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.
The Happiness of Here and Now
The Hawthorn flowers are in full luxurious bloom and I picked a branch of them to carry with me out to the horses. Something new, something different, I love the smell and I was curious what Ari and O would think.
Ari was unsure about the long, oddly wiggling branch of flowers, and preferred to keep his body at a distance at first. Occasio was sure eating them was the best solution to stop them from moving around with me.
There are a million different experiences we can have with our horses, our friends, our families. The thing that interests me most is why we choose what we choose?
I think all of us want two things. We want to feel normal, and we want to feel better.
Normal is our comfort zone where everything is safe and predictable. Everyone wants to stay in the comfort zone unless we feel stuck in “normal” for too long, and then we want something just a little interesting to break the boredom and help us feel better.
“Interesting” is the interaction between the self and the rest of the world that can never be fully predictable. Just the right amount of interesting makes life better, too much interesting and the defense systems of of fight, flight and freeze start to be activated.
This relationship between the comfort zone and interesting is why I train horses in freedom, and is why the process endlessly fascinates me.
When a horse is free of tools that restrain or motivate they give you more honest feedback of what they feel in every moment as it is happening.
When you train with pressure and release, or positive reinforcements such as food rewards, the horse starts to focus on how they will feel after the thing you are experiencing together.
I call this bridging of association, and while I use it for training in my own subtle way, it isn’t as interesting to me as the shared feeling of happiness in the here and now.
For example: if I invite a horse to step onto a wooden bridge they might do it to avoid the pressure of the lead rope or stick, they might do it because they think there will be a food reward after they do it, or they might do it because the sound of their hooves on the platform is interesting to them and brings up a feeling of curiosity.
I understand how to train a horse all three ways, and each way of training has its benefits, however, it is the third way that is the most interesting to me.
When we can do things with a horse because the thing we are doing is interesting for the horse, we are using the happiness of here and now to develop the relationship between us.
Can I use my feel and my timing of when I move that flower covered branch around Ari and Occasio? Leaving it close only as long as it is interesting, not long enough that it needs to be defended against?
If we dive deep into the art of training, do we know how to set up every experience so that moment is its own reward?
If we don’t know how to do that yet, we can always bridge associations in any number of ways. We ask the horse to try something too far outside their comfort zone and they will do it for us because we have built a consistent reward or release of pressure into the second part of the sequence.
If you do this, then you get that.
I do use this in my training, but it is not my ultimate goal. It is my fallback plan.
When I stroke Ari’s shoulder with the branch of flowers, I see I have overstepped the mark. It is too strange, too far out of his comfort zone and I see the freeze starting to build in his body. Ari is comfortable enough in this freeze I can wait for the slightest ear flick (thinking) and then I release the pressure he feels by moving the branch to his nose where he can smell the flowers.
Smelling the flowers is easier for Ari than being touched by the flowers, but it is still only in the tolerance phase of learning (he can only do it for a limited time.) So before it is too much for him, I pull the branch farther away to a distance that is more comfortable for him.
We bridge one thing to an easier thing, and then to an easier thing again. This bridging of association helps Ari broaden his comfort zone and learn to do a bigger variety of interesting things in his life.
The goal though, is to do this in such a way that we don’t need to build bridges as often.
The goal is to pet Ari with the flowers and watch him feel the moment and feel the emotional progression without the need for self-defense.
In an ideal world, as the flowers stroke Ari’s fur, I can see the stress signals move his ears between freeze and thinking as he experiences tolerance. Then he becomes more comfortable and accepting of the experience with the flowers and starts to shift his focus to the world around him and back to the flowers and then out to the world again. Then finally as it moves into enjoyment for Ari, I see the breaths become deeper and more regular, there is perhaps a snort or a lick and a chew, and that is where I take the flowers away to a new place or a new distance, where we might find our way to enjoyment yet again.
With good feel and timing, everything we do, in every place we do it, has the potential to become its own source of enjoyment.
If that doesn’t seem likely because the horse’s defenses are showing up in fight, flight, or freeze, then we learn to use advance and retreat and the bridging of associations to find happiness together.
I am glad I know about pressure and release training, and positive reinforcement training because they are good ways to build bridges of associations when training horses.
Most interesting for me though is the research I do in learning more every day about feel and timing and what it might take to do more of our training using the power of happiness in the here and now.
Ari will tell you I have a lot to learn still, and I am going to need my bridges of association for a long time to come even if I choose to use the subtlest forms possible.
The long game is to develop feel and timing to a point where the bridges are no longer necessary, and each moment becomes its own reward, building relationship between horse and human.
I guess you might say, I am both a dreamer and a researcher.
If you are curious to see my ongoing development of both dreams and understanding, join us on Patreon.com where I post weekly update videos.
https://www.patreon.com/tamingwild
Hooves and Heartbeats,
Elsa
