Be a Fun Distraction

While teaching yesterday, the subject of distractions came up for two horses. They were very different personalities: one was an Off-the-Track-Thoroughbred (OTTB) and the other was a Canadian Horse- a little known breed similar to a rugged Morgan or Cob. So even though they were on opposite ends of hot/cold spectrum, both these individuals were more interested in "watching the movie" on the outside of the arena, than focusing on the job at hand.

The TB is not newly off the track and has had some amazing owners who have done wonders with him such that he is a real sweetheart...but he is still a TB. So he could see reflections in the windows of horses outside (we were in an indoor), he could hear conversations going on in the barn aisle and he could hear the wind blowing along the indoor walls. He thought all of these were worthy of his attention just in case he should need to go into full alarm mode and leave the scene...which he never did thanks to the patience and base that his rider has given him. Nonetheless, he rarely or never gave his full attention to his owner.

The little Canadian, on the other hand, did not seem in the least worried. Just busy! While the TB's ears swiveled around to listen in all directions, the Canadian's whole head and neck swung as he checked things out. He had been trucked in for the lesson so this was his first time at that facility and in that arena. There were lots of things to investigate- mirrors, doors, a hole in the kickboard etc. and especially that gate leading back to the barn where all those potential friends were hanging out!

So the challenge for both of these riders was and is how to get and keep your horse's attention. Every rider shares this challenge. How do we keep our horses' attention? Some people like to give a horse some time to look around first so they can then settle down and focus. Others like to "put them right to work" so that they don't have a chance to get worked up about something.

But regardless of which of these is best for each individual horse, we can use Positive Reinforcement in order to BE the distraction which the horse turns to instead of all that going on outside the arena (or off the trail or wherever). If the horse is truly worried about something (which I believe TBs often are), then we can be reassuring to them by inviting them into a positively reinforcing game or exercise. It helps to start out with a familiar exercise which you know they enjoy and then depending on the horse, you can introduce something new or keep them comfortable with what they know.

The mentally quick horses love a new challenge and with Positive Reinforcement, we know that it's the SEEKING mechanism that entices them (read about SEEKING here). So if we work on a relaxing behavior like head down in the barn and in hand until they are rock solid, they will happily respond when asked to. Then when going into a scary indoor, we can ask for head down and that behavior will have been conditioned to relax the horse. From there we can transition into perhaps walking forward with head down, building duration for the head down behavior. We need to keep the reinforcements rate high at this time in order to keep the horse's focus on us instead of the howling wind. Then we can move on to some lateral flexing exercises (the head down is a wonderful longitudinal stretch), with lots of reinforcing for nice flexions. By now, we should have the horse's attention. We have become more distracting than the noises outside. Who wants to listen to the wind when somebody keeps offering peppermints?

For the busy and curious horse, you can sometimes bypass the relaxing exercises and go straight to the fun stuff. But it's always good for a horse's anatomy and physiology to get that stretching in the neck and over the back as a warmup. But perhaps that horse would find it fun to target cones on the ground with his nose as he went around the arena. If he's focused on cones and getting clicked for touching them, he won't be looking in the mirrors or out windows. And that type of horse usually can't wait for you to tell him what the next game is going to be once you get started. All else is forgotten!

Many riders use distractions to get a horse's attention- but not necessarily in a positive way. Some use negative reinforcement- more and more pressure to make that horse pay attention...but that does not help a horse relax. Instead it can add tension to the situation. Far better to build a reputation with our horses of being far more interesting and FUN than anything else. We've already seen that horses will leave food in order to play the Clicker Game. Now we need to build trust so that they will also leave their worries behind and join us in work.

Photo above is TB mare Zoe, near and dear to our hearts, showing all the physiological signs of tension and distraction! One ear up, one cocked to the side. Tight neck, wide eye, jaw tense. This was her first time back under saddle after foaling. She hadn't been in the arena in over a year. Clicker training doesn't eliminate a horse's instincts and fears, but it does give us a way to deal with them....Zoe is doing wonderfully 6 months after this photo was taken, learning lots of new games and ways to deal with her tension.

Zoe's yoga 2

I wrote about Zoe a while ago and the overarching theme with her is still the same- relaxation. She will now relax on the cross-ties while I groom her, putting her head as low as the ties allow. I reinforce this a LOT still because the distractions for her are many. She knows what is going on in the whole county. Something I have come to realize about the head down exercise is how many repetitions it takes in a good situation before you can expect it to work in a worrisome one. This is a light bulb realization for me- one of those duh! realizations. To a certain extent the exercise is relaxing in itself- the way that breathing deeply can be relaxing. But it is far more effective if you know how to breathe properly and practice it many many times in a quiet situation so that when you use it when tense, it is immensely effective. The same is true for head down and I regret that I did not understand this better with Smarty.

I do not know what Zoe's future holds but I do know that if she can learn to calm herself down, as so many horses have learned to do thanks to Alex's work, she will be a much happier horse regardless of her future career. She does have her tongue chewing habit, but I see that as a coping strategy rather than a calming strategy. It keeps her lid on, but does not reduce the heat under the pot!

Today I brought her into the aisle and increased my criteria for her head down behavior. Not only was she to put her head down, but I wanted her two front feet square. Due to a slight conformation issue, she got in the habit of grazing with her right foot back and her left forward. I have not concerned myself with this before in the head down exercise but I decided to give it a go today. Since I was introducing new criteria, I followed the rules and relaxed my standards on the other criteria. I did not expect her nose to be touching the floor or her head to stay down for more than a second at first. I asked her to stand square, then asked for head down and clicked as soon as she did it. Luckily, she did not move her foot before putting her head down but after it was down so I had time to click before that foot went back. When she lifted her head for the treat, I would give it to her, re-align her front feet and ask again. It took many repetitions but finally she left her feet square long enough to come up for the treat without needing to be re-set.

This was a small thing, but I felt I was able to introduce something difficult for her without really changing the external stress levels. I thought this might be a good baby step before throwing anything too stressful at her. I wanted to get her really working on responding to the cue and feeling the relaxation. I saw no tongue chewing which was great. There were a couple things going on- other horses coming to the door, dogs barking, etc which caught her attention but each time, I gave her only a second or two to listen to the distraction and then asked her to lower her head and she did.

My daughter also noticed that while she remains quiet for grooming, when the saddle comes out, the tongue chewing begins. So after we had several successes at head down with feet square, I brought out her saddle pad- no saddle, just pad. She had been relaxed and quiet for quite some time while we were working and I was curious to see her reaction. While she didn't offer to put her head down when I put it on her back, I watched carefully, and she didn't seem at all concerned. No ears pinning, no tongue chewing. I think I will continue to work the saddle in as the next distraction. Since no one is riding her, we can introduce this just as if she were three and was wearing a saddle for the first time. Hopefully we can bypass the saddle being a trigger for nervousness (or excitement or irritation or whatever it is that is causing the saddle to trigger tongue chewing!).

Planning the Day

I think the lesson I learned today was that I need to be very careful in the order I work horses in and the thought preparation I need to do between different horses. The other day went so well, having the same general lesson for three different horses and one flowed nicely into another and I got smarter about what I was doing with each horse. Each one benefited from the work I did with the previous horse.

Today I had a different experience. I managed to salvage the day but I had to put some serious effort into it. The morning started out with a lovely short ride on Elly. Actually, it started with some lovely ground work with her, followed by a bit of time spent on the Mounting Block Lesson which had fantastic results (trickling down from the mat lesson and getting her four feet under her) and then some lovely riding. It was my first time back in the saddle this Spring and felt great. Elly was responsive and quiet...I saw none of the anxious uncomfortable horse that she can sometimes be.

So that should have set me up for a perfect afternoon. The next horse (pony) I chose to get out was Stowaway. He is the least clicker savvy of all the horses here and the most shut down. Having been a lesson/camp horse, he is pretty dead. It took many many targeting lessons to get any positive reaction out of him at all. I'm not sure he really gets it yet that he can actually do something to enhance the game, but at least there is a light in his eyes when he hears a click. I felt he was overdue for some time with me which is why I made him my second project of the day. But he is so heavy to work with- accustomed to being dragged around and having to ignore all manner of tactless handling- that by the time I was done with him, my handling had become pretty coarse. He did really well and I longed him for a bit and he was thrilled to get clicked for some trot work- it was great to see a little liveliness to his step.

So then I got Ande out and that's when I noticed the trouble. I was carrying over some of the heavy feel I had from Stowaway. Ande had been so light and positive the previous day, and I realized I had lost that. As I worked, I focused hard on what we had achieved, how I had achieved it and what that had felt like. I did get it toward the end but it took a lot of mental/emotional effort on my part. I think if I had taken a few moments before I pulled him out of his paddock, to mentally prepare myself...the way watching the DVD had inspired me...we would have had a smoother day together.

After putting him away, I turned to Percy and then Rumer. The farrier is due on Monday so that always gets me hustling to work on feet. I had a really good time with both of them yesterday and was hoping to build on it today. But they had both had been listening to me click others in the round pen next to their paddock and were very anxious to get their turn! I knew Percy could get antsy listening so I chose to do him first but oh boy was he a wiggle worm. He just couldn't contain himself waiting for me to give him something to do. Every move I made, he tried to figure out something special to do in response. Back up? Step over? Swing my hip around? Good grief he was all over the place and getting more frustrated each second because he wasn't getting it right! I finally froze in place and clasped my hands together at my waist: Grownups are Talking cue. He got it- phew, he seemed to say, I know that one! And it got him to hold still! I did a lot of Click/Treat for that because I knew he was really itching to move. I then proceeded to head down because I wanted to calm him down some more and he seemed to be OK now that he at least knew what I wanted and he was getting rewarded for it. That was fairly successful but he also took a swipe at my leg while his head was down- typical colt style but he hasn't done that in a long time and with just breeches on, I reacted a lot more strongly than I had during the winter when I knew I had a lot of cushion between me and any teeth! So I knew he was a little more stressed than I really wanted so I decided to give him something to sink his teeth into! I got out his loopie toy and let him pick it up and hand it to me about 10 times. By this time, he really seemed quieter so I returned to yesterday's cross-tying lesson. I ran a long lead through a tie ring on one side of the aisle and another through the other side and attached both to his halter. I did not tie either but just held them and played with pulling first one and then the other, C/T ing when he yielded to each. He remembered from yesterday so I dropped both leads, leaving them through the tie rings and began working with his feet. He was an absolute star for that (front feet only) so I called it quits for the day and considered it a good day to go from Mr Ants-in-his-Pants to standing quietly for having his feet picked out!

Then I cross-tied Rumer and we did more work with her feet. She made huge progress yesterday with her hind feet. Really relaxing her hind legs and letting me pick them up instead of snatching them up. Today we went through the same process but I was even able to pick them out without her pulling away. I did consciously let go of her foot any time she pulled away at all. My instinct is to want to hold on and not "let her get away with" pulling away. But she knows the game well enough now that pulling away and getting her foot back is no reward compared to getting a C/T! So that was another good lesson for me today.

So now, I know I need to get an emotional/mental frame of reference as well as an objective lesson plan before I work with each horse. And I need to plan the day so that each horse gets the best opportunity to do his best work.

Zoe's yoga

Zoe is a TB mare who belongs to my daughter. She is Percy's mom so has been out of work (as an event horse) for a little over a year. She is definitely a high- energy and high-anxiety horse. Before being bred, she could never have more than a month off of work because she would get so wound up because she was bored! Thankfully, she adapted well to motherhood and Percy kept her busy enough that she certainly did not get bored. When they were weaned in early December, she seemed to transition into vacation time without too much trouble.

My focus with Zoe has been relaxation. Last winter I did a fair amount of work with her on head down. My daughter had taught that to her already but she would only go down to ankle height for me and then would "trampoline" back up. If you didn't click the instant her head went down, she'd bounce back up, then down and up etc. I felt like she would really benefit from the self-control of duration work. In addition, I think her body needs a lot of the stretching that comes with head down and her mind needs all the relaxation it can get. Basically, like a lot of moms, she needs yoga!

When Zoe gets very anxious, she chews on her tongue to calm herself down. Today I was working on Elly on her mat in the paddock next to Zoe and I happened to look up to see Zoe standing next to the fence chewing on her tongue. She loves to work, loves attention and really wanted to be the one I was working with. So when I was done with Elly, I took the doormat into Zoe's stall to work on the mat and head down. I had done some work with her on this mat before but it wasn't as solid as I'd hoped. The previous time I positioned her on the mat with a lead and she figured it out pretty quickly. This time I was hoping she would offer it by herself but it wasn't that solid yet. I did get her to put both feet on it by having her target my hand but she had only the toe of one foot on and the heel of the other. I probably should have gotten her halter but she was offering head down with her feet like that (as I said, I have done a LOT of HD with her!) so I decided to go with that.

I think the biggest lesson from working with her today is I need to decide exactly what criteria I'm working on and be clear in my own mind so I can be clear with her. I lumped too many things together: the mat, the head down and exactly what was I looking for in HD. It's been a while since I have really focused on her so I should have had some review of: nose to the floor, not just low, then add the duration to that and then bring the mat into it. As a result, we didn't get too far and it was dinner time so I decided to stop there and try again tomorrow when I was more mentally organized.