December 2006 Newsletter
Copyright 2006 Alexandra Kurland
The following posts were written for the_click_that_teaches email discussion list.

Contents:

Shaping On A Point of Contact

Shaping On A Point of Contact: New DVD

Foals and Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome

A Christmas Letter

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Shaping On A Point of Contact
by Alexandra Kurland
Copyright 2006

Oliver
I'm coming up for air after an intense stretch of video editing. The current video is titled "Shaping On A Point of Contact". It's perfect that it will be coming out in Dec. because I am feeling that wonderful night-before-Christmas anticipation with this video. We got some great footage, and I can hardly wait to share it.

On the surface it's a lesson on standing on a mat - one of the foundation lessons. That's on the surface. What it is really about is learning how to work on a release to create the balance needed for upper-level performance. Very neat!

The film features Keri Gorman and her three year old percheron cross, Oliver. Keri brought him to the Oct. Toutle WA clinic. Oliver was originally a PMU foal. Keri got him when he was a year old. She's done a magnificent job with him. He's a good traveller. He's emotionally solid. He leads well. He's a very pleasant youngster, but . . . There's always a but. He was also three-year-old gangly. On Sat. Keri brought him into the arena to get him oriented to the new environment. She was going through the foundation exercises, including mat work. Oliver was great. He understood the mat, was willing to stand on it. But he was never square. Whenever he stopped, his legs were always sprawled every which way.

I've been wanting to get some good video of mat work for a video on mounting blocks, but I hadn't had the right horse for filming. What Oliver was doing was perfect for what I wanted. But we didn't have good light. So it was: Stop! Don't do any more. Let's wait until tomorrow when we have better light. We worked with Oliver just a few more minutes, then I did a long session with Keri going through the rope handling skills she'd need the next day in her session with Oliver. We uncovered some really important layers that needed to be shared. And of course - we weren't filming. Ah well.

That was Sat. On Sunday we brought out the camera and got some awesome footage. I started with two ground work sessions on rope handling skills, one with another clinic participant and the other with Keri. We covered the mechanics of the lead handling: how you shape on a point of contact - what that means and how you do it. We looked at core structure, finding your t'ai chi power so you can be powerful without being aggressive. We looked at the difference between gross and fine motor control, the effect each has on the feel down the lead and the ability to release the hand. Very interesting the difference there! We explored the effect of steady contact versus working on a release. That was fascinating and such a key concept. Between the two sessions we covered so many core elements of this work.

And then Keri worked Oliver. He started out a little nervous. He saw his first deer, and there were goats grazing in an adjoining field that he wasn't so sure about. His nervousness turned out to be a huge asset for the taping. Keri did a gorgeous job handling him, and illustrated beautifully going to a point of contact and waiting for a give. Just perfect.

Oliver was also very bendy. Anytime Keri touched the lead, he would curl around her in a lateral bend. "For every exercise you teach there is an opposite exercise you must teach to keep things in balance." For those of you with horses that are at this wiggly stage, this will be a very useful video. Keri found the tools she needed to balance the wiggliness. In the process Oliver shifted from being a gangly three year old to a "Fred Astaire" dance partner. Very, very neat!

We filmed him again the next day and the change in him was startling. He stood square - but not just, yeah he's got his front feet together square - he was lifting through his back and the base of his neck. He was gorgeous! I made some still photos from the video to compare his before and after balance. The change is startling. Really neat.

Protecting or Offering the Spine
So we got good video. But more than that, in the sessions we covered some truly important concepts. The real core of the lesson was this: When you sit on your horse, he will either protect his spine, or he will offer you his spine. You want him to offer you his spine because that's how you get enhanced movement.

What does this mean? One of the "t'ai chi" awareness exercises I shared with Keri and included on the video is a warm-up exercise for the head and neck. It's a simple exercise that I often use to help people understand - by feeling it for themselves - the changes we are asking the horse to give us in the initial stages of a lateral flexion. The concept is: when you break a movement down into its component parts, you change the nature of the movement. That's the whole essence of clicker training. We're splitters, not lumpers. This exercise let's you experience first hand what that means.

When I use this exercise in clinics I first have people glance behind them. I ask them to make note of what they see when they glance over their shoulder. Then we go through the lesson, breaking the movement down into three steps. When I have them glance over their shoulder at the end of the process, most people will report that they can see much further around.

All good. But I can increase the range of motion yet again by guiding the process with my hands. If I stand behind someone and place my fingers gently just behind her ears, I can guide the process. What emerges is not just a freer turn of the head, but a coming alive of the entire spine. You get a real "cat stretch" lifting through the shoulder blades (the withers), that comes up from the pelvis. The spine is coming alive with energy - exactly what we want our horse's spine to do when we ride.

Sometimes I will have the person stand behind me and feel these changes by resting a hand between my shoulder blades. Almost invariably the person will press too hard and I will feel my spine stiffen. I can't give them that lovely full "cat stretch" sensation, much as I want to. My spine is protecting itself. I can go through the outer trappings of the movement, but that really glorious feel of the "cat stretch" will elude them. But lighten the fingers, take the guardedness away, and it is there to be had.

This is such an important piece to understand for our horses. Are you getting the outer trappings of a movement, or the real thing where the horse lets you inside and offers you his spine? You can't demand this. The more you demand, the more he will protect himself. This is something he gives you because he trusts you enough to let you inside.

And that's what we got on video. It was one of those perfect sessions where Keri and Oliver were at the right stage in their work together to make this leap in connection. And what is even better - we got it on film!

So that's what I've been working on. I was hoping to have the video done by the end of last week, but no video project is complete without major computer hiccups. If the computer cooperates, hopefully I will have it ready for production in the next couple of days. I can't wait to share this tape!

Alexandra Kurland
theclickercenter.com

Note The DVD Shaping on A Point of Contact is now available and can be ordered from the Clicker Center Bookstore

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Shaping on a Point of Contact: New DVD
By Alexandra Kurland
Copyright 2006
printed Dec. 15, 2006

The new DVD is done!!!! Finally. I can't believe I am finally able to announce that it is available. My original intention was to have it done by the first of December. As you can see, I'm a bit behind schedule. I'll spare you the long saga of computer hoops and hurdles that I have been struggling through these last couple of weeks. What should have been a simple, straight-forward, easy project has been anything but. Perhaps my favorite moment came when the tech support person I was on the phone with commented: "Oh yes, there's always been a problem with this program. We've known about it ever since we started using this software" I had to use all my clicker training skills to suppress the urge to say something rude.

I'll spare you the long litany of computer glitches, hiccups and major head aches and tell you instead about the new DVD. It is the second in a series of lessons designed to accompany the Riding book.

This newest DVD is called "Shaping on a Point of Contact." On the surface it is about teaching your horse to stand on a mat - one of the six foundation lessons. Some of you may be thinking at this moment - when is she ever going to get past those six foundation lessons and get on to the stuff I want to work on!?

I said on the surface the lesson is about standing on a mat, but it is really about learning how to use a release to create subtle balance shifts in your horse. In other words it takes you straight from foundation lessons to advanced performance - very neat! Keri Gorman and her percheron cross Oliver were the main subjects of the DVD. She did a beautiful job not just processing the lesson, but also articulating the changes she was experiencing. It was a perfect transition lesson - and the best part of it was we got it on tape!

So let me talk a little bit about clicker training in general and then this new series of videos I am launching into.

The Three Phases of Clicker Training
I said on Video Lesson 4 that there are two phases to clicker training. I really should have said there are three phases. The first phase you introduce the horse to the clicker and you use the foundation lessons to establish emotional control and good manners.

As your horse catches on to the clicker game, he becomes an enthusiastic player. As soon as he sees you, he starts throwing clicker trained behaviors at you. At first this can be amusing, but it can also feel a little out of control. So at this point the handler begins to explore cues and the concept of stimulus control. You teach your horse that there are times when you want the behavior, but in the absence of the "green light" cue, you don't want to see the behavior. This is the second phase of clicker training, the phase where you stabilize behavior the behaviors you have been teaching.

The third phase brings you to the performance stage. This is the stage we're beginning to explore in this new series of DVD lessons. Your horse understands the clicker. He understands how to use the information it provides, and he also understands cues and their function. He's on his way to becoming a clicker star so you are beginning to use clicker training not just to manage his emotions, but to have fun with all the aspects of performance that interest you whether that be dressage, trail riding, jumping, trick training, liberty work, etc. - you name it, and the clicker is right there assisting you through each step in the training.

Computer Anaology: Fancy Typewriter or Complex Tool
The performance phase is one of those world divides places because there are so many different ways you can use clicker training. One way is to use it on a very simple level, using just the outer layers of this tool. That would be akin to using your high speed, super-powered computer just for email. Yes, your computer is great for that, but it can do so very much more. The computer that one person is using essentially just to type letters, is the same computer someone else is using to run complex research programs.

So we can clicker train to connect with our horses, to establish good manners, to play and have fun - all good uses for clicker training, and a common starting place for most of us. We are at first just using it at the level of email and other simple programs. With the computer, if you begin just with email, you eventually find yourself branching out - for example: exploring the internet, downloading photos, buying a digital camera and learning how to use photo design programs, etc.. The more you use your computer, the more uses you find for it, and the more sophisticated a tool it becomes for you.

Mat Work

That's true of clicker training, as well. The more you use it, the more you discover what you can do with it. Mat work is the perfect example of this. When you first ask your horse to stand on a mat, you have to begin with the rope handling skills you already know. For many that means a very simple understanding of the lead rope. You can walk your horse from his stall to his paddock, but beyond that you may not have done a lot of ground work. So the mat work is at first very basic. In comparison to what it will become as your handling skills develop, it is very crude.

At first the mat is about emotional control and space management. Your horse sees it as a scary surface, something he most definitely does not want to step on. The polite horses will make a point of stepping over it, to the side of it, but always being careful not to crowd you too much. The pushier horses, or the more reactive ones will just push you out of the way to avoid stepping on the mat. So the first step is explaining to your horse that he may not barge through his inside shoulder to avoid touching the mat. Nor may he dodge out the other side. And knocking you down, or pulling away from you is also most definitely not the answer. The mat is not really that scary. If your horse just tests the proverbial water a little bit, if he puts the very edge of his toe on it, then click! he will discover that not only is the mat safe, but good things happen when he is on the mat.

So your horse gradually shifts from active avoidance to eager acceptance of the mat. At this stage he will be helping you to get to the mat. He knows the answer. Both you and your horse are working towards the same goal, so the rope handling begins to smooth out. It is at this stage that you can begin to look at the details that lead to a finessing of balance - in other words, to the details that create advanced performance. This is the stage that Shaping on a Point of Contact explores.

When you reach this stage, you are no longer using clicker training just to do the equivalent of email. You are branching out, discovering just how powerful and fun this tool really is. I want you to enjoy clicker training. I don't want you to encounter the equine equivalent of that computer technician who blithely told me: "oh yes, we've know about this problem every since the very beginning, but we haven't bothered to fix it," To that end I have been squirreled away, busily producing this next in a series of DVD lessons. Every horse presents unique puzzles, but if you can see how others have solved puzzles that are of a similar nature, your training will be all the smoother and more pleasant.

What’s in a Name
I've been told I need to call what I do something other than clicker training, because what evolves is so much more than just clicker basics. At some point I may come up with the perfect, descriptive name for this work, but for now I will refer to it as "The Click That Teaches" and what I am teaching is the good physical balance that leads to superior performance and the emotional balance that creates outstanding relationships. That's what you'll see emerging on this newest tape in the series: Shaping on a Point of Contact.

Just as a teaser, here's a list of some of the future titles I'll be producing:

1. Clicker Compatible Rope Handling Skills: The “T’ai Chi” Connection
2. “Three-Flip-Three” and “Hip-Shoulder-Shoulder”: Developing Softness and Collection Through Lateral Flexions
3. Riding with the Clicker: Single-rein Riding - the Basic Mechanics
4. Riding with the Clicker: “Why Would You Leave Me?” and “Three Flip Three” as Ridden Exercises
5. Riding with the Clicker: It’s a Little Thing!: Doing Less with More - Managing the Wiggle of an Over-Flexed Horse
6. Riding with the Clicker: Hip-Shoulder-Shoulder into Collected Starts and Stops: Developing the Gaits of a Horse
7. Riding with the Clicker: The “Hotwalker” Lesson: Riding Circles
8. Riding with the Clicker: The Training Turns: Reconnecting the Steering Wheel
9. Riding with the Clicker: Lateral Flexions for the Trail Horse

This is just a small sampling of my master list, but it's enough to give you a sense of the series. I don't intend to bring them out in the order I have them listed. I'll be producing them as I get good video to illustrate each lesson. I'll probably do rope handling skills, or perhaps three-flip-three next. I've got some great three-flip-three video, both as a ground and ridden lessons.

I'm certainly looking forward to the discussions this new lesson going to generate.

Enjoy!

Happy Holidays
Alexandra Kurland
theclickercenter.com

Note The DVD Shaping on A Point of Contact is now available and can be ordered from the Clicker Center Bookstore

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Foals and Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome
By Alexandra Kurland
Copyright Dec. 2006

This article was written in response to A question about two PMU foals. One of the foals was settling in well, but the second foal was slower to adjust to being around people.

I was thinking about your two foals last night, and it brought to mind an article I read recently in the New York Times on Elephants. I'm sure everyone knows about the poaching and the mass killings of elephants, but you may not have thought very much about the effect that these experiences have had on the survivors. Elephant behavior in the wild is changing. This article suggests that elephants are suffering from post traumatic stress syndrome resulting from the destruction of their family groups.
I've been wanting to write about this for a long time because I think there are very real parallels with our horses. Both horses and elephants are highly social animals with long memories, so it is not too great a leap to make to say that if elephants can suffer from post traumatic stress syndrome, then why not horses? Certainly some of the horses I have known, have matched the description of the elephants, both in terms of life experience and behavior.

Let me share some of the article. It is relevant not just for the PMU and nurse mare foals, but also for those of you who are working with aggressive horses. The original article was published Oct 8, 2006. The link to it is:
An Elephant Crackup?

Excerpts from "An elephant Crackup?" by Charles Siebert Oct. 8 2006 NY Times

All across Africa, India and parts of Southeast Asia, from within and around whatever patches and corridors of their natural habitat remain, elephants have been striking out, destroying villages and crops, attacking and killing human beings. In fact, these attacks have become so commonplace that a new statistical category, known as Human-Elephant Conflict, or H.E.C., was created by elephant researchers in the mid-1990’s to monitor the problem. . . . In Africa, reports of human-elephant conflicts appear almost daily, from Zambia to Tanzania, from Uganda to Sierra Leone, where 300 villagers evacuated their homes last year because of unprovoked elephant attacks.

Still, it is not only the increasing number of these incidents that is causing alarm but also the singular perversity — for want of a less anthropocentric term — of recent elephant aggression. Since the early 1990’s, for example, young male elephants in Pilanesberg National Park and the Hluhluwe-Umfolozi Game Reserve in South Africa have been raping and killing rhinoceroses; this abnormal behavior, according to a 2001 study in the journal Pachyderm, has been reported in ‘‘a number of reserves’’ in the region. In July of last year, officials in Pilanesberg shot three young male elephants who were responsible for the killings of 63 rhinos, as well as attacks on people in safari vehicles. In Addo Elephant National Park, also in South Africa, up to 90 percent of male elephant deaths are now attributable to other male elephants, compared with a rate of 6 percent in more stable elephant communities. . .

‘‘Everybody pretty much agrees that the relationship between elephants and people has dramatically changed,’’ Gay Bradshaw (author of an upcoming book on this topic) told me recently. ‘‘What we are seeing today is extraordinary. Where for centuries humans and elephants lived in relatively peaceful coexistence, there is now hostility and violence. Now, I use the term ‘violence’ because of the intentionality associated with it, both in the aggression of humans and, at times, the recently observed behavior of elephants.’’

For a number of biologists and ethologists who have spent their careers studying elephant behavior, the attacks have become so abnormal in both number and kind that they can no longer be attributed entirely to the customary factors. . . . In ‘‘Elephant Breakdown,’’ a 2005 essay in the journal Nature, Bradshaw and several colleagues argued that today’s elephant populations are suffering from a form of chronic stress, a kind of species-wide trauma. Decades of poaching and culling and habitat loss, they claim, have so disrupted the intricate web of familial and societal relations by which young elephants have traditionally been raised in the wild, and by which established elephant herds are governed, that what we are now witnessing is nothing less than a precipitous collapse of elephant culture. . .

Bradshaw sought to combine traditional research into elephant behavior with insights about trauma drawn from human neuroscience. Using the few remaining relatively stable elephant herds in places like Amboseli National Park in Kenya as control groups, Bradshaw and her colleagues analyzed the far more fractious populations found in places like Pilanesberg in South Africa and Queen Elizabeth National Park in Uganda. What emerged was a portrait of pervasive pachyderm dysfunction.
Elephants, when left to their own devices, are profoundly social creatures. . . Young elephants are raised within an extended, multitiered network of doting female caregivers that includes the birth mother, grandmothers, aunts and friends. These relations are maintained over a life span as long as 70 years. Studies of established herds have shown that young elephants stay within 15 feet of their mothers for nearly all of their first eight years of life, after which young females are socialized into the matriarchal network, while young males go off for a time into an all-male social group before coming back into the fold as mature adults.
When an elephant dies, its family members engage in intense mourning and burial rituals, conducting weeklong vigils over the body, carefully covering it with earth and brush, revisiting the bones for years afterward, caressing the bones with their trunks, often taking turns rubbing their trunks along the teeth of a skull’s lower jaw, the way living elephants do in greeting. If harm comes to a member of an elephant group, all the other elephants are aware of it. This sense of cohesion is further enforced by the elaborate communication system that elephants use. . .

This fabric of elephant society, Bradshaw and her colleagues concluded, had effectively been frayed by years of habitat loss and poaching, along with systematic culling by government agencies to control elephant numbers and translocations of herds to different habitats. . .

As a result of such social upheaval, calves are now being born to and raised by ever younger and inexperienced mothers. Young orphaned elephants, meanwhile, that have witnessed the death of a parent at the hands of poachers are coming of age in the absence of the support system that defines traditional elephant life. ‘‘The loss of elephant elders,’’ Bradshaw told me, ‘‘and the traumatic experience of witnessing the massacres of their family, impairs normal brain and behavior development in young elephants.’’

What Bradshaw and her colleagues describe would seem to be an extreme form of anthropocentric conjecture if the evidence that they’ve compiled from various elephant resesarchers, even on the strictly observational level, weren’t so compelling. The elephants of decimated herds, especially orphans who’ve watched the death of their parents and elders from poaching and culling, exhibit behavior typically associated with post-traumatic stress disorder and other trauma-related disorders in humans: abnormal startle response, unpredictable asocial behavior, inattentive mothering and hyper-aggression.

Studies of the various assaults on the rhinos in South Africa, meanwhile, have determined that the perpetrators were in all cases adolescent males that had witnessed their families being shot down in cullings. It was common for these elephants to have been tethered to the bodies of their dead and dying relatives until they could be rounded up for translocation to, as Bradshaw and Schore describe them, ‘‘locales lacking traditional social hierarchy of older bulls and intact natal family structures.’’ . . .

Though most scientific knowledge of trauma is still understood through research on human subjects, neural studies of elephants are now under way. (The first functional M.R.I. scan of an elephant brain, taken this year, revealed, perhaps not surprisingly, a huge hippocampus, a seat of memory in the mammalian brain, as well as a prominent structure in the limbic system, which processes emotions.) Allan Schore, the U.C.L.A. psychologist and neuroscientist who for the past 15 years has focused his research on early human brain development and the negative impact of trauma on it, recently wrote two articles with Bradshaw on the stress-related neurobiological underpinnings of current abnormal elephant behavior.

‘‘We know that these mechanisms cut across species,’’ Schore told me. ‘‘In the first years of humans as well as elephants, development of the emotional brain is impacted by these attachment mechanisms, by the interaction that the infant has with the primary caregiver, especially the mother. When these early experiences go in a positive way, it leads to greater resilience in things like affect regulation, stress regulation, social communication and empathy. But when these early experiences go awry in cases of abuse and neglect, there is a literal thinning down of the essential circuits in the brain, especially in the emotion-processing areas.’’

For Bradshaw, these continuities between human and elephant brains resonate far outside the field of neuroscience. ‘‘Elephants are suffering and behaving in the same ways that we recognize in ourselves as a result of violence,’’ she told me. ‘‘It is entirely congruent with what we know about humans and other mammals. Except perhaps for a few specific features, brain organization and early development of elephants and humans are extremely similar. That’s not news. What is news is when you start asking, What does this mean beyond the science? How do we respond to the fact that we are causing other species like elephants to psychologically break down? In a way, it’s not so much a cognitive or imaginative leap anymore as it is a political one.’’ . . .

The Elephant Sanctuary in Tennessee, a 2,700-acre rehabilitation center and retirement facility situated in the state’s verdant, low-rolling southern hill country. The sanctuary is a kind of asylum for some of the more emotionally and psychologically disturbed former zoo and circus elephants in the United States — cases so bad that the people who profited from them were eager to let them go. Given that elephants in the wild are now exhibiting aberrant behaviors that were long observed in captive elephants, it perhaps follows that a positive working model for how to ameliorate the effects of elephant breakdown can be found in captivity.
Of the 19 current residents of the sanctuary, perhaps the biggest hard-luck story is that of a 40-year-old, five-ton Asian elephant named Misty. Originally captured as a calf in India in 1966, Misty spent her first decade in captivity with a number of American circuses and finally ended up in the early 80’s at a wild-animal attraction known as Lion Country Safari in Irvine, Calif. It was there, on the afternoon of July 25, 1983, that Misty, one of four performing elephants at Lion Country Safari that summer, somehow managed to break free of her chains and began madly dashing about the park, looking to make an escape. When one of the park’s zoologists tried to corner and contain her, Misty killed him with one swipe of her trunk. . .

Banished, after the Lion Safari killing, to the Hawthorn Corporation, a company in Illinois that trains and leases elephants and tigers to circuses, she would continue to lash out at a number of her trainers over the years. But when Hawthorn was convicted of numerous violations of the Animal Welfare Act in 2003, the company agreed to relinquish custody of Misty to the Elephant Sanctuary.

Misty has also been in therapy, as in psychotherapy. Wild-caught elephants often witness as young calves the slaughter of their parents, just about the only way, shy of a far more costly tranquilization procedure, to wrest a calf from elephant parents, especially the mothers. The young captives are then dispatched to a foreign environment to work either as performers or laborers, all the while being kept in relative confinement and isolation, a kind of living death for an animal as socially developed and dependent as we now know elephants to be.

Misty has become a testament to the Elephant Sanctuary’s signature ‘‘passive control’’ system, a therapy tailored in many ways along the lines of those used to treat human sufferers of post-traumatic stress disorder. Passive control, as a sanctuary newsletter describes it, depends upon ‘‘knowledge of how elephants process information and respond to stress’’ as well as specific knowledge of each elephant’s past response to stress. Under this so-called nondominance system, there is no discipline, retaliation or withholding of food, water and treats, which are all common tactics of elephant trainers. Great pains are taken, meanwhile, to afford the elephants both a sense of safety and freedom of choice — two mainstays of human trauma therapy — as well as continual social interaction. . . .

If as recently as the end of the Vietnam War people were still balking at the idea that a soldier, for example, could be physically disabled by psychological harm — the idea, in other words, that the mind is not an entity apart from the body and therefore just as woundable as any limb — we now find ourselves having to make an equally profound and, for many, even more difficult leap: that a fellow creature as ostensibly unlike us in every way as an elephant is as precisely and intricately woundable as we are. And while such knowledge naturally places an added burden upon us, the keepers, that burden is now being greatly compounded by the fact that sudden violent outbursts like Misty’s can no longer be dismissed as the inevitable isolated revolts of a restless few against the constraints and abuses of captivity. . .

. . . the work of the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust in Kenya, a sanctuary for orphaned and traumatized wild elephants — more or less the wilderness-based complement to Carol Buckley’s trauma therapy at the Elephant Sanctuary in Tennessee. The trust’s human caregivers essentially serve as surrogate mothers to young orphan elephants, gradually restoring their psychological and emotional well being to the point at which they can be reintroduced into existing wild herds. The human ‘‘allomothers’’ stay by their adopted young orphans’ sides, even sleeping with them at night in stables. The caretakers make sure, however, to rotate from one elephant to the next so that the orphans grow fond of all the keepers. Otherwise an elephant would form such a strong bond with one keeper that whenever he or she was absent, that elephant would grieve as if over the loss of another family member, often becoming physically ill itself.

To date, the Sheldrick Trust has successfully rehabilitated more than 60 elephants and reintroduced them into wild herds. A number of them have periodically returned to the sanctuary with their own wild-born calves in order to reunite with their human allomothers and to introduce their offspring to what — out on this uncharted frontier of the new ‘‘trans-species psyche’’ — is now being recognized, at least by the elephants, it seems, as a whole new subspecies: the human allograndmother. ‘‘Traditionally, nature has served as a source of healing for humans,’’ Bradshaw told me. ‘‘Now humans can participate actively in the healing of both themselves and nonhuman animals. The trust and the sanctuary are the beginnings of a mutually benefiting interspecies culture.’’

The whole article is well worth reading. And for those of you who are interested, The Elephant Sanctuary publishes a wonderful newsletter, Trunklines. Their web site is www.elephants.com

Okay, so what does this have to do with horses? As I mentioned at the beginning of this email, I think many of our horses have had very similar experiences to those described in the article. If you have a horse that doesn't respond in a normal time frame to good handling, it may well be worth thinking about the elephant model.

One of the horse rescue groups that I've come to know through clicker training is Live and Let Live Farm in New Hampshire (liveandletlivefarm.org). They've shared some amazing stories with me. One was of Betty, a premarin mare who came to the center in foal. As they described her, she was perfectly comfortable letting her humans handle her foal. A few weeks after he was born, they tried to put a halter on him. Betty had had other foals, all weaned early at the pmu production farm. Within minutes of the halter being placed on her foal, Betty broke into a cold sweat and coliced.
Horses do carry emotional scars. They may live in the moment, but how they perceive the moment is colored by their past experiences. So with this filly who is so wary of being touched, you may want to borrow some of the strategies from these elephant sanctuaries.

When Panda first came to me, I stayed with her. We became each others shadow, and she has grown into the most loving and remarkable horse. Perhaps this is what this filly needs, for you to become her human allomother.

Alexandra Kurland
theclickercenter.com

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AChristmas Letter

By Alexandra Kurland

The first section of this essay refers to a series of posts about a rider who had had a bad fall and was now feeling considerable concern about riding again.

Merry Christmas Everyone.

This group is like a present we get to open every day of the year. People are so generous with their time. Linda posts to the list about her fall and the fears she has, and so many people answer. Linda, you've gotten some wonderful suggestions. I would add just one more, one that is really just another way of saying what everyone has else has written. It is this - never mind about riding for now. The riding will come. For now what is important is that you find reasons to want to go to the barn.

Remembering Why We Ride
Fear is a good thing. It keeps you safe. That churning feeling in the pit of your stomach that says perhaps today is not the day to get back on, is a feeling you should listen to. But don't let it become the dominant feeling that is associated with Ghost. Classical conditioning is very real. If you think about riding and your stomach ties up in knots, it doesn't take too many steps before just the thought of going to the barn creates those horrible feelings.

So fear is a good thing, and it is also a terrible thing. It can paralyze you, and keep you stuck. And it can also fracture relationships. I've seen so many horses who have become pasture ornaments because their owners were afraid to ride them.

You have a good reason to be concerned about riding. But you don't want that to fracture your relationship with Ghost. When you think about going to the barn, you want it to be with eager anticipation, not with a feeling of dread. So go back to simple things, to remembering why you love being around horses. That may mean at first you take a book out to the barn and spend time just sitting next to Ghost while he eats his hay. If that's where you need to begin to push away the fear, that's where you begin. All the other steps will follow from this.

Horses are good at taking care of us. Most of us who have ridden could tell stories about the times our horses kept us safe - where they started to spook, but then caught themselves and kept us on their backs. As I was waking up this morning, I was thinking about your post and all the people who wrote in. And I was thinking about how good horses are at taking care of us. Robin who is so powerful, and who could so easily hurt me, takes care of me. That makes me smile just thinking about it. What a gift that is, a horse inviting you onto his back, not because he has been forced to allow it, but because he invites the partnership.

Christopher
You know, when you are half asleep, how one thought leads to another and then to another. Thinking about horses and the care they take, led me back to a horse I knew years ago when I was first learning about training. His name was Christopher. My hunter trainer kept a string of young race horses in training. Christopher was sent to him as an untouched two year old. I spent the first afternoon he was in the barn, just quietly sitting near his stall. The next day and the day after that I went out to the barn when no one was there and spent time just being near him - not demanding anything of him, but accepting each little increment of trust he offered.
He gradually let me touch him, groom him, lead him.

In the spring when the training track at Saratoga opened, I went up every day to help out with the horses. Christopher became one of my regular charges. I watched his daily battles with his riders. He was no race horse. He had a beautiful, rocking horse canter. He would have made a superb dressage horse, but no matter how much his owner wanted it, he was never going to be a race horse. If they had taken their time with him, they might have brought him on at least well enough to run, but instead they pushed him, and he pushed back.

I remember watching his exercise rider, the trainer's son who spent his weekends riding bucking horses on the local rodeo circuit, trying to beat him forward. Christopher reared and spun, reared and spun. As he jumped out from under his rider, I saw him look back, take aim and kick him in the ribs. He threw his jockey, as well and kicked him in the back as he hit the ground.

I haven't thought about Christopher for years. It's a good memory because of the connection we had. He showed me how important building a relationship can be. Christopher hurt everyone else who worked with him, but he never hurt me.

Peregrine
Yesterday morning I was in the barn at an unexpected time. Peregrine was lying down taking a nap when I got there. I slipped into his stall and sat with him while he finished his nap. Is there any greater pleasure that that? I knew Christopher before Peregrine was born, but I didn't need my experience with him to teach me that taking time to build a relationship is important. That was something I already knew deep in my heart. So I was there when Peregrine was born, waiting to greet him into the world. That was twenty-one years ago. Last night as I wished him a Merry Christmas and gave him his last treats of the evening, I thanked him for still being here. That is the Christmas gift that brings me greatest joy, that he still here.

There have been times when my stomach has churned at the thought of getting on him. His stifles were always such an issue. When they locked, he would catapult forward into a hard pitching buck. I never knew when they would lock up, when he would explode under me. Every ride had the potential for disaster. I rode him because I was determined. And because riding made his body work better. I rode him in spite of the fear. Christopher looked back and aimed at a rider he feared. Peregrine didn't know how to manage his body. He didn't know how to handle the anxiety it created, but he still managed to take care of me.

Accidents can happen. Horses can make mistakes and we can get hurt. With cars we now build in safety features, we have air bags and seat belts and specially engineered frames. With training we can build safety features into our horses. We don't have to rely on luck and chance to stay in one piece. Training has given Peregrine better tools for for keeping me safe, and my stomach no longer churns when I think of riding him. Instead I smile. He brings laughter into my life. Last night I worked him at liberty. It is good to see him move. I use it as a check on our ridden work. How do his gaits look? Am I on the right track? He was so beautiful. He is twenty-one and he is moving better than he ever has. Thank you Peregrine for the gifts you bring into my life.

Connections
Those early morning half awake thoughts took me to many places. I was thinking about the elephants in Africa who are becoming more aggressive as their family groups are destroyed. And I was thinking about that exercise rider who had more guts than sense and who was willing to fight it out with frightened two year olds. Is it simply that he was so disconnected from horses that he didn't feel their fear? Is that what allows someone to get on the back of a horse who is so clearly not ready to be ridden? I have to be welcomed by the horses before I want to ride them.

Saturday my equine dentist was in the barn. His "day job" is policing the walking horse industry. He showed me pictures he took recently of a mare who arrived at a show grounds rocking from foot to foot. She was in so much pain, she couldn't support her weight on any one foot for very long, but she was tied so tight in her stall she couldn't lie down. Her feet were wrapped. When he peeled away the duct tape, he found a plastic device fitted to the bottom of her foot with nails protruding through it into the sole of her feet. What are the disconnects that allow someone to drive nails into the sensitive sole of a horse?

These thoughts lay side by side with the posts I had read that people sent in this past week. Marjorie voiced a concern about being off topic. I do appreciate the effort to keep the conversation centered around the riding book, but off topic - no, I wouldn't say that, because all these posts came from a place of deep caring. If we're going to ride, we want to ride happy willing horses. That means we need saddles that fit, and feet that are well balanced. It means we need to understand more than the scientific theories behind training, we need to understand horses. We need to watch them, spend time with them, connect with them, love them.

Clicker training is a science based training method. It could so easily be all about the head, and nothing about the heart. When I first wrote about clicker training, I wanted people to embrace the science because understanding learning theory is a good foundation for training. But I also wanted to share what I most treasured about clicker training and that is the ever deepening relationship it helped me to create with my horses.

When you take a fall, fear can take over and destroy relationships. But remembering the reasons why you love horses can rebuild them. The fear is there and it is real. It is there to help us stay safe. But it does not have to dominate us or our horses. We can put something else in its place - understanding, trust, connections, education. Weave those threads solidly together and you can create a safety net under your horses, one that keeps the relationship strong. If we all keep weaving those threads together perhaps we may also build a safety net for our beloved planet. That is my hope in this Holiday season.

It is such a gift when people write in to share their stories and to offer help. As I said at the beginning of this post, this is such a great list. In this time of seasonal celebrations, I want to take a moment to thank everyone for participating. Our horses bring us great gifts every day of the year. I remember this each time I go to the barn and am welcomed by my horses into their magical world.

Happy Holidays Everyone

Alexandra Kurland
theclickercenter.com