We definitely have made progress since I brought her home! And I am proud of the relationship I have built with her. I just feel like we are at a plateau and was unsure as to the best step forward. From the sound of it though the best steps will not be forward, but rather stay on our plateau until SHE tells me she wants to move up.
I would try something different. After a lifetime of riding, fox hunting, dressage, and eventing, I learned to do bodywork from Linda Tellington-Jones, Debono Moves, massage, Reiki, etc. Now, while I teach some dressage, I concentrate on working with abused and traumatized animals. Although there is plenty of anecdotal evidence, there is also science - Molecules of Emotion by Candace Pert, PHd. It is sometimes difficult to move forward with training until the stored patterns of abuse and trauma have been alleviated through bodywork. If you were near central NC, I’d love to help you with your horse - I never charge for abuse cases. Otherwise, why not check out some of the sources I mentioned above. You do not need years of experiences to learn some basic skills that will help your horse.
Wishing you success!
Barbara’s Tender Touch
[QUOTE=LHL;8143062]
I would try something different. After a lifetime of riding, fox hunting, dressage, and eventing, I learned to do bodywork from Linda Tellington-Jones, Debono Moves, massage, Reiki, etc. Now, while I teach some dressage, I concentrate on working with abused and traumatized animals. Although there is plenty of anecdotal evidence, there is also science - Molecules of Emotion by Candace Pert, PHd. It is sometimes difficult to move forward with training until the stored patterns of abuse and trauma have been alleviated through bodywork. If you were near central NC, I’d love to help you with your horse - I never charge for abuse cases. Otherwise, why not check out some of the sources I mentioned above. You do not need years of experiences to learn some basic skills that will help your horse.
Wishing you success!
Barbara’s Tender Touch[/QUOTE]
If I were in your area I would definitely take you up on that. I have heard of T touch but never learned much about it, I will investigate that option!
Having a trainer work with you while you are riding her will be invaluable. It sounds like while she is willing to give to the bit at times, she hasn’t yet learned to accept contact and is trying to find ways to evade it. This can be a normal step in the training process, but she will need a rider with consistent aids and a good sense of timing to encourage her to not back off your aids when she does establish contact.
I personally would also get rid of the roller bit and put a plain, slightly thicker, double jointed snaffle (eggbutt or loose ring) like this one in her mouth. I’ve found that if a horse is uncertain about contact, too many moving parts or rollers can just make them busy with their mouth to the point that it distracts from your aids and makes them more evasive. Also, make sure there are no underlying tooth issues that could make contact uncomfortable for her.
Martingales can be useful tools in the right situation, but they are not going to teach a horse about contact, which is what your horse sounds like she needs to learn.
If she has almost hit you in the face throwing her head, a standing martingale is a good idea but very loose. That might make you feel more secure.
I agree that working on her lifting her back more is a good goal. Try trotting poles either on a straight line or on a 20 meter circle. Don’t worry about her head and your hands, it’s good if you are following her rather than setting your hands. Concentate on getting her to be rhtymnical in her stride by posting in a consistent rhythm.
Neither the running nor the standing martingale will “hold” the horse’s head in position, or down, if correctly fitted. The running martingale simply keeps any pressure from the rein onto the bars of the mouth, rather than in the corners, NO MATTER what the horse does with it’s head. Since the change in angle of pressure can be a trigger to confuse/excite sensitive horses, this is what it is used for. When the horse raises or tosses it’s head, it does not realize that it is it’s own motion that is causing this, it only knows that suddenly the angle of pressure changes, and this does not make him happy. Thus the problem escalates. Use of the running martingale simply breaks the vicious circle, and allows the horse to relax. A standing martingale simply interferes with the top of a head toss arc. A head toss may be due to bad riding, use of the wrong bit, or simply a habit discovered to break the contact you have with the mouth. If it “holds the head down”, it becomes a “tie down”, a western style tool that is much overused and not helpful to actual training and riding of performance horses in English sport disciplines. A correctly fitted running or standing martingale may well be helpful to working with this horse. Which one depends on seeing exactly what the horse is doing, not possible without being there. You choose.
The classical training scale starts with step 1) Free forward relaxed motion. This is forward motion from the leg ONLY, activation of the hind end. No hand is used, other than basic navigation. To GIVE is key, always. A horse does not learn from pressure, he learns from “release of pressure”. The goal at this stage is for the horse to stretch out and relax down with his head and neck, on a loose rein. If the horse is a bit heavy in front, or low in front at this stage, no problem, this is expected of green horses, and in the case of your horse, it would be a goal, not a fault. Progress to later training without achieving this first step is most usually the root of the problem with riding and training horses.
When step 1 is secure, one moves on to step 2) Bending, straightness, lateral flexion. Again, where the head is is not a concern, other than relaxed. Little actually asked with the hand, other than response to yield to a soft touch. Step 3) involves direct flexion, and at this point the head is naturally carried in the correct position, because of the engagement of the hind end. Notice that “collection” has not even been mentioned yet, because to do so would be detrimental to the horse’s progress, confusing, and not recommended. True collection is what happens at the final stage of training, and is only really necessary for higher level performance. Most horses never get there, not really. And in most cases, it doesn’t really matter that they don’t, because of so many things they can do with the first three steps correctly in place.
So study the classical training scale, and don’t get ahead of yourself with asking for things that your horse is not ready to do for you. Because that is how training horses goes backwards.
Thank you everyone for the input! For Mother’s Day I was gifted with an hour lesson, I went over today to work with the trainer. During the warm-up I discussed all the problems I’ve been having with the trainer. Then the real work began! To sum it up my lady does have the knowledge to carry herself in balance and nicely collected. The problem lies in when she gets distracted, or decides she doesn’t want to she pops out and I don’t catch her fast enough. Because of her past issues with head tossing I have been very lenient and passive in my correction and assertiveness, which of course has enabled the behavior. We worked on my position to help hold her in place and not give her so much room to act up. She did really well once she realized I wasn’t going to give her any wiggle room. She did try to throw a couple small bossy fits, and the trainer helped me work her through them. She did end up recommending we try a running martingale during our next lesson, to help me catch her earlier before the head gets all the way up and to give me confidence I’m not going to loose my teeth. We have some homework and a new conditioning routine. I’ve also booked her some massage therapy, just to make sure she is kept as comfortable as possible. It felt so good to hear someone tell me my horse is not suffering, I’m not a bad rider and it’s ok to correct bad behavior. I hadn’t realized just how much I had been walking on eggshells!
[QUOTE=Schazade84;8142611]
I can get her down, on the bit and moving through her hind. I am investigating options to keep it that way without having to constantly remind and have her overcompensate by going peanut pusher. She is fully capable physically of staying together for at least half of our time under saddle, if not more.[/QUOTE]
A few questions…you say you can get her on the bit, but then she loses it and head comes back up? First of all, how are you getting her on the bit? Specifically how do you ask her for this? Secondly, what are you doing with your body once she gets in that frame? I used to have a problem where I forgot to continue supporting the horse. I would actively work with the horse to get them into a nice frame, and then I would praise and release. However, I would release way too much and drop the contact. The poor horse didn’t have any support from me, so the connection was lost and the head came back up. After a few riders with a trainer hollering “WHY do you keep throwing your reins away?!” it dawned on me…
If it’s not rider error, then I would also recommend lunging with side reins. If you’ve never done this before, please don’t try it by yourself- get a trainer or experienced friend to help. They are not a crutch, but they are definitely a useful tool at times. With my old OTTB, he was trying very hard to please but he just didn’t understand. Dressage trainer put some side reins on as loose as they would allow, and free-lunged him in the round pen. It took him a minute to figure things out, and bless his heart you could see him thinking like mad trying to understand. But then all of a sudden the lightbulb went off and he reached for that contact. Back came up, trot got nice and springy. It was crazy how quickly and drastically his trot changed. After that, asking him to soften and reach undersaddle was no problem. He just needed help understanding what I wanted.
ETA: So I responded without reading to the end of the thread…glad to hear you made some progress! 
[QUOTE=Schazade84;8146735]
… and it’s ok to correct bad behavior. I hadn’t realized just how much I had been walking on eggshells![/QUOTE]
OP, I know how you feel! My mare has (I’d say “had,” but I don’t want to count my chickens) a similar issue; no abuse background, thankfully, but serious dominance and stubbornness with a high head, wiggly neck, no muscle and poor work ethic. I was so worried about not pushing her buttons and triggering her that I was just reinforcing the bad. It was really all about her pushing the boundaries, being disrespectful, dismissing me as a leader, and seeing what she could get away with (I thoroughly vetted her to make sure pain wasn’t an issue). I’ve been working hard with a trainer to retrain me to have the knowledge and confidence to appropriately correct her and safely ride out any hissy fits, which have gotten consistently shorter and less dramatic. My trainer has also had me do a lot of relationship building on the ground to get my mare to respect me and see me as the leader. It has made a HUGE difference under saddle and is cost effective I have had to change the way I approach riding her and she seems to appreciate it. I think part of the high-headedness is lack of trust-- they feel they always need to be aware of any danger b/c it is up to them to decide how to deal with it since they are the leader. Now that my mare has confidence in me she is sooooo much more relaxed and willing to just do her job and let me be on the look out for danger Finding the right trainer for her has been a godsend.
Finally, my mare used to chomp on a dee-ring lozenge snaffle too and we discovered (trial and error) that she likes to have stability and less pressure on her bars, and switched first to a Boucher double- jointed with a copper lozenge and then to a Happy Mouth double- jointed with a copper roller and she is quite content in it. Not sure if that helps, but I thought I’d throw it out there b/c it’s an unconventional choice.
Good luck!
Oh, lunging in side reins has also really helped, BUT I watched my trainer do it the first few times and had her watch and help me another few times before tackling it on my own as my mare was very resistant in the beginning and it was hard to get her to go forward (BTW–reinstalling forward is another thing that worked miracles for us!). It sounds like you need to work on basic lunging issues first anyway.
Yay what a wonderful present. Onward and upward from here and break those eggshells.
It’s great that you got some help with her! It’s always easier for someone to help who is actually watching you ride and how the horse goes. Hopefully she will keep getting better and better!
