Leadership

Leadership

My experiment went well, but then I overdid it

Posted on July 9, 2009 by horsegirlonajourney

Riley and Star were away on a trail ride again, leaving Rocky alone in the Back 40. This time when I went out there he whinnied and ran to meet me at the gate and was all nuzzling in for reassurance, then lifting head up, then nuzzling down again. Last time he was left behind, he stood at his hay pile pretending to eat but with his body tense and ears rigid, looking at me with both eyes but not coming over until I got within six feet, when he took a step toward me and extended his muzzle.

45 foot line I let him in the arena to roll and then he galloped around bucking and kicking and neighing. As soon as he stopped making circuits and started pacing the front side, I slipped in and encouraged him to move, by wiggling the 45-foot line I held coiled in my hand. When he’d come to the corner and turn, I’d encourage the change of direction then go back to neutral as soon as he moved off. I did this several times, working on shifting my own energy from intense to neutral (and realizing again, even more clearly, that I need a lot of work on intensity, though my neutral is adequate).

He started making full circuits of the arena and I stayed in neutral except for those times he stopped in right-brain pose, head up and tense tail, at which point I pointed in the opposite direction he’d been traveling and slapped the coiled rope against my other thigh to tell zone 4 to move. He’d take off again. And then … he stopped and lowered his head and gave me two eyes and blew out through his nose. I smiled, took a step backward, and he trotted to me in a straight line except for veering off to put my on his left at the very last moment. I petted and talked to him and waited for the lick and chew, but he flung his head up and got tense again, so I sent him off.

The next time he asked to come in, I switched my rope from side to side, but had the vision in my mind that I was using the carrot stick for S-patterns. It worked and he corrected course each time and this time stood for a while and licked and chewed. I said come with me to get a cookie and he struck to me all the way to the mailbox in the corner where we keep the treats.

That was my strategy today:

When you’re anxious (RB), you’re gonna move. Even when he stands still, it’s not in an RBI pose, it’s in an “I’m just sending adrenalin to my muscles to pump them up, a la Lee Child’s Jack Reacher, before I sprint off again” readiness. In fact, it’s past Ready and well into Get Set. Moving him at this stage is a recent “what I’m doing isn’t working, I’m going to try something else.” Before I would try some RBI strategies of “be gentle with me” because I mistook his standing in place as stillness and retreating within. But having seen him go from LBE to LBI in a 3-second sucking in when I put him on-line, I thought maybe he is still being RBE, just not having to move his feet right at that second.

When you’re calm (LB), you can relax with me, and if you start to look around for something to do other than hang out, I’ll give you something active to do, like send you out and then run backwards and draw you to me. It was all at liberty and he added a Touch-It to his draw, coming in mostly straight, correcting without fear when I lightly wiggled my coils, and then touching the rope with his nose when he arrived.

It worked. Especially the treating him like RBE instead of RBI the whole time he was RB. And keeping my energy and perspective happy and positive and not being scared at his power as he ran around all loco, but supporting his ideas of motion and adding a bit more, and welcoming him in when he wanted to come in.

Then I overdid it.

When he was calm and tuned in to me, I put some cones out and put on his halter, to do a figure 8 with the longer rope. It was a disaster. He was less willing and I overdid the energy when I used the vertical swing on the rope to stop forward motion when he was going to pass the cone on the inside. I pushed him too hard and took the fun out of the pattern, and in fact he didn’t even act like he remembered how to do a figure 8, and did not offer anything: not impulsion, not bend, not “oh hey I know what those cones are for.”

I gave up on the figure 8 and tried for a few circles just to get more familiar with the feel of the new rope, and using lots of draw and send; I welcomed him in every time he came in and then sent him again right away, and that helped us reconnect. I took him to the mailbox for another cookie and then led him home to the back 40, taking him to a hay pile and feeding him some while I exchanged the halter for the fly mask.

I looked up “scared RBI” in the Savvy Club Q&A vault to verify how to word the “be gentle with me” strategy, and found an answer that I need to ponder. Thinking of the innate horsenality as the main leadership strategy and adding bits from the other quadrants to address specific behaviors but not totally replacing main strategy … Maybe this is a way to think about it, to help me get better in my responses, now that I can read him so much better.

It is very important to know your horse’s Horsenality innately. When horses show characteristics of another quadrant, it doesn’t mean that they should be categorized as THAT quadrant. For example, if a horse is innately a RBE and has moments of confidence where they get pushy and dominant with zone 1 (characteristics of LBI) if you were to use strategies for a LBI and treat them like a LBI, you would blow their confidence in you out of the water. This would be completely ineffective. What you are seeing when an innately RBE horse gets more confident and pushy is that they have become more CENTERED within the concentric circles of mild, moderate, extreme on the Horsenality chart. Centered just means they are more calm(RBE), trusting(RBI),obedient(LBE) or motivated(LBI) and showing characteristics shared by the other three quadrants. So this is where the wheels in your mind start turning…right? What is my horse innately, and what is the filter of that horsenality as a leadership strategy.

Categories: Leadership | Tags: 45-foot line, Horsenality, leadership strategy, Liberty, mistakes | Leave a comment

Our first attempt at walkies out in the world

Posted on July 1, 2009 by horsegirlonajourney

I took Rock off the property today in his new boots. We hit a threshold almost immediately — goats — and I used yo-yo to approach and retreat. I tried so hard to read him: do you need to move your feet? OK, squeeze game. Do you need to think first? Ok, yo-yo and stay back.

Rocky staring at horse-eating goats

But I feel so incompetent. I don’t know if I pushed him over any edges. I tried not to! I don’t know if we came in too soon. I think not, because Linda says you can always stop, just make sure the last thing you do is a comfortable and familiar thing, to end on a good note. (We did that.)

He could not stand still on the squeeze so he had to do several 180s with only a 1 second halt. He had his head up and nostrils huge almost the whole time he could stand still. He did drop his nose a few times and he even got some bites of dried grass, but then he’d fling it up again and have another cycle of spook and adrenalin.

With lots (lots) of backing and waiting and squeezing, we made it to the first mailbox on the route. I had cookies and put one on there and said Touch, and he did. He had a hard time finding the cookie and seemed to be torn between staring and spooking about the goats and nuzzling the mailbox until he got the cookie.

The big wide world

He has been walking beside me rather than behind me lately and I have been working on that. I am having to back him many times even just between the pasture and the barn. Does that mean my phase 4 is not strong enough? What if I try a new tactic: instead of turning and yo-yoing him back, what if I say Ok, go ahead! and turn it into a Falling Leaf, back and forth in front of me? Or even Traveling Circles? I usually feel too claustrophobic on the 12-foot line for those “big” patterns but too clumsy and tangly to trust myself with a 22-foot line in a new environment, especially with the road right there. I bet the 12 feet are enough, though, if he can squeeze with it, and it’ll be 14 feet if I extend my arm.

Today was the first time in a long time that I felt my own negative emotions rising — a little bit of fear, a little bit of frustration with myself for having studied so much but not knowing what to do in situ. I was in the Not So Sure zone of Stephanie Burns’ “Move Closer/Stay Longer.”

Here’s what Natural Horse Lover wrote about it last year:

The idea of the [comfort zone] model is to explore where you and your horse are and stretching the comfort zone by taking your horse and yourself into the Not So Sure Zone and returning back to the Comfort Zone, while avoiding the Unknown/Danger Zone.

This can be applied to any game we play, on the ground and while riding. The base line of the zones will be different for every horse and human and will change with progression in the Parelli Program.

We want our horses and ourselves to be in the Comfort Zone most of the time. If we decide to go into the Not So Sure Zone we need to know that we can deal with their reactions and with our reactions and then return safely back into the Comfort Zone. The further into the Not So Sure Zone you go, the further & longer you need to go back into the Comfort Zone for both of you. This will build you and your horse’s confidence.

It seems like it “should be” such a simple thing: take the horse for a walk.

This is simple, but it’s not easy. ~ Pat Parelli, Warren Buffet, & Lots of Other Wise People

I have to have faith that by taking the time it takes and not just jamming him along, both of us will grow in confidence, and then skills. At the moment I feel conflicted and incompetent and resigned and back at the beginning.

I am waiting for you, Vizzini. You told me to go back to the beginning. So I have. This is where I am, and this is where I’ll stay. I will not be moved. … When a job went wrong, you went back to the beginning. And this is where we got the job. So it’s the beginning, and I’m staying till Vizzini comes. … I. Am. Waiting. For. Vizzini. ~ Inigo Montoya

In a way, it is back at the beginning, because I have to go back to “walk behind me not beside me” and playing the games on the 12-foot line with the carrot stick and string dragging but not being stepped on. I have to build up my leadership and become more interesting than spooking.

After an experiment at Liberty in the round pen that resulted in the six geldings in the turnout (which shares a fence with the round pen) galloping, farting, and bucking all over the place, and Rocky doing the same in the suddenly little tiny circle with me in the middle, I took him to the Comfort Zone: the covered arena.

buck appy There I let him loose to roll and gallop and buck and kick, which he did with more energy than I’ve seen in a long time. So much that he ended up with one of his boots dangling from the pastern strap.

I stood in neutral in the middle and pretended I didn’t notice him snaking his head, holding it to the outside, or otherwise trying to dominate me. When he stopped and looked at me, I waited until he picked up a front hoof (30 seconds? a minute?) and then walked backwards in friendly pose, and he drew into me really cute and perked. I scratched him a bit and put him away in time for his dinner; we hung out at the trough for a bit so he could play with curling the water on his tongue and then sucking it.