Contents:
Which DVD?
Clinic Report by Elsie Wain
White Birch Clinic Notes
The "Why Would You Leave Me? Lesson: Head Position
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After those long and very intense posts in the August Newsletter, here are some shorter posts responding to questions about foundation work.
Which DVD?
by Alexandra Kurland
posted to the list August 20
Muriel asked:
"Can someone perhaps help me? I'm going thru Alex's DVDs at fast motion to
find a particular scene but no luck.
It's about mugging . Alex is working a black horse who is already very well
behaved, a mare, Alex entices the mare to mugging and then shapes de pose, . . "
Hi Muriel,
Laurel is right. That scene is in the Lesson One: Getting Started with the Clicker DVD. It's in the new material that I added to the original Lesson One video when I converted it to the DVD format. So go through the chapters to the final hour of the DVD and you'll find what you're looking for. I was using Sandy's quarter horse mare, Nikita to illustrate the foundation lessons.
And I wasn't really shaping the pose at all in this section, but simply reinforcing Nikita for something Sandy had already taught her. In this section you aren't watching a naive horse learning the exercises, but a very experienced well mannered horse demonstrating just how beautifully they can be done. I was trying to entice some mugging behavior by feeding in too close to my body so you could see what you do when a horse mugs. Nikita was having none of it. She kept going even more solidly into pose. So try as I might to undo all her good training (with apologies to Sandy), she remained the well-mannered horse that she is.
Nikita is the horse who was featured in last year's Perfect Horse articles. And she's also in the Lesson 4: Stimulus Control DVD having her very first single rein riding lesson. Sandy has done a superb job with her. Sandy was given Nikita by a local trainer/dealer who couldn't ride her. Nikita would buck, bolt, spin. She knew all the tricks for sending a rider flying and with her powerful quarter horse build she made it look easy!
I remember one of the early sessions with Nikita. She and Sandy were still negotiating their way through the early stages of clicker training. Nikita understood standing on a mat, but not leaving the mat. She'd figured out that keeping her feet planted on the mat got Sandy to give her treats, so standing on the mat was where she was going to stay. If you tried to ask her to leave, Nikita got ugly. She'd snake her neck at you and bite at the lead rope. It was the same emotional conflict and defensiveness that was triggered when she bucked riders off. So working through this lesson was a major piece for Nikita. It sorted through the learning how to learn process. When she felt conflicted and didn't understand what people wanted, her old way was to become aggressive. We needed to show her a different way to untangle her emotions.
Sandy did a wonderful job of explaining to Nikita that yes, standing on a mat was indeed a good thing, and would get her reinforced. But leaving the mat was also a good thing, and that, too, would earn reinforcements. In other words: for every exercise you teach, there is an opposite exercise you must teach to keep things in balance.
It's interesting what a huge ripple effect something as simple as teaching a horse to stand on a mat can have. Mat work is about balance: physical, emotional, and mental. The horse has to find physical balance to get on the mat in the first place. She has to have emotional balance to stay on the mat for longer and longer duration. And she has to have mental balance to understand that leaving the mat is okay. There are other ways to earn reinforcement besides this one highly, reinforced new game. When you have all three pieces in place, you will see a huge change in your horse.
That's what Nikita demonstrated so dramatically. I watched her snarling and snapping at Sandy in this early session. I came back a few weeks later and saw an emotionally settled, relaxed horse standing politely on the mat, and leaving without a fuss. They had both understood the larger picture that the mat work represents and worked their way through this very important foundation in the understanding of clicker training.I think that's one of the reasons I chose Nikita for the Lesson One DVD. I didn't film that early training session where things looked anything but pretty. I couldn't show you the befores, just the polite afters. But I knew her history and how much Sandy had accomplished with her. They've become a super team as Nikita's many appearances in the books and DVDs demonstrate so well.
Alexandra Kurland
theclickercenter.com
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Clinic Report by Elsie Wain
Elsie Wain from the Yukon has written the following clinic report. She doesn't have access to yahoo lists on her computer, so she sent this directly to me and asked me to post it. It's a wonderful report. Enjoy!
Alexandra Kurland
theclickercenter.com
Yukon Clicker Camp 2008
by Elsie Wain
The third annual “clicker camp” was held recently at Gem’s Haven Stable in Whitehorse. Once again, we were thrilled that Alexandra would take the time to travel so far to teach us so much!
The camp this year was an “advanced” camp, focused on riding. Most of the participants had been to at least one of Alexandra’s clinics, so were very familiar with the work. What we were all dying for now, was to ride!
Here in Whitehorse, we have a clicker group of around ten people who get together monthly to visit, help each other problem solve, hone our skills – and eat! Food seems to be a very important part of our get-togethers, and the 2008 camp was no different. Ross and Cindy Smith host the camp at their beautiful property 20 miles south of Whitehorse. Many of the participants camp out, and most of the meals are shared. No one goes hungry at our clinics!
Day 1
We started the day by doing the traditional round table where each of us talked about what we hoped to learn. We also talked about why we were interested in this form of communication with our horses. There were about 10 of us, and it took all morning! There was lots of time to share and to hear from Alexandra about her most recent “ah haa’s”.
Ross and Cindy have a new “club house” aka Cindy’s new tack shed, but it worked perfectly for the “talking” part of this clinic. We had access to hot water and coffee and a cooler full of drinks. It was warm and dry, which was really nice this year – it’s been such a dreary summer!
In the afternoon, we went to the horses. Alexandra already knew most of the horses. We talked about what we had been working on, problems etc. This year, I had my horse “Miss Friz” in the clinic. Frizzy is a five year old Morgan filly who I bought when she was three. What sold me on her was her lovely natural movement and her calm inquisitive personality. I purchased her from a long time breeder of “western working” Morgans. Eldon’s wife was in a wheelchair so they had a ramp into their kitchen. Barb really liked the horses, but couldn’t always get out to see them, so Eldon would bring special ones into the house to visit. Miss Friz was one of those.
I had her professionally started when she was three, then brought her home to the Yukon. That first summer, although I felt that I was making progress with her, she always felt like I was riding a ticking bomb, and that calm inquisitive nature had somehow disappeared through the starting process. One particularly nice afternoon last summer, she seemed relaxed and sweet, so after completing a lesson with her, I asked my husband if he wanted to just walk her around – after all, he owned half of her! Tom has an artificial knee, which inhibits his mounting somewhat. He dragged his heel over the dock of her tail and she went into a complete panic, piling Tom and running off. I rode her 3 times after that, and each time I could feel absolute terror, her heart pounding under my leg. I really like this little horse a lot, and the tools I had in my tool kit to help her through her fear and become my valued partner was clicker, so last September we started all over again.
At the 2007 Clinic, I was actually using my other Morgan mare, Misty. I trust Alexandra’s knowledge and observations so much that I really wanted her to see what I was dealing with. Frizzy gae a wonderful demonstration of a horse who had many fears, including ear issues. I couldn’t come near them without her pulling away. Of course this made bridling or haltering problematic. Here in the Yukon, we have a lovely little black fly that likes to make a meal of the inside of the horse’s ears. Without being able to touch Frizzy’s ears, I could neither medicate nor put on bug dope, so the black flies had a field day. Alexandra demonstrated “targeting on a point of contact” using the power of the clicker to teach Friz to target her ear to Alex’s hand. I spent most of the winter teaching Friz to target various body parts – feet too – to my hand. I also did a lot of “you can’t scare me”, using everything I could think of to touch Friz all over. By the time the 2008 clinic rolled around, many of the issues that had caused extreme anxiety last year had gone away, but Alexandra still saw a lot of tension in Frizzy’s hind end. So, under Alex’s guidance, I practiced TTouch on her tail.
Because Miss Friz was so reactive, I spend a great deal of time working on head lowering. Head lowering has come to mean two things for her: a) she can relax if she needs to, and b) she has a way of telling me “enough”. I also used Alexandra’s DVD on using the clicker to deal with fear of saddling to help Miss Friz with her saddle issues. Lifting the saddle, putting the saddle on, lifting the fenders, un-doing the cinch, doing up the cinch – all have become cues for Friz to lower her head, so she already had a way to communicate with me.
We linked the tail and hind end work with head lowering as well. I would perform the tail work, and when Friz lowered her nose to the ground, I would click, then very slowly and gently slide my hands down the tail bone to a release before I moved to her head to gave her the treat. To gain an understanding of what the horse was feeling, Alexandra worked on me, using my arm and shoulder to show how a slow downward motion would feel for the horse, compared to just dropping the tail and going straight to the treat. Of course this lead to a broader group discussion about how we release in all our work with the horses. So many of us have been taught to release immediately to “mark” for the horse that this is exactly what we want. When Alexandra used this quick release on my arm, I felt jarred and abandoned. Another lesson to assimilate – slooooww releases! It was so neat to feel Frizzy release tension and really stretch down through her spine and neck.
As an aside, I have been doing tail work since the Clinic, and for the first time, she was very good with her hind feet for the farrier. Usually she is very fidgety and we do her in stages, but not this last time – she stood like a rock. Of course she was rewarded a lot for being so good! Very cool.
For Alexandra, this first afternoon was one for “data collection”. The real work would start the next day.
Day 2
At the 2007 clinic, we played a lot with “micro-shaping”. This year, we took this work to the rider. We started “micro-riding”.
We split into groups of three. One person would be the “doer”, one would be the “monitor”, and one would watch. The monitor would ask the doer to move their shoulder blade (scapula) up. With their hand resting gently on the doer’s scapula, the monitor could feel the movement. At first these movements were very “macro”. When asked to move our shoulder blades up, most of us would lift the shoulder joint, or if we did isolate the shoulder blade, the movement was very stiff and big. From these gross macro movements however, we were able to become aware of our shoulders, and move to making the slightest movements by just “thinking” about our shoulder blades. The monitor could definitely feel the movement, and after practicing for a bit, the watcher could see a very subtle shift in the doer’s body. Day 2 was really just about experimenting and opening ourselves up to see and feel. Interestingly, this body work left most people feeling very grounded and relaxed.
In the afternoon, we took our new-found body awareness to the horses. This was the first time we were actually on our horses, and for the most part the “micro-riding” didn’t show a huge change, but there were some interesting observations. I generally start a lesson with Miss Friz by working on WWYLM on the ground. When I thought about my shoulder blade and slid it out, she walked beside me in a softer position – a little more level headed and relaxed. She also curled around me in a softer frame. Wow, these creatures really are the masters at reading body language!
Day 3
On day 3, Alexandra took us from moving our shoulder blades up, down, right and left, to feeling our ribs, the top of our thigh bone, including turning it in and out, to feeling our shin bone, and feeling the “bubbling spring”. This is a term borrowed from the Martial Arts. In Tai Chi, you learn to feel energy coming up from the earth, through the area just behind your toe joints, or the “bubbling spring”. We added an awareness of “roots” growing down into the ground (Centered Riding), then energy bubbling up, “breathing” into our back, opening the area at the base of the skull (more Centered Riding images), putting the tongue on the roof of the mouth (softens the jaw), and finally channelling the energy out of the top of our head. For some, the sensations were very strong, and different participants felt different things. Many of the monitors were shocked at how much they could feel going on in their partner’s body, simply by having their hand on the shoulder. The watchers too were amazed at the difference in people’s bodies and posture. If we can feel so much with just one hand on a person’s shoulder, imagine what the horse must feel!
Interspersed with the body work was Alexandra’s “rope handling” skills. Having gone through the body work, we could now see where the slightest movement could be felt by the horse. Many of the monitors felt like they were being yelled at when the doers did “macro” movements. This thinking translated nicely to how we need to ride, using our aids in a “micro” sense. Clara had kindly brought “Helen House Horse” to the clinic. Helen is actually an oval saddle rack, with four legs, a neck and a head. The body is covered with a dense foam material, the neck is strips of wood, and the face is made from the same foam as the body. She can be tacked up with a real saddle and bridle. She is a stationary soul who kindly lets us ride her to practice our position and how we use the reins.
After doing our body work, we each took a turn on Helen, practicing the picking up of the rein, asking for the jaw, the poll, the neck and finally the hip. Having spent so much time freeing up our shoulder blades, we were able to lift the rein and ask for a give in a lovely fluid motion. The horses were going to love this!
In the afternoon, those of us with horses in the clinic took turns practicing with our horse. Just before going out, Alexandra presented her big surprise and unveiled her most recent video – mainly shot at the Whitehorse clinic in 2007. The year before, Cindy and her Halflinger Merlin had given a great demonstration of taking the wiggly one rein horse to a collected, beautifully soft horse through an exercise of “flipping” around cones. After watching Cindy and Merlin, we were all anxious to go try the exercise again, this time with our new-found body awareness and ultra-smooth rein skills.
We all had a very good ride – Clara and Chorus were sheer poetry – her shoulder-in exercise was exquisite. Miss Friz was really getting under herself and we were occasionally catching some truly lovely lateral movement. All with one rein!
Day 4
By now we were into a routine of starting the day by working on ourselves, then moving on to practice on Helen, break for lunch, then spend the afternoon with the horses. Alexandra introduced more layers to the body awareness, this time adding the diaphragm, breathing into the lower back, the pelvic floor, and up through the belly button. Again, different people felt different things, but one thing was for sure: we were all loving this feeling of relaxation and awareness of isolated movement.
I had the best ride yet with Frizzy. Since last September, I have kept a diary of her progress. The real benefit of a diary is that we have solid proof that we are making progress, but more importantly, just how quick that progress really is. According to my diary, this was “lesson” was #57 – and I rarely spend more than an hour at each session. So, in 57 hours, or in about a week and a half in “working hours”, I had managed to take a very fearful, suspicious, quick to react little horse and have her walking around calm and cool in a location outside of her home. My diary also told me that this was “clicker-ride” #22. Friz and I worked on using the body work and rope handling skills to utilize the single rein riding to guide the her around cones placed in a circle. This is an exercise built on 3-flip-3. The cones are laid out in a 20 metre (or so) circle. Basically, you ride across the circle, flip the hips around a cone, and when the horse is balanced and in the right bend coming out of the turn, they are in the right bend to move their shoulder over in the direction that is opposite to the bend. Lateral movement on a horse with only 22 rides on this single rein! No muss, no fuss – and no fear!
Because we all meet often, many of the auditors have been supporting me along my path with Friz, and everyone was amazed to see such a busy, quick little horse moving so calmly and happily with a long, loose rein. I was thrilled with the focus she was showing. A big storm was blowing in, the sky was getting black and you could feel the drop in air pressure. From experience, I know that these thunder and lightning storms can reek havoc with a trail ride! I did take the path that discretion is the better part of valour, and quit before the storm really arrived, but even with the elements conspiring against us, she never put a foot wrong!
Day 5
Day 5 was a wind down, check-in kind of day. We spent the morning talking about our experiences, what has drawn us to these methods, how they work for us, and what keeps us going. One of the common themes was how participants in Alexandra’s clinics, all participants, are encouraged to be part of the process for the development of this work and technique. After a clinic with Alex, you have a sense of really “owning” what you’ve learned, and that you’ve played a role in developing the next steps. Often after a “regular” clinic, both myself and my horse have overdone it, and are tired and sore. After doing all the body work, we all agreed that this clinic felt more like a week at a spa!
We rode again in the afternoon. I was again thrilled with the emotional control Miss Friz showed when we were starting out. I was going through my regular routine on the ground when a neighbour rode through the yard. Friz couldn’t see the horse, but all the horses in the yard were calling. I was able to bring Friz’s attention back to me in very short order. I did lose it again when the horse appeared through the trees, then disappeared, but again, I was able to focus Friz back on the work very easily – (another advertisement for the power of head lowering!) For anyone working with a young, reactive horse, they can understand what a huge thing that is to be able to re-focus them!
While the lateral work was perhaps not quite as good as the day before, the “quickness” was not present. Frizzy walked nicely and calmly through the exercises, taking my cues so sweetly. I was thrilled. This is what we’ve been looking for, and I found it through clicker!
So, another clicker camp is under our belts and Alexandra is booked again for 2009. A great big thank you to Clara Sharp – our fearless leader! Clara is the one who arranges the clinics, takes the money, books plane tickets, and herds all the cats! We have a wonderful group here in Whitehorse, and it was Clara who brought us all together, and showed us all what a wonderful experience using clicker and a clinic with Alexandra is!
Elsie Wain
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Here are more clinic notes. This post comes from the White Birch clinic outside Saratoga, NY
White Birch Clinic Notes
Posted by: "Barbara Melville"
Wed Aug 27, 2008
Our three-day micro-riding clinic with Alexandra Kurland at White
Birch Stables in upstate New York just wrapped up yesterday—a mind-
boggling experience. Fortunately, many terrific and richly detailed
posts throughout the summer have given beautiful accounts of the
structure, key points, nuances, and unfolding lessons of Alex’s micro-
riding clinics, including Elsie Wain’s recent report on the five-day
clinic in her own neck of the woods, so that I, lazy soul that I am,
won’t have to try to capture it all….:-). Congrats too, Elsie, on the
lovely rides you and Miss Friz achieved at the clinic.
Our weather was sunny and gorgeous all three days, and in addition to
the barn’s usual friendly complement of horses, chickens, cats, bunny,
and dogs, we also enjoyed the company of the barn’s newest critter, a
lamb named Bazel, and three adorable baby possums that Kim Cassidy is
fostering for eventual release into the wild. (Kim had a merry time
encouraging Bazel to find his “inner ram,” but after he began butting
everyone, she encouraged him to take up targeting instead.) As in all
Alex’s clinics, the food was great, the company was warm and
supportive and full of insights, and there was a whole lot of laughter.
Those at the clinic included Sandy (of Sandy and Nikita), who manages
the Equine B & B at White Birch; she organized and ran the clinic and
rode Nikita in it while also handling all her daily barn chores.
Simply awesome. There were also Becky and her paint gelding, Mac
(both from White Birch, and both veteran students of Alex’s). Dolores
brought along her gelding Harley and her stallion Lance—who was worked
by Barb of Barb-and-Percie, who came down from Canada for her first
but hopefully not her last White Birch clinic, and Kim rode Oisin (--
hope that’s spelled correctly!) Mundi and Micheline and Gay audited,
as did White Birch barn-mate and yoga-for-equestrians teacher Diane.
(I’ve left someone out, haven't I?) I rode one of Sandy’s horses, a
handsome dark-bay TB gelding named Tucker, because after the recent
wet weather and a little too much clover, my Brittany is momentarily
too tender-footed to work comfortably under saddle, although she is
quite happy to work in hand.
In our three days with Alex, we learned and explored the first bit of
the process, the “mantra” that opens awareness and kicks up energy
throughout the body, from shoulder blades to bottom of the foot; we
repeated the exercises three days running, to help anchor them deep in
our memories and bodies; and each afternoon we took all that we were
learning straight to the experts: the horses. Although we didn’t get
as far along as folks at Elsie’s and other longer clinics, we too
marveled at the “awareness of isolated movement." (Are clicker
trainers especially apt at picking up these subtle lessons, I wonder?)
At one point, Alex posited the idea that “If a horse can feel a fly,
he can feel a thought.” After awakening our shoulder blades, ribs,
thighbones, knees, “cannon bones” (or shins), and then our “bubbling
springs,” that idea no longer seems the least bit impossible.
Among the many high points for me: The way micro-riding alternates a
purely mental state (thinking) with a simple physical action
(targeting) and marks each shift with a click. The alternation-plus-
click pattern lets you go deep into your mind/body, then come out of
it, and then go right back into it. It feels like a combination of
massage and meditation; each time we ran through the exercises, we
ended up in a a rare state of physical and mental well-being--a group
bliss-out.
The very idea of being able to access bones and body parts using our
minds rather than our muscles, and then to see that process happening
in others--it's just dazzling. If I had not been right there seeing
and feeling it, I fear I might be tempted to dismiss all this as so
much goofy New Age stuff, but hey, there was Mundi, who felt the
bubbling spring in her left foot as if it were an electric shock. And
that’s exactly what it looked like—her left heel jumped the instant
she accessed that spot. And that’s what it FELT like to Alex,
Micheline, and I watching from about four feet away—like lightening
striking Mundi and running through the ground to touch us all.
There were simply too many “Aha!” moments to capture—my brain is still
a little fried and working hard to remember and capture as much as
possible. There was Sandy just “breathing” Nikita up into a lovely
canter transition. Barb dancing with Lance in pre-WWYLM. All the
lovely horses and riders. The way switching the energy circuit on,
from top to toe, feels like driving down a road and “hitting all the
green lights” as Mundi put it. Feel free to help me out, here,
everyone at the White Birch clinic, because there was so much good
stuff going around!
Because I’m still learning basic “macro”-level riding skills like Hip
Shoulder Shoulder and Three-Flip-Three, I thought that it would be
beyond me to do any actual micro-riding at this clinic—so I was
shocked when Tucker willingly turned both right and left on no
physical cues at all, seemingly responding to my efforts to rotate my
thighbones in the direction I wanted him to turn. (Frankly, Tuck and I
usually tussle about turns.) Did I really physically rotate my
thighbones, or did I just think it and wish it? Either way, Tucker
TURNED and kept turning, and as long as I kept my focus, his turns
were extraordinarily gentle and nicely bent.
When we all gathered around at the end of the clinic to sum up,
Micheline said that, like me, she feels she isn’t at micro-riding
level yet “but now I think that it’s accessible. Now I think, ‘Yeah,
I can do that. I did that on the ground’.”
Just think about it….. Ordinary riders, on ordinary horses, can do
THIS. And, um, be “ordinary” no longer.
Thank you, Alex. Thank you very very much indeed
Barbara Melville
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This was followed by a post from Amanda Martin:
Re: White Birch clinic notes
Posted by: "Amanda"
Thu Aug 28, 2008
Great clinic report :-))
**When we all gathered around at the end of the clinic to sum up, Micheline
said that, like me, she feels she isn't at micro-riding level yet "but now I
think that it's accessible. Now I think, 'Yeah, I can do that. I did that
on the ground'."**
Isn't the micro-riding cool ?! The thing I find bizarre about it is that I
am already using it....I just didn't know it was there. The horses are
already tuned in to our intent and micro-movements, we just aren't tuned in
to that level of the relationship.
When I came home from the first clinic this year I had a massive 'aha'...my
horses are not jumping the gun or anticipating my request, they are reading
my micro-movements and are responding accordingly. I thought they were
anticipating because I hadn't completed my macro-movement request. That
made me think much more carefully about how quickly they respond to a
request....what is it they are actually reacting to, the micro- or
macro-movement ?! and it was a good way to teach myself to tone down the
macro-movements and listen to the feedback they give me in relation to the
micro- and macro-cues.
The horses are definitely going to be the teachers as we explore the
micro-riding.
**Just think about it….. Ordinary riders, on ordinary horses, can do
THIS. And,
um, be "ordinary" no longer.**
This concept is so awesome.....and the most amazing adventure en route to
"ordinary no longer" :-)
Amanda
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The "Why Would You Leave Me?" Lesson: Head Position
by Alexandra Kurland
posted August 30, 2008
Ruth wrote:
On Aug 29, 2008, at 3:13 PM, the_click_that_teaches@yahoogroups.com wrote:
I watched yesterdey the ³capture the saddle²-DVD again (with delight :-))
and I chew on a higher head position in WWYLM on the left rein Cillas head
is very low I heard from Alex from the DVD that it¹s a question of the
box: so you shape a higher head position? Or will it take time and muscles
to elevate head and neck?
Quick answer and then it's back to DVD editing: be mindful of the timing of your release. If you release just as your horse is going down, you'll get more and more down. Cilia will lean down and around into a lateral bend. This isn't what you want. You want to time your release on lift. Yes, she may well drop her head after you let go. That's fine. The question is does she come up to meet your hand or does she pull down and around? Timing is important in this. If you hold on too long, you're likely to get Cilia leaning down and and around. But if you release too soon, you may be releasing on nothing. She has to give you some change before you let go.
The "Why Would You Leave Me?" DVD precedes this riding lesson because it trains us to be aware of our horse's orientation to the invisible box. Where are we placing the "box"? Too high, too low, too crammed in close to us? We learn where we need our horse's head to be to allow the rest of the drill team to line up in balance. And we learn to recognize when our horse is in the "box" and when he is ever so subtly drifting out of it.
The Microshaping DVD also precedes this lesson. Here we learn to see and use small details of movement. What constitutes a give? Can we recognize in a timely fashion the subtle shift that just occurred? Can we release on that small change and then build on it through a series of microshaped releases? Or are we holding on too long? Looking for too much? The horses will tell us by responses they give us.
The phrase for riding on a triangle is: get in, get something, and get out. If you find yourself staying on the triangle and not releasing, you want to assess what is going on. It may be:
1.) You don't really know what you are looking for. Fair enough. When you are new to this, you will be going through a data collecting stage. You won't always know what you want to release on. It's all one grand experiment. Just recognize that when you aren't releasing, you have your horse on a very low rate of reinforcement. Look for more opportunities to release the rein. You can often build a major give from your horse out of a series of releases for smaller shifts in balance. This is a wonderfully flexible system. So if you swing the pendulum too far in the direction of releasing so much so you end up releasing on nothing, don't worry. You'll constantly be assessing your horse's performance, collecting data, refining your criteria and improving your performance. Remember assessing your horse's performance was one of the foundation skills that was built into the very first clicker training lessons. Assessing performance is something you know how to do. Trust the process.
2.) You may be asking for too much out of each give. The mantra here is: a give is a little thing not a big thing. For example, when you ask for the hip, instead of expecting one big, definite step under, you could build that step out of a series of gives, each one creating a balance shift that contributes to the overall sequence of steps.
3. Your horse may be beautifully balanced and ready for you to move on. When you ride on a triangle, you are riding on a release. If you find yourself wanting to stay there, it may mean you are ready to organize the outside rein so you can float on a point of contact.
4.) You may have some balance issues in your body that make it difficult for your horse to give to you and balance underneath you. Look at your mechanics. Are you using muscle instead of bone rotations? If you are tense, he may not feel the invitation to give to you, but may instead want to resist softening into your hand. If you are crooked, or you are leaning, your body may be telling him the opposite of what you are intending. Videotaping a ride will help with this.
5.) Your horse may have some soundness issues that make it difficult for him to align his body. If you find that your horse persists in leaning/pulling/resisting the suggestion of your hand, if he struggles to align himself in a balanced lateral flexion, check for physical reasons. Perhaps the saddle is crooked making it uncomfortable for him to bend in one direction. Perhaps his teeth need to be checked. Maybe his feet are out of balance. Or perhaps there is some more serious physical issue at play here that the lateral flexions can help you unearth and understand better.
So much for quick answers. I should add that adding energy helps pick horses up. If you are finding that Cilia is curling down too low, adding energy will help to bring her up.
Alexandra Kurland
theclickercenter.com