I’d just like to say how much I’ve appreciated this thread and the suggestions from people on this forum. It’s made me feel less crazy in trying to figure out what path I wanted to follow with my horse. I’d been stressing out at one time, certain that I had to choose between western and dressage and this thread and others has helped me realize I can embrace aspects of both, with the goal of a happy, balanced, centered horse 
Instead of coming from a place of “working on your horse” how about working on yourself. I never get bored working in an arena because I have plenty to perfect in myself. Thank goodness too, because we are experiencing the winter from hell which makes even turning the horses out in their ice covered paddocks… dangerous.
How good are you at knowing where the feet are and how in-tune are you at feeling the horse beginning to shift his weight for a transition? How early can you feel it? How good is your seat at following the movement at a trot, walk, canter at all speeds? Can you influence the speed and the tempo just by grounding a foot at just the right moment when the weight of the horse is passing over it? Can you slow the walk down to baby steps and then walk right out to a long striding ground covering walk and then back again, just with the horse wanting to follow your energy and seat? without the aid of your reins?
Can you trot over some cavelletti poles?
I like to ride to music and vary my horses rhythm and tempo to what music comes on. I have a couple of CDs with a variety of music so that it doesnt become too stale or predictable.
Would you be up to experimenting with some shoulder-in, haunches-in? Leg yielding? and perfecting the timing with those exercises?
If you have some friends you ride with, maybe you can longe eachother on an old school horse so as to perfecting your following seat. Play with some drill team exercises?
I have been known to herd cats and other horses in the arena just to add some play that the horses like to do.
On the ground I like to set up a few barrels for jumps leaving enough space for the horse to go between the wall and the jump, then I practice at liberty asking the horse to go on the outside of the jump, over the jump, inside the jump using my body energy. Sometimes I get two horses going in opposite directions. How is your horse at having a beachball bounced off of him? You just never know when you are going to be out on the trail and a plastic bag flies towards or under your horse. I always get my horses used to having an exercise ball roll under their feet and come out the other eye so the horse feels it is ok at changing eyes.
Lots of things you can do while stuck inside but mostly I make use of the time and consider it an OPPORTUNITY to work on myself; my feel and timing.
Have fun!
I’ve been trying to get a better awareness of where his hind feet are, will keep working towards that.
I could work more on dragging things, lead ropes dragging beside/behind him on the ground still get a bit of a reaction.
Lol, he’s been used as a “net” to toss/bounce the big horse sized exercise balls over, and under if it’s not too big. One we have at the barn gets stuck under his belly.
We do work on leg yielding, and starting to play with shoulder-in.
Straight lines are still a challenge, he gets wiggly, so that is still a work in progress as well.
I don’t usually get bored in the arena, but you have all give me ideas of things I can work on refining
“Straight lines are still a challenge, he gets wiggly, so that is still a work in progress as well.”
Make sure you are focusing on where you want to go and not looking down at hishears/neck. this may be part of why your horse is spooking at times also. Joe Wolter said an interesting thing at a clinic I attended this summer. (Paraphrasing) He said, “Even asking your horse to follow a straight line is putting pressure on the horse.”
And this is my addition…But if we are looking out ahead and giving the horse a place to go, he is going to go more enthusiastically and straighter and without pressure because you are allowing him to move and think “forward”.
That reminds me of something someone posted about getting your horse’s “birdie” in sync with yours. Darn, wish I had time to ride tonight!
Mac does silly stuff like that, too - in the summertime, he’ll jump in the air if a ground bee startles him:lol:…
I read a great article in Equus two months ago, about Horse Agility.
I first thought, oh, for cryin’ out loud…show jumping inspires doggie types to make dog sized obstacles to create dog agility, then horsie types that are afraid to get on, make horse-sized ‘doggie’ obstacles to create horse agility…
But really, the article really got to the core of teaching a horse, and spending just a wee bit of time on something, and going on to something else on a good note. It was, to me, all about the Anti-Drilling arena time.
The book is called Three Minute Horsemanship and it was written by Vanessa Bee.
[QUOTE=froglander;7453364]
That reminds me of something someone posted about getting your horse’s “birdie” in sync with yours. Darn, wish I had time to ride tonight![/QUOTE]
http://esiforum.mywowbb.com/forum1/1279.html
As for the spooking at Silly Stuff…
I think that all goes away when you get a horse Turned Loose, and on a Feel.
It’s really that simple…and that difficult.
I trained my AQHA cutting-bred mares, myself, in oh, 2003 when they were three and four. I taught them to be sacked out wrong. I taught them that even if something upset them, they should stuff their feelings, make a GREAT BIG mental (and probably also physical) brace, check out mentally and don’t move their feet.
It still haunts them, and me.
My mentor helped me with a troubled mare we bought a few years ago, getting her to really turn loose and be ABLE to be OK in any storm. I’ve seen him ride her through the sagebrush, near the hay barns, in a 30 mph wind with gusts to 60, bits of hay tarp EVERYWHERE around on the ground…she noticed them but never batted an eye.
So…I’m riding a couple of springs ago for a calendar photo shoot, on a cold, windy day. (No, I am not a supermodel. The star of the day was my husband’s border collie.)
First, on the squirrely new mare, who I can keep ‘with’ me as long as we sort of keep moving. Sort of feels like riding a bike, you can’t stop, but you can stay in control as long as you’re always going somewhere…My hat blows off, no problem. Horse-naive photographer grabs it, marches right up with hat in front of him, waving it, ‘Here’s your hat!’…maresy has no problem with this. And my hat blew off two more times…
Afternoon, on the 10-year-old mare, I can keep her ‘with’ me, stop, go wherever I need to. And then my hat blows off. I grabbed it to my belly, and fortunately this mare REALLY trusts me, because she paused just long enough to get the hat back on my head. She was about to buck me off. It was NOT OK by any stretch of the imagination to have the hat over the saddle horn.
There seems to be a ‘critical mass’ that can be reached with the horse, when BOTH you and the horse learn to ‘turn loose’ , to be able to not follow that scary story that your mind comes up with. Horses come up with stories, too, especially when they’re mentally under-challenged and full of too much good feed.
My mentor tells me about getting on a RANK pseudo-broke ranch horse, with Ray telling him, ‘If you believe he’ll buck you off, he won’t let you down.’
That reminds me of something someone posted about getting your horse’s “birdie” in sync with yours.
In my experience, if you can truly get the horse turned loose and on a feel, the horse just doesn’t find anything he needs to spook at. On a feel, when you lift your hand, the horse follows your hand…you never pull and wait for a release. Your balance shifts, your life shifts, the horse follows it- you never squeeze and wait for the horse to trot. Pressure and release is how you teach the horse what you mean, not how you should be riding/handling the horse except when you are showing the horse something new.
Glad thread popped up again. Just an example of how bad habits sneak in, when you would SWEAR you fixed them.
I have a kinda lazy 4 yr old QH. He sucks back a lot, so we have been working on GOING FORWARD on a very loose rein. We are getting good results, he respects my leg, etc.
BUT… his walk is short and slow, it is frustrating, I use my seat, too much and he jogs, so he does listen to my body. I can speed up and slow down on the buckle of 11 foot reins, but he has a hard time walking w/a purpose.
SOOOOO, in a lesson a few weeks ago, I was told I was peddling him 
NOOOOO!!
My older, semi retired horse, has a BIG walk, so when I got my new guy in May of last year, it was a big adjustment, so in a Mark Schwarm clinic in June, he told me that I was peddling my horse, to quit pestering him. I REALLY REALLY REALLY had worked on NOT doing that, but yep, I had started doing it again
I am in the NOT liking to ride around in circles of an arena, I much prefer to ride outside on trails. I still work on stuff, just enjoy the change of scenery.
Last Summer and Fall, I wanted to put as many of miles on my new guy as possible, once winter came (still is a horrid winter), I have been riding in a huge indoor arena, so been working more on fine tuning stuff.
I put out poles, cones, and even a big ball. Lately, the ball has been fun, I put up a few cones and poles to make a course to get the ball thru, I try to just use my legs, since really, you need to line up the hindend to where you want to ball to go once it is pushed.
We pitter around a lot, between the “work” sessions, he seems to really like pushing the ball around, he comes from some cutting, so it is more like play for him, but I am asking him to move his hind end in aim the ball. I think places like Farm & Fleet carry small to med balls, they are not very expensive anymore.
SOOOOO, in a lesson a few weeks ago, I was told I was peddling him NOOOOO!!
lol, don`t feel bad about that…horses invite you to do that because they find out quickly that it works. Horses keep amazing me with their intelligence.
[QUOTEI am in the NOT liking to ride around in circles of an arena, I much prefer to ride outside on trails. I still work on stuff, just enjoy the change of scenery.
][/QUOTE]
Funny how horses can mirror you…in so many ways. Even to the extent that they prefer outside with somewhere to go instead to inside going round and round and meeting four corners in every revolution. Without a purpose to riding inside, you probably both got bored…together.
I put out poles, cones, and even a big ball. Lately, the ball has been fun, I put up a few cones and poles to make a course to get the ball thru, I try to just use my legs, since really, you need to line up the hindend to where you want to ball to go once it is pushed.
We pitter around a lot, between the “work” sessions, he seems to really like pushing the ball around, he comes from some cutting, so it is more like play for him, but I am asking him to move his hind end in aim the ball. I think places like Farm & Fleet carry small to med balls, they are not very expensive anymore.
Sounds like you gave this horse and yourself a purpose to riding inside. Horses figure out pretty quickly if there is a purpose to an exercise. Give them a cavaletti to go over, a ball/another horse/cow/cat to chase and they start to see the purpose in your requests and you go somewhere together.
You probably learned something very important from this horse. Tom Dorrance and Ray Hunt said to not to look at things as problems but instead think of them as opportunities to improve the relationship.
It was nice to read your post and how you handled it.
Shermy, neat to hear about your approach.
I had an epiphany last summer, about the horse just not responding to you as it should- you want a faster, or slower walk (or trot, or canter)…and you have to pedal, or pull/hold the reins, or otherwise constantly ‘babysit’ to get the speed you want.
The epiphany was…pedaling (or holding back) is the HORSE moving YOUR feet.
It’s easier to see if the horse is just going too slow or too fast, and you aren’t ‘doing anything’ about it.
But the same thing (the HORSE is moving YOUR feet) is happening when you are in what I call the Mexican Standoff where the horse isn’t running off but you can’t take your death grip off the reins, either. Or, if you stop pedaling, horse stops immediately.
And, if the Horse is moving You…it is not possible to have said horse ‘with you’ , ‘on a feel’, ‘respecting you’…any of that. At best, you’re annoying the horse, but getting it done anyway. At worst, the horse will get fed up and spook, bolt, buck you off…whatever, because you VERY CLEARLY (in the horse’s mind) let him know HE is in charge since HE is moving YOUR feet.
I could get my horse on a feel last spring, as long as things weren’t too exciting and he liked what we were doing. Otherwise…shenanigans. And as cowy as my horse was, I had a REALLY hard time getting individual cows in, he would run to keep up but just as happily blow on by when the cow turned.
The whole ‘who is moving whose feet’ thing, really cleared a ton of stuff up for me.
And then, last fall, my mentor said (probably for the sixty-eighth time) “he’s pushing on you with that right shoulder” when he corked off in the canter. (In other words, your horse is moving your feet right there when he does that…)
I finally felt it (well, I’d always FELT it but never knew really what it meant other than the horse was corking off with me), shut it DOWN, and horsie went immediately on a feel- whatever speed I ask for, yes, maam, at a hand gallop toward the other horses and the gate. I could have stopped him on a dime with my seat While Galloping an Excited Former Racehorse Toward His Friends…never had that before!!
Too slow, is just the same as too fast, in terms of the horse moving your feet. It’s just a little less adrenaline-inspiring, less likely to get you planted in the dirt!
But yes, Shermy…change the subject, good call.
Fillabeana,
THANKS for that post. Your epiphany of last summer, just became mine.
“the horse moving your feet”…THAT is exactly IT !
Could someone help me understand the idea of “turn loose” better? I’m not quire sure what is meant by that
Fillabeana,
THANKS for that post. Your epiphany of last summer, just became mine.
“the horse moving your feet”…THAT is exactly IT !
re-runs, you’re welcome.
And sometimes I see it, but don’t really know what to do about it. I’m much better with the horses, but my border collie bitch is an EXPERT at ‘moving your feet’ by moving your face. When she licks you or lunges at you to lick you. And you can have both hands on her collar, she can NOT reach your face…but she lunges quickly with her tongue, you turn your head sideways…and she’s like “SCORE!! :D”…
sigh…
gotta keep trying, she’s a lotta dog.
And, by the same token, I’m positive that I’m going to be finding, and ‘solving’, more instances of the horses (and the cows) moving my feet for a long time to come.
Could someone help me understand the idea of “turn loose” better? I’m not quire sure what is meant by that
I hope we get a LOT of different responses to your question, frog.
First example is my little 6 year old self being taught to ‘turn loose’ by a nurse at the pediatrician’s office, for a shot/vaccine.
I was, of course, told I was brave. And that I could feel just a little wee bit of owie, if I would relax, hug my cowie (I didn’t like my teddy as much…well before my family ever had cows!), and just LET her give me the shot.
So, I let go of the thought that the shot was going to REALLY HURT, but rather just hurt a little…and that I could let that happen without freaking out.
I turned loose, I allowed the shot to be painful without having an emotional reaction to it. And thus the shot wasn’t really painful. Yeah, it was a shot…but it wasn’t upsetting.
Ray Hunt has a video titled ‘Turning Loose’.
It is one of my two favorite videos ever (along with the Buck movie).
I don’t understand why it is not being distributed any longer, unless the people in charge feel like it is too frequently misconstrued.
I think you can rent it from Giddyup Flix, but I don’t know if you can buy it any more.
The first time I saw the video, I was really kind of…huh? Why on earth is Ray doing that?
Sort of like, first reading Tom Dorrance’s book True Unity…mwhat in the world?
I could see that the horses Ray was working with were in a fabulous state when he was done, but it looked to me like he was maybe ‘over-harrassing’ them…he had a big bay TB gelding go right through the round pen panels, he whacks a mare with the flag right when it seems she should get a ‘peaceful’ reward for stepping in the trailer…but seeing it all the way through, he gets to a DEEP place in the horse, and when he’s done, the horse is just happy to be there with him, no more trouble in the horse anywhere.
Best advice, go WATCH people like Harry Whitney, Buck, Joe Wolter ride. Their ‘project’ horses that they might take over the ride, to help someone at a clinic, definitely have angst at first, but the horse ends up in a real state of peace. That true, deep peace is a horse that is ‘Turned Loose’.
That’s a bit about what the ‘Legacy of Legends’ is about. It is NOT about ‘the Vaquero Tradition’, it is about people who are going about (and know HOW to go about) getting the animals, and often the people, free of trouble/angst/deep pain in their lives.
I had hoped to go watch Tom Curtin as someone had suggested but it turns out to be the same weekend as my nephew’s 1st birthday so can’t really escape that for a horse thing…sigh.
It’s so hard to find anything like this going on in the bottom half of Florida
I saw there was recently a copy of Turning Loose in eBay, maybe one will surface again.
So in a way, do both horse and human need to be able to “turn loose” and let things happen?
I don’t know if this is along this vein or not, but a couple years ago, riding my horse in the arena, he just wasn’t cantering when I asked, so I asked and said “YES YOU ARE” when he kinda said “maybe” and he took off but I went with it instead of my normal response of checking him back. That might have been a turn loose within myself at least? Or am I way off? Canter settled and was quite nice after that btw.
he took off but I went with it instead of my normal response of checking him back.
That might have been a turn loose within myself at least?
Yup!
Other people have made the example of ‘living in the now’, and Eckart Tolle’s ‘The Power Of Now’, in terms of human turning-loose.
When your horse is confident that you are capable of leading, and that you ARE ‘in the now’, he will be able to turn loose himself.
That’s a bit of why when a ‘master’ takes your horse and turns him into a purring, melted-butter bliss cookie…things go back to ‘the usual’ after a bit when you take him back.
It takes tons of time and experience to learn how to direct/control the horse’s feet without the horse feeling like you’re going to trip him, or like you are TOO controlling. And, on top of that, you have to be just as ‘there’ and ‘with the horse’ as you ask the horse to be ‘there’ and ‘with you’.
But you get little tastes of that purring melted butter cookie…how YOU feel and how your horse feels and all of that together and you just want more.
I think that you’ve hit on a point, Frog, about the PERSON getting turned loose. I think at least a third of the riders at a Buck clinic (or, 'back when, a Ray Hunt clinic), or a Bryan Neubert clinic or any of these guys who seem to have 25 to 30 riders of every imaginable experience/ability level in the arena at once…
A third of those riders will follow instructions, try not to do anything wrong, get it right…but they never turn loose within themselves. And then they’ve paid a pretty big pile of dough for something that ‘didn’t help’ or ‘they didn’t get any individual attention’.
When you turn loose of being a ‘good rider’ or a ‘trainer’ or Big Name Trainer (or Medium Name, successful Local Trainer) , when you stop being defensive, and really agree to look at what YOU are doing that is causing particular issues to come up over and over again in the horses you ride…it doesn’t seem like there are a zillion riders taking ‘your’ attention- you’re just as busy as you can possibly handle, your brain is processing absolutely as much as it can and the clinician really DOES notice what is going on when things start to happen.
he took off but I went with it instead of my normal response of checking him back.
That might have been a turn loose within myself at least?
Yup!
Other people have made the example of ‘living in the now’, and Eckart Tolle’s ‘The Power Of Now’, in terms of human turning-loose.
When your horse is confident that you are capable of leading, and that you ARE ‘in the now’, he will be able to turn loose himself.
That’s a bit of why when a ‘master’ takes your horse and turns him into a purring, melted-butter bliss cookie…things go back to ‘the usual’ after a bit when you take him back.
It takes tons of time and experience to learn how to direct/control the horse’s feet without the horse feeling like you’re going to trip him, or like you are TOO controlling. And, on top of that, you have to be just as ‘there’ and ‘with the horse’ as you ask the horse to be ‘there’ and ‘with you’.
But you get little tastes of that purring melted butter cookie…how YOU feel and how your horse feels and all of that together and you just want more.
I think that you’ve hit on a point, Frog, about the PERSON getting turned loose. I think at least a third of the riders at a Buck clinic (or, 'back when, a Ray Hunt clinic), or a Bryan Neubert clinic or any of these guys who seem to have 25 to 30 riders of every imaginable experience/ability level in the arena at once…
A third of those riders will follow instructions, try not to do anything wrong, get it right…but they never turn loose within themselves. And then they’ve paid a pretty big pile of dough for something that ‘didn’t help’ or ‘they didn’t get any individual attention’.
When you turn loose of being a ‘good rider’ or a ‘trainer’ or Big Name Trainer (or Medium Name, successful Local Trainer) , when you stop being defensive, and really agree to look at what YOU are doing that is causing particular issues to come up over and over again in the horses you ride…it doesn’t seem like there are a zillion riders taking ‘your’ attention- you’re just as busy as you can possibly handle, your brain is processing absolutely as much as it can and the clinician really DOES notice what is going on when things start to happen.
