Connection

I stood next to the big, black horse.  I could feel warmth radiating from his body, and I could hear his gentle breathing.  I picked up the reins and...nothing...I'm not sure what I expected to feel, but I thought I would feel something.  After all, I'd known this horse for years.  I'd petted him.  I'd given him treats.  I'd gone riding with him so many times for so many hours.  Shouldn't I feel some connection when I picked up the reins?

Instead it felt like I was holding reins connected to a fence post, or any other inanimate object you can think of.   It was one of the most terrifying experiences of my life.  There I was, standing next to a big, well-trained horse, with close to 40 years of being around, handling, and riding horses, not to mention over 2 decades worth of riding lessons, and I had absolutely no idea how to ask him to move forward.

It was last October, and I'd gotten in touch with my riding instructor.  I still didn't feel like riding any horses, but I thought maybe I could go out to where she keeps her horse and get a lesson on working in-hand with him.  He's a lovely Canadian horse that she has had for many, many years.  He is her primary riding horse and he also has been known to give lessons to her students or be ridden in clinics with Jean Luc Cornille.  I've never ridden him, but my instructor and I rode him and Nimo for 2-3 hours at a time out on the trails surrounding her barn many times, so I thought I knew him a little.

I'd seen him at the last clinic I went to with Nimo.  He was being used by a Science of Motion student visiting from another area who didn't have access to a regular instructor.  And while I've seen him do impressive things when my instructor rides him - in fact, I could watch her ride him all day, they look so beautiful together - this time, you would have sworn he didn't know how to steer.  He is a nice, quiet horse, but he isn't a push-button horse.  He expects his rider to be engaged and using her body correctly before he gives anything good.  So his rider got an education in how much she didn't know.  But when she did coordinate her body, he would respond immediately.

In my hubris, I assumed that because I'd been working with my instructor with Nimo for about four years, I would have an advantage over someone who didn't have that opportunity.  I figured that because I had worked with Nimo, even though I hadn't done a lot of in-hand work with him, that at the very minimum, I'd be able to ask this horse to walk and trot in reasonable balance while I walked with him around the arena.

As anyone who has worked with horses for very long knows, horses can usually disassemble any illusions of grandeur that we have about ourselves in one second flat.  So I stood there in that arena, attached to this lovely, well-trained horse who is easily capable of flying lead changes and canter half-pass and piaffe and passage, and asked my instructor how to ask him to take a step forward.  I was a complete beginner again.

We worked for over 45 minutes and my instructor gave me feedback on my body position, my energy, the way I was holding my reins, and every minute detail.  I did my best to respond to her feedback, and mid-way through the lesson, I was able to do really legitimate shoulder-in at the walk and do some slow, cadenced trotting as well.

The horse is wearing a double bridle, but I'm only using the snaffle.  He would be overbent if I used the curb reins.

From a technique standpoint, it looked like I had made huge improvements.  And I had.  I figured out how to communicate with him through the reins and with my body to get the movement that I was looking for.  The thing that I never felt for even one second was connection.  

It was devastating.  I'm sure I've written before about how I felt a connection with Nimo.  One thing I don't think that I have written about was what the word connection means to me.  Since that experience with my instructor's horse, I've spent more time than I care to admit thinking about it and paying attention to how other people use that word.  And I think it means something different to me than to at least some others.

I've heard others use the word connection to be more along the lines of what I described above with my instructor's horse.  So connection means being able to work with the horse using your preferred tools (halter or bridle or whip or flag or arm or spurs or whatever) to achieve your riding/driving/handling goal. 

I've also seen countless videos of Warwick Schiller working with all kinds of horses, but in particular a young horse that he started working with as a weanling.  He talks about the success of that work, which was a little different from the way he used to work with horses, as a credit to achieving connection.  And I can certainly see what looks like a connection between the handler and the horse.  Warwick has that horse's full attention and the horse moves around him like he's been doing it for years instead of minutes or days.  Warwick refers to the kind of training he does now as relationship-building rather than the more technique-oriented approach he used in the past.  The results don't look that different to an outsider, but they feel different, according to Warwick.  And that feeling is pretty important to someone who really cares about horses.

Now, I don't mean to be critical of anyone who has achieved international success in training horses.  There is not question that Warwick Schiller and many others like him are amazing trainers who accomplish really impressive things with their horses.  And they do it in a way that is designed to be as low stress and reasonable for the horse as possible.  That is awesome, and I hope that some of their techniques will help me with Donut.

To me, though, connection goes far beyond using tools and communicating with a horse to accomplish a rider's goal.  And I don't care how good a trainer you are, it isn't achieved in minutes or days or weeks or months in the round pen or the arena.  It is a long-term effort.  It is knowing what that horse is thinking.  It is knowing what that horse is feeling.  It is knowing that the horse knows what I am thinking and feeling.  It is knowing that if we get into a situation that isn't in an arena, but rather on the side of a mountain in the middle of a thunderstorm, we are going to be able to work through it.  It is knowing that when my horse gets so tangled in sticker brush that he can't get out on his own, he is going to stop and wait for me.  And then wait some more because when I try to help, I get tangled up too.  And when I ask him to do something that may be uncomfortable or even painful to get out of the situation, he does it without hesitation because he knows I've got the solution.

None of that stuff comes directly from techniques.  The techniques can lay the ground work, for sure.  But I didn't know any natural horsemanship techniques when I worked with Nimo.  I just blundered my way through.  And we still managed to form a connection.  It was a connection that probably kept both of us alive through more than one potentially catastrophic situation out on the trails.

That connection didn't mean that Nimo did everything I asked him to do, though.  In fact, he not infrequently refused my requests or did them differently than I expected.  Sometimes, I had to spend some time convincing him that my idea was worth doing, and there were times when he clearly thought I was an idiot, but I did what I asked him to do anyway.

I'm not sure what that reminds you of, but it reminds me a little bit of a deep and long-lasting friendship or even a marriage.  Those relationships start out because two people like each other or find something attractive about the other person.  And there are techniques that can help keep a relationship going and even improve it.  But in the end, a friendship or a marriage that is one year old is not in the same category as one that is 20 years old.  Because no matter how great you and your friend are at communicating with each other, it simply takes time and experiences to develop a connection.

I'm lucky to have a couple of close friends that have been with me for about 20 years.  The feeling I have when I am with them is much different than the one I have when I am with people that I like very much, but have only known for a couple of years.  Likewise, my husband and I have been married for 13 years.  The way we interact with each other and resolve conflict is much different than when we were first married, even though we had been dating for some amount of time that I'm sure my husband knows, but I don't remember (maybe two years?), before we got married.

So what is a connection to me?  I think it is a little bit like the famous definition of pornography that a Supreme Court judge once used - "you know it when you see it" - or rather, "you know it when you feel it."  It is both horse and rider listening to each other and knowing the other is listening.  It is being able to back off from a request if the horse tells you it is too much or he just doesn't want to do it.  It is the horse doing something he doesn't want to do just because you ask.  It is the horse and rider problem-solving together.  It is a partnership with contributions and participation from both horse and rider.  It is the result of years of communication and experiences where the horse and rider have learned that their partner is good for something and worth paying attention to.  It is the recognition that it is probably a good idea for the human to be in charge most of the time because the world we are in is a human one and not a wild one, but that there are times when the horse can be in charge or present a solution, especially once he knows enough about the world he is in.  But most of all, it is picking up the reins or the lead rope and feeling a consciousness on the other end.  It is a direct line to the mind and body of another sentient being.  (If you want to read a great book about one way that connection can work with a horse and human, check out Mark Rashid's Life Lessons from a Ranch Horse.  I have read it more than once, and when I read it again after Nimo died, I cried almost the whole way through.)

Working through this idea of connection is important to me.  Because if you ask me what I want to do with Donut someday when she grows up, my simple answer is, "I want to have a connection with her."  It matters far less to me what discipline we do.  Whether it is dressage or trail riding or endurance or working equitation or team penning or jumping or driving or liberty work, makes very little difference to me.  What I want more than anything is to pick up the lead rope or the reins and feel Donut on the other side.

Writing about connection has been on my mind for awhile, but it seemed appropriate to write about it this week, because I think I finally took my first step toward achieving it with Donut.  We have a long road ahead of us still, but we had a little breakthrough a few days ago that made me realize I'd been going about things the wrong way.

I've been writing a lot recently about some techniques I've been exploring with Donut, particularly with respect to some personal space and reactivity issues we've been working through.  I had come up with a plan to really target those issues and I started following that plan a week ago.  It was an unmitigated disaster.  

I started out by taking Donut out to eat grass by the arena as usual.  But instead of going in to the arena to work, I just led her back to her field.  I wanted to break the cycle of reactivity and temper tantrums, and I thought if I changed the routine a bit and she didn't have to work, she would return to her normal self.  That didn't happen.  She was even more reactive than usual and threw a big fit.

I remembered that I planned to use the TRT method of backing her out of my space, but using a swinging lead rope instead of a shaking lead rope.  Yeah, so I used a bit more energy to swing the rope than I needed, and Donut went straight up in the air instead of moving backwards.  (Probably should have spent more time watching the Mark Rashid video on using a rope to influence a horse's movement...)  And then she proceeded to run around me in circles, leap in the air, perform what looked like the movements a border collie would use to catch a frisbie in mid-air, and in general be a complete nutcase.  I stuck with my TRT methods though and kept trying to move her hindquarters over until she relaxed.  The problem was that every time she relaxed, she would almost immediately explode again.  It went on long enough that I was disrupting the barn turn-in schedule and I had to let it go.  Somehow I got her in a state that I could lead her forward and managed to get her to the barn and in her stall for her to settle.  Which she did and I led her the rest of the way out to the field without any issues.

But it was obvious that I either needed to commit to using the TRT method at a time of day where I could potentially spend hours working on it until Donut was exhausted or I figured out what I was doing wrong or we needed a new technique.  Because I have things like a job and a child to care for, spending hours at the barn was probably not going to be the solution I needed.

To that end, I decided that working on breaking what seemed to have become a habit of reactivity was the first priority.  My first thought was to take Donut to a different place to graze and see if that affected her reactivity.  Maybe the habit was ingrained in her because of the location?

So the next day, I took her to a different grassy area and she ate for 5 minutes, and I cued her to lead.  Almost immediately she was up in the air again.  At that point, the mom in me had had it.  (If you are a mom, you may be familiar with the feeling.  After your kid has ignored you for the 800th time and you have tried all the brand new techniques from the parenting book you bought on being a better parent and you really are at the end of your rope, and you use the look and the voice that tells your kid that whatever is going on is going to stop RIGHT NOW.)  And I did what I should have done months ago, but didn't because I've been trying so hard to be an enlightened natural horsewoman exploring new techniques.  I grabbed a hold of the chin strap on her halter and put firm pressure on it and informed Donut in my mom voice that we were going to walk quietly out to the field and there was not going to be any more of this nonsense.

My little nutter then proceeded to walk quietly out to the field.  She once thought about going up in the air, but I had my hand on her halter and I felt her thought before a single foot left the ground, and it was over before it started.  I kept using that technique all week whenever I led her from eating to the field.  The second time I led her, she tried to go up in the air twice, and each time, I was able to stop it from happening, with slight pressure on the halter.  The third time I led her, she balked at going forward to let me know she was on to my new technique.  I swung the lead rope at her haunches to get her going and then she walked with zero attempts to go up in the air.  The fourth, fifth, and sixth times have all been issue-free.  

In fact, on Saturday, I was leading her in from the field, and needed to use my hand on the chin strap (normally I just lead her with a loose lead in to the barn because she is good about it and is only reactive if something out of the ordinary spooks her).  We were having an ice storm, so the barn owner had told the staff not to come that day so they could stay off the roads.  She and her husband took care of the horses instead.  And they did things a little differently than the regular staff might have, so the horses in Donut's field got a little elevated with the change in routine and getting fed and having Donut and another horse caught and taken out.  Donut had picked up on that energy, and I could tell she was going to want to go up in the air.  I didn't want that because I really don't want her reacting in the first place and because the ground was icy from all the sleet coming down and I was not imagining my day ending with both of us falling down on the ice and getting tangled up in each other.  I put my hand on her chin strap, looked her in the eye, and that was the end of it.

You may be screaming at the computer and saying, "No!  You aren't supposed to lead with your hand on the horse's halter!  It's dangerous!  You could be dragged into the air!"  All I can say is that is the technique I used with Nimo, and it was incredibly effective and I was never once hurt, no matter how animated his 17-hand self got.  I remember once I had taken him to a local schooling show.  He was three years old and just under saddle.  I didn't take him to compete, just to get him out of the barn, in the trailer, and at a quiet show to see how he handled it.  He was awesome about everything except when I led him by the warm up ring.  Then he lost it.  (I'm reminded of Warwick Schillers 13 rabbits theory, which is probably what happened, in hind sight.  Basically the other things probably were bothering him, but he wasn't showing it, and I asked a little too much because of my own ignorance.)  So I had this enormous horse almost out of control, and I knew I needed to get him back to the trailer before he scared the living daylights out of everyone at the show.  (I've notice other people seem really concerned about animated horses.  I tend to be less bothered by it, I guess, especially if I know there is a reason.)  I put my hand on his halter and not once did he rear up or run over me.  Because I could feel him.  And he was reminded with every step that there was a human next to him.  He didn't become magically calm, but he did become controllable so that I could get him out of the situation causing the stress and keep him and everyone around him safe.

Would it have been ideal if I could have worked with him there until he settled down?  Maybe or maybe not.  Maybe it would have made shows terrifying.  As it was, I competed at that location two or three times during the next couple of years, and I never once had an issue with him in any of the arenas (except the time they mounted reflective pumpkins in straw bales and placed them all around the perimeter of the arena to decorate for Halloween - we did our entire dressage test on the inside track!).  So getting him out of the stressful situation didn't have any adverse effects.  Instead it showed him I realized my mistake and I was getting him out of there.  That is a critical step in building connection, I think.  I listened to my horse and when I made a mistake, I didn't compound it by trying to work him through it.

I never tried this technique of putting my hand on the halter with Donut because I really thought that all of the things I did with Nimo were ignorant or uneducated or just could be done in a better way.  But Donut didn't watch the videos or read the books that I did.  She is who she is and she was telling me over and over that things weren't working for her.  But it wasn't until she reared up right in my face that I got the message.  I'm hoping she doesn't have to be that vocal again.

What I love about having my hand on the chin-strap of the halter is that I can feel Donut.  There is another sentient being connected to my hand.  Having that sense of touch and immediate feedback is so important to me, and I didn't quite realize how much I missed it until I had it back again.  We are a long way from in-hand work with a bridle, but I may move that up in the timeline in my head, especially if Donut keeps responding positively to a more direct technique.  I am now completely relaxed when I lead her.  (And by relaxed, I mean not stressed as distinct from not paying attention and drifting in to my head.)  I don't worry about what she is going to do, because I can feel it and prevent it from happening.  And now I have an awesome technique to help break the cycle of reactivity that she was in.  She just needed me to communicate in a different way.

For the next week or maybe even two, all I am going to do is the basic routine.  Bring Donut in from the field.  Let her eat her dinner.  Groom her.  Possibly torture with the vacuum or water from a hose, depending on weather.  (It's possible that I booked a photo shoot for her on the 27th without really thinking that through...) Take her out to eat grass.  Walk quietly back to the field.

I'd like to see if walking with my hand on her halter continues to be effective in preventing the reactivity.  If it is, then I'll gradually start doing ground work in the arena again, and potentially trying the TRT methods again to see how she reacts.  I also finally got Mark Rashid's video on Ground Driving, which is quite honestly about the best $35 I have every spent.  I can't believe I didn't buy it in 2005, which it first came out.  It has several really good tips that I wouldn't have thought of and I'm definitely going to use on Donut.  I'd been planning to start her on longeing in mid-April when she turns two and then transitioning to ground driving, and the video actually walks through that process.  I may start it a little earlier, depending on how things are going.  Anyway, I can use a couple of the techniques earlier as prep work, and I hope to start those in a couple of weeks as well.  

I also want to see how having my hand on her halter fosters our path toward connection.  I think it is certainly possible to have connection and not have contact, but for me, feeling that contact has become such a critical part of how I feel connection.  Anyway, stay tuned, and I'll check back in next Monday and let you know how things are going!