Cob Jockey

While doing groundwork with Disco the other night, I was struck by how different my perception of him is today vs what it would have been five years ago. Before Kate's hippie Dressage and after Kate's hippie Dressage.

 

Disco is a slow twitch kind of guy. I have never seen him spook, never seen him make a quick cut sideways. Nothing intimidates him, and it feels like it takes things a while to get from his brain to his feet.

Finally getting somewhere with ground tying. By the way, we were under a Wind Advisory for 40+mph gusts at the time, and the indoor sounded like it was going to blow apart. Good pony.

 

I, on the other hand, am fast twitch. I do everything fast. I grew up running fast. I used to get in trouble for doing my school work too fast. I have spent the last decade being told to slow certain movements down in order to go faster and lift more weight in CrossFit. Connor is fast twitch, and so are my dogs, who feel joined at the fast twitch brain to me (well...one of them does).

The slowest of all the slow twitch brains, and we love him for it.

On the one hand, sometimes I wonder if this makes Disco and I incompatible. On the other hand, Kate has given me the tools, thought processes and introspection needed to see him for what he is and meet him where he is. To develop sensitivity and reactivity instead of diminish them.

Take backing in hand, for instance. Kate teaches that you need to give the horse four seconds between picking up the knot underneath their halter to where you start to apply a feather light pressure on the bridge of the nose, because that's how long it takes the brain to process that new stimulus.

 

Flicking his ears back and forth between paying attention to me for his next cue as we did groundwork at the mounting block, and to the sounds of PM chores and dog chaos in the barn aisle

Fast twitch me wants him to back the second I think I want him to back, the same joined-at-the-brain feeling I get from Meatloaf and from Connor. Is it not disobedience if he doesn't? Is it not training the wrong thing if I don't expect an immediate response? I often apply too much pressure too quickly as a result, and he feels slow and dull to me.

But.

If I take a deep breath and slow my brain down, slow my hands down, I notice that he just needs a second or two after my hand touches the knot, and then he backs at the lightest touch. Wait a second, that's not slow, nor dull. That's him responding in exactly the time frame Kate says he should need, as a horse.

Lead changes clearly make sense to him!

 

Now I should say, this is for things that are not yet automatic responses for him. For new things, I have to give him space to process and an appropriate level of escalating pressure. Once a thing IS automatic, for the most part he responds immediately and with such a soft aid. He's desperate to work and to give me the right answer almost robotically once he learns something new. 

 

You can see the moment when fast-twitch Connor decides he's had enough of Disco being in the lead, speeds up and cuts him off to remind him who's in charge (Connor is still, for now, very much in charge of their field).

 

It struck me that without Kate, I would have made this horse dull. 

I would have asked too loudly and too quickly to ever give him a chance to learn subtlety, and he would have shut down and got resentful. He may still, I don't know, I'm not an expert horse trainer and I do expect to make mistakes with him. But Kate has at least given me a chance to meet him where he is and to see him for what he is.

It's kind of cheating to practice ground tying when he's absolutely exhausted after running around like an idiot with Connor before his lesson, but hey, seize the day right? PC: Leah

I'm turning out after breakfast. Disco opens his mouth to grab the halter when I go to put it over his nose. It's such a minor thing, I could have easily gotten it on anyway and ignored his open mouth in favor of getting turnout over more quickly, but I won't. I drop the halter and walk into his shoulder, pushing him around his stall without touching him. I stop. He stops second. He drops his head and stands still. 

We try again, and this time his mouth stays closed. We've been working on this in our (virtual) Kate lessons, and he understands that he got moved because opening his mouth was the wrong answer. And his reward for standing politely for haltering is that I allow him to stand still, and that he gets to go outside.

We have so many conversations like this, and they do feel like conversations. He gives me a right answer and I reward him - by letting him stand still with my body language clearly saying "I am not asking you for anything in this moment", with wither scratches, or by ending the session. He gives me a wrong answer, and I make him move his feet - ideally in the way he finds most challenging, which right now is sideways, but sometimes it's backwards.

"Before Kate" me would have not known how to reward or discipline him in the same ways a herdmate would. How to be so aware of my body language that I understand even what the lean of my body in one direction or another means to him. Old me wouldn't have known how to reward without treats, or to discipline in a way the horse understood and could process and learn from.

But Kate has completely transformed the way I handle horses, and the horses respond. Pyro and Disco especially. I swear it's because they feel understood, and because the human's "language" makes sense to them.

 

I watch, now, and I see the way Connor stands his ground when Disco is being annoying, and it's Disco that eventually walks off to a different part of the pasture. "The horse that moves his feet loses," as Kate says. 

Connor and I are speaking the same language to him, and while Disco still tries stuff with us both, it feels almost half-hearted. The answers to his shenanigans, mild as they are, have been so consistent from both of us (all of us, really), that he doesn't try as hard as he did when he first got here only three weeks ago. 

It's fascinating, it's fun, and it's paving the way for Disco to be a Very Good Boy for everyone that handles him, and nothing means more to me than that right now.

I don't even know where to start with this post, but I have to start. I've been witnessing an incredible transformation in my barn and learning a lot about horsemanship through it, and it deserves to be written down.

A couple of weeks ago I was videoing my barnmate's virtual Dressage lesson, watching her futilely trying to pony kick her 5 year old around a big psuedo-turn on the forehand at our Dressage trainer's instruction, and I realized it looked a lot like a groundwork exercise Kate had me do with Connor. I asked my barnmate if I could borrow Pyro for a Kate lesson, and she agreed.

Pyro (foreground) and mom Missy (behind)

I need to pause here and give some background context on Pyro so that you'll understand how massive this change has been. My barnmate bred and raised him out of her heart horse, and despite doing everything right with him, he was never a horse you could let your guard down around. He had no sense of personal space and little respect or regard for humans. He is also a bit ADHD, constantly into everything, and sometimes nibbling or even biting. I never handled him without a whip, since even arm waving or throwing my gloves at him to get him out of my space was met with a blank stare.

So with that stage set, you will understand why this...

(We're doing a lot more than ground tying, but the ground tying is the only thing I can get a photo of while working alone.)

...feels so wildly unbelievable.

We are two weeks and two Kate groundwork lessons into handling Pyro in this new way, and he is a totally different horse. Our relationship with him, mine and my barnmate's both, in both directions, has profoundly changed.

In the first lesson, I was standing facing him and asking him to step sideways and turn around me in a big TOF. Following a prescribed and predictable escalation pattern that takes into account the speed at which horses' brains are able to process new information and take action based on that information, we arrived at maximum force "ask" with the whip, and he just stood there and flinched his skin in anticipation of the hit rather than moving his feet.

Pyro learning to Dressage, wearing, fun fact, former Blogger Carley's Bobby's Micklem

 

It was fascinating. He knew it was coming and simply did not care to respond to the ask - he didn't respect me as a leader, and had learned he could outlast humans if they asked him to do something he didn't want to do. So, Pyro reasoned, if he stood there and took it, it would end eventually, which made a lot of sense in the context of his day-to-day personal space issues - he didn't want to move, so he wouldn't.

But after one Kate lesson, I was able to move him in both directions with the lightest of taps, and after a week, I could move him simply by moving the whip toward him and "pushing the air" toward him. Which was far more a consequence of the relationship changing than it was him learning a new cue - clearly, he understood the ask before, he just didn't want to.

Week 2 - relaxed posture, staying out of my space, engaged with a soft eye waiting to see what I'll ask for next. This may as well be a different horse!

The general change since then has been jaw-dropping. He's happier and far more relaxed in all contexts. His posture has changed, and he stands around humans with his head down and his back relaxed. It occurs to me now that in the past, he was as tense around us as we were around him, although that body language was so subtle, I missed it until it wasn't there anymore. We are now, all of us, regarding each other with curiosity and respect instead of suspicion and guardedness.

Here is Pyro voluntarily giving me and my dogs a 10-15 foot bubble as I cleaned manure out of the drylot last week. I didn't park him there or ask for this, this is him seeing my relationship to him differently and making different choices than he would have in the past as a result.

 

As Kate said, horses don't WANT to be the leader. In the wild, the leader gets eaten. So, now that we have given him reasons to work with us and not against us and proven our trustworthiness as leaders, he IS able to relax - he doesn't have to look out for himself quite as much. He is willing to wait and see what we ask him to do, even as he is also enjoying the moments of personal "be responsible for yourself" we're giving him too within the work.

It's not all sunshine and roses - he still tries to get nibbly sometimes or challenge us, but now that we have mutual respect, a desire to work with and not against each other, and a common language, we have clear ways to communicate "you're out of line, brother", and even the nibbliness is slowing over time. 

After nearly 3 years of knowing this horse, to see this big of a change in two weeks is mind-boggling, and I'm finding myself looking forward to my next groundwork lesson with him. Who even am I?!

Yesterday Disco participated in his first ever clinic, and I don't think I'm being overly dramatic when I say it was a turning point.

There was drama, though, lol

My barnmate has been working with this trainer remotely for years now and wanted to bring her in for a clinic, so I agreed to sign Disco up for a groundwork session to help fill it even thought I knew very little about her.

This clinician is the type of older salt-of-the-earth horsewoman that everyone needs in their lives. She's spent her whole life training horses and has raised over 100 foals. She can ride too, and did in the clinic, but at a fundamental level she just speaks horse. She speaks body language, she speaks intentions and she firmly but fairly insists on good behavior.

And she pushed Disco's buttons in a way I needed to see, in a way I should be doing. And he did not appreciate it.

The GIF above was his first of several outbursts over something so small as being asked to move forward or respect the handler, and to be honest, I was shocked. He's been so docile for all of us to handle even as his hormones come in, but after the clinic I can see that that's only because we've not pushed him on the little things, and slowly, almost invisibly, he's trying to start to boss us around. That's not good in something that has testicles.

Still young enough to be led past my barnmate's mare quietly but not for long!

The clinician was nothing but fair to him even when she really got after him. She wanted him to stay out of her space. She wanted him to respect her as the cranky old broodmare and not see her as the play buddy. She wanted him to walk when she said walk (with his eye below her shoulder level), stop when she said stop, and not put his head to the ground, which she called an attempt to exert control over the handler.

And all of this was...hard. So surprisingly hard for an animal four amateurs handle twice a day every day with no issues and nothing but a flat halter and lead. But I needed to see it.

This isn't the post where I'm going to dig deep into what we did and the methods I used, although I will later. This is the post where I talk about his reaction to being asked to submit to something he didn't want to do, and it wasn't even WHAT we were asking, it was that we were trying to boss him around at all. 

He was mad.

Even after he begrudgingly respected the clinician and his body was obeying, his tail clearly conveyed how mad he was

Although I've only seen it once or twice, it struck me that I have seen this before, for his default reaction to be on the anger spectrum, like when Lisa haltered him for the first time.

He did come around. After maybe ten minutes of fireworks, he clearly respected the clinician and was paying attention to her in a way he didn't in the beginning, although his pointed tail swishes conveyed that his mind hadn't fully submitted even if his body was compliant.

At this point she asked if it was okay that we split the session to preserve his baby attention span, so we put him back in his stall while she worked with another horse, then in the second half of the session about 45 minutes later, I did the majority of the handling.

For this session, he was foot perfect for me. Very "yes ma'am" and very clued into my body language. I realized how much he had been getting away with before, even if it was something as subtle as him taking an extra step after I stopped, or him not immediately walking off with me when I start walking. 

He was also foot perfect for me the next day, although he was a little jumpy. That was understandable, we had rocked his world pretty hard and he was no longer the center of it. 

After digesting all of this for a couple of days and a good talk with Lisa last night, I'm so glad I did this clinic. This came at the right time, right when I needed to step up and be a leader and put him in his place enough to keep him from being dangerous as his hormones come in. It gave all of us (because the ENTIRE co-op watched this lesson!) tools to use to handle him safely. And it gave me a frame of reference for what I should and should not accept in terms of behavior from a young stallion.

I think I'm going to look back on this as a turning point in our relationship in all of the best ways.

I've talked before about how I've been training Connor not to move when I park him somewhere and he's not restrained.  I've been using the same "wait" command that I use with the dogs.  We practice in the washrack or crossties with the pipe gates closed, and if he moves a single foot, he gets an "ah ah!" and put right back where he was before.

He's been doing well with it, and seems to enjoy being able to interact with me more - plus it makes my barn mates giggle to see him placidly stay where I put him.  Tuesday night I tried it during his bath for the first time.

Wild animal here, folks.

It couldn't have went better.  He loved being able to turn his neck and head and watch me bathe him, and didn't move a single foot.  When I got back up to his head and shoulder area, he turned his head to gently lick my arm while I sprayed him.

Not something I would do with every horse in every situation for sure, but it works really well for Mr. Social himself.

Allowed to sniff things within range without moving his feet.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhh I'm so excited for the clinic this weekend I can't take it!

Fail.

Connor and I had a fantastic lesson tonight.  He finally knows the shoulder-in square groundwork exercise well enough that she taught that to me, and then we did a short lunging session in which she really had me work on sending the shoulder out and getting him to bend through the ribcage.  It's funny, all of my problems with my upper body under saddle directly translate when I'm lunging him.  I am continually astounded by how identical good lunging and good riding is. 

 Then, we had what I would call the first semblance of a normal lesson we've had in quite a while.  In the beginning, he gave me some of the best walk work I've ever gotten out of him, and we continued to work on square halts.  At the trot, she had me do an exercise that proved extremely effective at getting him balanced and in both reins equally.  We started by doing M-X-F and K-X-H loops (and switched directions regularly), and after we were doing well with that, she had us add a 10m circle at X before continuing with the loop.  If he wasn't paying attention to my outside aids, was leaning on the left rein, or was not as balanced as he should be, it was 1) difficult and 2) ended with me letting him run into the wall (only if it was in fact his fault for not listening, and not mine for not using my aids effectively).  We saw some real improvement with that exercise, and ended when we had a balanced horse moving nicely through his back.

Not impressed.

Despite the fact that we have only jumped once since the May Cathy clinic, I think she's going to see a ton of progress in our jumping.  As my trainer said tonight, he's not doing more advanced movements, but he is moving in a much more advanced and educated way, and therefore she is very curious to hear what Cathy has to say about him this time.  We are getting closer to having the pony we need in order to begin those more advanced movements, and since we are getting back to the indoor, which is a proper Dressage arena, I think this winter will see us tackling them for the first time.

So pumped!

One of the hardest things about keeping Contender 45 minutes/$7 in gas away from my house is that I feel the need to make each visit count.  I have to keep reminding myself something my mom told me many times growing up, when I didn't have anyone to lesson with and wasn't allowed to ride our horse, that there's more to having a horse than just riding, and sometimes it's the groundwork that counts more.

At least pretend you like this stuff!

I found out that Contender's game of hard-to-catch is not a one off thing, but something he's done the entire time he's been in regular work.  It's turned in to an actual game for him at this point, and it will be a long, slow process to work through.  I never knew about it because the whole time I've known him, he's been mostly hanging in the pasture at Lisa's and was always very easy to catch.  Here, it's like he had one lesson in the indoor and did a "NOPE!"

So, although it hurt a little bit to drive all that way and not ride, knowing I had homework from my trainer to work on, I did it.  He needs to learn that not every interaction with me will involve hard work, or riding.  Tonight involved lots of treats, a relaxed grooming session, some work giving to pressure, moving his body in different ways from the ground, and putting on/taking off the halter many times.  None of this was directly addressing the core issue, but it's indirectly addressing it through making him more comfortable and happy with me, the routine, and the new barn.  Not to get all fluffy and anthropomorphic on you, but it's also establishing my role as a leader in the relationship and someone to trust - something that I know will take time to fully cement.

Now the "little man," as my barn mates have taken to calling him, gets his usual two days off before our lesson on Thursday.  Here's hoping for progress!

(Photo credit again to Austen at Guinness on Tap)