Last night I had to get the vet out for a pony mare who was colicky - no impaction but cowpies, some explosive diarrhea and a lot of gas. Her gut must have felt like it was on fire. We got her sorted out, U/S okay, IV fluids and pro-bios on board… and chatted while the patient came out of her sedation. We got on the subject of local “woo” - including one vet in the area who is now an advocate of extreme woo in all things.
My vet then mentioned a client (not by name) who she was sad that she had to drop - as that woman was very invested in all things THW (the vet brought her up - I did not) and questioned everything the vet advised about her mare and even asserted that several chronic issues had been fixed by TTHW and her magical laying on of hands. These issues are just getting worse, the outlook for the mare is grim and my vet is having to just step away. `
There is a point in most horses lives while they are still fragile, where one bad experience will be a setback. And then there is a point where they have enough miles under their belt and trust you and if you push one time it doesn’t undo everything.
In a show situation hopefully the horse has already learned about jumps or dressage letters or trail class obstacles or crowds or whatever and you aren’t trying to show a horse that has never seen these components of his discipline. You can still use all these techniques on the ground outside the ring. And in the ring, if your horse has a meltdown, you can choose to be your best self and not revert to pushing the horse in a negative way just because there are eyes on you.
My experience has been that once horses understand they are generally safe with you they can handle more environmental chaos. I think that some horses spooks become worse because they know they will be effectively punished for spooking and so they spook at the shadow then bolt from the riders anticipated response
Good description. I did something similar with my Dutch gelding who tends to be very herd bound. It does require that the human be very alert to the horse, and be willing to accept that the animal’s expressions of fear or hesitancy need to be a respected part of the process. The “being seen and getting got” as WS describes it. For my gelding that meant seeing his ‘stickiness’ in walking down the aisle as the beginning of his hesitancy to go to the arena alone. It took me a good month to get solid results, but it has worked very well. And the look in the horse’s eyes is a big reinforcer for me.
The WS videos explain it pretty well. But it is a big perspective shift from even an R+ approach, where behavior is something that is imposed on the animal. The CAT-h is a more truly collaborative process.
One does not. If the animal is overwhelmed, then you work on what you can work on. But there is ABSOLUTELY NO ROOM for any idea “rushing” the process.
The simple answer to your question, is you make the decision that you are not going to do the X you had planned, but instead shift your plan to something the animal can cope with. Then you make a new plan for the coming months, to work on the issues.
Yes, all of this. Ideally, you don’t go off property and face challenges if you cannot successfully negotiate those challenges at home. And you build that trust in small steps at home, so the horse has confidence to push past a situation in which you can’t “start from the beginning.” The horse should have enough trust in you, and stable psyche that when he takes a peek at the flowers, and you use your inside leg, say “Yes, those are flowers, Come Please” and then you take your leg off and subtly release some tension in your arms when he goes past it.
At home, you aren’t training your horse not to look at things; it’s the opposite. You are teaching him to look at things, analyze them, accept them, and move on. That’s the fundamental difference between stereotypical desensitizing training, and the Cat-H stuff. You don’t “attack” the horse with leaf blowers, chainsaws, bullwhips, plastic tarps, etc and create havoc around him endlessly until he ceases to react. Instead, you allow the horse to approach the Fear Object with caution, and through sensitive timing you allow him to process it and make peace with it as His Own Decision. The horse builds trust in you as leader, because you “see” his fear and help him figure it out. He then learns to think first, react second, and has enough faith in you to trust you when you do need to push him through something. (Because it WILL happen, we can’t prepare for everything). As long as you have a solid foundation of respect, he won’t be so fragile that you will unravel his confidence and he’ll forgive you for pushing him a bit. Horses are so smart and so kind to forgive us of our mistakes, and learn to do the most incredible things just because we ask them.
Okay I am just over here coloring my wheel but I wanted to note that part of the pagan parelli method of horsemanship there is an entire dvd series of tapes you can purchase for about $250 off ebay called the liberty tapes and in it the LP smiling bottom cheek goddess talks about approach and retreat. There some tapes on working the horse in different comfort zones too. Or approach and retreat with desensitizing with fly spray, etc.
And then good ol monty roberts has a lot of approach and retreat for trailer loading.
But my personal pet peeve is when people talk obnoxiously when letting the horse sniff and process when trailer loading.
I mean, sniffing all the poop on a trailer ramp takes a lot of brain cells then trying to discern okay walk on good boy cluck cluck cluck must be anoying as hell to a horse.
Maybe ill make a youtube video called “the silent loader”…how to load your horse without clucking.
Anyway, back to the smiling cheek goddess - if you know you know - i was whining about my tailbone hurting the other day and i was told by my coach that it is because I dont squeeze those muscles and hold it up when I ride. It made me think of linda parellis make your butt smile videos.
There are some great books on anatomy and riding. Buy your coach one for whichever holiday is coming up next. You have a saddle fit issue or a posture issue or both, not an ass squeezing issue.
I got my youngster to let me open our first under saddle gate today because I had time. I wasn’t out with other impatient riders. I was out with a friend, who was riding my other horse. Because they were both my horses, I felt more empowered to say, “If this takes 10 or 15 or 30 minutes, then that’s what it takes.” My other horse is quite content to stand around (especially if he doesn’t have to go first or do the gate), and my friend, another American expat who lost her lease horse when she moved here, is thrilled to just to be riding, so she’s happy to let me do whatever.
It made all the difference in the world. When you start feeling stressed and under pressure, you are screwed.
Using various forms of eye training seems to be the guru go-to to push their own agenda. Start with a few quality images that are universally agreed upon to be good images. Slowly, introduce images that align with your agenda. Soon, you have a whole slew of followers who believe they have received the best eye training available. Only one problem, the eye training they received from THW normalizes very commonly recognized pain stances in horses, and demonizes any stance where, heaven forbid, the horse lift his head to use his binocular field of vision to assess an object at a distance. That moment when he raises his head often creates a striking pose for a photo where the horse looks alert and energetic. Ask THW acolytes, and they will immediately say the horse has an unhealthy brachiocephalicus and abnormal jugular groove and no topline.
I don’t believe these people would recognize a true topline if it smacked them in the face, especially not with the eye training they’ve been fed for months.
Definitely one of the most important components. Take the time it takes. The only ‘pressure’ is artificial pressure we create to conform to expectations. It took a month for my guy to get comfortable going from the barn to the indoor. So what. He’s pretty rock solid now and the difference it makes in his mind between the experience of me letting him move at his own pace versus me trying to ‘make’ it happen faster is transformational.
Nailed it! Let’s also not forget the fly twitch line that many horses get in summer that indicates some sort of shoulder nerve impingement. And swollen salivary glands which are ALWAYS caused by bad riding.
@MapleBreeze back to finish my incomplete thought - sorry about that - the saddle fitting thing can be as simple as a twist that is the wrong width. I crippled myself for a week and couldn’t ride for 2 after sitting 10 minutes in a wrong twist. My seat bones were literally bruised. In a saddle that fits me ok, I may feel them (my seat bones) if it doesn’t have a well padded seat, but I won’t be hurting! Note, the saddle above, the one that crippled me - very high end. Latest this that and the other, squishy seat, gorgeous leather, etc. It just wasn’t the right shape for me.
If by “very hard” you mean pretty much impossible sure.
In my pro days, I rode a lot of horses whose primary issue was their owner’s lack of feel. I refer to this as “riding like an anvil”.
Most of the horses were anxious types who were real triers but very worried about possibly being in trouble. Anvils are not a good fit for this type.
One day I was helping one of these impossible to help clients at a local h/j schooling show with one of these “anxious trier” horses. I explained: this is just a schooling show, not the Olympics, and he is jjjuuust starting to learn lead changes so our plan is to just trot the changes and pet him for a nice calm down up transition. Ok?Who cares about whether or not we win this podunk schooling show, let’s make this calm can happy for everyone. Ok you have a few more before it’s your turn so go hang out quietly and calmly in the schooling area.
Ten minutes later doesn’t this owner come riding back reporting that she tried a lead change and he was so good that then she’d thought she’d see if he’d do a line of TEMPI CHANGES and he even got two of them before they fell apart.
Based on how smugly she reported this it was obvious in her mind she was showing her trainer and also the whole rest of the schooling area a thing or two about who knows how to ride, since we don’t see anyone else getting half a line of tempis in the schooling area of a h/j show, so she was surprised when my response was more along the like of “WTF?? WHAT DID I TELL YOU about the lead changes??!”
In her mind, she was showing off and impressing the rest of the schooling area. In her horse’s mind (who is always worried that maybe he made a mistake OMG what if I just made a mistake) she asked for a lead change, which he gave her, and then three strides later she asked for the other lead again. That reads an awful lot like WRONG ANSWER to a horse that is always worried he might have made a mistake.
But ok, you “showed off” to the other people in the schooling ring who aren’t even looking at you because they aren’t interested in what you’re doing. Good job. Congratulations, your trainer will now be putting Humpty Dumpty back together again and would you please for the love of Christ develop an interest in tennis.
That situation articulated something for me that I had had a feeling of but hadn’t yet been able to put into words, so here goes:
If you want to take a quick litmus test of your own riding, ask yourself what your head space is like when you’re working with your horse.
If your primary focus whenever you’re on your horse is making him feel like a rockstar, hey man this is a new environment today but you can do it, I promise you you can do it, come on just a little bit ok! there we go! now we’re rolling, good boy this is good but ok what do we think about our canter lead? here we can try again, there you go! Now we’re rolling!
…you ride like a professional.
If your primary focus when you’re on your horse is I just want to have a nice day I hope he doesn’t do anything bad YOU CAN ABSOLUTELY NOT BACK UP HERE!! FORWARD FORWARD omg I hope Susie with her rich husband and smug face didn’t see that WRONG LEAD IT’S SUPPOSED TO BE THE OTHER LEAD omg this is so embarrassing dammit we drove all this way and spent all this money and already we have backed up and started off on the wrong lead what a waste already today is a disaster omg I bet everyone at the barn is going to think I suck…
…you ride like an amateur.
And, remember how I said that this situation with this client and her fkn tempi changes in the schooling area articulated something for me that I hadn’t been able to clearly put into words before?
I was completely delighted with how my little red horse did that day. That video was his first trip, which obviously we did not complete. Second trip we went back in and still had a refusal and a bit of hesitation to go around the one turn, but he made it around!! He got so much more confident!! What a good boy! That day was a phenomenal success in my book.
And what was COTH’s response to that video?
Suffice to say, you can see the two different mindsets playing right out in the thread.
It always surprises me when people complain that their horse embarrassed them (with one notable exception of a mare that would go into heat whenever off property…now THAT was embarrassing). This sport is humbling but you have to approach it with this idea that you are helping a prey animal through a potentially very stressful situation for them.
I took my green bean a few years ago in a w/t hunter class. It was supposed to be for 12 and under, but no one signed up, and he was super spicy so I asked the show management if they would mind if we did it. The ring is huge, and it was a breed show so there’s a ton of really scary stuff in the ring. He clocked around by himself like a champ despite doing airs above the ground earlier that morning in the warmup. Even though his show record looks really weird right now, the whole idea was to help him be comfortable with all that new stuff. And he did brilliantly.
I think the judge was a bit puzzled, but that didn’t matter. I was just happy with him. I’m sure people watching the show were like WTH…but I don’t care about that either.
I love this! It totally took my WB mare to humble me enough in this respect. Only taking her to schooling shows where I don’t give two f’s what happens outside of coming home with clean breeches. I had to learn to laugh whenever she does something that seems ridiculous. Also, back to some previous comments, it is much easier to have this mindset when you have some physical fitness and the butt velcro that comes with it. Not all the way there with my mindset, but I’m getting there.
I am not sure it is reasonable to expect everyone to keep up a super star level of SM exposure such as Warwick Schiller and others. Nashon Cook does a good job of offering very small teaspoons of SM content, but absolutely NOT giving away his techniques. Does anyone think he is trying to keep a “secrecy/cult” environment?
I believe he had a small SM blow up when a planned event, in partnership with another trainer, went kablooey. I forget the details. (Someone had told Trainer #2 something negative about NC training, perhaps ?) But if Nashon was a woman with “witch” in the business name, no doubt folks would have been plenty eager to rake him over the coals for this.
I don’t see that TWH is dramatically different from plenty of people who are operating at a similar level of the industry. They are NOT Pat Parelli or Anne Kursinski, but they do have devoted clientele.
I am a big fan of Mary Wanless. But for years whenever I would speak of her positively on COTH invariably the same (one or two people, I forget) would pipe up loudly about the bad experience they had. As if George Morris hadn’t been an insulting jerk for decades, one famous Eventing trainer wasn’t filmed walloping a horse over a water jump with a branch, etc, etc.
As a matter of fact, COTH has made a virtue of slamming Dressage Hub for doing what COTHers do here daily. Highlight a bad incident, day, etc and blowing it up to apocalyptic levels.
I find a very uneven application of suspicion, scorn, etc depending upon how ‘soft’ the target is.
