A Pivotal Moment, part 3

The second month of CEP really blew the door off the hinges for me in terms of desensitizing.  (Felicity also calls it exposure training, which may be more accurate.)  My brain went into overdrive as I started to understand how the "approach and retreat" method works for helping horses to feel comfortable with lots of different things touching them, waving around them, making noise at them, and even being off in the distance.  The sky is the limit in terms of the types of things you can use to work with your horse.

I also discovered that Freya had probably gone through similar training at some point, because she basically just knew how to do it.  And Gemma was in absolute heaven because she was able to be successful with Freya almost immediately.  You can watch a short video of the two of them below:

Plus, I had a couple of major breakthroughs with both Donut and Freya.  I wrote in my last post about Donut finally learning to stand still.  Well, we took that to the next level when I was able to have her stand in Pillar 1 from The Balance Through Movement Method for probably about 20 minutes.  Near the end of the session, I was able to do one of the nerve release techniques that I had learned for Freya and Donut was able to stay with me, even though I could tell that she was feeling a little uncomfortable.  (The technique doesn't involve any force, but I think it creates strange sensations in a horse's body, which is where the discomfort comes from.)  This was a huge moment for both of us, because Donut had never let me do any bodywork on her before.  Every time I tried, even with a simple technique like the Bladder Meridian Technique from the Masterson Method, she would fidget and disengage.  Initially I thought it was because she was young and impatient, but as time went on, I started to get concerned that it meant something Not Good was going on in her body.  So it was this incredible relief for me to be able to start connecting with her and being able to feel her tension and help her through it.

This is a photo from our session.  In addition to being in a state of disbelief that this is my former busy body of a horse, I noticed how awkwardly Donut was standing.  One of the reasons I started BTMM was because I had some concerns about how awkward Donut looked.  I'll probably write more about it later, but being able to stand still and accept bodywork was an important step for her.

 

For Freya, I had been working pretty diligently on the nerve release techniques that I was learning through 1:1 sessions with one of the BTMM instructors.  But we were getting hung up on activating her pectoral muscles.  And then one day, the gentlest touch worked, and I could see them "firing."  It was really cool to watch and I couldn't contain my joy and relief.  I had been putting my heart and soul into rehab work with Freya, but I had gotten to the point where I just wasn't sure we were going to get very far.  And the moment I saw those pectoral muscles engage, it felt like this huge weight was lifted off of me.  Maybe we could do this.  Maybe Freya wasn't going to be broken forever.  It's hard to say how much of this success was associated with the nerve release techniques and how much was associated with the CEP course, because the CEP course does have a postural component to it that is based on BTMM.  So Gemma and I had been working with Freya on her posture as part of the basic skills we were learning through CEP as well as the BTMM nerve release techniques.  Coming at the problem from two angles may have helped us more than if we had just been doing the nerve release work.

Another thing that we accomplished with Freya was working with the large body clippers.  I didn't expect her to have trouble with them because she is great with the smaller clippers.  But when I decided to put a trace clip on her, I realized she was not comfortable at all with the noisier body clippers.  Luckily, I knew how to help her with that thanks to the CEP work, and it took about 5 minutes before I was clipping her shoulder.  

I also had a little epiphany about using food.  Back when I was doing endurance riding with Nimo, I spent pretty much all of our "down time" feeding him.  If I was grooming him, he was eating.  If I was body clipping, he was eating.  If I was trimming his feet, he was eating.  If he was standing at the trailer, he was eating.  I had learned how important it was for horses to have access to food as much as possible, but also keeping weight on him when he was in serious conditioning work was a challenge.  So I was in the habit of making sure he always had some kind of higher-value hay when we were doing standing still-type activities.  It had the added benefit of helping him be pretty patient for things that took awhile.

When I was body clipping Freya, I realized I had been expecting her to just stand still.  And she did.  But body clipping takes time and it occurred to me that maybe I should do the same thing with her that I did with Nimo.  So I set out some of the chopped, bagged hay that I reserve for when the horses come in for dinner, and she happily chowed down on that while I clipped.  I tend not to do marathon clipping sessions, preferring to spread the clipping over several days, but there was no reason Freya couldn't eat while I clipped.

I see a lot of people withhold food from their horses as a way of establishing power over them.  Even if it is dinner time at the barn, I will see owners deliberately not feed their horses because they are going to ride them.  So the horse has to watch other horses being fed and then gets fidgety and then is punished for fidgeting.  It is repulsive behavior.  Either get to the barn early enough so you can leave the barn before the feed is put out or wait until your horse gets to eat, even if it is just a portion of the food.  I will also see horses standing for 30 minutes or even an hour or more for mane pulling or body clipping or bathing with no food.  And while it isn't essential, why can't the horse have a hay net?  I mean, when I go to get my hair done or have a pedicure, I get a coffee to drink.  It's part of the ritual.  I don't need the coffee, but it's nice.  And why the hell can't we do nice things for our horses when they do things for us?

Meanwhile, I was struggling a bit with my mental state.  Gemma did a little schooling jumper show with Butters during that time period.  It was the first show she'd done in several months, and it was really hard for me to be there.  It was hard for Gemma too.  The thing about improving my horsemanship skills and really starting to tune into my horses as part of CEP and BTMM work was that I could see even more clearly how much other people do not tune in to their horses.  I could see the extreme anxiety that horses had and how they were still asked to perform.  I could see how many competitors are still in the Dark Ages when it comes to how they interact with their horses.  I even heard one trainer tell a little girl how proud she was of her for showing her pony "who is boss" after a tough round where the pony refused a lot of jumps.  A little girl, you guys.  Little kids should never hear those words.  No one should.  But the fact that kids are still being taught that kicking and hitting and pulling on horses shows them who is boss is enough to make me want to walk away from the entire human race.  The only thing that saved me from starting to lash out at people was the ability to talk about this feeling during the weekly CEP coaching call.  It helped to hear that other people felt the same way about horse showing as I did.  That the same things that bothered me bothered other people.

I don't know what the solution is for the complete mess that the horse world is in.  Well, actually I do know the solution.  Everyone needs to be better educated on how to handle horses and they need to stop thinking of them as machines that perform at their pleasure.  But how to implement that?  I don't know.  There is more information than ever about options that people have to not act like complete asshats around their horses, and yet the bad behavior seems more widespread than ever.  All I can do right now is to keep working on myself.  Which is what I did in the third month of the CEP course...