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Specificity and skipped steps

The Project:

One Mustang directly off the range, One trainer, No tools, Just body language

The Goal:

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

 

Specificity and skipped steps

 

It seems Myrnah and I have reached a step in the process that is not as graceful as all the previous steps have been. Specificity is proving to be more difficult for us than anything we have done yet. I don’t know if I am excited by the challenge, or disappointed in myself for not setting up the course of learning better. A little of both I think.

 

Last week was all about traveling together, developing our ease and relaxation in movement. Myrnah more or less got to choose where we traveled; I just asked her to keep moving. Everything Myrnah and I have done together so far has had a large element of choice on her part. If I wanted to trim her hooves, I let her decide where she wanted to stand to have them done; and, if she changed her mind, I picked up my trimming tools, followed her to the new spot, and started again. If I asked her to turn, I wasn’t too particular about where we were headed so long as she yielded the direction asked. If I asked her to back up and she turned around in the process, that was fine too, so long as she stepped back for me. We were building a basis of communication, and I wanted all the pieces to feel easy. Little by little she became more accurate in her responses and I was thrilled.

This week I set up a pattern to build specificity. Walking together, rest in movement, the gate open between the woods and the arena, Myrnah could take me wherever she liked. New addition to the game: I added a couple of tires, double-stacked in the arena. If Myrnah was interested in investigating them, we could stop and rest there; everywhere else we needed to keep moving.

 

The idea is to teach Myrnah to sidle up to something (like a stack of tires) to let me get on. The first step in that is to get her to be interested in something tall that I can stand on. It worked like a charm and pretty soon those tires were like a magnet- the only place she wanted to be.

 

From the first step of investigating the tires to get a rest from perpetual movement, we built to my standing on the tires while we both took a break. Then on Wednesday I started getting specific; Myrnah needed to put her side to the tires before we could both relax. As soon as she was in position, I would sit down and take some time to just be still with her.

 

Getting Myrnah in exactly the right spot beside the tires was challenging for her. Anything so specific is new to us, and she didn’t want to do it. While I was happy to give it up and go walking instead, she didn’t want to do that either. She wanted to just rest at the tires in any position she chose, and so Myrnah started pinning her ears at me.

 

This is where I think there is a balance to be struck. “Confidence-in-one’s-self” and “confidence-in-others” need to be in balance. Myrnah has a great deal of natural self-confidence. When her confidence in me is lacking, it is easy for her to start being angry. Wednesday she had a perfectly good idea of what we should do together: (standing relaxed at the stacked tires) My idea of alternating walking and standing at a specific spot next to the tires seemed like a terrible idea to her. Too much confidence in herself and not enough in me lead to some angry gestures.

 

I am generally intolerant of anger, so I jumped right on it, and thought, what do I do with my other horses to build their confidence in leadership? I work on our yields: front-end, back-end, and sideways. Myrnah’s front-end yields are soft and easy; her back-end yields are relatively undeveloped. Back-end yields are something I kept putting off until our bond felt stronger. Well obviously here was a gap in her education and a missed step in the process.

 

What happened when I went to push her hind end away from me Wednesday? She told me NO. I pushed harder and she showed me she had feet to kick me with… hmmm, pushing harder obviously wasn’t going to get me anywhere I wanted to go. (and yes I was thinking all this would be so much easier if I had rope right now and could just make her do it).

 

So take a deep breath and break it down. We take a walk and then I play with gently putting my hand at the back of her belly to suggest she just look toward me with her nose. If her nose tips toward me, her hip will at least energetically yield, even if it isn’t physically apparent. The problem is she won’t even do that.  On this day a hand on the side of her belly puts Myrnah into a strong opposition reflex, sending me running out of the kick zone. So I yell and jump up and down and clap my hands and run in circles driving her nose away from me until she looks at me with curiosity, and comes back with her ears forward. Then I sit on the ground, breathing hard, and wishing I hadn’t put off this step in the training. Breath caught, we try it again.

 

Sometimes, if I get my tact just right her nose comes toward me when I place a hand on the back of her belly, and I quickly reward that by moving my hand onto her withers and simply walking with her. Sometimes my tact is off, (or hers is), and I get the opposition of her hind end suddenly thrown in my direction; then I have to resort to acting like a crazy person, running around, moving her front end away from me until she musters up the positivity to look at me and ask what in the world I am doing, and wouldn’t it be nicer if we both stopped and just hung out together. ( I always say yes to that)

 

A horse’s confidence in others is based on their respect and their respect is based on their willingness to yield physical space. Willingness equals a positive attitude. When Myrnah started showing aggression, I knew her confidences were getting out of balance and we needed to build a little more respect and confidence in me, her person, and hopefully her leader.

 

I wish I had spent more time teaching her to yield her hind end earlier in the game. Without rope or stick I wasn’t sure I could, but now I see it is a critical piece that is fundamental to later progress.

 

On the up side, Myrnah’s extreme opposition prompted my own desperate measures, which caused her to look at me in a new and curious frame of mind. Her ear pinning seems to be melting away, her specificity of standing exactly at the mounting block has improved dramatically, and her offers of focus, arc and softness in her body while we walk together are so beautiful they make me want to cry.

So thank you to the exercise of specificity for showing me our missed step in the process. I love everything I am learning through this, even if I don’t always get it right the first time.

Elsa Sinclair

EquineClarity.com

Rest in Movement

The Project:

One Mustang directly off the range, One trainer, No tools, Just body language

The Goal:

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

Rest in Movement

It sounds like a contradiction, rest in movement, yet I think it is contradictions like this that make us feel alive. Last week I talked about draw and drive, using those concepts to build a connection between partners. I believe it is the combination of two contrary ideas that is often a powerful force of creation. Draw and drive bond horse and rider to each other in a way that feels magical, yet, when looked at closely, we find it can in fact be understood and built logically one step at a time.

Rest in movement is another one of those apparent contradictions that seem to bring power and grace into life. As of this week Myrnah is not sure she agrees, though I do jest a little here. In reality Myrnah continues to amaze me with how gracefully she moves forward to the next step in our process, time and time again.

In training horses we work with the idea of pressure and release to cause growth and development. When Myrnah and Cleo were first with me, in order for them to feel release, I needed to turn my body away, take my eyes off of them, and maybe even sit down on the ground and be very still- all pressure released in an obvious way. To add pressure all I needed to do was stare directly at them; that seemed to be all it took for them to feel the need to respond. As time went on and they became more confident, I was able to release pressure simply by becoming still and quiet with them, wherever I was already standing. Putting pressure on sometimes required my walking over and causing them to take a step in some direction they wouldn’t have chosen on their own, in order for them to think about me.

Up until this week I have felt I needed to follow Myrnah’s lead letting her dictate how much of any one task she felt ready to do. I wanted her to feel that working with me was easy, with releases of pressure simple to ask for. All she needed to do was reach over and touch me with her nose to ask for a break and it was readily given. Slowly, over time, I was able to ask her to keep moving through a task, past her request for a break, helping her build a stronger work ethic. If I pushed too far I could see her get frustrated; she would start to bite at me and pin her ears, letting me know she needed more release.

This week we had a breakthrough. We went out in the woods for a walk and I had the thought that Myrnah was ready for more. So, instead of letting her just wander from one bite of fern to another, I asked her to keep walking. Every time she tried to stop I asked her to move- anywhere she wanted to go, just continual movement. Interestingly, she didn’t seem to get frustrated, or ask me quit the game by reaching around to touch me; she just kept trying to stop where she wanted, and then patiently walked on when I asked. Occasionally she would take me back to the paddock gate, and I would gently push her away; she would circle round to face it again, and I would gently push her away again. Sometime it would take eight, nine, ten circles before she would take me out into the woods again. We walked for 20 minutes that day, and by the end Myrnah was starting to develop a rhythm and an easy swing to her walk. As long as she kept moving, I was quiet and peaceful, simply walking alongside her, my hand on her withers and my feet in time with hers- no pressure, just the two of us resting in movement.

 

The next day we took the rest in movement idea out the other side of the paddock into the front yard where there is lots of grass to eat. That indeed proved much more challenging. It is hard to keep moving when there is a buffet underfoot calling Myrnah’s name with every stride. I again was thoroughly impressed that she didn’t get frustrated with me; she simply pitted her perseverance against mine and gently and slowly came around to my way of thinking. When Myrnah finally was brave enough to walk us through the narrow path between the garden and the car, taking us to a new area above the pond, I chose that moment to stop, take the pressure off, and let her graze for awhile. Rest in movement is a new skill for us; rest while grazing is an established release and reward. When a horse offers me a supreme effort of bravery or focus, I do my best to let them know I fully appreciate it.

The interesting side effect to this rest in movement practice is the affection I get afterward, as both Myrnah and Cleo surprise me with the dramatic increase of nuzzling and focused appreciative contact. I don’t know whether they are thanking me for the simple relaxation that movement brings, or the dominant role I take on by moving them that allows them feel safe and part of my herd, or something else all together.

Whatever the reason, rest in movement seems to have fallen into place perfectly as the next obvious step, and I couldn’t be more pleased with the results.

 

Elsa Sinclair

EquineClarity.com

Sharing the Journey

The Project:

One Mustang directly off the range, One trainer, No tools, Just body language

The Goal:

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

 

Sharing the Journey

 

When I was a child horses allowed me to be bigger, stronger, and faster than I was on my own two feet. They swept me into a world where anything was possible. They shared their journey through time and space with me and lent me a sense of power in life.

 

To this day, horses still give me all of that and so much more. In the beginning horses were a physical thrill and that physical thrill fed me mentally and emotionally. As I grew, training horses became a mental thrill, learning about cause and effect, building a partnership between horse and rider systematically. Now in this project, challenging me to a year of training without tools, I find my emotions are being fed directly in a way I have never before experienced.

I sit here watching the print course along the page as I struggle to illustrate with words this visceral and personal experience. I am not sure how it is this project seems to use my mind and my body to shape the course of events while tapping more directly into the emotions at the core of my existence. I can tell you the physical steps I take, I can tell you the mental processes that accompany the physical steps, yet I don’t know how to describe the emotional component that comes from the connection between horse and human.

 

I do know, however intangible it is to explain, people feel it powerfully when they get the chance. Perhaps not exactly what I feel, but something profound none the less. Each time I introduce someone new to the Mustangs, I am apprehensive that what I do is too subtle and slow to be of interest to anyone other than myself.

 

Nothing ventured nothing gained, so I take a deep breath and put it out there, walking each person who comes to visit through the physical steps of drive and draw, approach and retreat, walking them through the mental understanding of building trust and connection with a horse. Then I stand back and marvel as the emotional connection between horse and human sparks and all of a sudden this isn’t just about me and my journey with Myrnah. This is a journey shared.

 

I don’t know how to explain the feeling of intensity, being an integral part of a horse’s breakthrough from fear to confidence. I don’t know how to explain how time evaporates and before we know it, hours have gone by in the blink of an eye. I don’t know why it is so emotionally touching to feel that bond, that trust and that connection with an animal so recently wild and so new to the world of people.

 

I marvel that I can share this experience with other people. Myrnah and Cleo are willing to reach out to the friends I bring to visit with them, willing to meet, converse, and show each person attention and devotion, offering communication and connection.

 

It’s so simple and so powerful.

 

I know I could spend more time with the Mustangs drilling cues and specific responses, riding patterns and creating machine-like perfection of movement. I also know that doesn’t affect anyone in the deep way this more inexplicable feeling of connection does.

 

I sat on Myrnah again on Monday- it was lovely and yet somehow also felt beside the point. It felt like Myrnah was unconcerned but also unengaged as though there may be a few more things we need to do before she is ready to completely bond and connect with me riding. This isn’t about how many tasks we can do together; it is more about how engaged and interested I can encourage Myrnah to be about doing those tasks with me. It’s about how the two of us feel as we do whatever we are going to do together.

 

Myrnah and I are sharing this journey with each other, and also with the world. To anyone who might be interested in tasting this inexplicable feeling of connection, I want to put it out there that it is possible, and achievable, and simpler than you might expect. You just need to learn to read the signs along the way.

 

 

 

Elsa Sinclair

EquineClarity.com