The 13th Rabbit

Sweat was dripping down my face and soaking my clothes.  I was convinced that I would never be cool or dry again.  As the month of August winds down, the days feel interminably hot and humid.  The bugs, particularly the horse flies, are vicious biters.  And everyone's tempers, including the horses', are short.

I fantasized for the 508th time about moving to Maine, or Canada, or maybe the Arctic Circle.  The summer hadn't actually been that bad when compared to the usual Virginia summer, but the older I get, the less tolerant of the heat I get.  And I was counting the days until October...or maybe January.  Bring on the freezing rain!  At least the sun wouldn't be beating on me like a magnifying glass and I wouldn't be fighting for my life against the exploding insect population.

But I digress...the reason I was once again struggling in the heat was because I'd become convinced that I was in danger of putting Freya in front of her 13th rabbit. 

For those who don't follow Warwick Schiller, the 13th rabbit refers to an anecdote he tells occasionally.  The way I remember it is that he had a client who came to him with a horse that inexplicably spooked at a rabbit, despite having seen rabbits before and not spooking at them.  So the horse is out on the trail and sees a rabbit and maybe gives it the side eye, but keeps on going.  And then the horse sees another rabbit and again keeps on going.  And the horse sees ten more rabbits without much reaction.  But when the horse sees the 13th rabbit, it explodes and has a big spook, which seems inexplicable to the rider.

Warwick points out that what was likely happening is that the horse was worried just a little about each rabbit.  And over time that worry accumulated until the horse simply couldn't contain the worry any more.  Kind of like the straw that broke the camel's back.

It is the kind of thing that can happen to any person or any animal, really.  Little things (or maybe even bigger things) pile up and then one more thing happens that is maybe not even that big of a deal, and we explode in anger or our horse seems to lose its mind.

I was reminded of the anecdote when Mr. Schiller posted on Facebook yesterday about Trigger Stacking.  He shared a little about a horse that one of his employees was working with and how they spent 10 days working on ground work before riding even though the horse already knew the groundwork.  The point of the work was less educational and more about helping get the horse to a mental state conducive to learning and working.

And I got to thinking about what we've done with Freya.  I've actually tried to be very aware of trigger stacking and give her time to settle.  I waited almost a week before I rode her and even then, the ride was just a simple 10-15 minutes walking around.  For our first lesson, no one rode her at all because she was clearly demonstrating that she was worried, even though her behavior was perfectly manageable.  She simply had trouble standing still and would fidget a little when cross tied.  

Over the past couple of months, we have gradually introduced her to riding.  We started with a few minutes of walking in the round pen, and have graduated to about 30 minutes of mostly walk and trot, with a very little canter and a few ground poles or very low jumps.  I really felt like I was taking it slow with her and that things were progressing well.

Until she started ducking to the left for all poles and low jumps.  She absolutely knew how to do them.  She had been doing them perfectly.  And then, suddenly, she started having a lot of trouble.  So I walked it back.  We went back to doing single ground poles and then gradually raising the height to about 6".  The last ride Gemma had on her was almost picture perfect.  I was feeling pretty proud of myself for "fixing" the problem.

And then I saw Mr. Schiller's post, and I realized I had probably just put a band-aid on it because I wasn't addressing the root cause, which was probably not Freya's ability to trot over a 6" flower box.  It was clear she was quite capable of jumping at least 2 feet from the work we had done with her.  However, one thing that I hadn't been doing was any bodywork.  I had a chiropractor come out shortly after we got Freya and do a full session, including acupuncture.  The chiropractor told me that aside from one subluxated rib, she hadn't identified any problems.  So I figured that meant we were good to go, and I put bodywork on the back burner so I could focus on other things.

What I didn't think about that I should have was that Freya had gone through a lot.  I don't know exactly what she was doing on a day-to-day basis at her old home, but I think it is safe to say that she had been shown and then taken out of showing and then been leased out to one or more people and then sold to a horse trader.  Then she spent some time (probably a few weeks) at a new location before being brought to an auction to live in a cramped stall for two days.  And then she moved to a new barn with new people and new routines and new expectations.

So her life during the past few years has had a lot in it.  And because of her breeding - she is basically a paint Quarter Horse - her default is to be quiet and just deal with all the crap coming at her without having any big reactions.  But just because she isn't reacting a lot doesn't mean she isn't feeling stress.

And I wouldn't know how much stress until I worked with her to try to release it.  I decided to do a single ground pole exercise on the ground with her last night, followed by the Bladder Meridian Technique from the Masterson Method.  The pole exercise is one that I got big results with from Star when we were in the early stages of rehabbing her, and I was curious to see how Freya handled it.

I got the exercise from Listening to the Horse and it just happened to be the first one from the set that I tried with Star.  She struggled with it, even though it seemed simple enough.  All she had to do was stand next to a ground pole and move one front foot and one hind foot to the side so that she was straddling it.  It took forever to help her understand what I wanted and what I found was that there was a lot of licking and chewing after moving a single foot over the pole.  And after the exercise, Star would literally throw her head in the air and yawn over and over.

I wondered if the reaction was specific to Star or if it might have the same effect on Freya.  So I gave it a try.  Freya wasn't resistant at all to doing the exercise.  In fact, she was the opposite.  She moved all four of her feet over to the other side of the pole, rather than straddling it, even though I was only asking her to move one front foot.  After several attempts with the same result, it occurred to me that she was rushing through the exercise.  Why?  Because it was stressful and she wanted to get it over with?  Because she had already learned it and she thought that was what I was asking for?  Some other reason?

But when I changed the direction and asked her to move to her left over the pole instead of to her right, she froze.  She couldn't do it at all and got increasingly agitated.  I walked her away from the pole and practiced asking her to move her shoulder to the left without a pole.  And I discovered that she couldn't do it.  Why?  Physical issue?  Mental concern?  Too rattled from the pole exercise to concentrate?  I don't really know at this point.

What I do know is that a single pole created a whole lot of stress for her.  The same mare who happily trotted five ground poles perfectly when moving over them from the front instead of the side.

I decided to end the exercise in the arena and go back to the barn for some body work.  I could tell that Freya was stressed, even though the only sign was some fidgeting when asked to stand still.  I wanted to see if I could find a specific part of her body that was bothering her to get more information.

I put her in the cross ties because Gemma had Star in Donut's stall.  (I only have one stall and I end up playing musical horses a lot of days.  I'm on the waiting list for another one, but at my barn, a horse quite literally has to die before there is an opening.)  Normally, I would like the horse loose in the stall to do the Bladder Meridian Technique, but I figured it probably wasn't that big of a deal.  The cross ties were loose enough that Freya could move a little if she wanted and I didn't want to use the bigger space of the round pen.  And quite honestly, I was expecting to see the same type of behavior I'd seen from the several other horses I'd tried the technique on.  That behavior being fidgeting a little, weight shifting, head tossing, and other well-contained reactions.

Before I tell you what happened, let me be clear that we pet Freya all the time and brush her several times a week all over her body.  She stands quietly and has never indicated any concerns.

The second I put my hand on the bladder meridian near her poll, she could not control herself.  She wandered all over and pulled on the cross ties and ran into the wall.  She tried to move my arm away with her nose.  She flung her head in the air.  At several points, she rested her head on my shoulder and tried desperately to will me to move my hand away from her.  (I can't explain it - I just felt it very clearly.)

I stuck with her and gradually moved my hand down the bladder meridian even though she wasn't giving me any signs of tension release.  In fact, she was getting progressively more agitated.  From the lightest pressure on her neck.

By the time I got to her withers, I decided to try the other side.  Most horses carry more tension in one side than the other, so I thought/hoped that maybe I had started with her most tense side and switching sides might bring the pressure down a little so I could get a response.  Thankfully that is what happened.  About 30 seconds after I put my hand on the right side of her poll, I got a huge reaction as she licked and chewed and yawned several times.

I was so relieved because I'm not sure how I would have proceeded if I hadn't gotten that response.  I was worried that I was in over my head.  I did stop the bodywork at that point and turn Freya out in the field.  I felt that given her agitation, a single release was a good stopping point.

My working theory at this point is that Freya has been accumulating stress for awhile.  She has been hiding it and trying to keep working as best as she can because that is her nature.  But at some point, the little gymnastics we were doing were the straw that broke the camel's back, so to speak.  And she was telling us the only way she knew how that she had too much on her plate.

I am also speculating that Freya has lost her ability to self-regulate.  Horses in the wild obviously get exposed to stress all the time.  Hunger, thirst, fear, etc.  But they have the ability to let go of it.  Otherwise they would be a hot mess all the time.

Much like a person who is stressed but knows that there is more stress coming, so they keep it together because they know they don't have the luxury of breaking down, I think Freya has been avoiding showing her stress or releasing it because she has gotten in the habit of holding it in.  Which is why when the intent of my touch changed from petting or brushing to helping her target the tension, she got very agitated.  She was uncomfortable about letting go of it.  (Also, can we all take a moment to reflect about how amazingly sensitive horses are to be able to feel a change in the intent of a touch?)

I have no idea how long it will take to help her become more comfortable with releasing her tension.  But it has become clear to me that it is probably the most important thing I can do for her.  I plan to try the Bladder Meridian Technique several times a week, but I don't think I will do the pole exercise again until I see some positive results from the bodywork.  I will also keep her doing some light under saddle work, but we are going to stay focused on simple things that seem easy for her for a few weeks.

My hope is that this sweet mare will find relief soon.  I really believe that she is going to be a wonderful partner for many years to come, and she is well worth any effort that we put in now to help her be more comfortable.  Even if it does mean I am out at the barn sweating my own body weight every day!:)

The path to knowledge

I was messaging back and forth with a friend yesterday, and something came up that has been a recurring theme in my life, so I thought I'd write about it a little today.

My friend is fairly new to horse ownership and she is struggling a bit because she doesn't like feeling incompetent.  She is accomplished in her professional career and enjoys feeling like she is good at things.  But as she learns more about horse care, she realizes how little she knows and she finds herself feeling like she is a failure at caring for her horses.

Our conversation reminded me of something that I learned when I was in a masters program for education.  One of my professors introduced me to the Four Stages of Learning:

1. Unconscious Incompetence
2. Conscious Incompetence
3. Conscious Competence
4. Unconscious Competence

When anyone is learning something new, they start at the stage of Unconscious Incompetence.  This stage is often referred to as "you don't know that you don't know."  Whether it is learning to paint, learning to read, learning a new job, or learning to take care of a horse, there is no way that a person can just start knowing all the things.  And there is no way they can know the breadth of the things that they don't know.

But over time, a person starts to learn terminology and techniques and they start to realize that there is a whole world of stuff out there that they don't know yet.  It can feel overwhelming and frustrating, especially for people who like to feel good at something or have achieved a lot in other ways.  This is the stage of Conscious Incompetence, or "you know that you don't know."

Eventually, though, if a person keeps working at the skill, they reach the stage of Conscious Competence.  This is the point at which things start to feel more comfortable because the person is both aware of what they need to do and also has a certain level of comfort with what they need to do, even if they aren't perfect at what they are doing.  I think I feel this stage most often when I'm schooling dressage movements.  I have a self-dialogue going in my mind where I remind myself to do things like sit back, engage my core, be aware of where my hands are, and feel the connection with the horse through the reins.  And if I follow my own instructions, more often than not, I get good results.

And sometimes, if we are lucky, we reach the stage of Unconscious Competence.  I think riding a bike is most often cited as an example for the average person.  At some point, a person no longer needs to think about how to balance on the bike and they can instinctively apply the brakes and steer and turn while talking or thinking about something else.  Their brain and body know what to do without conscious thought.

I was explaining this process to my friend as a way to tell her that she needed to go easier on herself.  Except learning horses is not like riding a bike.  The knowledge and skill required to care for them goes well beyond balancing on an inanimate object.  It is no longer enough to know that horses eat hay, drink water, and need shelter.  Horses of today are typically managed in such a way that owners need to know about dental care, hoof care, feeding concentrates, supplements, and medications, environmental management (e.g. stall care, field care, blankets, fans, fly sheets, fly sprays), body work (e.g. massage, chiropractic, other specialty fields), handling the horse on the ground, fitting saddles and other tack, grooming, wound and other medical care, and if they are lucky, they get to ride and then they have to learn one or more disciplines with enough competence to stay on the horse.  Plus, they have to know how to maintain a truck and trailer, and haul through a variety of conditions with an unbalanced load.  And God help the poor horse owner who wants to compete.  Then there are a plethora of associations and fees and rules to figure out.

I feel like I spend most of my time in Stage 2 (Conscious Incompetence).  It seems like I am always looking for new information to help me answer questions that I don't know the answer to.  Occasionally, I get to hang out in Stage 3 (Conscious Competence), and that is nice.  And sometimes I get a glimpse of Stage 4 (Unconscious Competence).  I would love to spend more time in Stage 4, but I have a feeling that even if I thought I was there, a little bit of research would send me right back to Stage 2.

For me, owning horses is always about a search for more knowledge, and that makes me happy on the aggregate level.  Admittedly, there are some situations and some days when my brain would really like to intuitively know the answer, and I wish I didn't have to dig in to a book or the internet or call a friend for help.  On the other hand, what an amazing gift to be able to enjoy life with an animal that has no expiration date.  There will always be something more to learn.  There will always be a way to improve my interactions with my horses.  There will always be something I can do better. 

Horse ownership isn't for everyone, really.  Even people who love horses.  I think being a true horse person means accepting that we will never know all the things.  We will never hang out at Stage 4 very long because something will happen to remind us we don't know all the answers.  Horses have a way of humbling the very best of us and I think that is a good thing.  

For true horse people, the path to knowledge doesn't have a destination.  There are too many side trails and rabbit holes to go down for us to ever find the end.  That can be hard to accept for many people, but if you can make your peace with it, the possibilities are endless.

Showing Star

Sometime back in June, I got it in my head that I wanted to show Star in a couple of the schooling shows that my barn hosts.  The organizer of the shows had decided to add two evening shows during the week in addition to the regular weekend shows.  I had signed Gemma and Star up for those regular shows, but I thought it might be fun if Star and I did the week night shows.  It was just two shows, and I'd be at the barn anyway, so why not do the shows?

The first show was scheduled for early July and as the day of the show approached, I remembered why I don't like showing.  I get anxious about remembering the test and all sorts of other little things.  And that isn't really any fun.  And I wondered what the hell I was thinking to have signed myself up for such torture.  (I go through this process literally every time I sign up for a show...you would think I would have learned by now, but all evidence suggests that I am a slow learner when it comes to horse stuff.)

The universe smiled on me, though, and the show ended up being cancelled because of some storms in the area.  I breathed a sigh of relief and unequivocally ignored the fact that I was scheduled to show again in a month, at the beginning of August.

A few days before the August show, I once again started feeling my anxiety start to rise, even as I reminded myself that I would be showing Star.  Star is hyper-dependable, and as far as I know, is incapable of bucking, rearing, spooking, or any other behavior that could be remotely challenging to handle.  The test was ridiculously easy and required only the most basic skills.  On the other hand, I hadn't actually ridden Star that much, and I lacked a little confidence in my ability to show a horse that I hadn't spent years riding several times a week.

The day of the show finally arrived, and I was horrified to discover that we would only be using the standard dressage arena.  Normally, the show uses the small size arena for introductory level tests and the standard size for the rest of the levels.  But because the show was small, and only running for about three hours, the organizer wanted to keep things simple.  Which was totally understandable.  Except I wasn't sure how Star would do if we had to add a lot more trotting to the test; we'd only practiced the test with the small arena.  The long side of the arena now looked like it stretched forever.

When I rode Star, I typically only rode her for 20-25 minutes.  It has been hot and humid and we are really just working on basic walk and trot, with a very little canter.  She is 24 years old and I'm not a lightweight rider, so I felt like I should stick to the minimum amount of effort.  So I had spent a lot more time working on transitions than just trotting around for minutes at a time.

I decided to keep our warm-up as brief as possible, and I spent about 15 minutes mostly walking and trotting, with a few canter transitions thrown in.  Star seemed energetic enough, but I still worried that maybe I was asking too much.

When it was time for our test, I was strategic about how I set us up to start to avoid any extra trotting.  I checked in with the judge just a smidge early so I could start walking down the long side to get close to the entrance before the bell rang to let us know the judge was ready for us to start.  That way I could keep the extra trotting to get into the arena to a minimum.  I kept Star near the entrance until I heard the bell, and then I asked her to start trotting.

As we turned to enter the arena to come down the center line, I was surprised to find that Star had been hiding another gear to her trot!  She blasted down the center line like she was on fire and it was good that the test didn't call for a halt at the beginning, or we might have missed it!

Unbelievably, this little mare seemed to know exactly what was going on (even though she has only been shown in one other dressage show by Gemma), and she was very energetic.  So energetic, that she tried to turn one of our trot half-circles into a canter circle!  I found myself laughing at her exuberance, and aside from the attempts at canter, she did pretty much a perfect test in terms of listening to my requests and performing movements and transitions accurately.

We ended up with a really respectable score of 66.818% in the Western Dressage Intro Test 1, which ended up being the second highest score of the show.  We were penalized because of the canter, of course, but the judge gave us really nice comments, and I was so pleased with how Star did.  I realized I had seriously underestimated her, and I'm so glad I had the opportunity to ride her.

Star is powering up the center line!

Free walk

This halt was darn near perfect, and it earned us an 8.

For the sake of my nerves, I think I'm going to take a break from showing for another couple of years, but Star was a wonderful partner.  And I think I'm going to start asking her for a little more during our rides, because she demonstrated that age is just a number, and she still has a lot of life in her!

Riding Freya, cont.

Apparently, I completely missed posting last week.  I didn't even realize until the week was half over and then my schedule was so hectic, I didn't have time to write.  This week, though, things are getting back to the normal state of chaos and confusion, so my brain can remember that it is, in fact, Monday.

I wrote earlier about my first attempts with Freya to start working on balance.  Thankfully, I had a lesson with her a couple of weeks ago, and my instructor was able to work with me on a more advanced level, so I could make some progress, instead of blindly feeling my way through.

The first thing we worked on, and in fact, the only thing we worked on, was asking Freya to yield and soften through the poll.  To do that, we slowed down her walk and later her trot, to give her the ability to balance herself better.  What we found at first is that her initial response to my request was to jack her neck up as high as it would go and stick her nose out so it was almost parallel to the ground.  Much like I had when I worked on my own, we tried an assortment of exercises designed to help her without putting a lot of pressure on her.  So things like shoulder-in, small circles, walking a square.  We also experimented with my position.  

For about 15 minutes, nothing worked.  But we kept trying, and experimenting.  My instructor thought it might be the bit putting pressure on the roof of her mouth because of her extreme head raising, but I knew that couldn't be it because I had a Myler mouthpiece with a broken mouthpice, tongue relief, and a very low port.  There was no way that the bit could be jack-knifing in her mouth like a regular snaffle could.  It was possible that she didn't like the bit, of course, but my gut told me it was just because she'd become accustomed to being allowed to move in a very unbalanced way.

Finally, my instructor asked me to use a bit more pressure on the reins.  We'd tried every other variation except that because my initial attempts at asking for balance prior to the lesson had indicated she would be really fussy about the pressure.  But nothing else was working.  So I used more pressure on the reins, kept my hands low, made sure I was sitting back, and asked her to move forward slowly and with softness through her poll.  I should note that I wasn't wearing spurs or using my whip at all.  Just asking with the tone of my body, some light leg pressure, and probably about 2 pounds of pressure on the reins.

At first, Freya's response was even worse.  She started going backward and sideways and then her front feet came off the ground.  None of her antics were particularly intimidating to me because of my work with Nimo, who spent years teaching me how important balance in the saddle is with his spooking, spinning, and bolting tendencies, but I also know she is much more sensitive that Nimo was in terms of her mental state.  So I worked on finding a way to still be clear what I was looking for, but give her openings to move forward.  And within a minute, she was giving me what I asked for.  The extreme reactions were gone, perhaps because she realized what I was asking was not nearly so hard as she thought it would be:)

Once my instructor and I had worked out the nuances of what Freya needed from her rider to understand what she was being asked to do, I got off and put Gemma on.  I'll admit I didn't know what to expect.  I had to work pretty hard to convince Freya to soften for me, and I knew Gemma didn't have the same experience in the saddle.  So would she be able to get anything?  

It turns out the answer was an amazing yes.  When Gemma did the same things I had done in the saddle, she got the same results.  I'm sure it helped a lot that Freya had worked with me first, but it was pretty cool to see Science of Motion principles work with an 8-year-old on a horse just learning.  You can watch a short video of the work they were doing below (note that mobile users may need to switch to Desktop view to view it).

So the lesson was a huge step forward, and gave me to information I needed to start working with Freya more frequently to help her change the way she moves to something that is more balanced.  We still have a long road ahead of us, but I'm super excited to see how Freya develops.