Where Not to Be

You'll remember from my last post that I was going to start trying the TRT Method with Donut to see what happened.  In particular, I was interested in whether it would make a difference in Donut's level of reactivity.

My first task was to do what Tristan calls teaching the horse where not to be.  When Tristan does this in the videos, even when he is working with a fresh three-year-old stallion, it looks completely doable and not that difficult.  I just stand still and direct my energy and shake my lead rope into the space in front of me - rather than at the horse - and the horse steps back and stands calmly.  Then I ask the horse to lead and maintain whatever distance I've set.  I go a little faster and a little slower and stop and turn, and the horse is expected to maintain the distance.  If she doesn't, I turn around and direct my energy and my lead rope at the space the horse is not supposed to be in to help the horse learn to give me the space I've asked for.  That sounds ridiculously simple, right?

Yeah.  So Day 1 of this little endeavor was a complete fail.  I thought I would start by introducing the concept while leading instead of standing still.  (Why I feel like I have to overthink things and do something different is beyond me.  At this point in my life, it is a bad habit that I am having trouble breaking.)  My plan was while Donut was next to me, I would direct my energy at the space I didn't want her in and shake my lead rope to move her away.  I guess I was still reluctant to try leading in front of her, and I wanted to see if it would work from the side.  It did not.  Donut was unimpressed and completely non-responsive to my attempts to move her over with my energy and lead rope.  If I put my hand on her and asked her to move over, she would do that, but that was not the point of the exercise.

So I went back to the drawing board, and for Day 2, I decided to FOLLOW THE INSTRUCTIONS IN THE VIDEO.  This time I took Donut out to the parking area where there is plenty of room, solid footing, and where she is used to working.  I stopped her and then I turned around, directed my energy at the spot in front of me, waved my lead rope, and said "SHHHH."  (The shhhhh sound is one that Tristan uses and he is often able to get the horses so they work off the sound, which I thought was a good idea.)

Nothing happened.  Donut just stared at me.  Thankfully, I had brought my stick with a flag on the end of it for reinforcement.  I started waving the flag, shaking the lead rope, directing my energy, and SHHHHing.

Nothing happened.  Donut continued to stand completely still and look at me.  I mean, she hasn't ever stood still for that long in her entire life.  How she was able to do it while I was doing all that I was doing was beyond me.

In desperation, I escalated my movements and lead rope and flag and voice as much as I could and finally I directed everything AT her and started firmly tapping her on the chest with the flag.  I can't even imagine what I looked like, but I finally got a single step backward.  

I was exhausted and needed a rest at that point, so I called it good, and led Donut out to the field.  The good news is that there was absolutely zero mouthing on my sleeve.  Normally, Donut will lip my sleeve a bunch of times or crowd me a little, and she did neither of those things that day.  I considered that a success.

On Day 3, I repeated the process in the parking lot.  I was able to get a single step backward with a whole lot of energy and rope shaking and flag waving.  I asked for more than one step back this time, and started working on the exercise of leading her while she was behind me and changing my speed and direction.  She was great about doing that with the exception of the stop.  That is probably mostly because we've already done that type of work.  She's actually really good at it, and the only reason I stopped working on it was because when I would get to the point where she was trotting, she would tend to get overexcited and then I would spend 5-10 minutes working with her to get her calmed down.  So I decided to leave that bit for when she is older and better able to manage her excitement.

The only issue we were having is that when I stopped she would come all the way up to me.  Then I'd turn around and move her back.  After doing that several times, with sort of minimal improvement, I decided to call it a day.  I try to never work with her for longer than about 5-10 minutes.  She is still a baby, really, and I feel like her attention span is just not capable of longer sessions without losing some of the impact of what we are working on.

On Day 4, we headed out to the big arena.  I went through the same process as before.  I started with backing her out of the space she wasn't supposed to be in.  I was beginning to think of it as setting the distance.  Then I walked her around.  And I about jumped out of my skin when she tripped a little, and I thought she was spooking.  Because she was directly behind me, I had no idea what was going on, and I almost had a full-blown panic attack.  

And that ended the leading the horse directly behind me part of the process.  I realize that many great horsemen lead their horses this way.  But I absolutely cannot do it.  I am so anxious the entire time that Donut is behind me because I can't see her.  It is making me crazy.  So, whatever I do, it isn't going to be this particular way of leading.  I want her on either side of me instead.  She doesn't have to be right next to me, but I have to be able to see her.

However, there is more to the technique than simply setting a distance between the handler and the horse.  There is also a little pattern that the horse does with its feet.  The first part of that pattern is teaching the horse to move its hindquarters in a certain way.  I was pretty sure it was similar to what I've already worked on with Donut and it is something she does well, so again, I wasn't expecting too much trouble.

I first asked her to move with gentle pressure from my hand on her side.  It took maybe 1-2 minutes for her to understand how she was supposed to move.  I congratulated myself on that bit and then went to her right side to ask her to do the same thing.  At that point, she was completely uninterested in doing in more work, so it probably took a little longer to get the same movement.  I called it a day at that point, and started leading her back to her field.

Which is when I discovered I might have another problem.  Donut was really insistent that she wanted to eat some more grass.  Weeks ago, I think I did 2-3 sessions in the arena where I let her eat grass after we worked as a way to reward her for being out in the big arena all by herself and for paying attention and doing what I'd asked.  Apparently, she decided that needed to happen every time.  

I just kept her moving and we sort of wandered all over and eventually made it out to the field (which is a really long way from the arena when you are dealing with a recalcitrant horse).  As before, I noticed that one thing that seemed really improved was her mouthing behavior.  For what was now 4 days in a row, she had made zero attempts to put her mouth on my sleeve.  It was a joyous occasion.

For Day 5, I was back out at the arena.  This time, I was able to do the exercise of moving her backwards with just the lead rope and not the flag.  So she was gradually improving on that bit.  Then I worked with moving her haunches in each direction (I skipped the leading for my own sanity).  She seemed to struggle with it a little more and there was a lot of moving backwards before sideways.  She is normally really easy to move around with pressure, so I kind of wondered if the specific way the legs were supposed to move was triggering a response.

I have to admit that I thought the pattern was sort of random and possibly even an unnecessary marketing technique.  But Donut's refusal to do it when I knew she was perfectly capable of it got me thinking that maybe there was something to it (or that I was not doing something correctly...).  Because there is nothing about it that should be uncomfortable.  It is basically disengaging the hindquarters and doing a modified turn on the forehand until the horse yields through their body to the movement and the pressure of your hand on their side.  I wasn't using anything other than my hand on her.  So no whips or hitting or yelling or anything that might make a sensitive horse upset.  I wondered if it could be a little like the Masterson Method of horse massage, where sometimes horses will struggle a bit when you get to a spot where there is tension.  They may move around or fuss or throw their heads up or even kick, simply from a light touch.  And then they will release the tension if you can stay with them.  Maybe the way I was asking Donut to move was operating in a similar way?  

By Day 6, I was starting to feel like I knew what I was doing.  I did the same thing I'd done on Day 5.  I asked Donut to move back with the Shhhing and the lead rope and she was doing that well.  She was still having some trouble with the movements for the hindquarters, but it seemed like it was getting a little easier.  What was not getting easier was the way she was reacting when I led her from the arena to the field.  She was getting extremely reactive about not being allowed to eat grass (even though she was able to eat grass BEFORE we worked).  

When she'd fussed at me before about wanting to eat, I just worked her in circles and serpentines.  This time, I decided to try the movement with the hindquarters that we'd been practicing in the arena.  I ended up having to do it from a distance and using my lead rope to cue her to move because she absolutely started kicking out.  Again, that was a really interesting response.  All I was asking her to do was move her hind legs over.  When she fussed at me in the past and I'd turned her in a circle, that never triggered any kicking.  In fact, it would often settle her.  So what about the movement was causing such a reaction?  Was I doing something incorrectly? And more importantly, was it a reaction that I should work her through or did it mean that the technique was not appropriate for her?

On Day 7, Donut and I headed back out to the big arena.  My daughter happened to be out at the barn with me, so I conscripted her to take a video so I could take a closer look at how I was moving and my timing.  She is not quite ready to be a professional yet, but it is much better than the videos she used to take, where the camera moved so much, it would give anyone watching motion sickness:)

Anyway, you can watch it here: 

 

I started off by just walking her a little and asking her to back up normally as a warm-up.  You'll see her looking at something shortly after that.  There was a car coming down the road off in the distance and she was a little worried about it.  I took a page from Warwick Schiller in that moment and just gave her a little time.  And you'll see me eventually look over at the car.  I should have done that sooner to show her I saw it.  I keep forgetting that part of the technique.

Once she was over her worry about the car, she started moving around and getting in my space a little, so I asked her to move back.  She was not as sensitive to the request to move back as she had been previously, but once I thought I had her settled, I moved on to asking her to move her hindquarters over.  Before that, though, I checked for tension and reactivity by running my hand over her body.  Tristan actually has little movements that he will do with his hands if he detects tension in certain areas, and I didn't do those.  I was mostly just making sure she didn't feel like kicking at me if I was touching her side.  What Tristan does if horses are reactive when he is touching them is to keep his hand in the position that caused the reaction (even following the horse around if it is moving) until the horse stops reacting and then he takes his hand away.  I didn't notice anything that concerned me when touching Donut, so I proceeded with asking her to move over.  In case you are wondering what I was looking for when moving her hindquarters, it was for both her inside hind leg and outside front leg to move as a diagonal pair.  As soon as I saw her do a a couple of steps like that, I would stop.  She had a little more trouble moving to the left than to the right, and she even stopped a couple of times on her own.  I just kept my hand where it was and increased the pressure a little until she started moving again.

I'm really glad I had Gemma do the video because I can see a couple of places where I can do better.  You'll see that when I ask her to move back, she is slow to react and the way I'm shaking the lead rope is kind of erratic.  I think I might switch to swinging the end to see if that works better.  I also think the way I hold my body could be more confident.  Because of her reactivity, I think I've gotten to the point where I try to keep my energy as low as possible and that has led to a change in the way I carry myself.  So I'm going to try to move a little more confidently. 

I'm also glad I saw the video because my memory was that it was more difficult to get her to move than it really was.  I would have sworn we worked for at least 10 minutes, and it was really less than four.

So I thought that session went OK, especially for a situation that is a little closer to the blind leading the blind than I would like.  I felt like maybe we had gone a bit backwards on the energy needed to ask her to move back, but moving her hindquarters seemed to go better.  One interesting thing I did notice was how much she is moving her mouth.  She seems to be doing a fair amount of chewing, and I'm curious about why.  But I think I'll need more time to think on that.

Unfortunately, I still had that pesky problem with Donut wanting to eat grass after the arena work.  We had barely made it through the gate when Donut started getting really reactive about not being able to eat grass.  (I will give her this - she is a persistent horse when she wants something!).  So she was escalating her behavior.  I completely forgot that I was supposed to be testing the hindquarters movement as a way to resolve the problem because I was so surprised about the escalation.  I really thought that the more times we went through the process, the easier it would be.  (It is true that animals will sometimes seriously escalate a behavior just before extinction, so it could be that was what was going on here.  But based on subsequent events, I'm thinking that the problem is actually less about the grass and more about something else.)

I used my usual circling method, but she just kept reacting.  I think she went up in the air at least four times on the way to the barn.  In fact, when we got to the barn, she was so obnoxious that I contemplated closing the sliding door in her face and making her stand out there by herself until she settled down.  All I did was ask her to stop before walking through the door, which is a habit I have always had.  I like to make sure everybody knows where they are supposed to be before walking through any opening that is less than 10 feet wide.  So it wasn't an unexpected request.  But she lost her mind about it and started trying to run me over and rub on me and just basically physically intimidate me.  I was able to withstand the pressure she was putting on me and if I had been thinking, that would have been a great time to deploy the technique of "get out of my space."  I felt like I had my hands full, though, and my brain hasn't adopted the technique yet, so I was stuck with my usual techniques of making myself bigger and using my body to block her forward movement into the barn.  (I was also super thankful that she wasn't a 17-hand Friesian attempting that - I would have been outclassed for sure.)

Finally, she settled down at the door and I led her to her stall.  Normally, we would have gone past the barn and straight to her field, but I have been trying to occasionally go through the same routine we would go through if she was in work.  So I've started wrapping her front legs with polo wraps before we go to the arena.  And then when we are done, I bring her back to the stall and ask her to stand tied for a couple of minutes while I remove the wraps.  My plan is to increase the number of times each week that we go through that routine and add steps as well as minutes to the time I expect her to stand while tied until it feels like old habit.

Anyway, it turned out to be a really good thing that we stopped at the barn.  It gave both of us a chance to get our thinking brains working again.  And I had no trouble with Donut in her stall.  She stood quietly while I took the warps off, and she even managed to freeze when she got the lead rope wrapped over the top of her head.  She stopped when she felt the pressure and waited for me to release her.  So all that was good.

When I went to lead her out of her stall, though, she got into my space and was a bit pushy.  This time, my brain was working, and I was on it.  I immediately asked her to back up using the same method I'd been using all week.  So something really interesting happened here too.  She didn't back up.  Even though I'd been working with her on it all week, it was like Day 1.  So I escalated my energy and the rope.  Still nothing.  I kept escalating and I was literally SHHHHing as loud as I could, shaking my rope as violently as I could without hitting her, and JUMPING UP AND DOWN IN PLACE AND WAVING MY ARMS before she backed up one step.  I repeated the process until I had her backed up as far away from me as she could get.  And then we just stood there for probably two minutes.  Any time she tried to move out of that position, I cued her to move back.

Finally, after I felt like the lesson had started to sink in for both of us, I asked her to walk out of the stall.  (I don't think Donut is having this issue completely on her own.  I think something that I am doing with the way I interact with her is causing it.)  Completely on her own, she walked slightly behind me and to my left.  Which didn't bother me at all because I could see her with my peripheral vision.  (She prefers to be led from her right side, which is unusual.  I do typically lead her from the right, but I work on the left as well, to keep things more balanced.)  She walked completely calmly all the way out to her field.  Even when one of the dogs who lives on the property came up near her and barked at her and ran around.  Then when I got to the run-in shed where I turn her out, she waited quietly while I moved another horse away from the door and stepped into the run-in shed where she waited patiently while I took her halter off.  She is normally pretty good about those things anyway, but there was definitely a new sense of quietness about her.

So I'm thinking there are two things going on here that I need to pay special attention to.  First is the space issue.  Even though I haven't felt that Donut was particularly pushy when I was leading her in normal situations, she can be when she gets reactive or in a situation where she thinks she knows what to do.  But her reluctance to move indicates a problem, which is likely my own fault.  In my attempts to pay attention to her and keep my energy low, I've probably lost some of my normal assertiveness.  That might not matter for all horses, but it clearly does for her.  

I have to address this pushiness before I can do much else, I think.  I'm going to do that by asking her to move out of my space in lots of different places.  In her stall, in the barn aisle, in the parking lot, while I'm leading her to the field, in the arena, in the round pen, and anywhere else I can think of.  I'm going to do it over and over until she is responsive anywhere and everywhere to the sound of my voice.  I'm still not planning to lead her with her positioned right behind me, but I may consider leading with her slightly behind and to one side.  That may allow me to enforce a space requirement while still being in front and most importantly, being able to see her so I don't feel anxious and transmit that to her.

The next thing is this focus on eating after she works in the arena.  That issue could be related to the pushiness issue, but it is more likely part of the process where young horses have to go from being able to do whatever they want when they want to accepting direction from someone else.  I've done a lot of work with Donut in her comfort zone, which is when she is in her stall eating.  I groom her, I trim her feet, I put polo wraps on her, I've washed her tail, put body wraps on (more about that in another post), and I've even vacuumed her in there.  And I don't think that was the wrong approach.  Based on my research, it seems like a common strategy to work with baby horses in spaces that they are comfortable in and get them to think that interacting with humans and doing things is their idea.  But it's time to start transitioning her to learning that sometimes she is going to need to give me her full attention and do what I ask her to do.  There will hopefully come a day when she can be a true partner and participate in the decision-making process, but that day is not now and it probably won't be for quite some time.  She needs to learn the rules of engagement, so to speak, before she can learn how to make good decisions within a partnership.

To that end, while I work on the space issue, I'm going to change the location of where we work.  I can still take her out to eat grass by the arena, but then instead of working in the arena, I will work her either in the large space in front of the equipment shed or the parking area.  Both places are on the way from the arena to her field, so I'm going to see if that avoids the whole issue for awhile to get her out of the habit of thinking she needs to eat after she works.  Then after a week or two of working on the personal space issue, I will try working in the arena again to see how she acts about the grass.

Even though this past week did not yield a bombproof horse, I feel like I learned some really valuable things.  And I feel like I have a plan to address the things that aren't going as well as I'd like.  I'll be sure to report next Monday on how my plan works out!:)