Hope Horsemanship

Tag: choice

  • The Illusion of Choice

    The Illusion of Choice

    I ran into a friend recently who asked: are you riding a lot lately? I had to answer honestly: no. Oddly I felt like I had to clarify the answer to explain, I’ve been spending a fair amount of time with the horses, but no… I’m not riding.

    I have pressed into a season where Khaleesi is getting some rest (MENTAL), Wyoming as I mentioned recently is in “restart” mode once again (EMOTIONAL), and Hope has had a bacterial infection that seems to be resurging leaving Iva and I sensing she needs to have some down time to heal (PHYSICAL).

    Wyoming in the pen
    Hope in the field

    Horses have three major systems and it seems like I have all of them operating slightly out of balance in some form in the HH herd. What a neat opportunity, and a perfect time (early winter) to step back and ask: what can I learn from all this?

    In years past I would have been bemoaning having 3 horses and none of them in a riding state at the moment, but today I see opportunity.

    In my last blog I recounted Wyoming’s highlight reel and I continue to press in creating relationship with her. I have always believed that the challenges I have with Wyoming would make me a better horsewoman, and what I learned with her would bring me improvement in my already solid relationship with K. Today I wonder if in fact, maybe I have that backward.

    Khaleesi is the favored one. The chosen. She is the mare I cut my teeth on what it’s like to start a horse from almost untouched. She and I have grown together from not being able to lay a hand on her to competing in 50 mile distances. On our best days I can think things and she does them while riding. She is a stunning creature of strength and balance with a good mind. I appreciate her input and try to at least take her suggestions as a factor as we work together- often she has very good ones. We’ve been in some pretty tight situations over our years together, and I trust her with my life. Yet the more I examine our connection- which is pretty solid- I realize it’s much more like a business partnership than that deep thing I long for.

    In this season of giving her some down time to (you can read about this in my last greento100 blog “Rest Reset”) I only bring her in for more necessary things- which occasionally includes going in a pen to graze and hang out while I work with Wyoming. I can always “catch” my horses at least right now, but Khaleesi knows the difference when I communicate we have business and I’m haltering you versus I have something I’d like to do and am willing to have a conversation about it. When I offer more conversation, she has let me know recently that if I’m asking, then no, I’d prefer not to do whatever it is on your mind today thank you very much.

    She isn’t rude about it. And I can insist and get it done. But it brings me back to the age-old question: doesn’t a horse always prefer to graze and be with the herd if given the choice?

    Well, I have a little time this season. Maybe I can dig into this a little deeper. Maybe I can answer it at least for this horse.

    And so I began a new experiment… without a tool of control (halter/lead) or a lure (hay pellets/treats) can I bring her into the pen and convince her to carry me around in there of her own choosing?

    Can I go from a solid partnership – the illusion of choice – to a new layer of real choice where at any time she can disengage and leave without any adverse consequence?

    I went out with the halter and no real plan… well that’s not true. The first day I had big plans. I cycled through plan A, plan B and plan C before I began to see the depth of the truth.

    I had spent about an hour with the herd in the field, my curiosity at first would she choose for me to put on the halter? I was certain I could tell her that’s what we were doing and she would comply… but tolerating and choosing are not the same. She took the opportunity to kick up her heels and push the herd around the large field letting me know that her choice was not to work with me. So now I needed to begin trying to change her mind. I continued my human attempt at conversation with her where she would disengage with me but I would try again. Like unsuccessful courting… however her range of how far she would push the herd began to diminish until at least we were working in a smaller area.

    I had danced my way clumsily into her space and began to get a real honest moment with her where she would go still and relax and accept me there – when she would turn toward me slightly and even take a step in and finally there was a moment where she would stand calmly and accept that it’s likely I’ve earned some right to her time after an hour of waiting her out I saw her give up and accept that this WAS going to happen…

    And I stood next to her quietly and still, and then… walked away.

    I did not even put the halter on her. This was not part of my plan at all.

    I recently had a conversation with Katy Pistole who has a transformational approach to horses and humans where she reminded me: keep in mind that you must get away from seeing success or failure in an interaction with your horse based on their performance or what you “got done” in the session. I already believe this with my entire mind. My mental system concurs, but the truth is deep down I didn’t know HOW to live this out. What a strange thing it is to find out you are believing one thing in your mind but you can see the reality is that you don’t believe it in your depth of being.

    I was ok with changing the goal post either direction as I sort out how things are going, but this was removing the goal post and the ball. What then are we doing out here?

    And I knew: it would have looked to an outside eye like I walked around my field unable to catch my horse for an hour, apparently “gave up a failure” and yet something vitally important had occurred in that time.

    Instead of answers I had even more questions.

    How do I keep conversation with this horse going…I don’t have a lead rope, a halter, a stick, even a limited space pen where she doesn’t have 6 acres to leave into? Will she always walk away from me or ignore me without some way to connect us physically? How can I keep her interested in a connection with me with NO tool and NO lure (food)? Is this a stupid idea? What conversation should I even try to have? What are we even communicating about? Where can I get better equine language skills? I am not very non-verbal naturally – is there any hope for me?

    And yet, I was willing to try. And on the next day a few changes had already occurred. First she never ran off at a trot from me, and though she has a huge field she stayed in a relatively small area. Her retreat zone was already smaller in perimeter than the previous day.

    Also, she allowed me the space next to her much sooner and was relaxed about it, but I still felt more tolerated than welcomed. She gave me access to her “on” side where I normally would prefer to put on the halter sooner as well.

    There came a point I considered quitting for the day. I had seen improvement, but I was coming up short in the conversation department. I didn’t know what else to do, so I found myself standing quietly near her, on the off side, mind wandering a bit as she grazed… what next? I got nothing. And just then, she took a step toward me and began to nibble on the halter almost as if to have me open it up. Which I did.

    Then things got interesting.

    She began exploring the halter, and when I’d offer it open to see if she wanted to put her nose in it she would turn slightly away.

    Ok. So you want to talk about it, but aren’t looking to put your head in there quite yet.

    Then I started to go off the map for me, and began change the conversation completely.

    Let’s talk about the illusion of choice for a moment.

    I have learned a fair amount of horsemanship that using concepts of training the horse. I have worked with shaping a desired behavior with pressure release horsemanship and also with positive reinforcement (clicker/treat) training.

    In either branch of “training”, as K began to show interest in the halter I “should” reward her. Either by removing pressure/punishment release (remove the halter when she shows interest and keep it steady there when she turns away from it) or by click/treat reward to encourage learning and conversation about the halter.

    I have trained my horses to be pretty good at being haltered in both branches. I worked on asking her to lower her head into the halter with pressure-release as our foundation of horsemanship, and this summer I experimented with Positive Reinforcement (clicker/treat training or R+) and could take the halter out, stand a few feet away from the horse and if they knew it was “game time” the horse would walk over to me and put their head into the halter. Fun.

    Today as I was having a truly honest and open conversation with my lead mare, I considered an option I have not tried before: when she turns toward me and the halter, offer it more; and when she turns away, let it go and release.

    My brain began spinning as we experimented. This is essentially rewarding the horse for evading the halter. IF we are training or shaping behavior. What if there was another option? What if I really wanted to switch to trust, conversation, and freedom? If that were the case could I be rewarding her for an honest response? Now I’m in the weeds and I’m not quite sure the terrain. Yet deep down I know I want this relationship to be built on choice, but a really good illusion of choice seems to me the best we have in the other systems.

    Pressure-release says to me You get to choose as long as you choose what I want you to choose!! Great job getting the answer right! I will release you, and when you do something super amazing I will reward you the highest reward I have: I will walk away and leave you in peace. And even though R+ puts the foundation of the work in choice… we don’t reward a horse for leaving us, walking away, or making a “wrong” choice. I like this game of learning approach for some things, but it becomes a bit of a problem when I run out of hay pellets. This system is better at choice because we find out when our own request/behavior is so undesirable to the horse they walk away even in the face of getting cookies. Also I do believe this system in the long run can make a horse feel pretty good about being with the human if done well, but there’s a gap after the cookies before the honesty really comes to the surface… and in the end neither are truly freedom and choice.

    ** Let me clarify I don’t think shaping and training are bad things. Probably they are even necessary — but are they limited to anyone who has the deep dream of more? Who wants to dance instead of train? Who wants the horse to operate as one with them together? Yes we can train horses to do those things but what we really want is partnership and in shaping and training only are we kidding ourselves by creating an illusion of what looks like total connection?**

    This has bothered me at the core for a long time. Training by pressure-release and R+ are better than some old school methods of violence and force toward horses- yet there is something richer I keep feeling is missing.

    I want deeper.

    So the other day I took a plunge and decided to STOP shaping and training Khaleesi, and begin to build a different kind of relationship with her that could very well backfire on me completely at best, and depending on the horse, possible even become dangerous (not likely with K).

    Back to the field experiment…

    Khaleesi explored the halter with me on the off-side at first and if she turned her nose away I removed the halter and when she turned her nose back toward me I presented it again. I opened the noseband and she even began to put her nose slightly into it and then wiggle around.

    Like someone trying to communicate in a totally foreign sign language I thought: she wants me to put this halter and lets go do something? Maybe she’s wondering where my leadership is and why I’m standing around like I have no plan? and so I began to bring the poll piece up over her head… and then she would remove herself and I always removed the halter and let her choose when to re engage.

    We did this a couple times and then she zoned out, looked straight ahead and yawned and chewed and twisted her tongue practically in a loop as she considered the unexpected thing I was doing.

    Next she offered to reposition me on the on-side. This whole conversation continued until I was offering the halter to her with my arm already raised and she could dip her nose through my arms into the halter with my arm over her neck ready to close the poll section over her head. She would lift her head up gently and I would release the poll section and let the halter drop down. She must have done this ten times to check and make sure I meant it. It was like she didn’t really believe that I would let her release herself even from when I had the poll section through the loop- at ANY MOMENT girl, you can say: no thank you.

    This seemed to blow her mind. If I stepped back a moment she stepped closer to me. She wasn’t grazing, she was engaged in this conversation. Finally she stepped away and began to graze a moment. This was ok, it had been over an hour of field work and the last part of the conversation seemed really deep to me. It touched things in my own heart that I would need to process too. So I slowly stepped away and began to walk back to the barn.

    As I looked back I saw she had taken a few more steps toward me and was still looking intently at me. I paused, I squatted down where I was and waited. After a few moments she crossed more than half the distance between us and then stopped again- intently watching me.

    I waited a moment, and then walked over to her. She greeted me with her muzzle to my hand, and then she returned to grazing, and I walked off to the barn.

    I have struggled with the idea of solid leadership versus listening to the horse and getting with the horse so that they can get with you. I’ve heard more times than I can count that if you don’t “be the boss” — or at least in a way I prefer to think of it “be a good leader” then you are both just going to be confused.

    I think there is important truth in this. I do need to lead the conversation, however as I consider the greatest leader ever… the God who created the universe and the horse and me, I see that He tells us that great leadership is always in service. And we must serve in love. Love is patient, kind, does not demand it’s own way, is not arrogant, it is not frustrated, irritated or resentful… love rejoices in truth. Love bears all things. Love believes and hopes and endures.

    Is it possible to lead a horse this way? Some parts are obvious. Leave your ego at the door and choose humility. We know patience is vital with horses. We know being mean, mad, annoyed or frustrated will kill our ability to work together with them. Everyone I know believes kindness is important… but, does not demand it’s own way?

    If God is love… does HE NOT demand his way? Wait. Have I ever considered this as a truth? Doesn’t God actually demand we do things his way if we want to have relationship with him? Certainly he has a higher plan available if I will trust him. Just like I have a higher plan available to K if she would trust me. Horses love to graze and be with the herd, but I also believe giving them purpose is good for them, and I’ve felt her come alive in race day and sink into deep consideration when we find new balance together in the arena. Things she can’t do on her own with the herd.

    Now as I’m leaving the field my analytical mind begins clicking new gears. God doesn’t just love the world, God IS love. And then God gives us the definition of love in the famous love chapter (1 Corinthians 13). If these things are true about love… then they HAVE to be true about the character of God himself!

    Khaleesi will do just about anything and pretty willingly, but there is a part of her that she holds back. I do not have her heart, her complete trust, her spirit (or soul.. whichever is the inner being of an animal which is different from a human). We are a strong business partnership, but we lack the intimacy of a deeper connection.

    She is my mirror. The hang up as I gaze into that mirror in the field this week is that I also lack trust in intimacy. To be clear- we are not called to deep intimacy in all our relationships, but there is a calling from the heart of the creator of the universe to us to let him in- all the way in- to the deepest part of ourselves… and yet it takes time and trust to get there and intimacy cannot be forced, it must be given. Similarly Khaleesi will have to choose if I am worthy of that deeper layer of her freedom, and I will have to prove my own heart of love for her.

    Maybe this creature, this gift from the creator will help me understand and change that in a way that is healing in my own heart. Maybe HE is trying to tell me something, about how I hold back layers from his own heart of love. Probably there are changes in me that must happen before Khaleesi will sense the security and worthiness in me.

    The story is not finished yet. I don’t know if I’m on a ridiculous useless tangent or on the road to something magical. I’m going to take a chance and see where the path leads.

    And so to the field I go…

  • The Wild One

    The Wild One

    Khaleesi was the first horse I started. She was what I’d consider basically feral. She was intentionally bred then born on a massive mountain property and handled minimally spending her first four year running with a large herd. I thought she would be the perfect project for me- a horse without a lot of human influence. After enjoying that process and the things I learned from it I was inspired by my past (living in the west) to the plight of the wild horses and was inspired to adopt a mustang. I wanted to do one small part to help the overwhelming issue of unwanted wild horses, and I knew a native equine would teach me even deeper layers of horsemanship. I had met a couple other mustangs in recent years that were fine horses with great connection to their humans and so I looked into finding one of my own.

    The night I met Wyoming after a long drive to TN

    Wyoming (then called Wild Heart) was in the TIP (Trainer Incentive Program) and so was supposed to have a solid start and good foundation and only needed some finishing miles. Somehow I had enough sense to realize it would not be best for me to start with an unhandled wild horse after only one experience in colt starting. Lets begin with one that has a good foundation-

    I think I can take that on. I thought.

    I had no idea what was to come.

    Over the few years I’ve had Wyoming I have seen “success” in moving forward and then always sideways and backward in progress. I won’t attempt in this post to cover all the layers of our time together and my journey as a horsewoman. There were significant holes in her foundation, I’m certain some trauma I will never know, and there were plenty of shortcomings in my own communication skills and observational accuracy.

    And so here we are beginning once again as I have a few times in the past. Another opportunity to learn from this mare, a horse of lifetime… I hope… because I can’t imagine having another one this challenging for me to uncover what she needs to become my partner.

    I think this is the third time I’ve taken time off to re-evaluate and begin again. The first pause was for over a year where I left her with the herd for the most part and didn’t ask much of her except good manners. She is a friendly mare and enjoys to be close (sometimes too close) and I had hands on her regularly but didn’t do anything that would require more than basic cooperation. This first break came on the heels of working with a friend who was interested in the mustang project as well. If the fit was right the mare could eventually become her horse, but for the start we’d share the responsibility and work together. I was committed to her for life regardless how things went.

    We brought her home and began some simple ground work sessions to get to know each other, introduced her to her herd, did some ponying on trail, and in a few weeks got her under saddle (she had been started and ridden by her TIP trainer) and began to move forward in a slow but steady way that normally would have built confidence and trust.

    Things progressed at first, then after a certain point she began to refuse to go out. We checked saddle fit, made sure we had a French link bit that wouldn’t be harsh, my friend was an experienced rider, we had her physically evaluated, we took her out with herd mates for confidence. Yet she would turn around on trail and get more and more forceful when we would press through… she began to rear up and crow hop and buck if we insisted. This wasn’t a ride through it and she’ll see it’s ok situation.

    Both of us worked on various levels in as many creative ways as we could come up with, we added hand walking, sometimes I’d pony her for a time from the lead mare, (please don’t give me suggestions, I promise we put a LOT of thought and asked for ideas from trusted sources, and in the end- it always got worse, not better). Finally one day I hopped on her when she began her refusal as my friend was not feeling so confident and I have less fear (maybe less sense). She turned rodeo horse on the trail without a lot of room to maneuver. I was able to ride her straight up the mountain (no trail) but back toward the barn making life much harder than if she were to just continue on the nice trail as we’d asked. I worked her through trees and around rocks in an attempt to connect her feet and her brain, and she didn’t put me off, but she never changed- she never softened or come to me. She put up with it and then eventually we went on home. She wasn’t the right horse for my friend that was for sure, so we dissolved that partnership – and yet I wasn’t sure what to do to help her. She was beginning to get more frustrated and occasionally going into fight mode as we worked with her. Things were going backward, so she went into the field until I could figure out what to do that would change things for the better, not continue to make them worse. In the meanwhile a reset seemed like the best starting point.

    It was in that time I renamed her. I told her one day in the field: you aren’t Wild Heart anymore – you belong here, you have a herd, a “family” and you don’t have to be wild anymore. You can trust this home for life. You are no longer fending for yourself, for resources, for a herd, for your life, for survival. You are “home” now. What do you want to be called? I was reminded where she came from… Wyoming. It had traces of heritage in it, but didn’t brand her with the “wild” streak which I’d like her to let go of in time. It seemed like a good name for her.

    Wyoming it is.

    We began again. I’d done some work with her, had a fabulous horsewoman come help me get her out of kindergarten in our ground work and begin to prepare to take a rider again. A crash course due to time limitations of restarting her, but at least helping me get more tools to help her in the process. I’d also been working on trailer loading (this has been a very long term process with mild success and failure). Christmas of 2019 I had a clear sense it was time to put on a saddle and try riding her again.

    I began with some ground basics. Got some conversation sorted out and then got on her. It was a beautiful Christmas gift.

    I only rode her for 20 minutes or so, in the front yard, but it was hopeful. She was willing to try, and no western show.

    I continued the slow gradual work and eventually had some help from Emily Kemp once again in a spring clinic. I inherited a really great western saddle that suited our purposes better, and we were progressing together — building small steps toward her becoming a solid riding horse.

    Eventually she was on the trail again, I was enjoying her though never truly confident she felt solid.

    Once again, very gradually, things began to go sideways. First she would try to roll (while I was riding her on trail) and then she would be reluctant to leave the property, if I worked her in the yard she would stick her feet and not want to move. Eventually she would refuse to leave altogether and began to go western in the yard. I have limits to my riding skills, but in the bucking and rearing I sat through as calm as possible (I did not think she was trying to kill me, she was trying to communicate) it never got better.

    During her trail riding season

    Riding it out or even making her work harder to show her just walking along is much less effort- it didn’t help. She only escalated each week. And I became aware that though with other horses you can push through the sticky points, build their confidence and move forward, with this horse once she got to the “I can’t” she would eventually stop thinking completely and do anything to get out of whatever situation she felt was overwhelming her in increasing drama and volume until the “pressure” was removed. It wasn’t a choice anymore. It was like blind instinct, or raw emotion.

    And yet. The horse seems to “like” me. She never seemed to want to hurt me (she absolutely could have), and she was always willing to try to work with me again. This mare was quite a puzzle, a lot of try in her and a desire to please, but a point gets crossed where she simple cannot do it anymore.

    Everything continued to go sideways or backward and I used every creative thought process I had to help encourage her, build confidence, go back to fundamentals, try to go forward into a new challenge that might inspire her, more groundwork, less groundwork, lots of encouragement, more demands (she is incredibly intelligent and physically athletic and balanced so maybe she needed to be challenged to use her gifts more?). Everything had limited success… everything went sideways or backward by the second or third time.

    Finally a barn move meant she had to be loaded up or left behind. I tried a larger stock trailer which was worse because of it’s unfamiliarity. In the end she loaded onto the small 2-horse we had worked on for at least a year or two. She’d had one semi-successful ride a few months back and then went backward not wanting to have to do that again… After an hour or so where she actually went under the chest bar and squeezed herself out through the front human door once (that was a terrifying moment for us all), I was able to hard wrap the lead rope to the chest bar and she stepped up to release herself and she was locked in for the short 7 minute drive up the road to her new home with the herd.

    After this I decided to try to continue the trailer work with her to solidify that experience and build on it. Wrapping the lead line to the chest bar had worked to create a scenario where she pulled against herself and could release by coming forward. Let’s try that again. As so often happens with her, you can get it done once, but she’s had a week now to consider how she might change the outcome… and she did. She put all that mustang strength into pulling and as I stood there waiting for her to come forward and be able to release her – instead she bent the metal, broke out the chest bar which gave her another 3 feet of treeline which then put her outside the trailer (NOT GOOD) and rearing up. She tried to go sideways and hung herself over the upper door hinges and now was strung like a fish and the rope around the chest bar pulled tight enough to not want to come loose either.

    My beloved sidekick Iva was watching from outside and had also been first witness to the mustang coming through the front door like toothpaste out of the tube a couple weeks before… stood calmly and said to me:

    Jaime, this is not good.

    Indeed.

    I was able to loose the rope and free the mare. I had rope burns and she was basically unharmed, shockingly no one was seriously injured- except my trailer which did go in for some repairs after this session.

    We returned to the field. I tied her to a tree while I reflected for a bit, and she stood quietly. I eventually set her loose and took a few months off to think.

    What am I missing with her? Every success so far in working with her like I would any other horse has always gone backward over time. There were periods where much was going so well with us. She’s a fine mare… big personality, athletic, balanced, smart, responsive. When things are good they are really good…

    One of my favorite riding sessions with Wyoming

    Was her purpose in life to humble me and remind me how limited I am? Show me that in fact I have much less control than I ever thought over things? Maybe every puzzle does not have a solution? What is her purpose in my life?

    I quietly reminded myself that I wanted a mustang to learn how to be a better horsewoman, and so regardless if she turned into a working riding horse or not, she is amazing at teaching me. The day I freed her from the trailer fiasco I was calm on the outside, knew to control my breathing and reaction, but deep down incredibly frustrated. In that moment I considered the term “breaking” a horse that many of us horsefolk have moved away from. And I asked myself, could I “break” this horse? and if I even thought I could… did I want to? Did I want her spirit broken if it meant I could control her? In this moment… frustrated as I was… was the closest I have ever come to wanting to break a horse’s will. And in the depth of my heart I knew… if I could do it… I would not.

    I knew that day that I wanted Wyoming to be her vibrant, wild, beautiful self and I wanted to have a relationship with her, but regardless if I ever got her on a trailer or under saddle, I did not want to break her. Because that would break something in me in the process. Something neither one of us would be able to ever recover.

    And after a couple months of down time to reset, I returned again this fall to the work… of learning how to work with this wild heart in a way that we could both live with.

  • Gates

    Gates

    Wyoming is in boarding school this month… For various reasons she is in a field by herself temporarily (about a month) and though at first it was a necessary transition, I quickly came to see it as an opportunity to spend some focused time with her while she wasn’t “on the job” with a herd. For the month of October her only friend (though she could see other horses not far across a driveway) was… me.

    I “gave up” on Wyoming in the late spring when a follow up trailer loading event went sideways and ended us both almost really injured. I had severe rope burns on my hands to remind me of the epic failure to communicate and she was temporarily hung up on a door hinge– which could not have felt good — though the wild one didn’t seem the worse for wear. One good thing about a mustang- I don’t think you can actually kill them.

    The very bad day of trailer loading practice.

    I gave the work with her a rest and began looking for ways to dig myself out of the doghouse of stupid, deaf (to horse language), untrustworthy human and spent some time dabbling in positive reinforcement. I think this was a really helpful step in our relationship. In positive reinforcement (R+) a major pillar is choice, and I began to give her total choice to work with me or walk away. I used hay pellets as a reward and she’s on massive pasture so she wasn’t starving for dried up grass. She was suspicious at first but Khaleesi helped me out by loving the classroom so much Wyoming couldn’t help but want to get involved.

    I used R+ to reintroduce the halter in the field and a new fly mask and we had a lot of fun with touching various objects and learning to learn with hay pellets this summer. I also began to get more serious about the idea of “thin slicing” my way to a desired behavior. As a goal minded person I naturally break down things into steps, however I tend to start small and then as things begin to work, I make impatient leaps. I began to see that horses- this wild red head in particular- needed a lot more small steps all the way through the process than I was willing to give her. This took A TON of time I didn’t want to admit could possibly be necessary.

    New fly mask

    One day I wanted to trim Wyoming’s feet and thought inside the barn would be easier. It’s a large roomy barn with huge doors and she had been in and out of the old barn more times than I could count, yet she would NOT enter this barn. It was this moment I began to see more clearly from her perspective. Khaleesi or Hope would enter about any barn I asked them to, depending on the space they may pause or need a smell or a look, but Wyoming was very suspicious of this space even though she had walked by the doorway to be fed for months. I found this interesting. The fact that she might be wary is understandable, but she was 100% not entering this space.

    Let me make clear a vitally important assumption: She was not “being an idiot” and she was not “acting stupid” or “refusing” for the sake of being difficult, she was not “being mare-ish”. If I believed any of these things things forward progress would be practically impossible. I know this horse is none of those things, there was a reason she would not enter that barn, and instead of slamming her through that “gate”, wisdom necessitated that I find out either why, or how to change her mind.

    In truth she didn’t have to come in, I have worked on her feet in the yard already. The barn was only marginally easier for me. This meant I had no goal that was more important than the curiosity of why this particular horse would be unable to walk inside a barn. Forgetting about her feet I began to experiment with inviting her closer, then inside and observe as she would try, focus her attention past the doorway and disappear into a deep processing time for minutes on end. I could tell she wanted to do it, she was willing, but there was something that had her convinced it was possibly a death trap or maybe a time machine in the least. I kept this simple, I asked her to stay focused on the barn entrance and only added minimal pressure if she turned her focus elsewhere, and I found over time she began trying to cross the threshold on her own.

    I think about 20 minutes went by with what seemed like zero progress but I observed a lot of deep inner processing often with her head down nose brushing the threshold, and just stood there with her curious. After probably 30 minutes she was taking a step or two in and then backing out and trying again. I think it could have been 45 minutes before she willingly walked into the barn, looked around, turned around fully to investigate and began to get comfortable.

    What fascinated me is I didn’t have to pressure her to walk in. She knew it was what I wanted even as I stood quietly occasionally gently lifting my lead rope arm. When she was ready she began doing it herself- taking steps in and then steps back out then immediately trying again until she could manage to get all four feet into the building. It was completely calm and even fun. She wasn’t panicked or stressed. I saw that if I simply gave her the time she needed to process (it seemed like eternity in comparison to other horses) she would figure it out and she would comply.

    Even more intriguing was the next day this same entrance took almost the same amount of lead time. Where I’d have thought she might pick up closer to where we left off, she spend about 20 minutes again processing the open barn door. Day 2 I might have taken 10 minutes total off the process. Day 3 still better but not by nearly as much as I would have expected. Each day was progress, but surprisingly for me how many steps back we would have to restart.

    It became perfectly clear this is how I was going to work the trailer. Only at that rate it could end up being 2 more years! The good news was I’d already given up, so two years from now is still an amazing improvement on never!

    Not long after I was able to invite her into the barn without trauma and confusion I decided to begin with the trailer. This isn’t a cavernous new barn, it was the baggage box! We have not racked up good associations with the trailer so I felt it was likely we’d be behind the zero.

    The first day over the summer of remedial trailer loading, it took an entire 90 minutes of her processing, standing outside, occasionally trying to evade to even begin to come up the ramp. After 90 minutes If I remember correctly, she came up the ramp and agreed to put her head in the trailer. In case you’ve never watched paint dry, I’m about done after 5 minutes. An hour and a half is eternity. And then I think she put on a foot or two so not even all the way on the trailer, but I was determined to see where this rabbit trail would go. Two things I observed:

    1. This was very non-stressful, she wasn’t upset at all.
    2. She was completely engaged the entire 90 minutes even if she was standing with everything still and processing for many minutes at a time, she didn’t not try to eat grass or ignore the work. She was invested.

    Over the couple of months I’ve come to appreciate the value of understanding threshold in a much more subtle way. I think everyone can appreciate the concept, and everyone who has worked with a horse probably would say of course they understand threshold, yet my guess from knowing a variety of horse folks that it probably has a different meaning to each person. I know a few people who can see the threshold from well in advance of it in very subtle signals like a tightening of the skin or a change in the jaw (and they respond accordingly- you actually get negative points for knowing subtle threshold signs and blowing by them!), and I know some people who are aware of the threshold because they are now on the ground and the horse is up a tree or gave them a kick out before running off. For some people it takes injury to the person or the horse to realize that’s where the threshold, well, where it “was” because at that point you’ve blown past it, in fact probably blown past a few of them.

    Yep, I know that person. I am her sometimes.

    Most people are probably a little like me, most of the time somewhere in the in-between. I think it’s more valuable than we give credit to- recognizing thresholds sooner and finding ways to help the horse through the gate instead of blowing through them with force until someone, or the horse, is hurt.

    Sometimes it takes this for me to stop and reconsider

    With Wyoming, and I think this isn’t completely unusual for horses, you can bust through some of the early gates with a moderate amount of force because the creatures at heart are so generous and willing. My lessons with this mare is that I’d think we were doing pretty well and finding success together and then over time it would start to go backward. I’ve begun to suspect that I missed the early “gates” and she wanted to work with me so she would try, but something wasn’t addressed properly and we would eventually come to a gate that she just couldn’t keep going with me through and then we’d come apart.

    Also I think there was a certain amount of pressure I let get to me that this mare had some kind of reasonable time line and I was so far outside of what was reasonable that I must be completely ineffective… if I would just stop playing around and push through, get it done, we’d “move forward” and I wondered if maybe that was right? Could I be wrong? Certainly. I tried it with riding her and pushed through some pretty intense rodeo action, and I tried it with the trailer which could have had us both really hurt but for the grace of God who seems to want me to learn these lessons alive to encourage someone else to maybe try a different way.

    What if we really did begin to love the process? What if we began to slow down and ask the horse: are you ok with this? and then care about the response especially if it’s “no, not really” and then what if we began to offer support and help even if it meant the only answer that would really solve the problem would be the gift of time? The most valuable thing we have… so valuable we rush through and force our horses often to get onto our timeline so we can do the things we want to do with the horses. What if we entered their world more often and really listened when they needed time to process, time to heal coming back from an injury more slowly or gradually, time to trust us, time to believe that we are actually asking, time to even answer us?

    What if we didn’t blow through the gates by force as long as we could get away with it?

    So many people I know say they enjoy the time with their horse, but when I look closer at my own behavior and I suspect I’m not alone… that really means I enjoy the time the horse does what I want her to (perform, trail ride, even get on the trailer). What my month of solo time with Wyoming brought more to the surface was that I wanted to enjoy the time I stood with her while the paint dried. I wanted to give her the gift of standing by her side when she stood on the trailer ramp for the 25th day and put her head down to process the idea of going into the box. To encourage her when she began to look around, but to allow her to decide when she’d go in, and to trust that she was giving me her best.

    Wyoming does go on the trailer now and it doesn’t take an hour, sometimes 5-10 minutes lately before she’ll put all 4 feet on. She only stands quiet for a limited time depending on how deep in she goes, and I don’t close her in yet. It’s clear to me she is not ready to be locked in. But she is very calm about the whole thing and enters and exits without stress and anxiety. She is begging to trust me again.

    I don’t know what the next steps will look like, I’m finding them as we go. But for this mare, I’m going to trust that the process will continue and someday she will ride on the trailer without the stress and fear that had her lathered in sweat that last time I got her on over a year ago. That process was a little faster but it was not nearly as honoring to her own unique thresholds and took advantage of her generosity and her try. I got it done but it only ended us up eventually backward and almost hurt.

    I hope I’m taking this lesson and applying it to my slightly easier creatures. I’ve been working on asking Khaleesi for permission for a while now and not forcing things on her even though I can. I try to balance that out with the reality that she’s a working animal that sometimes has a job to do, but I don’t use that card any more often than I have to, and if I find myself getting there too often I have to step back and ask why?

    Hope is more tricky because she’s been forced into so much over her life she doesn’t always engage in bothering to answer. She’s been trained to comply and go inside herself and shut down for survival. She has a lot of brace mentally and physically we are trying to release and free up for her. She’s starting to come out more and more and that’s a fun process to see. I love that the very easy and kind kids’ lessons are part of that story!

    It seems to me this is something that can continue to improve regardless of what level and where we are with our horses. I sense I’m getting a better feel, but I have far to go. And for anyone with multiple horses I think they have unique tells of when they are coming to a gate that isn’t free. It’s nice to have a horse that is super vocal about it, but most people don’t really want that horse! Often the cues are much more subtle.

    The next challenge becomes what to do. Horses and human both share a benefit from growth, we do want to go through the gates! However we have to find a way to support them in the growth. I think sometimes even acknowledging and letting them know you’re with them is a great start. There is no one answer that fits all, but isn’t that exactly the process we can enjoy? Getting to know this unique creature along a lifetime of communicating and experimenting and listening along with guiding or asking them to come along with us?

    Is there anything better than that?