Meditations on Equestrian Art

The Project:

Horses from many walks of life, communication through body language, tools used only for safety, never to train.

The Goal:

To discover how far Equestrian Art can be developed solely using body language.

Taming the Wild Want…

Ari and I were standing on the hillside together breathing hard for a moment as we regained our composure. Ari licked and chewed and snorted as I looked out over the valley and thought about my next choices.

I am reminded time and again that training horses in collaboration with their needs and wants is a journey of self-discovery and often an exercise of taming my wild wants.

All independent beings have a tendency to want what they want when they want it. Then for most of us independent beings, we find one of the things we want is to be in a relationship with another being of equal status that also wants what they want when they want it.

If what I want and what my partner wants is valued equally what do we do when those wants appear to be opposed?

On this particular day, this conundrum is what Ari and I were navigating.

Ari wanted to nap under his favorite tree in the paddock. I had placed a bucket out in the woods for me to sit on or stand on, I wanted Ari to take a walk with me out to the woods to find it, then he could resume his nap while I sat beside him. A simple game we had played before and one I thought was well within our range of capability.

After a few minutes of being together and exchanging the pleasantries of the day I asked Ari to walk with me. Ari took a few steps and stopped so I asked again and he again took a few steps and stopped.

Ari wanted to nap, I wanted to walk and I thought I could talk him around to my point of view so I kept asking. However, here is what happens when two independent beings have opposing wants: Fight, Flight or Freeze.

I often think Ari has a bit of a sense of humor in this relationship we are building. I ask him to take a walk too many times and so he does, but then he keeps on picking up speed until we are running through the woods side by side right past the bucket that was my goal all the way to the far side. We regroup for a moment, enjoy the view together, then I ask him to walk again and he says yes, and then kicks into a little bit of flight so we find ourselves running through the trees again back to the home paddock and his favorite shade tree where he again informs me he would like to resume his nap.

I tell all my students, when you are confronted with fight, flight or freeze in a relationship, take a moment, take a breath, take a walk, and then re-approach with more tact.

Neither Ari nor I want a relationship where our partner blindly says yes to everything we want, nor do we want a relationship where our partner gives up when we say no or our wants seem to be opposing.

Relationships are about finding common ground to stand on and common ideas to share.

If I was going to re-approach Ari with more tact I was going to need to tame the want I felt to take this walk out to a specific place in the woods, while setting the situation up so he could also tame his want to sleep under his favorite tree.

What is possible between us today in this moment?

With more tact and better feel I asked Ari to take just a few steps towards the woods, and then back up a step toward his favorite tree, and then we rested for a long while, doing only things well within our comfort zone.

Ari gets to nap and feel sleepy while I lean on him and rest my cheek on his back, enjoying the peace together. Sometimes when he looks a little grumpy I can stroke his neck or rock his body a little and cause a change of focus for the better and then we resume simply being together.

When I think the likely answer might be yes, I ask Ari for a few more steps out toward the woods but again, we stop before his wants and my wants run into each other.

Rest and repeat.

Slowly, gently, and peacefully Ari and I make our way out to the woods and the bucket that was my goal, two or three steps at a time with many rests to soak up the beauty of the day and allow Ari his desire to nap.

Ari makes room for my wants, but only when I tame them to what he thinks is a reasonable level. I make room for Ari’s wants while also encouraging him to tame his wants and be a little adaptable to mine.

When we take food rewards and tools of pressure out of the conversation with a horse, we start to see how to collaborate with them. We start to see that the horse’s wants are every bit as valid as our own wants and the coming together of their wants and our wants is the foundation of the relationship.

A year from now, I might be able to ask Ari to leave his napping plans to walk with me and he will happily put them aside for a while because he knows what I ask is reasonable. However, the way I prove to Ari consistently that my requests will be reasonable is to stay under the threshold of fight, flight and freeze as we work together.

Believe me, I am far from perfect and often my wild wants get the best of me. The point is, when I make a mistake and push Ari into fight, flight or freeze, I notice, take responsibility for my part in the equation and think my way through it to a better relationship.

The fun part is, I find horses learn by example. While I will get better at asking for reasonable things from Ari and tame my wants when I see I am provoking too much fight, flight or freeze, Ari will develop slowly and surely in the same way. When Ari sees that he is provoking too much fight, flight, or freeze in me, he will learn to tame his wants a little to find common ground with me.

A little at a time we will build and strengthen our collaborative desire to find common ground and common ideas to share, and that makes life more fun for both of us.

Ari and I were lucky enough to have someone filming this week as we navigated our way from his napping tree to my destination of choice out in the woods. I have put together a video of the process and posted it on Patreon. I encourage you to join us there for weekly video clips of inspiration and ongoing conversation about these ideas.

https://www.patreon.com/tamingwild

Collaboration with horses might be slower than training them using stronger methods, but the way it feels to develop together this way feeds my soul and builds a life I want to live. I am happy to share my musing and learning along the way and I appreciate the community you all contribute to when you take a moment to read or watch.

Life is better together, thank you!

Hooves and Heartbeats,

Elsa

TamingWild.com

The Project:

Horses from many walks of life, communication through body language, tools used only for safety, never to train.

The Goal:

To discover how far Equestrian Art can be developed solely using body language.

Dark Night of the Soul

April Fools’ day sent me sprawling emotionally. Thank you Atlas for humbling me yet again.

Yes, in the end of March I wrote about our: “breakthrough I thought we could count on!”

I could see the light at the end of the tunnel for Atlas and I, and we were steadily moving the right direction… and then yet again I was wrong.

This is the dark beauty of being a researcher. We come up with a plausible hypothesis and then we take action to test it out. The results come in and we get feedback about where we were wrong, and where we were right.

That last part, “feedback about where we were wrong, and where we were right,” is sometimes about as clear as mud, and I am up to my knees in it mucking around trying to figure it out.

I am going to read this in the future and laugh at the things that baffled me then.

However, it rarely feels funny in the dark moments searching for truth. When I get stuck, I feel dark and depressed, like I have no business being a research trainer. I should stick to the tried and proven theories that the other great trainers of the world have already tested for me.

Yet still, I find I am driven to search for better solutions.

Here is what happened to make me question everything with Atlas, again.

We had a foggy day, and something about the air currents that day made the fog horns sounding on the ocean also reverberate through our little valley. Every time the noise echoed around us Ari and Atlas would startle and stare in the direction of the ocean to the west.

By the time the fog had burned off Ari had let it go and was back to his happy-go-lucky self. Atlas was an emotional wreck and I couldn’t get anywhere near him, again.

I thought, no problem, we have a solution now, we will just walk together until this stress dissipates for him.

We walked on and off all day and even though he walked with his ears pinned for most of the time, he rarely licked or chewed, his muzzle was held tight and unflinching, and every slight noise made him leap out of his skin, I still had confidence we would get through it together. This was not going to be a big backslide in progress like past events had been, I was determined.

It would take over an hour in each session for Atlas to settle enough to reach out and touch my hand, finishing the session, his entire body shaking with fear as he made the effort. I would leave him to eat for a while and then come back to repeat the process.

The next day our first session seemed hopeful, and Atlas seemed not quite as afraid or angry as he has been the day before.

The second session changed everything.

Atlas decided he didn’t want to walk anymore, and he was mad as hell with me for suggesting it.

I knew I could wave my arms and scare him into it, but if I did that, then what did I have left to defend myself with if he got really angry and threw himself at me?

So instead we held a sort of a stand-off where I would walk toward him, very slowly, four beats breathing in for one step, four beats breathing out for the next step. Atlas would back away from me very slowly, with his ears pinned.

I honestly wasn’t sure if he was going to keep yielding or attack, but my instinct bet on him choosing yield as the better option, so long as I kept it slow enough for him to think.

Around and around and around the paddock we went like this. Each step I took toward Atlas causing an angry backward yield step from him.

Occasionally he would come out of his furious self-focus, the ears would flick forward and I would pull my focus off of him to look out over the valley and breathe.

When his muzzle had stopped twitching and I had given him time to just be peaceful and easy with me, I would look at him again and he would instantly pin his ears at me again, and the process would repeat.

Atlas did not want me there, I was the source of his discomfort more than I was the source of any comfort and he was angry with me.

I felt like I had failed him again and it was killing me. More than that, I realized I was afraid of him for the first time since we had met.

At this point I got sick, and found myself too weak to do anything more than the basics of care with the horses. I spent an entire day in bed sleeping and feeling miserable, when I woke up the next day I knew I had to change something.

What do I do if Atlas refuses to walk his stress off, and I don’t feel like I have the luxury of time to start again with the distance work, building trust over time until he will accept closeness once more…

I always tell my students that you earn the right to be an assertive leader by investing in the relationship either passively or dominantly.

Assertive leaders ask for things gently, kindly, and without extreme pressure. If you have enough invested in the relationship the horse will say “yes” to what you ask, but if you do not, your gentle requests will become irritating to the horse and the horse will start to become more and more dysfunctional in their behavior toward you.

I had invested so much with Atlas passively I thought I had earned the right to ask him to walk gently and be successful, and I was correct for a while. Then I learned that an environmental impact like the fog horns brings his stress levels so high it results in less relationship credit to use.

In this situation when my credit ran out, and Atlas was no longer was willing to walk, I kept asking him to at least change focus for me, and this repeated asking in a quiet way with long durations of eye contact became more and more irritating to him.

This mired us deeper and deeper into a hole where he was angry and I was frightened, and yet neither of us was willing to back down.

I thought maybe I just need to persevere and keep putting gentle pressure on him to change focus and he would start to come around to seeing my request helped him feel better. I would work for hours every day and we would see progress from the start of the day to the end of the day, but the next day Atlas was even more angry and resistant, and I found myself feeling more afraid of him.

I think we had to do this for a while so I could see clearly, that I am not above the rules.

The rules were going to force me to reinvest in the relationship either passively or dominantly; no more gentle persistence of asking for things.

I might be skilled enough in my feel and timing of assertive leadership to win the battle of wills for the day, but I was losing the overall goal of having Atlas associate me with better feelings the next time he saw me.

With summer coming I am feeling the time pressure to develop our training faster for many reasons. Trimming his hooves is becoming a more immediate concern. I would like to move him from the paddock to the pasture with its less secure fencing, and I would like to have some peace of mind that I could attend to him if any health emergency arose. Given all these factors, I chose the dominant leader option.

I will still spend some time in passive leadership at a distance every day, but it can’t be my only solution because it simply is taking too long for Atlas.

I brought a rope out and placed it on the box in the middle of the arena, and I promised myself I would use it to scare Atlas if he tried to threaten me in any way. I knew I could throw the rope just right to make Atlas feel trapped between me and the fence, making me the dominant leader and ending the argument quickly, allowing us to find our walk again. Once we could walk, I knew I could become re-associated with Atlas’ good feelings.

This is the most interesting part of the story. Once the rope was somewhere I could reach for it, I never needed to pick it up. My confidence was high again and Atlas started responding to me completely differently. I now moved in clear confident ways, so he felt the pressure between me and the fence as the right amount of dominance. Any face-off between us was quickly finished and we had found our walk again.

Once we found our walk we found our consistent good feelings together and relatively quickly we found ourselves back to the level of relationship we had at the end of March.

A trust we can count on and reliable good feelings we can find together, even at close distances.

This week, I even got my first whinny from him when I walked by the paddock.

It is humbling to see in hindsight the mistakes I made over the last couple of weeks, but I share them with you all so you can learn from them too. I posted a video of this challenging time with Atlas in the Patreon group and I welcome you to join the group to share the journey with me.

https://www.patreon.com/tamingwild

I feel a strong optimism about the path ahead for Atlas and me now, but if history is any indication he probably has a great deal more to teach me. I promise to keep you posted of all I learn.

Hooves and Heartbeats,

Elsa

TamingWild.com

The Project:

Horses from many walks of life, communication through body language, tools used only for safety, never to train.

The Goal:

To discover how far Equestrian Art can be developed solely using body language.

Before Riding…

This week I thought I would talk you through a brief photo essay of some of the things Ari and I are doing to get ready for riding.

The past few weeks we have developed Ari’s comfort in being leaned on. He knows how to brace his feet and find his balance accommodating me shifting around him and putting my full weight up against his.

We have spent many hours going places together with Ari leading the way. This is important because once I am sitting on his back I will always be following his lead.

We practice having my arms go up in the air so I am taller than normal, this is a minor change in comparison to sitting up on Ari’s back, but we have to start with small steps toward the end goal.

As you can see Ari is not sure he approves of me being taller so close to him, so I do it only for a moment and then retreat to being a normal height.

When Ari has made the most change toward better feeling that I think is possible for the moment, I offer him my hand, he touches in, and that is our agreement to change the conversation to something easier.

Having me down low was a challenge for Ari at the beginning of our relationship. Now he finds it much preferred in comparison to the other option, me being taller than usual.

Hugging Ari is a funny task that is important before riding because he has never experienced being squeezed by human limbs before.

There will be times riding when I need to catch my balance and grab ahold of him for a moment with my legs or my arms.

We need to make sure this is comfortable for him in relaxed situations before I ever try to do it in any situation with higher energy.

Our next task to get comfortable with is jumping.

After I sit on Ari, I will have to jump off of him at some point.

As you can see, Ari is less than pleased with the jumping, so we keep it far enough away from him to be tolerable for now.

With a little support from Ocassio and I over time, Ari will adapt and learn that jumping is amusing and not bothersome at all.

Our final task this week is about buckets, and my ability to stand on them, as I will need to do to climb on for a ride.

At this point in time, I practice far away from Ari.

And often I practice when I am downhill from him so I am not too tall at first.

As you can see, at this point in time, Ari likes the part best when he sees me stepping off the bucket to become a normal height again.

All of these tasks are approached with the best feel and timing I can manage. Ari is free to express how he feels about each action I take and the duration of harmony we share between actions. Ari’s feedback to me is my continuing education so I am perpetually learning to do this better.

The tasks are fun, but the way we feel together while we do them is so much more important.

I have posted a video on Patreon so you can see our practice of these things in action. If you are curious about this and ongoing stages of the process, I greatly appreciate your patronage joining the group and I will continue to share update videos every week.

https://www.patreon.com/tamingwild

Here is to horses teaching us well! Here is to us humans learning to listen better every day to become the best partners possible through all the fun tasks we might think up.

Hooves and Heartbeats,

Elsa

TamingWild.com