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Detailed horsemanship: building a better send

Posted on August 7, 2013 by horsegirlonajourney

Erin interrupted herself in my lesson today, apologizing half-seriously. “I’m picking apart your send. I’m so picky! Picky picky picky!” I laughed and told her that’s what we hire her for, that I appreciate her attention to detail. “I’m picky with you because I know you can take it,” Erin said then.

Take it? I crave it. Erin excels at separating each step of a process, isolating and fixing the techniques that are causing problems, and recombining the steps into a process that works.

Lesson Flower

Today, the circle game at liberty proved powerful. River became not so much a mirror as a microscope. The cause of the problems was my send, and the solution was threefold.

1. Refine my phases

In Parelli level 2, we learn to give the horse a long phase one and then if necessary a quick two-three-FOUR. We also learn about tagging the ground, not the horse, so that the horse has time to move forward and “win” the game by not getting tagged.

What I have ingrained in my body motion is to go up two-three–FOUR! with FOUR! being a loud, strong whzzzzzzWHAPP on the circle at 12 o’clock. Typically, River moves off of 12 o’clock just in time, slowly but impudently, and swishes her tail to show her disdain.

What Erin sees happening is that I am dulling River to the whzzzzzzWHAPP. And that it looks like I am threatening her, when I raise the stick and string and focus so intently on the spot and then “attack” it so hard. At the same time, I leave myself nowhere to go if I need to escalate, and I have convinced River that I’m usually not going to touch her so she doesn’t really have to get a move on.

Erin helped me refine my phases to be effective without threatening.

Point.
Add voice cue.
Lift stick.
Wiggle stick.
Flick horse with string. A flick with intensity, but not a big loud fast overhead whzzzzzzWHAPP.

She also showed me that River is doing exactly what I’m asking her to do when I send. I have been rotating my body to “open” the circle, stepping back with one foot, and extending my arm to point to 5 or 6 o’clock. It is as if I am standing in a doorway and opening the door outward, inviting my guest to squeeze past me into the room — and then snapping at them for brushing too close to my body.

I am now practicing pointing to the spot on the circle where I want River’s nose to be when she turns and starts forward, somewhere around 1 or 2 o’clock.

As I try this at my desk, I realize this is the same as the direct rein position in level 2 freestyle riding. Hmm, how interesting!

2. Release at the appropriate time

During our warm-up, River had trouble maintaining direction at liberty at the canter when going to the left. At about 10 o’clock on the circle, she would spin with her nose away from me (sigh) and squirt back the other direction. I tried a few techniques, such as flicking some energy toward her zone 4 when she was 180 degrees from her sticking spot (at 5 o’clock on the circle) or the “OH, you want to go right? okay, go right FASTER” game. I also tried moving in front of her to block her after her U-turn and drive her back in the correct direction. This strategy worked best, but I still wasn’t getting full circles.

Erin helped me discover that I was giving small, intermittent releases when turning River around. I’d release when River slowed, pressure her to turn and then release when she was facing away, pressure to drive her forward and release as soon as she took a step. With Erin’s guidance, I brought my energy up and kept the pressure on until River had slowed, pivoted, launched into the canter, and taken a couple of strides.

This allowed River to find a true release in upholding her responsibility to maintain gait and direction. It also communicated my directions more clearly than a series of RED LIGHT green light RED LIGHT green light. As she learns that she can trust the true release, she will seek it, and not expend so much extra energy in changing directions.

3. Delegate responsibility

Standing calmly when asked is another form of maintaining gait and direction. That means that when I back her out during yo-yo game, she can wait until she gets the next signal, which could be to come back in, or it could be to circle, or it could be to sidepass — it could be anything. It also means she can stand still for having her feet cleaned, without stepping forward to nuzzle my helmet or slobber on the saddle. The “send” in this context is my asking her “halt here” and is no different ffom asking her to “canter left” or “trot right.”

It’s about refining my control of my intention, energy, and relaxation so that River can become calm, connected, and responsive, no matter what we are doing.

Categories: Feel, Liberty, River | Tags: horseback riding, parelli natural horsemanship, penn valley | 3 Comments

Being particular and trusting

Posted on August 2, 2013 by horsegirlonajourney

The principles I am working on lately are “be particular without being critical” and “trust that he’ll respond but be ready to correct, not more one than the other.” I’ve had one of those “ooohhhhh!” moments, where I suddenly perceive the depth of yet another glib Parellism.

Riding with both hands on the reins and my hands up and “ready” is not trusting that he’ll respond. It’s not even being ready to correct — it’s standing there with the red pen poised over the paper, waiting for the other to dare to write a word so that I can cross it out. It’s projecting a beam of energy that says “no!” and then wondering why my partner isn’t doing something.

There is time to respond. There is time, if a correction is necessary, if my leg cue or my breath or my belly button isn’t enough to communicate the correction, to raise my hand from its relaxed position on the mane or pommel or horn and add a rein cue. “There are four moments in a second,” says Pat, describing how quickly a horse can change, how the tiniest gesture on our part can mean so much to them so quickly. And it’s okay to use more than one of those moments to get my hands in place if it becomes necessary. Someday I will be fast and smooth; for now, I am practicing smooth and slow, because my fast right now is buzzy and spastic, just hovering there to swoop down at the slightest provocation.

I have not been particularly particular with Rocky. My habit has been to blame myself for not being aware of his phase 1 of a behavior, so that by the time I become aware, it’s “too late” to address it. (Not that I still blame, exactly, but it’s a useful shorthand.) If Rocky’s rubbing his head too hard on me, in a way he wouldn’t dare with a higher ranking horse, I blame (or credit) myself for not noticing his approach sooner, not anticipating his actions sooner. Thus, by the time the Behavior happened, it’s “too late,” because I’ve already allowed the horse’s phase 1 or phase 2 of approach.

What it comes down to is that I have not been giving Rocky enough responsibility. In my attempts not to micro-manage, I swung too far the other way.

My heart is in the right place, in that I want to be a fair leader who doesn’t overreact. But my habit has undermined the fairness, as Rocky never knows from one day to the next whether he’ll be corrected or not, which puts in him a position of constantly having to test the boundaries and find out.

My new behavior is to respond to whatever it is, whenever I see it. To allow Rocky the responsibility to be respectful, to remove his burden of seeking the boundaries every day, and to uncritically, unemotionally remind him of his side of the partnership, when necessary. In this way, he knows I’m doing my best to hold up my side as well.

And I’m recognizing that I don’t have to respond in 1/4 of a second. I have time for an intense, measured movement that is not so swift that it blurs at 30 frames per second.