I like to believe that I have a special relationship with my
young Morgan. At home he is like a
dog. He comes when he is called, leaving
friends and hay at any time of the day or night to trot up to me with a willing
expression on his face. We can work and
ride away from his friends without a single bobble. The events we have attended up until this
weekend have confirmed in my mind that he is a willing steady partner relying
on our special relationship to keep a cool, calm head in any setting. Yea, me! Yea, for my exceptional training
skills! Yea, for finally getting one of those quiet, calm, cool and collected
horses!
Then this weekend we had our regional Gathering that we had
been looking forward to and working hard to be ready for all summer. I was excited to finally be able to ride into
any arena without having to drag the retinue of support horses that Chico (my
previous CD partner) always required to go anywhere. Finally, I was going to be one of those big
time professionals with a nice calm horse standing sedately and waiting outside
the arena. We started off on our first evening
walking the horses around the arenas we would be showing in and he took it all
in stride. Nothing phases him as he is
not one to spook or be watchy in a new environment. I was feeling pretty dang good.
The next morning we headed off for our first class of
Partnership on the Ground confident our winning performance would turn heads. My goal for this show was to earn my
qualifying scores to move to the liberty division at Finals. Partnership on the Ground is designed to showcase
quiet partnership, subtle cues, correct movement and execution of maneuvers. We
walked away from the barn on a loose lead, together and focused. Once Ernie and I walked into the arena he suddenly
became some other horse I had never seen before. Out of nowhere (at least that I could tell) I had a screaming, rearing, pawing,
dancing dervish. While we watched the
other folks do their tests I did my best to quietly reassure my suddenly needy
boy before we did our test. When I
couldn’t make any progress I told Dan to go get his pasture mate that we had
left in the barn. Maybe he was more herd
bound than I knew! Nope, no
improvement. It distracted him for just
a bit but then he was right back to being anything but connected and focused on
our partnership as I tried to get him to refocus and join me in the task at
hand. I tried everything I could think of,
petting, soothing, talking, blowing, lowering his head because horses raise their
heads to scream (nope, he kept his head down and screamed at my boots). Finally, it was my turn to go in. I told the judge there was a possibility this
would turn into a training session rather than a judged test because I wasn’t
sure he could keep it together through an entire test. As soon as we stepped across the boards at A
he was all business. Admittedly a bit
more distracted and over sensitive than at home but ready to go to work. Huh, another surprise. When Chico had these meltdowns, he was
incapable of working; things only got worse on the court. At least we had that going for us.
We kept his support horse with him for the rest of the day
though he was definitely not looking towards him for comfort. Then during our final riding tests that day one
of the horses in the barn raised a bit of a ruckus. The arena we were showing in is right next to
the barn. Ernie immediately checked out
and wanted only to get back to the barn to see why he hadn’t been invited to
the party. We made it through our test,
barely, but I knew it was time for me to attempt to figure this situation out
and nip this behavior in the bud.
In Cowboy Dressage we are all about supporting the horse, helping
them to feel safe and comfortable and able to focus. We allow support horses so that horses
nervous in a new environment don’t feel overwhelmed. We encourage quite connection and
reassurance. We have ground classes just
to emphasize how important we believe this connection to be in building a
better partnership under saddle. It’s is
therefore rare at a Cowboy Dressage show to see a horse so completely off his
rocker. Especially one that can be standing
amongst his horsey buddies and still looking for the better party to join.
So, how do you handle a horse in this situation? Well, I’m not sure I have the perfect answer or
the right one. Time will tell. But, this is how we handled it this
weekend. When I realized that Ernie wasn’t
scared, or missing his buddies (since we offered those solutions to no effect)
I decided that perhaps he was acting out because he wasn’t getting what he
wanted in that moment. My social butterfly
really wanted to be wherever he thought the party was and he believed it must
be where he wasn’t. It didn’t matter how
many horses he had around him at the time, the horse that walked by at the other
end of the grounds was obviously having more fun. He wanted to be there. His ability to focus once in the arena (for
the most part) told me he needed to go to work and move his feet. So, that’s what we did. Every time his mind left me and what we were
doing he got to move his feet. If his
mind left accompanied by airs above ground and screaming he got to move his
feet with a fair bit of energy in order to keep as many of his feet on the
ground as possible. If his mind left
with just a little look and a call he got to do a turn on the forehand or a
turn on the haunches. It wasn’t always
pretty and there were times he had to do quite a bit of moving but more and
more he came back to me and was able to focus again. He tried rearing, pawing with all four feet (a
trademark move of his) and various other dance moves. If his feet were still he tried orally
satisfying himself on my hat, the whip, the lead rope, the chair etc.
By our last class he was pretty dang good. The show was running late at the end of the
day and we had over an hour to hang out in the wings of the indoor arena
waiting while horse after horse walked by where we were standing. He had one other horse from our group (not a
pasture mate) waiting there with him. When
he got bothered he moved but the movements became smaller and smaller until it
was maybe just stepping back with one foot.
Eventually my sweet yellow kid came back to me by inches. When all was said and done we ended the show
with our personal high score and the Open Partnership High Point. Not bad for a horse that spent a good part of
the show leaping around like a BLM Mustang just off the range.
As always when I get hit with a training situation that I’m
not 100% ready to handle I do A LOT of introspection and thinking the situation
through. I try to think about what my
mentors would do in this situation. Then
I try some stuff and see what works. I
used to be frozen with the fear of doing the wrong thing and making the
situation worse. Now I know I can feel
my way through it and figure out if I need to keep pushing until it gets better
or if I need to change tactics. It’s
still scary sometimes when you feel like you are in over your head or wonder if
you are capable of fixing this particular problem. Maybe truly great trainers never feel that
way, but I know I do.
I guess what I’m trying to say with this blog post isn’t,
wow, look at me and my fabulous training skills. It’s also not meant to be a how to for when
your horse is acting like a lunatic because I wouldn’t necessarily handle
another horse the same way. I think the
take home message (or at least what I took home from this) is don’t be afraid
to step outside of your box and try some stuff.
Try to imagine why your horse is acting out. Had Ernie been scared, nervous or otherwise fearful
I could have made things much worse for him this weekend. I knew him well enough to realize that wasn’t
the case this time. I wouldn’t be surprised
if there weren’t some people scratching their heads watching our rodeo
wondering why I didn’t just go get him his buddy so he could take a breath and
focus. It was because it didn’t help
this time. Not at all. I had to try some other stuff until I found
something that worked and built on it. Even
in a world built on soft feel sometimes stuff is going to get a little ugly
before it gets better. Sometimes we must
up the pressure enough to be effective and make a breakthrough. Sometimes you have to wing it a little. I hope by the next show I’ll have less of
this teenage nonsense to deal with.
Maybe not. It may take a couple
of years. But, if he keeps showing me
the good stuff once we go to work, we’ll keep managing the baby stuff as long
as it takes. So, my apologies to all of
my fellow showmen this weekend. I hope
my teenager didn’t interfere with any of your rides. Thank you to all the offers of support and
understanding. Next time, hopefully we
won’t be the ones throwing the tantrum in the cereal isle.
