my definition of a good citizen aligns with the general horse community, a horse willing to fight over something like “will you please take a step backward” is absolutely not acceptable. And yet… now what? We have already established in the last two entries that she doesn’t feel very good about her life. That’s what I’m trying to address.

    In over seven years, by no one’s definition, has she been transformed into a good citizen no matter what kind of training I’ve practiced from harsh (becoming more scary than her threats) to compassionate (free choice and positive reinforcement). In all the places I’ve searched, so far I haven’t been able to break through for a real change.

    Now I’m getting better at understanding where the horse’s thought is, and how they are feeling. Currently I am going in deep to see if I can change Wyoming’s experiences to change her thoughts, and then get a change in how she feels.

    Begin at the begining?

    A soft moment during our R+ phase…

    The halter. I have worked on getting her to accept being haltered willingly from many angles over years with her. I can put the halter on, but it doesn’t take a horse whisperer to know she is tolerating, but not relaxed or willing. I love linear rational thought: If I can’t get her to willingly accept the halter, is it a wonder the rest of it is like poison fruit of the tree? I wanted to go back to the source and work from the root.  

    When I walk into Wyoming’s stall she immediately comes to meet me at the gate.  I offer the halter and she will grudgingly allow it to be pulled up over her nose. Gradients of messy depending on the day, but I get it done.

    Something I found interesting is Khaleesi will not come to me in the stall and put her head in the halter, yet I never have a problem walking right up to her and offering the halter and she will dip her nose dutifully. (We are experimenting with this but that’s a different story right now) Wyoming coming to the gate to meet me, which on the surface seems “better” than having to walk over to halter K. However, actually putting on the halter is a totally different experience. Khaleesi is willing to cooperate, Wyoming tolerates and sometimes gives little threatening nips at the rope with her lips. 

    I began to grasp something that I had not thought through before: Wyoming was not connecting with me by walking over to meet me at the exit gate. If one was only reading action it looks pretty cooperative. Where was her mind? With me? Not at all. Her mind already left the stall. This is not good if one misreads the situation to think we’re working cooperatively. What I can get away with because it’s actually Wyoming’s plan isn’t going to give me accurate information about what’s going on with her. And if I don’t have accurate information we are going to eventually run into trouble.

    The truth will set us free.

    So being the truth seeker I am, I decided to try something different. I walked into the stall. She came over to me. Then I walked to the adjacent corner of the stall. This was going off script. She stayed at the exit.  Standing with me in a stall corner, was not on her list of plans so she did not join me. 

    I made a light shuffling with the lead rope to get her attention and encourage her to consider coming over to me. Just think about it? I was asking her to add me to her list, maybe bump me up to a higher position there. She pinned her ears and looked over at me with a warning.

    Nope. Not gonna do it. Don’t ask. 

    Interesting. The ear pinning threatening behavior I thought was reserved for asking her to put out effort. Simply coming two steps over to me in the stall did not seem worth the fight she was threatening. But somehow, to her, it was.

    I paused and considered, if she was already threatening violence, maybe I needed to find a safer spot from which to press this issue. Her stall has an exterior barn wall, a partial wood wall with a four foot exit gate, then two farm gates that separate her from Khaleesi and from the other half of the barn which is storage for hay and equipment.

    pondering climbing out of the stall completely before we begin…

    From this position, I asked again with more insistence: I see your brain is already out in the field. Let go of that for the moment, bring your brain back here to the stall, and find a place of peace with me.

    I walked over to what makes the back “wall” of the stall which is a green farm gate, and climbed up to sit a moment. It seemed like a better place…but as I sat there now looking at her rear end (with her head still pointed out the exit), I realized that when I began to push the comfort zone there seemed a decent chance of getting a chunk taken out of my leg.  And so I climbed over the gate into the safe zone of the barn outside her stall. With the open plan of this particular make-shift stall, I had great access to her with the ability to stay out of reach. 

    Let’s freeze frame a moment.

    Before I get into the action to come, let’s walk through the present snapshot of the story. Wyoming is not at peace with her brain out in the pasture and her body in the stall. In order to find peace she has to reunite her body with her brain. She thinks she would prefer to put her body out in the field where her brain is. I must show her that since it is not always possible to get her body where she sent her brain, she can choose the real option to bring her brain back and engage in the present. She can find peace this way.

    This is not so different from human experiences. Anxiety, which is at an all time high in the world today I’ve heard, happens when a human allows their brain to go places their body cannot. Sometimes into the future to worry about things they cannot control or even deal with because they are not yet real. Sometimes to a place they cannot actually be, to try to control things there. This is always a losing game, and it creates sickness in the mind and the body. We hear more often than ever the importance of becoming present where and when we are. Find something that can return you to the reality of the present, where it turns out, most of the time… you actually ARE ok. 

    Trauma, I think, without going out of my own depth which is not much here, is when you DO come back to the reality of the present location and time and find out indeed… you are NOT ok. Acute trauma usually has an end point, but the effects linger. If we don’t address it (which is painful), we will continue to suffer- which is more painful.

    It’s a pretty good bet this horse has experienced trauma. She was wild for at least two years in Wyoming before being rounded up. She might have lost herd mates in that time to starvation or predators, or injury, or random barbed wire fence lines or suffered some of these herself. Being rounded up and penned is traumatic to a wild animal. In her first training-gentling experience she was traumatized by the halter, bit her handler, reared up, and flipped over. Some horses do not get so traumatized by being haltered the first time. I wish I could say her life has been carefree and perfect since she found her way to me, but that’s not true either.

    I thought I was getting a green-broke mustang who was doing well under saddle and needed some consistency and mileage. Perfect for me! Instead, looking back, I brought home a traumatized animal whose personality was more fear based than most and I did not have the tools then to even recognize what was happening forget what to do about it. I delved into natural horsemanship type work and began driving the creature to her fight/flight mode in order to work with her and certainly added to her experience of trauma in the hope of helping her. The same work that created a pretty good citizen in Khaleesi by most definitions, did not create the same thing in Wyoming. 

    And so, armed with new understanding and some rough tools, we are back in the moment with the horse gazing out of her stall, with her mind out there and her body in here. She is not at peace. My presence was upping the ante on this and it didn’t sit well with her at all.

    I’ve moved away from driving pressure, so my plan was to create a kind of “indirect pressure” in her environment that would not scare her to have to fight or flee, but to be big enough eventually that she couldn’t block me out or ignore me anymore. I wanted her to choose to put me on the list, because I knew her being present would bring her peace. Peace is what she wants more than anything, but she’s stuck in her patterns and doesn’t know how to get there alone. Now I had to be ready to not add to her fear/flight/fight system, but make it so her other choices to stay stuck didn’t work out so well anymore. Then, when she did come check in with me, I had to be ready to offer a place that felt better than she felt in vigilante mode. I had to find a way to offer her rest, security, and peace in my presence. It had to be real.

    I made a noise with the rope. She turned her head and death glared at me, snake ears and flashing eyes. Then turned back to her field.

    I made a larger noise. Same reaction but faster and more intent.

    I swung the rope to hit the wood barn wall next to me with a bang. She swung herself around, dipping her head low and raising it like a dragon, ears flat against her neck and came at me over the top of the gate with her teeth bared threatening me that this demand for her attention was worth fighting to the death over.

    Well, I wanted the truth.

    This is what’s been in there the whole time. I was now poking at it from a safe place in the hope what I stirred up and revealed, maybe… maybe we could release it and make a deeper change for the better.

    Here I saw it more clearly: It is not that Wyoming is offended by any request to do a thing. This horse has a fear-based natural bent already, and has gotten a self-preservation life and death grip on the thoughts she manages about her environment and her herd. If you want her to let go of those, she is convinced her very survival is at stake. And though I believe that Wyoming basically “likes” me, she doesn’t look to me highly enough to let go of her survival mechanisms to give me her full attention (yet). If I ask her to let go of the other thoughts she is managing and put me in the center of her mind, she is kind enough to warn me that I’m stepping into a dangerous place. If I continue to press this, she threatens… I don’t think she wants to have to kill me. But in the end, if she believes its her or me, right now she would follow through to whatever extent she could in order to get me to understand and back down.

    And so I began to press into Wyoming’s self protection mechanism. I don’t do it because I need her to become a “good citizen” (though I would love that to be an outcome). I don’t do it because I need her to become an obedient riding horse (that would be awesome, but I already have one of those). I am doing it because somehow this horse has come into my care, by ignorance, mistake, or willful stubbornness by the grace of God, she’s here now and we are going to have to find our way to a better place. 

    The truth (sometimes ugly when it comes out of the dark) is what will set us free.

    I continued this basic program of making just enough noise to break her loose from her other thoughts and have to focus on me at least for a moment. I left a lot of time in between for her to search out this puzzle and to process it. I am not trying to use fear to manipulate Wyoming, the tool (whatever it is) will not come after her, just make enough noise and fuss to have my thing bigger for the moment than the other thing she’s trying to hold on to when she gets stuck.

    When I did get her attention, it came with her best dragon impression. Today I wanted her to be “rewarded” for checking in with me even if it was with a massive wave of what looked like murderous rage.

    Oh, thanks for giving me your attention! Good job!

    Video clip of one of the times she realized she didn’t have to feel bad about being present in the process.

    I don’t know if that was the best response or not. I’m kind of in the wild myself here with her now. I’m learning by trying and trying not to get hurt in the process. When she comes at me with that kind of face, it does not feel good for her, but she has momentarily had to let go of that other thought, and she is present. The truth, it appears, is she is convinced being present will feel bad. I say that because as she would come at me with murder in her eyes, as the time went on, she would hang there a moment with her snakey ears pinned and eyes flaring and I just stood there two inches out of her reach and then we’d pause for just a moment, and she would begin to soften. She would look at me and start to relax, her ears would float back up, and I would be still and breathe evenly with as much peace as I could muster, trying to translate from every pore: I know you’re ready to fight, but I love you, you are mine, and we are going to get better together in time. I am here to help you.

    She would stand there and everything in her body would begin to soften until her lower lip would drop slightly and she would let go of the entire weight of the world she was used to carrying. The first time this happened in entirety, she stood in as much peace as I’ve seen her maybe ever, then she had a big release reaction. She shook her entire body and neck, she went into yawning that twisted her head both directions and her tongue would come out of her mouth in all directions. 

    It took two hours to come to this place where I could reach out and touch her on her forehead and she stood relaxed and peaceful, no fight in her. Not a hint of trying to send her mind out the gate or window. 

    Finally peace.

    I know this made a deep change in her, because after I walked away to do some things in the barn she began to eat hay. That might seem normal for a horse. However, I left the horses in their stalls for which is normal this time of year for a few hours a day. Khaleesi eats the most hay in these periods. Hope eats the next amount but less because she spends a portion of time laying down resting as she is not fully well. Wyoming always ate the least. 

    When I returned later to release the horses from their stalls, Wyoming had eaten every almost every blade of hay which is highly unusual. I always suspected it was because she was distracted with checking out her window and stall door, but she never paced or pawed or showed bigger signs of stress. She always went into the stall voluntarily. I think she would choose the stall because her herd was inside, so that’s where she needed to be- but her brain was in fact roving the field still on guard for danger. 

    As I worked with her for the two hours, not only did she gaze out the exit door, but there is a smaller window.  She would cycle her mind out that window, to the exit, then with Khaleesi in the next stall. Those three places were all on her list to cycle through making sure all was in order. At some point she must have added in eat some hay to the list, because she did eat some of her hay. She’s not lacking for calories, has never shown sign of colic, and drinks her water, so I never concerned myself with addressing her low hay consumption over the 6-9 hours they would spend inside.

    Now, if the herd is put in the barn, she eats all her hay and I keep adding more. This reinforces to me that the work I did with her over those two hours convincing her to let go of her thoughts to be present in the stall with me did not ONLY give her a few moments of peace while I was there, but she learned that she could find peace being present in the stall even when I was not there. She was finding more peace even on her own now.

    That is a very big deal. That is a very big why to continue to try.

    I wish I could say that in this first big day of finding a place of relaxation that we now have solved her issues and all is well!

    Not quite. The journey has only begun, and so far this one promises to be one of plot twists, steps forward and sideways, and sometimes backward… one that will require patience, and the ability to notice the smallest things as landmarks along the way. However I am seeing evidence that teaching a horse they can let go of a thought truly is one of the most important things to helping them live as good equine citizens. 

    Right now, asking Wyoming to let go of a thought feels to her like an attack on her self-preservation and tips her into fight mode. In other horses, it is a reason they bolt, flee, buck off a rider, or try to kill the vet. If a horse can let go of a hard thought they have a better chance at working together with us in our own thoughts – like you need hoof care, or to come safely with me as I lead you somewhere you aren’t sure you want to go… These are things most people could agree a good citizen would be able to do.

    Stay tuned as I process the days I spend with Wyoming. The ups and downs of that journey will be the focus for now, and I’ll be back soon with another installment!

  • The devil in the details.

    The devil in the details.

    In the last post (Complicated), I posed the root question:

    And so, the whole thing depends on the question: can I help change Wyoming’s experiences and thus her mind, that working together with me is something she can feel good about? And in changing this, could she feel better about her life all around?

    Over time I have been given advice about Wyoming suggesting a few basic horsemanship concepts. I was told You’ve got to make the “wrong” thing difficult and the “right” thing easy. Also This is a horse where you have to get it to be her idea if you want to succeed.

    This is all well enough… but somehow I wasn’t able to get a next step from the well meaning clinicians and horse-folk who suggested these better ways, to actually sort out exactly how was one to do this? The devil, they say, is in the details.

    As for the first premise, I have been astounded at how easy the “right” thing can be (walk quietly in a circle) to find this mare will choose ear pinning, rearing, and even trotting or cantering in order to NOT comply with my “easy” request. Have you ever heard that it takes more effort to frown than to smile? I’m certain that ear pinning and rearing take way more effort than quietly walking relaxed a turn or two around me.

    Khaleesi had this figured out pretty quickly. She did the math and came to the conclusion complying with my general requests were going to be the path of least resistance. I think she also knew my heart (is that a stretch to write about?) for however a horse knows these unseen things, I think Khaleesi has always known that for better or worse, overall I am trying to do right by her. This horse seems to reward the least try by her human, and she seems to have a lot more grace in my failings. Khaleesi is the kind of horse of which it is said: they will fill in for you… a lot.

    Wyoming is not such a horse. She may or may not know my heart is to do right by her, but she tells me every single time I am not quiet enough in a request, every single time I get impatient and don’t allow her the time to consider and choose. She responds to my energy and where I am looking and if my body is not exactly angled in the ideal way to ask that thing. She responds in a huge way if I am at all confusing to her in any signal. Wyoming has a very low tolerance for mixed signals or confusion.

    As for the second piece of advice, the making it her idea. I never got someone to show me effectively what that would that look like with her. In the past I figured it’s obviously one of those things you have to struggle through on your own (what are you an idiot to have to ask that follow up question of HOW to do it? Or maybe it was like the force… you have to find it on your own grasshopper). That was another assumption. I should have probably asked better follow up questions. Maybe someone might have been able to show me.

    Observing Harry Whitney and Tom Moates, it seems altogether less magical and more practical. The horse gets to choose and whatever she does IS her idea now. And as I’ve heard Harry say: when it’s her idea, then she will own it, then it’ll stick.

    Harry Whitney in TN patiently allows for the horse to come to the idea on her own

    Oh, I thought. So I must not trick, force, or otherwise manipulate and threaten her into doing what I want. And yet somehow I have to help her make better decisions? Which then follows that if I’m dealing with her honestly and not manipulating or otherwise controlling or punishing her… then it actually has to work out better FOR HER when she chooses the thing I am presenting. Which might incentivize her to truly seek to join with me because… it works out for her when she does.

    The devil is in the details.

    I hear a lot of talk in horse circles about putting the horse first, then watch the presentation of folks’ interpretation of that in action and am skeptical. Let me clarify a finer point, often I observe my own presentation of my own interpretation of putting the horse first, and I am highly skeptical even of my own stewardship of this concept.

    And yet, as I perch outside the round pen as Harry helps a horse, I think there is actually a simple truth in… well… put the horse first? Harry Whitney, in the scant week or so I’ve spent around him in California and Tennessee, puts an emphasis on how the horse feels above everything else. 

    Harry in Vista, CA February 2023 helping a horse center and find peace in the midst of distraction

    I am pretty good by now about sorting out what a horse does. I can see the way a horse steps over a hind foot, or if the horse’s body moves backward, or if the horse is walking, trotting or cantering. I am even good at seeing a weight shift and feeling which foot is lifting underneath me. It is not that hard to sort out: I asked you to walk, and you are not walking. This I need to “fix” somehow. Harry wants to know how the horse feels.

    As I circle back to the question, can I help Wyoming FEEL better about her life, it seems now to rise above all the other questions I have asked: Can I get Wyoming comfortable on the trailer? Can I get Wyoming to respond to a simple request unoffended? Can I put on a halter without her nipping at it as I put it on? Can I convince her to carry me as a rider without being so pinched up inside?

    And so I went to work last week, and the devil is in the details.

    Day one and day two were spent with Tom sorting out the fact that Wyoming is not only complicated, but that she does not feel good most of the time. Even in the herd she is never fully relaxed, she is the one who appears to take on the role of defender of any possible harm. This is a heavy load to carry. Any new environmental stimuli, even a chainsaw a mile away in the woods across the street is cause for concern and alert. 

    Khaleesi has a more balanced sense of what is concerning, and what can be noticed and let go of. Same herd, same stimuli, still aware of her environment and sometimes on alert, but quicker to let something go and relax again.

    If I were to consider Wyoming’s “worry cup” (as in the amount of anxiety a horse is building up until it runneth over – usually in a negative expression of some sort), Wyoming is not a cup half full kind of mare… she is like 5/8th  most of the time and now has learned to carry that kind of worry in everything she does. This would mean when I want to do something together I have precious little room to press her before her cup runs over. I think this constant anxiety is a big part of this not feeling good all the time.

    If she lives at 5/8 full, I think me showing up puts her at 6/8 (or 3/4 for those who prefer to simplify their fractions) then whatever we begin to sort through together leaves only 7/8 and then bam… self-protection at all costs shows up in fight/flight with the fight being unusually high on her list of options.

    I am considering the possibility that her 5/8 full worry cup at all times being a way of life could account for why she is so quick to flip over to fight/flight and the fact that we’ve had to get decent at dumping out the part we just filled if we both want to survive together. If this is an accurate hypothesis, then it follows that I have not been effective at getting down into the bottom 5/8 of the cup she carries constantly in order to empty some of that and give us some emotional space to work in.

    If I had to find an analogy to compare it to, it’s like working with a machine that is not running quite properly and you have to learn how to manage it without it overheating and blowing up if you want to get anything done. We exist too close to the red zone as an every day functioning.

    I think until I find a way to dig into some of the chronic discontent/anxiety she carries as her normal and help her to let go some of that somehow… then I’m constantly in the zone where every move I make could be the thing that takes her over the edge. It’s an eggshell kind of life. My guess is she would rather not live that way either. If she knew there was another way.

    As Tom says: this is the horse she would rather be.

    This winter and at other times I’ve put her into the benign neglect zone, first because I didn’t have any promising answers to bring a change. Second, in the winters I’m busy with my teaching work and have far less time for the herd.

    I used the think caring for her basic needs, allowing her to settle into a herd in a life of basic freedom could not only do no harm, but would help her reset again and feel better in order for us to possibly try again after that refreshing time off. Maybe the horse can drain the cup on her own? Since meeting Harry I am convinced that they actually DO need intervention in a different experience in order to make a change. Leaving them alone to “be a horse” if they are troubled will not fix the trouble. 

    The biggest take-away I had from Harry in Tennessee this spring was: 

    Our understanding runs our emotions, our emotions dictate our actions.  If you want a change in the horse, you must change their understanding. 

    Harry Whitney

    After Tom’s visit it had come into focus for me, somehow Wyoming needs new experiences to get that cup drained enough that she could withstand a little pressure in order to grow and expand her world. Leaving her alone to a world that gets smaller and smaller due to fears is not kindness. Creating a shake up in order to help her was going to be necessary.

    No Wyoming… tell me how you really feel?

    And the devil is in the details.

    This is where the hoof hits the dirt. The first question from the last post was: can I help Wyoming feel better with new experiences that will change her mind. Once everyone was gone and it’s just me and the mare I now to have to ask: How on earth am I going to do this?

    I have a feeling this is going to demand more from me that I currently possess in knowledge, skill, creativity, grace and most of all patience. As I got started, I realized this horse is probably going to be the kind that makes me or breaks me – meaning I will either grow and learn, or she’ll be too much for me and I will truly fail her. I can not at the moment accept the latter as a possibility, so I’m prepared to be changed from this process. 

    And so we begin… again… again.

  • Complicated

    Complicated

    “Well she’s… complicated…” he says, “This isn’t the kind of horse you move on, sell to someone else or otherwise offload.” As he turned to my friends he added, “This is the kind of horse that, well, people with this kind of disorder end up with…”

    I didn’t ask Tom what exactly that disorder was. I didn’t ask because I was pretty sure I knew. I was pretty sure it was whatever the disorder- it is the thing that tries to explain why certain people, upon finding they have acquired a “complicated” horse, instead of thinking what a terrible thing it is and how difficult the road will be, see an opportunity to learn things that “uncomplicated” horses cannot teach you.

    I could be wrong about that and probably should have asked. Probably I didn’t really want to know the definition of this disorder in it’s entirety. Some things are better left to wonder.

    I do have a fairly “uncomplicated” horse in the herd and I enjoy her immensely. I am not the kind of person who has to have a problem to solve at all times. Ok. That’s not true, I am that kind of person. However, I am also the kind of person who can enjoy an uncomplicated horse. In fact, I am grateful that the complicated horse will make me better for the uncomplicated one as well. 

    Enough of that. Back to the complicated wild one.

    I’ve had Wyoming, I keep saying about five years, but I think I’ve been saying five years for at least two years now, so it might be more like seven years. I’ve written about her journey from time to time here. I’ve ridden her, I’ve done ground work, I’ve trailer loaded her, I’ve done clinics with her… but I have never found “success” with her. 

    When I say success I mean: felt like we had come to a place where things were working together well. 

    Everything I have done with her that initially masqueraded as success has always eventually unraveled, sometimes in potentially dangerous ways.

    I could get things done with her, and she’s so sensitive it sometimes “looked” amazing, but it never felt good, it never felt solid, it never felt right.

    I still haven’t given up. This mare has over time brought up the question for me if there are horses we should “give up” on and allow them to live out their days as a pasture ornament, but that never felt right for her. I think Wyoming has a desire to do something together. I just have not been able to figure out how to do it so it works for us both.

    This is Tom Moates’ second visit to play around with us on the farm. We focused on trailer loading last time, and though that is still not settled, I have a good path laid out and can continue to work on it. What I wanted to address this visit was the path to becoming a reliable riding horse (or the decision she couldn’t be). 

    She has been started and restarted a few times already, the last time, a couple years back I even went on a few nice trail rides on her before she began laying down during the ride. Yes, while I was riding her. When she was done, she was done. I was never hurt, she would simply lay down and I got off, but this is an example of how it was not successful. 

    I tried letting her know this laying down thing is not how we do trail rides. She didn’t care. When Wyoming is done, there’s nothing left to say about it. I could have whipped or beat her, but it wouldn’t matter. She would die if that’s what it took. This is what we come to, eventually, with about everything.

    After a few episodes of her laying down on the trail, and me trying various responses of either ignoring it- getting off, asking her to get up, and simply getting back on and continuing on… I also tried carrying a crop and smacking her forward when she started to lay down… she actually got so fast at it in order to avoid getting driven forward that she could lay down with little to no warning! 

    But it didn’t matter in the end, because the problem continued to move up the chain to her refusing to leave the yard entirely and she would crow hop, buck and start to rear if I insisted. Which took us all the way back to can we ride in the arena again, and then can I just get on her and ask her to go forward at all?

    This is an example of how things would come apart. 

    And so I go back to the drawing board and try to figure out why this isn’t working out.

    Since she didn’t travel on a trailer (she has before but that also came unglued) my options for getting help living at the end of nowhere have been limited. In February, Harry Whitney put me in touch with Tom Moates, who lives within driving distance from me. Tom has an interest (disorder based too?) in wild mustangs and complicated horses, Wyoming is both of these, so he was keen to work with me if I could line up enough other horses to make the short trip worthwhile. We now call them these fun two-days of people and horses “roving clinics” as we hop up the valley from farm to farm on the 220 corridor. Mix in some good food and laughter and what could be better?

    A soft moment with Tom after we worked a while on getting her to center up her mind

    On Monday (day one of two days this visit), Tom watched me halter Wyoming in the field with her small herd loose on the handful of acres, and try to get her mind centered on me. Unsuccessfully. 

    I had planned to get her halter on in order to bring her in so we could begin talking about the process of saddle and riding and how we might go about finding the holes that have apparently been left behind in the many other starting processes so I could sort out my homework with her going forward. I had plans, but have learned to come with a plan and take what presents. I could have walked her away but I knew she wasn’t with me, so I tried to address that first. 

    Tom watched me struggle to center the mare and get her to let go of the herd, the environment, and all the other things her busy mind keeps track of at any one second and after a few minutes asked me: Would you like me to comment?

    Yes. Please. 

    In this way we began working right there in the field with what we had. It took a while to get the mare willing to give up on all the other thoughts she was juggling enough to cooperate with a few simple asks including “can you walk around me in a circle, relaxed and responsive in case I want to make a change midstream (not on autopilot)?” What I’ve become used to and what Tom and the others were seeing is that this mare can go from: I’m ok but I’m not really focused… to I’m about to stab you in the heart and pound on your grave… quickly back to oh hey what do you want to do for dinner?

    It’s a Jekyll and Hyde life with her, and when she threatens death it’s convincing.  I’ve yet to see her follow through, and I’m not afraid of her. This doesn’t mean I don’t take her seriously, but I don’t think she wants to act out her threats. When I see this dragon act, I usually put in a hard boundary and she lets go of murder momentarily, and we go back into the cycle… wash, rinse, repeat. I have not been able to make a significant change in the cycle as of yet. Thus the we are not successful feeling I have. 

    On any normal day you walk into the field with the herd she is the ambassador, friendliest horse I have. I bring anyone and everyone in to meet the horses without concern. She is not a generally aggressive horse. She loves to be around people and I see her as usually quite willing to try. All it takes is for her to feel trapped and asked to do something (anything) that isn’t what she had in mind and it flips like a switch to life and death, self-preservation, and you can see it in her threats to fight.

    Abigail & Wyoming a few years back

    She doesn’t hold on to that big bluster long, and when I meet that with an equal sized quit that!! She always does, and she goes back to a normal looking horse, her eyes are not blazing and her ears look normal, and the teeth go back where they belong behind fuzzy velvet muzzle. Usually she’ll comply with the request which is something like walk around a circle. But often she does it with a hard heart. She complies in order to get it over with which becomes avoidance by compliance. This turns into auto-pilot where she can do the thing without engaging her brain which she prefers to keep on the forty-two things she is juggling while trying not to have to give me any more brain space than necessary to keep me at bay.

    I have learned to walk the knife edge of demanding things of her and yet not getting hurt, which as I reflect might have put us in a truce where I accept not having her full attention if she will give me enough of it to do a thing together. This would also be why we still are not successful.

    As Tom watched this dynamic between us he questioned some of my responses and my timing, and my choice to get bigger or not get bigger, and when… which all was useful for me because we have a particular history and way of relating that may not be always ideal. Yet after a while when he asked to take the lead rope and do some experimenting he came back with the moment we began this blog.

    She’s complicated.

    Tom observed not very many horses are as quick as she is to go to full on life or death self-protection response and threaten violence. He also didn’t think she truly wanted to take out a human, but we all agree it’s not completely posturing. If she were pressed it seemed likely she’d shoot to kill. Her switch between the two: life and death versus compliant seemed unusually quick. It was also not completely clear when the bad attitude needed to be met with a big boundary and when it might be more productive to ignore it and allow it to dissolve without creating an explosion. I have struggled myself sorting this knife edge out in working with her.

    What Tom came around to express is his clarity that the mare doesn’t feel very good most of the time, and because she isn’t feeling very good, she’s quick to explode. We don’t know if this is necessarily physical. She may not feel good physically, though I don’t have evidence for this. What seems very clear is mentally and emotionally she does not feel good. This could be chicken and egg so we have to start somewhere to effect her feeling better and my sense is mentally emotionally is a good place to start because we have no clear entry point for the physical (I’ve had her checked over through the years wondering if she had physical issues, and we just don’t have any good leads on that side). 

    She is hyper vigilant and is always ready for an environmental factor to take out the herd. She is concerned about everything. I also think from the way I’ve worked with her in the past- with my natural horsemanship, direct pressure, driving style- she is concerned about getting the right answer to a cue. It’s not personal, it’s everything. She’s like a teenager who is mad at the world and the bad attitude is always at the surface ready to come out in a snarky comment, sarcastic remark or an eye roll. 

    I don’t know if she came this way or if humans (including me) created this. My guess is it’s a combination, and it doesn’t really matter. The same me working with the same tools also produced Khaleesi who is a great partner and basically compliant- even one might say responsive – horse. We have much room for improvement together but Khaleesi never threatens my life. Each kid is different in a family, so is each horse in a herd. And this horse is more like the kid adopted from a war zone who lived there long enough to carry some trauma. Regardless of her background, I’m sure I have a hand in the degree of problems we are working out. I’m not particularly bothered by this, I only plan to do better from here. 

    Great moment at the end of the session when Tom was checking out if she can tolerate some “dead weight” while carrying the saddle.

    When Tom said she doesn’t feel good about anything it struck me in a new way. Strange, because I could have said that same thing myself for years if I’d thought about it. Deep down I knew this was true but hadn’t isolated this is the root problem everything hinges from. Clearly the entire picture is hanging on the question: can I help Wyoming feel good about life in general and working with me?

    If she did begin to feel good, then trailer loading would work out better, the riding would fall into place, and even simple things would not be such a challenge. As Tom observed: you can get THAT onto a trailer, but then what? You’re just trailering THAT around! You don’t want to travel with THAT? THAT is not the kind of thing you want to export.

    we don’t want to export THAT

    Indeed.

    And so, the whole thing depends on the question: can I help change Wyoming’s experiences and thus her mind, that working together with me is something she can feel good about? And in changing this, could she feel better about her life all around?

    Apparently that’s part of the disorder in me, against all evidence so far, I say yes. At least I think that’s what having hope is all about. Here at Hope Horsemanship, I’m certainly going to try.

  • The motions of emotion

    The motions of emotion

    I spent few days with Harry Whitney last week. I hope I will never be the same.

    I have been to a handful of horsemanship events and clinics ranging in size and popularity and I did not know what to expect from a Harry Whitney clinic. Harry doesn’t have much media out there to get a detailed understanding of what he is doing, though it’s not difficult to get the basics, so if you want to learn from him, you’re going to have to go find him.

    Brandea and I did just that and we flew across the country to catch him in Southern California on a week we both could manage to get away. It was well worth the investment.

    I was surprised and soon delighted to find how intimate the group was. Harry does mainly one-on-one sessions and the clinics are limited to 5-6 horses. Auditors (or fence sitters and rail hens as Harry chuckled at the different terms for a clinic observer in other parts of the world) are also limited, but this clinic was below even the limit. At any given time there were less than 12 of us gathered around a round pen close enough to touch the master horseman hardly having to raise a voice to have a question heard.

    Intimate group around the round pen

    I have been in clinics where questions were “legal” but I’ve never seen anyone else address questions so willingly, easily, graciously and genuinely as Harry Whitney. He seems to invite questions because in order to learn, I think he wants those engaged in the process to be seeking and if we are seeking we should have questions. Harry creates a safe environment to ask any honest question, never leaves the human feeling stupid or embarrassed though he might lead you in a direction that brings a good natured laugh from everyone but always in a way that keeps us from Ftbecoming too serious about ourselves or the horses and his puns, jokes, and teasing take a potentially long exhausting day of mental heavy lifting and bring some lighthearted joy to mix into the kettle (pardon the vulture reference… one day to break things up Harry let us know if he could be any bird it would be a vulture and why).

    Possibly the thing I will remember the most in my first experience of Harry Whitney is the way his face can go from an attempt at very very serious to the grin that spreads so far and wide it always reaches his eyes. In a world of frustrated, annoyed, exhausted, exasperated, disillusioned master horsemen, the environment around Harry is true lightness and joy mixed with a weight of wisdom and experience. Where many well known horsemen seem to have compassion for the horse and disdain for the ignorant people who ruin them, Harry appears to have as much concern for the people who come for help as the horses who brought them. 

    I won’t try to encapsulate his approach in one blog post, however in some ways I could. There is an integrated core that roots beneath everything he does, and if one could get a handle on that it seems there isn’t anything that wouldn’t be possible. It reminds me of the “seek ye first” idea because when you sort out what that thing is… “and all the rest will be added unto you.”

    If I were to attempt a boil down to that core treasure it is about the mind and emotions of the horse. If you seek a present, calm, integrated mind and body (which will mean the horse feels good, has peace or in in a good emotional state), then you can have it all. There is nothing you couldn’t do together.

    The bad news is also the good news: it’s a lifetime in how to get there.

    In four full days of notes I skimmed through them to see if I could organize something out of the many hours of conversation and observation of Harry working horses and Harry walking others through working their horses. One quote seemed to rise through the roundpen dust:

    We must get more familiar with the motions that come with good emotions and the motions that come from negative emotions.

    Harry Whitney

    What Harry Whitney offers to those who have the patience, is a vision to see what a horse looks like when it truly feels good and how to see the signs of when a horse is doing the thing, but doesn’t feel good about it.

    I might have said before that identification of the problem is key, but today I will go to another place and say identification that there IS a problem is more key. We have so normalized… no… we reward and celebrate getting things done with horses when they are worried, shut down, or elsewise functioning in tension through the highest international levels, that I wonder how many people actually even have the eyes to see what it looks like to have a horse moving freely, in balance, with it’s mind and body aligned to commit willingly to the work it is engaged in. I long for the day when it is unusual to see a troubled horse in work instead of unusual to see a relaxed confident horse competing or even pleasure riding. 

    Lest anyone take this statement to suggest that I have sorted this out and point the finger around me, I will clarify that though I have been desperately seeking this without even knowing it was possible for years, I saw even today just how far I am from bringing my horses forward a shining example. But we will take ground together in this because I am committed to it. I am dedicated to learning and disciplining myself to the shifts necessary to be the one who is able to make my horse feel better about everything we do together.

    I have never been to a clinic where someone made what I’ll call an adjustment when I didn’t see a horse move a nose hair or whisker. I have previously thought (maybe I made this up, but I think I got some help from many sources over a few years) that if a horse didn’t move in their physical space then we don’t have anything to correct or adjust. And yet as I watched Harry in the round pen with a particularly bothered gelding the first day, I saw him knock the coiled up lead rope against his chaps making a decent striking sound and I hadn’t even seen the horse move.

    I had some ideas but I don’t want to assume. So I asked. I wanted to understand.

    Harry explained he created a kind of interruption or distraction at the point he saw the horse’s thoughts begin to move from present in the round pen with him to back to his stall and buddy in the shed row. He wasn’t trying to punish or correct the horse for a change of thought, he was interrupting or even blocking that thought because the horse had basically two options available: he could be present and calm, or he could allow his thoughts to meander (or lope directly!) back to his stall which would mean his mind would not be present with his body. When this happens he will be anxious until he is able reunite his body and mind. Considering we had no plans of taking his body back to his stall quite yet, bringing his thoughts back into the round pen and keeping them there bringing peace to the horse and all of us was Harry’s aim.

    Furthermore, it is preferable to reconnect that mind to the body at the soonest possible opportunity. It is exponentially more difficult to bring back a mind when it has gone far or gotten very hard in it’s direction. Harry Whitney is a master at helping a troubled horse come back to being present and feeling better about himself, and he has developed the understanding of noticing when a horse has just begun to have it’s thought leave to ask the horse: Hey there, let go of that and stay with me. He does it in a way the horse feels better about things.

    The things that can come from this cornerstone is infinite. People are so used to horses working while they are troubled that it takes a special circumstance to get a good look at what untroubled looks like. Compliant, obedient, slow, or snappy to give us what we ask for – these are not in themselves signs of a horse that’s untroubled. Horses can do very high level activities even without a rope connected and still be troubled on the inside about the work. Many dull shut down horses who are so troubled they have “gone away” when humans are present are considered perfect bomb-proof kid horses of high value. This horse might be quiet and basically compliant but it doesn’t mean it is relaxed and happy in the work. And that bomb proofing creates its own kind of danger. Someone will in time be hurt by it- the human or the horse.

    On the other side of the coin horses that wear their emotions on their outsides and who begin dancing around in giraffe mode every time they are asked to do anything are not shut down the way the dull horse is, but snappy reactive activity even if it’s responding to our cues does not mean willing and feeling good. Horses are fantastic at avoiding us in a myriad of ways and yet convincing us they are “on board” in order to get us from bothering them more. They are incredibly smart and as Harry said more than once through the week:

    It’s amazing they haven’t killed us all off by now.

    With so many examples of troubled horses competing and winning across the board of horse sports. I have wondered if I was just being overly sensitive, or if I was not reading things clearly, or if this is necessary if one wants to do things with horses.

    I have wondered if it might just be true that horses want in their hearts to be left alone to graze and be in their herd and feel safe and everything else we do is going to bring trouble…

    If so, maybe the best we can hope for is to do our things with them and then apologize and set them free again and at least try to give them as much horse life as we can in between the work?

    Now I don’t believe that. I do believe much of what we do troubles them, but from the glimpse of what I saw, it IS possible to actually be a force for peace when the horse gets anxious. The question as Harry put it is:

    Can we actually be effective at going into a situation where the horse is bothered and help the horse feel better?

    I saw that yes. This is possible. But it’s not for the faint of heart.

    Not because it’s a dangerous process at all, in fact Harry joked one day one that he doesn’t get a lot of auditors because his clinics are too boring for people to sit that many hours and watch. I thought he was kidding… he might have been, but there was more truth in it than even I realized. In fact there were many hours of things getting done and getting addressed at a level where you’d have to be watching closely to understand. No one is discouraged from getting firm or having a meltdown in order to do what needs to be done to bring a horse back to present with us. So these moments did occur- there is no tiptoeing around a horse allowed- however once the horse returns the moment is over and the leading onward continues in a quiet and relaxed thoughtful way. Harry took horses that were feeling scattered and fragmented (hot) and helped them relax into beautiful transitions that were soft but had life, and he helped horses that were dull and shut down to bring up that life without driving them around with force and pressure that worried them into the movement.

    The reason this is not for the faint of heart is because I observed the people present all had a very LONG view on their paths. They talked over years not days yet without losing track of the day to day and what can be done in a short time if done with quality, feel, and a quiet mind. This both takes a ton of patience because real change (which absolutely has to begin within the human and that is a process too!) takes real time, yet also once the shift happens it is astounding how other problems melt away without focusing on them. It is both a painfully slow and a ridiculously effective way to live. I think it brings hope.

    So for anyone else out there who has had enough horses (and for some people one is enough) to have come into one that the other things seem to hit a roadblock, or work for a while and then unravel, consider finding Harry somewhere as he gets around the country pretty well in a year, and sit along the fence and see if there might be something there that could change your life.

    I highly recommend it.