Newsletter Feb. 2006

Newsletter February 2006

These posts were originally posted to the_click_that_teaches email discussion group, an on-line study group for the new riding book.

February 6, 2006 From The Click That Teaches List
Discovering Single-Rein Riding

by Alexandra Kurland

My apologies for my absence this past week. I've been traveling so I'm just getting caught up. So first - my thanks to all of you for sending in such great posts. I love all the posts on the different exercises in the book. And my goodness, the responses to my question about triggers. I very much want to follow up on these. These are posts that I don't want to leave dangling, but there were so many other questions about single-rein riding that I thought rather than try to answer all the individual questions, I'd write a general introduction to single-rein riding. There will be plenty of time on this list to look at all the individual questions in detail.

But before I get to that, I want to send a special thank you to Katie Bartlett. Your posts are awesome!!! Thank you so much for jumping in and responding.

So onto single rein riding. I think the main question is how does all this fit in to what each of you has already learned about riding. I hear particularly the question about integrating this into a lesson program. Can you explore the exercises in this book and still take lessons?

The best way for me to answer that is to describe my own introduction to this type of training and how I learned it. As I said in the riding book, I didn't invent single-rein riding. I just use it. My contribution has been to integrate it into clicker training. One of clicker training's great strengths is that it breaks training down into many small steps. Single-rein riding breaks riding down into many small steps. The two seem perfect for one another.

For me, one of the guiding principles behind my training is safety always comes first. Single-rein riding gives you a tool box that first and foremost helps you to stay safe - again a good match. Even better those same exercises that keep you safe - perfected lead you straight to performance. So you aren't taking a detour, a side trip to sort out behavioral issues, and then returning to your main goal - developing a performance horse. You aren't learning two completely different tool boxes - one for safety and control, the other for polish and performance. You are working in a large tool box that integrates both aspects of successful riding. I'll refer you back to the post I wrote on single-rein riding being part of a continuum of rein handling techniques.

I encountered what I refer to as single-rein riding first through John Lyons. I think I saw him for the first time in 1990 or maybe 1991. He was giving one of his symposiums at a facility in Western MA. I'd heard of Lyons, I'm not sure where, but his name was familiar, so I went to see what his work was about. I'd been using round pen techniques with results that pleased me for five or six years, so I was curious to see what he did. I went not really knowing what his work was about. I just had a general familiarity with the name. I was at the time learning from two very different sources: Bettina Drummond, one of Nuno Oliviero's principle students, and Linda Tellington-Jones, the founder of TEAM.

On day one of the symposium Lyons started a three year old under saddle. On the second day he worked with a very stiff, high-headed mare that the farm owner, a horse dealer, had been saving especially for Lyons. It wasn't so much that she was dangerous, but that she presented very common problems, and he wanted to see how Lyons would handle her. She certainly looked like many of the horses I was familiar with, inverted, stiff, braced. She responded to the rider by throwing her nose up into the air and trotting stiff-legged around the arena - a horrible, jarring, ugly trot. She'd been ridden in standing martingales which had only made her more defensive.

Lyons got on the mare and trotted small circles around the round pen. He explained what he was doing, but I didn't have the background to understand what he was saying. I watched critically, as one does. This didn't look anything like the training I was familiar with. But I had learned how to watch training. I knew results didn't just happen. They needed time to develop, so when I say I watched critically, I mean that in an inquiring, not a negative, fault-finding way. I watched the mare work, trying to follow what was happening.

About forty-five minutes into the ride, the mare dropped her head down around her ankles and kept it there. She trotted forward with a smooth, easy, ground covering stride; no more braced, pogo sticking around the round pen. Her trot was fluid and relaxed. "Hmmm. Interesting," I thought. I wasn't sure how he had gotten there, but she certainly didn't look like the tense horse he had started with.

Lyons started talking about connecting the inside rein to the mare's feet. He worked her in tight circles, getting her to bend her head to the side and take a step laterally. In just a few minutes he had the beginnings of a side pass. "Hmmm," I thought. "That's interesting. That may be how they get a sidepass in western riding, but that's not what we are looking for in dressage. That's not how we do it. In dressage we don't just want suppleness, we want suspension." I remember thinking that so clearly. I had Bettina showing me such beautiful training. This single-rein bending didn't seem relevant. I dismissed it, or I should say, I almost dismissed it, but there were two things that intrigued me from the weekend. First I was truly impressed by Lyons' round pen training. Now I know that many of you will see red when you read this. There are as many opinions of round pen training and ways of going about it as there are horse trainers. And there were certainly elements of Lyons' training, that I filtered out of what I took back to Peregrine. But on the whole, I saw things that were worth exploring and understanding better. And the only way to do that was to go home and ask Peregrine what he thought of all this.

At the time I didn't have a proper round pen to work in. I'd improvised a small area at the farm where I boarded which worked fine for my horses. I wasn't working with rough stock. The horses I worked at liberty were all well socialized to people. I could work in small spaces, sometimes even applying the concepts of round pen training to stall-sized areas, because the horses were already comfortable with me. The round pen was a place where we had a liberty conversation. It was never about frightening horses or chasing them until their lungs were burning. Prior to Lyons clinic I was reading body language and following a simple choreography of "dance steps" with the horses. As stripped down and simple as that was, I had always been pleased with the results. But I had to say after watching Lyons, that I was even more impressed by what he was able to accomplish in a round pen.

At his symposium I watched him start out in the morning with an unbroke youngster who wanted nothing to do with him, and by the end of the day he was riding him out in the parking lot while one of the spectators tried to spook the horse. No matter what she did, Lyons was able to keep the horse turned towards her, working safely. He's by no means the first or only person who has put on an impressive display of colt starting. I personally choose to take my time over the process, but that doesn't mean I don't appreciate the skill that goes into this type of training.

The other thing that intrigued me about the weekend was Zip's top line. I liked the way he looked. He had a softness particularly to his poll area that I found pleasing. At that time most of the horses I saw, including the dressage horses, were braced in their topline. They might be round, but they looked held. They were rigid, stiff. They didn't have the fluid, dynamic softness that I found so absolutely, be-still-my-heart, breathtakingly beautiful about the horses that were trained by Bettina and the other students I saw of Mr. Oliviero.

Find A Look That Pleases Your Eye.
So here let me digress a bit. I think when you are training towards performance goals, it is important to find a look that pleases your eye. When I was first starting out, I had no idea what type of riding I wanted to learn. If you'd asked me, I'd have said I wanted to learn it all. So I was looking at everything because I knew nothing about the formal riding disciplines. I quickly found things I didn't like. Western pleasure, for example, had no appeal for me. Now that doesn't make it wrong, but it didn't draw me. When I watched a good western pleasure horse, I could admire the training, the turnout, the spit and polish of the ride, but I didn't find myself saying: "I want to learn that. How are they doing that?" If you compare it to different styles of music, or different art forms, it was not a style that had any lasting appeal for me.

I say that even though I started out riding western. Then I took lessons from a local hunter/jumper trainer, a superb horseman, but not a good instructor. The riding was fun. It was exciting, but I was essentially piling bad habits on top of bad habits. .

The first time I watched a dressage horse, I was visiting someone I had met at a seminar. We started talking after the seminar ended. Everyone else packed up their things and went home. We were still talking! We were clearly appreciating the same things in horses, so she invited me to come visit her farm. She lived only a couple of hours away, so I took her up on the invitation. We ended up gabbing away the day, as two horse people will. It wasn't until evening that we went out to the barn. She saddled up her Arabian for me to ride. He fussed and danced on the cross ties in his eagerness to get out to the arena. I found myself thinking "what on earth am I getting on?" I didn't know enough to recognize his eagerness as simply that, and not untrained, bad manners. When I got on, oh my goodness, I'd never had a ride like that! This horse felt like nothing I had ever experienced before.

But what a funny ride. Nothing I knew seemed to work. Thank goodness the horse was kind. He took care of me in spite of my ignorance, and showed me a glimpse into a world that I am now totally committed and addicted to. The feel of that horse has stayed with me all these years. He had such a deep, grounded, all-is-well, calmness about him, and at the same time his gaits were buoyant, energized, joyful. You may think you know what this means, but if there is any brace in your horse, any stiffness, you are just dancing around the edges of what this horse felt like. I was enchanted.

But that was just the beginning. Jodi then brought out her mare, a gorgeous Polish arab/trakanner cross who had originally been trained by Mr. Oliviero himself. She took her horse up into an open meadow, and rode her for me in the moonlight. I had never see passage and piaffe before, and here was this magnificent mare dancing before me. It was a truly magical moment. The night sky was alive with stars, and this mare was more beautiful than I had ever imagined a horse could be. I said to Jodi she could not show me this without teaching me how it was done. Jodi was a professional trainer, but at the time she did not take students. However, she agreed to teach me. And that's when my real education began.

Two weeks after I watched Jodi, I went to the North American dressage championships expecting to be blown away. I was so excited to be able to see these great horses in person. I watched all day, horse after horse, stiff, braced, rigid. There was nothing in that ring that made me say, "you cannot show me this and not teach me how it is done."

Now this was in the mid-eighties. Dressage in this country has grown and changed dramatically. We've imported some great trainers, and great horses. We know more about the sport than we did then. There are still stiff, braced dressage horses, but there are also many that are very beautiful. So if I were to watch an equivalent show today, I might come away with a very different response. At the time, I didn't understand the differences in what I was seeing, but I knew that the one was a look I loved, and the other was something that had no draw.

That was my introduction to dressage. I had found a look and feel that pleased me. I had found the heart of how I wanted to ride. I share this story because I think it is so important to have a sense of what pleases your eye. That's what guides you in your choices. What do you like? What supports that look and gets you closer to it? What takes you in the opposite direction?

All of this matters when you start talking about the single-rein riding. The look and balance you develop in your horse through this training will very much be influenced by what pleases your eye. That means that you can be working in a system of training that differs from the one I learned, and we can still have a conversation. We can both be doing similar single-rein exercises, but the balance and feel you reinforce may be different from mine. As a result we'll develop different looks out of the same underlying tool box.

When Jodi moved out of the area, she introduced me to Bettina who very graciously opened her barn to me. Her training is very technical, but oh so beautiful. I fell in love even more with the look and feel of these horses. This is what I wanted. It was the standard against which I measured all other forms of training. So when I saw John Lyons, I was intrigued. Here in this cowboy type of training I was seeing a similarity to the look I loved. I didn't understand what I was seeing, but it kept me from dismissing his work out of hand. I started experimenting with the pieces I could take away from the weekend. I looked at his round pen training and was pleased with the results.

Blending
Here is where I can begin to answer the question: can you mix different styles of training? I was learning from Bettina at the same time that I was studying TEAM work from Linda Tellington-Jones. And now I was mixing in yet another system of training in John Lyons' work. Bettina and Linda were at opposite ends of the spectrum when it came to horse handling. Bettina had been trained in Portugal where the expression was: "when they started young horses, they kicked the Americans out and closed the barn doors behind them." Her training did not have a place for a "sentimental attitude" toward horses. That was completely the opposite of TEAM. But TEAM was helping so many of the horses I worked with. I could use both, and merge them together in my own work. I didn't need either Bettina or Linda to embrace or accept the other's work. I could learn from both and find my own way to combine the two styles of training into an approach that brought me closer to my riding goals.

When I started exploring Lyons' round pen training, I knew Linda Tellington-Jones disliked the work very much. I wasn't sure if she had actually seen his training, but I did know that TEAM rejected round pen training in general. That didn't stop me from experimenting with it. I liked the results, especially for Peregrine. One of the statements Lyons made was: "the strongest lead rope is the one in your horse's mind." That struck a cord with me. Peregrine could be so difficult. Both of his stifles locked so even the simplest lessons were often a huge struggle. He couldn't bend or turn with any ease. When I asked him to work through the TEAM leading exercises, he just wanted to leave. No matter how I broke them down, he struggled.

Liberty training seemed the key. If he could work out in his own body how to stay with me, I would have the best, most powerful lead rope of all, the one in his mind. So that's what I explored, and doors opened. Peregrine and I had always clashed. He didn't try like his mother. But with the liberty training he was with me. We started to be friends. He was finally trying to figure out how to do what I asked. His stifles still locked. He was still difficult, still frustrating, but he was meeting me half way. He was trying, and I was trying. So is it any wonder I went back and took another look at Lyons' work?

This time I paid more attention to what he was doing under saddle. I watched his weekend symposium, and also a three day clinic. His clinics at that time were pretty wild affairs, fifteen or more horses all flying around out of control. The riders were told they could only use one rein at a time, and most of them were sitting on horses that had major issues. So more than one rider that first day looked as though she thought she was going to die! I was very appreciative that they were willing to be such good guinea pigs! For my part I had left my horses at home. I wanted to watch and learn. If I had ridden in that first clinic, I wouldn't have been able to watch all the other horses, to see how each one responded. The overview helped me take the work home to my Peregrine.

I still wasn't sure I understood what Lyons was about, but I could see how the single-rein riding gave the riders control. I saw it first as a tool that gave you safety, something I definitely needed given the horses I routinely worked with. So I explored the outer layers of single-rein riding. I went around in endless small circles trying to figure out what a baby give of the jaw felt like. Thank goodness for Bettina's training because it gave me a framework for all this. I had a look I loved and a feel I loved that guided me through all the endless gives. What was a baby give of the jaw (Lyon's term)? When should I release? What was I looking for? These were my questions. And I know as you begin the process, they will also be yours.

What I recognized very early on was that these single-rein exercises were a chunked down, spliced apart entry point into the work I was learning from Bettina. They gave me a way of understanding the weight shifts she talked about. And it gave me a way to share the work with my clients.

I remember talking with some of my friends about Lyons' work. We wondered what other people did with it. Without Bettina's work guiding me through the process, I'm not sure what I would have done with it. Peregrine would have been supple, but I wouldn't have known what to do with lateral flexions. I wouldn't have seen how they evolve into shoulder-in and the balance of a high school horse.

Evolution
In the early stages of this work, neither did Lyons. That evolved over time. His learning curve was an interesting process to watch. His original use of single rein riding created a safe horse. That was his goal. At his early clinics people brought him horses they couldn't ride. His job over the course of the weekend was to get these people up on their horses and out on a trail ride.

At the first symposium I watched he said: 'I solve ground problems from the ground and riding problems from the saddle." I watched him work, and knew that wasn't what he was doing at all. Every weekend he took his stallion, Zip, through the foundation ground work lessons: the baby steps of the "East, West, North, South" exercise and round pen mechanics. Every weekend Zip and John reviewed the basics of single-rein riding.

One of the principles of training states that the longer we stay with an exercise the more good things will evolve out of it. As John reviewed those foundation exercises week after week for symposium audiences, good things began to evolve, and he saw the connection between ground work and riding, and he saw how you could evolve the balance of an upper-level performance horse out of these simple lessons. That's when Zip started making dramatic changes. When I first saw him, I liked his topline, but not his gaits. His trot was too much of a short-strided jog for my taste. Now he started to move magnificently, with the impulsion that made his work truly beautiful.

I won't go into the evolution of Lyons' work here, though that would be an interesting digression. I know how long this post already is, so I need to return to the major question which is: can you use the single-rein exercises in the book and still continue to take lessons with your local instructor?

This is what I did. I would head off to one of Lyons clinics, get a good dose of single-rein riding and go back to the barn inspired to work on the purity of the system. I'd diligently pick up just the inside rein, following the mechanics of the day. Peregrine and I would sort through layers of the work. I'd see connections with Bettina's work that I hadn't been aware of before. Things she had talked to me about would start to make more sense. I'd be working on baby gives of the jaw, and Peregrine would shift his balance so that suddenly things worked better, and I'd be exclaiming - "oh that's what she meant when . . . "

Once I started to understand the significance of a particular exercise, I would share it with my clients and their horses. We'd puzzle through the current layer, make discoveries, and then hit snags we didn't understand. That was the next layer that needed peeling, but we didn't yet have enough "tools in the tool box" to unravel that puzzle, so we'd slip back into riding with two reins. We covered up the problem by relying on the channeling effect of the outside rein. But that was fine, because even though we were covering up some questions, our horses were going better than they ever had before. It was a very self-reinforcing process. It was Bettina's work that drew us forward, and it was Lyons' work that gave us a way of interpreting her training and making it accessible to our horses.

So we'd chug along quite happily for a while, and then I'd head back to another Lyons' clinic. And the interesting thing was that whatever the issue had been that was puzzling us, he had clearly run into the same problem. The advantage he had was he was giving clinics every weekend, and seeing a new group of horses in each clinic. Now that I've been on the road doing clinics, I've come to appreciate what an incredibly powerful learning process this is for the instructor. There's nothing like having ten new horses every weekend to sort out what works consistently and what still needs to be tweaked. So at every clinic, he would have a whole new batch of horses to help him find the holes in the training. I'm glad I got to experience the stair steps. It was wonderfully valuable and instructive. I'm sure those of you who have followed the work of people like Parelli and other clinicians have seen the same thing. The work most definitely evolves, and many of the things that were crude in the beginning, become more refined and elegant. I know the same process is occurring with clicker training, and that's as it should be. Every horse teaches us something new.

At these clinics the questions I'd been puzzling over, the road jams I'd encountered that made single-rein riding seem like a temporary tool, not a lifelong process were piece by piece being removed. I began to see the continuum, the connection with the high school work. There is always more to be learned, but the overall picture emerged. And it emerged in conjunction with clicker training. I'm not sure I would have seen the big picture if I hadn't had clicker training guiding me.

Stepping Stones
When I first started adding clicker training to my riding, I kept questioning why did I need this "crutch". Lyons and Bettina didn't fill their pockets full of goodies. Why did I need to? I remember riding Peregrine in one of Lyons' clinics. I was using the clicker, but sparingly because I wasn't sure what I wanted to reinforce. This was at the time when Peregrine was just coming off a long stretch of lay-up because of the problems I had had with his feet. Forward was a huge issue for him. During the clinic we sorted through several huge training hurdles.

I've told this story many times. I was so pleased with our progress during the clinic. At that time I was still not sure that Peregrine would be able to return to riding soundness, and here he was moving well, handling the pressure of the clinic. I was very proud of him. And then the clinic was over, Lyons was on his way to the next clinic, and I was left wondering what was next?

I went home and worked diligently through the exercises we'd covered in the clinic, but I wasn't sure what I was looking for. I asked for baby give after baby give. I could feel Peregrine thinking, "I've given a hundred times already, how much longer is this going to go on?" And then, by happenstance, he found a moment of better balance, and I felt a huge change in his poll. Click and treat.

Again I could almost feel Peregrine saying: "Oh is that what you wanted?! That's easy enough!" He got himself organized and within a stride or two, repeated the release. We both had something we could latch hold of. It made me think of finding a stepping stone across marshy ground. The click created something solid and repeatable for us to find. With each click and a treat, the response became clearer, easier to find. We might not fully understand the lesson we were working on, but we'd found something that felt different, something that felt good, and we could anchor that feel with a click and a treat.

I never thought of the clicker as a crutch after that. I understood its value as a teaching tool both for myself and for Peregrine. With the clicker I was able to understand the "big picture" of single rein riding. That's what is in the riding book. So that was the process. I would experiment, explore, get a new piece form Lyons or Bettina and focus on that. I'd head off to someone else's clinic and I'd get something useful from them that I would take back to Peregrine. He was my filter, my experimental animal. If the exercise benefitted him, I would begin to share it with my other clients. If we liked it, it stayed in the mix. If not, it was discarded and something better, more universal, was put in its place. So Peregrine has all my layers, all my experiments in him. He can show you all the good things that worked, as well as all the things that were discarded and never passed on.

And that's the process. What I know about single-rein riding is this:

It is a superb tool for developing a safe, rideable horse. That's where you begin. I would say that everyone who rides, especially if you ride more than one horse, would benefit from having the basics of single-rein riding in your tool kit. When a horse spooks, bucks, or bolts, there's nothing like it for bringing things back under control.

It is also a superb teaching process for reaching your performance goals. And here is where you encounter "season to taste". I was learning these techniques under the umbrella of Bettina's training. They were not an end in themselves, but a means to an end. These chunked down steps resolved many issues that are universal to all good training. We all, for example, want our horses to have soft mouths. And we all want access to our horse's hips.

I remember working with a dressage rider in the early stages of my learning this work. She was having problems with flying changes. That's what she wanted to work on. But I could see that her real issue, the underlying reason that the changes weren't happening, was her horse worked with a locked jaw. He was protecting himself from the backwards traction of her hands. As a result everything else was more stiff and braced than it should have been.

"You cannot ask for something and expect to get it on a consistent basis unless you have gone through a teaching process to teach it to your horse." She had never gone through a chunked down teaching process to ask her horse to soften his jaw. Her training had been too lumped. As a result, she had reached a stage where she was working on advanced exercises, but her foundation was weak and the work was falling apart. When a rider has reached this stage in her training, it can be hard to go back and work on baby steps, but it is often those baby steps that get you to your goal faster.

What Pleases Your Eye?
In each of my posts so far I've given you journal assignments. Here's the assignment from this post. Have you found the look that "rings your bells and whistles"? Have you found what I found in Bettina's work, that way of riding that pleases your eye and delights you in the way your horse feels?

That's so important because it will guide you through this process. The tools are very basic, but the results will vary depending upon the picture of equine beauty that you have in your head. We can be studying very different systems of dressage, and still find the single-rein tool box valuable. We can both ride similar exercises, and yet end up with very different looks because that ultimate picture we each carry in our heads will effect what we release on.

So have you found the look that pleases your eye? Can you describe it? Have you found an instructor that can get you there? Note, this isn't about what job you want your horse to do. You can say, "I just want to trail ride." But that doesn't answer the question. I've seen trail horses that look so sad, worried, and uncomfortable. They're doing the job, but just barely. And I've seen trail horses that were awesome, that made you want to laugh riding them - bold, confident, balanced, great horses. So it's not the job, not what the horse is doing, but how does he do it?

Here are some more questions to ask yourself. Can the look you love be sustained by the horse? Can he perform in this way and remain sound? If the answer is "yes", you have clear sailing. Equine beauty and equine emotional and physical soundness should match up. If the answer comes back "no", you have a problem, and you may want to examine what it is about that look that draws you.

If you haven't found a look that pleases you, then the assignment is to put your antennae up and go in search of what pleases you. Look through books and magazines and begin identifying what pleases you. Watch videos. You aren't looking for technique, just what draws your eye, what makes you say, I want to do that. Be aware of your triggers. Are you rejecting a look because it seems an impossible goal, something you'd be afraid to try? Or are you rejecting it because it is not a match with your belief system and principles, and what you find truly beautiful in horses?

Training Umbrellas
The next question is: have you found someone who can get you to this riding ideal? If you are working with someone locally you enjoy, whose teaching style is something you are comfortable with, who is good to your horse, and who is taking you in the direction you want to go, then let that instructor's work provide you with the "umbrella" under which you place other things. By all means add in new pieces. Find the things, like I did, that will help you understand his lessons better. If you decide to add in clicker training and single-rein riding, I think you will find that the mix works well.

If, on the other hand, you are working with someone because they are close and you feel as though you need some kind of local support, but your instructor isn't really on the same path that you are, make something else the "umbrella". Use this list and the riding book to give you the organizing framework you need, and take from your local person only the pieces that fit into that framework. Leave the rest behind.

All this means there is no set answer to the question: how do you work with an instructor and follow along with the discussions on this list? That will depend so much upon your goals, the training resources you have access to, and your level of experience, as well as the puzzles your horse presents you with. We will each come to our own form of blending. We'll be able to have productive conversations and use the riding book exercises, but the final look we create will be a reflection of our horses and our own unique learning process.

One more piece and then I'll stop for the day. When I wrote the book I knew that many people would never get to the end of it. They would read the first half, the sections that give you the safety tool box, and that would be enough for them. They would take what they needed from the book, and leave the rest. That's absolutely fine. But I also know that there are other riders who are looking for more. They have their picture of equine beauty. They want that magical feel of connection, energy, power, and softness. If I had written a simpler book, I would have left out what they are looking for. That's why the book is what it is. When you are ready, all the layers are there waiting for you to peel them.

Alexandra Kurland
theclickercenter.com

February 15, 2006 from The Click That Teaches List
Head Lowering is Not a Forward Moving Exercise, Stopping for a Treat, and More Work on the Foundation Lessons

by Alexandra Kurland

I sound like a broken record, and I love it! This group is awesome! We've had a week of amazing conversations. So many things to comment on. I'm not sure where to jump in.

Head Lowering

I think I'll start with a recent question. Hilary wrote:

"I have a question - Every time I open Alex's book I read - remember, head lowering is nor a forward moving exercise -. . .
With my 2 youngest horses however ( 2 years and 10 months) , I have found when walking them out, it seems really useful to use a target to keep their concentration with me, and their head to well below wither level.

Am I creating a problem later on for myself by using head lowering like this, with forward motion?"

Hilary, there is no one single, right, only-way-to-do-it head lowering behavior. Head lowering can not only be taught in a variety of ways, it can be used in a variety of ways. The first clicker-trained version of head lowering I generally introduce horses to is done through targeting. I have the horse track the target down to the ground, and later follow the target so he walks with his head down. That's a useful early skill, easy to teach, easy for the horse to understand and follow. It sounds as though you are finding this form of head lowering helps your horse. It's a very appropriate use of the tool.

The "head lowering is not a forward moving exercise" mantra belongs to the version of head lowering that is generated from the "t'ai chi wall" and the lifted inside rein. It is taught out of backing, specifically backing in a square. (This is the lesson that is presented in detail on Video Lesson 3.) I add this form of head lowering to a horse's experience for a number of reasons:

First, the outer, most visible layer of this exercise gives you a calmer, less pushy horse. It gives you a solid, "I really need you to drop your head and calm down now" response. It is your power tool when you really need your horse to settle, and because of the way it is taught it addresses shoulder barging and general pushiness.

When you watch a horse go through this lesson, you can see them settle emotionally. What may not be quite so obvious, especially the first time you watch this lesson, are all the shifts that are occurring in the horse's balance. In order for the horse to get his nose all the way to the ground while at the same time complying with the mantra, "head lowering is not a forward moving exercise", he has to shift his weight into his hind end.

"But wait a minute", someone may be saying. "My horse drops his nose to the ground when he grazes, and he's totally on the forehand. I don't see any weight shifts."

Exactly. Grazing is forward movement. So a horse can absolutely walk with his nose on the ground and keep his weight shifted forward. That's one of the reasons the mantra is so important. When the horse takes a step forward to catch his balance as he drops his head, the handler counters with a request for backing. Only once the horse has reset his weight back, does she ask for or allow her horse to drop his head. As the process evolves, the horse figures out how to rock his weight back into his hindquarters so he can stretch his neck out and down to the ground - without taking that rebalancing step forward.

It took me a batch of really challenging horses to figure out just how important that mantra is. Initially I'd be working with a difficult horse. It would be barging through me, nervous, upset about who knows what - definitely in need of head down. We'd start out just fine. I'd get the horse backing in a square, then I'd proceed to head lowering. The horse would start to settle for brief moments, but it would still be on a hair trigger. Sooner or later something would startle it - it would barge forward, and I'd ask for a backing step. The horse, knowing the whole sequence by this point, would skip the back up step and simply drop its head. Things would be momentarily calmer. That's very reinforcing when you are working with a horse that is on the brink of loosing all emotional control. Things are calm, things are safe, at least in that moment. It feels good enough. Why rock the boat by asking for that step of backing?

But what I discovered was I wasn't solving the underlying problem. That subtle (and at times not so subtle) push through the shoulders was still there. And yes, the horse had indeed dropped his head, but he had also pulled down on the lead. He didn't release softly into the drop of his head.

Crooked Horses
When I started being much more diligent about making sure that the horse undid any forward moving steps that he took before I allowed him to drop his head, I saw what a huge impact that made on the effectiveness of the lesson. Not only did I get the horse to drop his head and calm down, but a whole cluster of related balance issues were resolved, as well.

If you begin by introducing your horse to this lesson under saddle, you can feel these changes directly. I've sat on crooked horses where you can feel the releases occurring vertebrae by vertebrae - very cool. So on an emotional level, you are addressing any tendencies the horse may have to solve problems by barging or pushing past you. And on a physical level you are addressing many of the balance/crookedness issues that your horse may have, and that are the underlying cause of his pushiness.

Even simple requests can put a crooked horse into a compromised and possibly painful position. Rather than endure the stress to his joints, he barges forward to relieve the pressure. Think about doing deep knee bends. I have a twist down my right side. When I do a deep knee bend, there is a point where my knees start to scream at me: "What are you thinking!!!! Enough already!!" When I worked with an Alexander Practitioner and learned how to align my bones without twisting my knee, I was amazed at how much further down in a deep knee bend I could go without any discomfort to my knees.

This realignment is the key to understanding why I put what I did into the riding book. We are using these exercises to teach our horses a body learning equivalent to the one I gained from the Alexander and Feldenkrais work. This isn't having someone else position your joints for you. It is a learning process where you become very internally aware. Take that to riding, connect it to your horse and you truly do become like a centaur.

Head lowering also lets you address another kind of crookedness. It gives you a tool you can use to straighten out and rebalance your horse should he become too curled or over-flexed. That's very important once you head into lateral flexions where it's easy for your horse to think: "If a little is good, a lot must be better." So head lowering taught from the t'ai chi wall rein effect is an important tool to have at your disposal. It's going to help you apply the principle: "for every exercise you teach there is an opposite exercise you must teach to keep things in balance.

Once the lesson has been learned at the halt, you can ask for head lowering at the walk. And then at the trot and canter. The degree of head lowering you ask for will be dependent upon your horse, the circumstances and the gait. I've never asked my horses to canter with their noses to the dirt, but I have asked them to walk with their heads that low.

Single Rein Riding: Stopping for a Treat
Linda's posts sparked a wonderful thread this past week. I won't add too much to this except to comment on the stopping for a click.

Linda wrote:

However I found in doing this I seemed to be loosing
somethings. The first thing I found is that when ever I clicked
Joshua would come to sudden stop and await his treat. I soon taught
him to continue on until I asked him to stop, but this still came
with an unwanted result. As soon as I clicked Joshua would have a
physical/emotional response that was attentive but anticipanting of
the treat...even if he continued the behavior. This I found to be
counter productive to the soft and flexible flow of Classical
Dressage.

The stopping for a treat seems to be one of those world divides places, something that can be hard to understand when you're riding. I want my horses to stop. When I click, they stop. They don't stop crashing on their forehands. They stop in balance, but they very much stop. And it is the stopping that becomes one of the power tools of clicker training.

Every time the horse stops, he must reorganize himself and rebuild back to the clickable moment. It is the stopping and rebuilding that creates the deep understanding of what is being asked. When you have worked through a piece with enough resets and restarts, your horse will understand the balance so well, he will be able to reproduce the totality of the movement without being micromanaged through it. You can let go and know your horse's good balance is not going to disappear out from under you.

The more correct a horse is in his balance, the more correct I can be in mine. It becomes a cycle. Now when I breathe, my horse's body is in the perfect place to receive my suggestion. He shifts his balance ever so slightly, I recieve it back and we flow together in a harmony of parts.

One of the images I think of is that of a symphony. In school I remember listening to "Peter and the Wolf". Most of you are probably familiar with the piece. It teaches children the sounds of the various instruments in an orchestra. The conductor of a symphony will hear a performance very differently from the untrained ears of a child. He doesn't have to have everyone else stop playing to know if the violins are doing their part. But in a rehearsal he might want to spend a few minutes with just the string section, reviewing a particularly challenging section of the score. That's very much the role of single rein riding. At first it acts like "Peter and the Wolf": "This is the sound the horns make." - "This is the feel of the hip stepping under."

"This is the sound of the horns and the drums playing together." - "This is the feel of the jaw and the hip connecting."

Once this is well understood, single rein riding serves the function of a rehearsal where the conductor singles out a section of the orchestra to play for him. He won't interrupt the actual performance, but here in the rehearsal he will listen to that section play by itself until it is tuned to his ear.

We want the symphony, but sometimes listening to the simplicity of a single instrument brings great pleasure. So single rein riding can be seen as having many facets, many functions, many rewards depending upon the skill level of the horse and rider using it.

Riding the Symphony
We want the symphony, in other words that glorious freedom of movement that evolves out of good training. We all find many ways to experience these glorious moments with our horses, those times when everything works and we flow in harmony. It's easy to start writing purple prose when describing a ride. My horses feel great, make me smile. Linda, it sounds very much as though Joshua feels great, and makes you smile. We may be asking different things of our horses, achieving a different picture, but we are achieving the same end goal: our horses feel great and make us smile.

So is there a value for you in the exercises in the riding book? That's the broader question. Rather than lapse back into purple prose let me go back to the nuts and bolts of what these lessons are for. We're going to switch metaphors for a moment. Think about a car that is parallel parked. Suppose when you pulled in to the parking space, you gave yourself plenty of room, but now two cars have pulled up tight to your bumpers. You can't just turn your wheels and pull out. You have to turn your wheel a little, inch forward, rock back, turn your wheel a bit more, inch forward, rock back, etc. At some point you will be able to turn your wheel and drive out - flow.

This process of rocking forward, rocking back is something I want my horses to be very familiar and comfortable with because it is the keystone holding up this work. So what do I mean by this?

Just as we tend to favor one side over the other, so too, do our horses. This can be an artifact of training, or the result of conformation, hoof balance, injury, etc.. There are lots of causes. The bottom line is most of us are not sitting on perfectly symmetrical horses. Peregrine represents a good example of this. He cannot flow forward in that died-and-gone-to-heaven trot that I so dearly love if his joints are out of alignment.

Balance Beams
The Olympics are on now, albeit the winter games, so it's an appropriate place to bring in one of my favorite sayings:

"Even Olympic athletes fall off the balance beam." Which means that I don't expect my horses to be perfect all the time in their balance. If I ask for a trot transition and, as Peregrine lifts up into the trot, he loses his balance slightly and falls into his outside shoulder, I say to myself: "even Olympic athletes fall off the balance beam." It is okay to have a momentary loss of balance. What I want is for my horse to know how to climb back up on the balance beam and get himself reorganized. An Olympic athlete falls off the balance beam, climbs back up, and picks up her performance right from the point of the mishap as though nothing had happened.

We saw a beautiful example of that in the pairs figure skating. The Chinese team had a terrible fall. The female skater crashed to her knees, was in obvious pain, but went right back into the routine and ended up with a silver medal. Now I do not want my horses working in spite of pain and injury, but I do want them to have that Olympic athlete ability to regain their balance and continue on. That's the underlying process that I am looking for with these exercises. I am teaching my horses weight shifts. At first the weight shifts are big and obvious. Later they are subtle, invisible, but powerfully present.

So, if I am asking Peregrine, for example, to trot off, but I feel in the moment that he is about to make the transition that his weight is falling rather than lifting, I'll reset him. I'll ask for a weight shift back. That's just like the car that is parallel parked. Shifting his weight back allows him to realign his joints. We try again. I ask for an upward transition, he responds, but still the balance is not where it needs to be. I ask him to rock back, and then shift forward again. And now I feel that his hindquarters are supporting, lifting. He can move forward on "the balance beam", so this time, instead of redirecting the energy into a shift back, I allow it to flow forward.

Now I have two choices. I can let the trot go on, or I can click it after a few strides. If I am working with a horse that is still learning about resets, I'll probably click. My horse will stop. I'll give him a treat, and now I'll get to go through the process of "getting back on the balance beam" all over again. As we go through this process, my horse will get better and better at getting up on the "balance beam". I won't need multiple resets to get into the trot I want. They will occur within the transition. And if my horse has a momentary loss of balance within the trot, I can breath a reset, in other words, a half halt, and the trot will rebalance within the flow of the movement. He will know so well how to get into the balance, that any loss of balance will become fleeting.

At this point I won't be clicking after a few strides. I will let the trot flow on. That is the ultimate reward for both myself and for my horse. I do believe that horses love the way their bodies feel when they move with the freedom and ease that good balance creates. They love the energy, just as we love the feel in our own bodies when we move with athletic grace. Good movement becomes self-reinforcing, but the process of getting to that movement, that's what I want to reinforce well with the clicker, because the faster my horse can get "back up on that balance beam" the faster we can find ourselves back in the flow of a beautiful trot. And it is much easier to stay in that flow once you've found it than it is to get there in the first place. So that's the piece I want my horse to know well. Each time I click and my horse has to find his way back into the flow of the movement, I make the getting there more solid.

When I was first learning about this type of riding, there was no clicker to mark progress, to say "yes!" to the horse - "That's a piece of what we're after." There were releases, and there was the reward of moving well. And there was also the threat of pressure - "Brace, and the pressure escalates." The system worked, but adding the clicker changed the landscape completely. I don't need to tell all of you on this list about the bright eyes and the eager partners we gain when we weave the clicker into the mix.

I'm asking for hard things of my horses. I'm asking them to work on a balance beam. Because I am asking for hard things, I want to reward them well. When Peregrine gives me a beautiful trot, it just isn't enough to pat him on the neck and say nice job. I want bells and whistles to go off. So I use the clicker when I ride to teach, to motivate, and also very much to appreciate.

The resets I learned from Bettina, are not, I think, a universally used technique, but they are a huge part of maintaining joint soundness. With resets you are in essence taking your horse through an Alexander or Feldenkrais session. That's the level of body awareness that develops through this work - in both the horse and rider. So soundness and beautiful movement are woven together. Now does that mean that this is the only "road to Rome"? Absolutely not. This is what I wrote about in my last post. It's so important to find a look and a feel you love. If you have found a look that pleases your eye, and an instructor that you work well with, you may decide to dabble on the outside of the riding book exercises for a while.

These exercises connect fundamentally to good riding, but the connections are not always that obvious when you first encounter this work. That certainly was my first impression. I did a lot of approach and retreats before I really saw what this work was about and embraced it fully.

Resets and Foundation Lessons
I want to tie all this back to the previous posts so people who are working on the foundation lessons won't feel lost or left out. The foundation lessons are preparing both you and your horse for resets - for getting up on the balance beam in the first place, and then for staying up there longer and longer. In the foundation lessons you are learning three important skills: training a single, isolated behavior; training by priority; and resetting your horse. The three key lessons for this are: "happy faces", "the grown ups are talking, please don't interrupt", and standing on a mat.

In "happy faces" you are focusing on the position of your horse's ears, a single isolated element. You aren't concerned with where his head is. You're simply clicking when his ears pop forward.

In "grown-ups" you begin to train by priority. The "grown ups" lesson is so important because this is where you learn to manipulate rates of reinforcement. At first you click - feed, click - feed in rapid-fire succession. A good tip is to put a piece of colored electrical tape across the knuckles of the hand that's closest to your horse. If you are standing to the left of your horse, you'd feed with your left hand, Your right would be against your body. Here's the sequence: Your horse takes his nose away from your pockets and holds his head in line with his shoulders. Click, you reach into your pocket, and feed out away from your body where you want your horse's head to be, then you touch the electrical tape that's on your right hand with your left hand. If you can touch the tape before your horse moves his head towards your goody pouch, click, feed. Touching the tape gives you a target. It keeps you from reaching into your pocket before you click.

You do a rapid fire series of clicks, then you slow your click down. You touch the electrical tape, count 1001, click, feed. Etc.. As you build duration, you'll see variations in the behavior. Sometimes his ears will pop forward. That reminds you that that would be a good thing, so now you add that into the mix. You are training by priority. You want your horse to put his nose in a certain position and put his ears forward. What is most important is that he have his nose where you want it - away from your body. If he puts his ears forward as he swings his head in your direction - there's no click. You've already trained "happy faces" as an isolated element. Now you are combining it with grown-ups and the order matters. What is most important to you is that he keeps his nose out away from your body. Adding in "happy faces" is secondary to this.

Next comes standing on a mat, which is really just an extension of grown-ups, but now you are being more specific about where your horse puts his feet. If he steps off the mat, you're going to use resets, asking him to shift his weight forward and back until his foot lands on the mat. As your horse learns that the weight shifts you are asking for are simply there to help him locate the mat so he can get to his click and treat faster, he'll become increasingly accepting of the process. You're essentially asking for the same subtle weight shifts forward and back that you'll be asking for later under saddle. So everything is everything else. The more comfortable he becomes with this process, the easier it will be for him later to learn the weight shifts under saddle.

So the "homework" is to continue with the exploration of the foundation lessons. Look for opportunities to train by priority and to reset your horse into a better balance. If your horse stands politely next to you, here's the next question. Does he stand in good balance? To get him to stand well, focus on one leg at a time. I usually begin with the inside hind. Ask your horse to shift his weight forward and back until his hind leg lands with the joints aligned and supporting his weight. You'll be using your stand on the mat skills to do this. Once that leg is aligned well, align the outside hind, then add in his front feet. Add these elements to grown-ups are talking and you'll have something pretty neat to show off!

Alexandra Kurland
theclickercenter.com

February 27, 2006 From The click that Teaches List
Clicker Communication

by Alexandra Kurland

This post was written in response to an email from a rider who was struggling with some issues with her mare. First her mare was uncomfortable having her udder cleaned. Second, she had bucked her rider off during a lesson. The instructor adviser the rider to kick her mare in the belly, so she wouldn't do it again. Several other memebers of the list wrote in with excellent suggestions for both situations. The following post looks at belief systems and the training choices that grow out of them.

I've been traveling so I am behind with the list. I just finished reading last week's posts, but haven't read any since last Thursday, so if this seems behind on the current conversation - it is. I'm writing this not to answer specific questions that were raised, but to highlight and underscore what others have already said.

We had a recurrent thread during the week dealing with the advice people are given from conventional trainers. Kathy wrote in perplexed about her mare's warning bites. Lisa wrote in asking about a bucking incident and her instructor's admonition that she needed to kick her mare in the belly so she wouldn't do it again. And Tanya wrote about the process she's going through shifting from the paradigm of escalating pressure to this other world that breaks training down into small steps and builds successes in small increments.

There have been some wonderful responses. I don't really need to add to them except too say, Yes!!!! That is exactly right. And also to add that this is where clicker training becomes clicker communication. This may sound a little strange, but Kathy, when your mare turned around and gave you a warning gesture, in a very real sense this is cause for celebration. It means she felt comfortable enough in your relationship to tell you that something was bothering her.

Now I know emails get passed around the internet, so I can just hear the scoffs as someone with a more conventional way of viewing horses reads this post. "Yeah, right. The horse felt comfortable all right. She has no respect for her owner, and if her owner doesn't show her who is boss pretty soon, she's going to get a nasty bite."

Sigh. I know the rhetoric. And yes, if Kathy doesn't listen to her mare, she might get a nip next time instead of just a warning gesture. After all, if you aren't heard, don't you shout a little louder? And yes, Kathy could go back to the old paradigms of suppressing behavior, but she got much better suggestions than that from the list.

I've seen the horses who work with dull eyes. They have learned not to protest, just to obey. They look "respectful". They stand quietly, they are easy to handle, polite, well mannered. All that sounds like something we should all want, but is it? I want polite, absolutely, but I also want a horse who feels comfortable enough with me to tell me when something is bothering him. Peregrine knows he may express his opinions. But he also knows there are limits. He can make faces, but he can't act out on those faces. If something is bothering him, I want to know about it. If he dances on the cross ties, I don't want to suppress that behavior, I want to listen to it. It means something.

Now if I had never taught him to stand still, it might mean simply: "I don't know how to stand still, and what you are doing makes me a little nervous."

But on a horse that has learned basic manners, the warning gestures, the dancing away from your hand, that's communication we need to listen to. If your horse has not been comfortable enough in your relationship to express his concerns before, it is communication you want to celebrate.

That doesn't mean that you allow your horse to bite, kick, or buck. But it does mean that you learn to listen to your horse. You acknowledge the gesture for what it is, and you chunk your training down so your horse can remain comfortable with what you are doing. Your horse can tell you what his concerns are, and you can show him that you understand and will work with him.

That's clicker communication. If you think of clicker training as a tool, something you pull out now and then to solve a particular problem, you may never reach the stage where clicker training morphs into clicker communication. Certainly you may find a deepening of relationship through even just this limited use, but you won't really understand what those of us who use clicker training as a more universal communication tool are talking about.

And this communication is so precious. Let me share a story. The barn where Peregrine and Robin live is attached directly to the indoor arena, a real luxury in a cold climate. At night when I am doing barn chores I often turn Robin out in the indoor arena. This past week the latch on the door was broken. Robin knows he can slide the door open, which is what he does. Now he could walk right back into the barn. He could come into the aisle and eat hay, or visit with the other horses, or even make a bee line out the barn door and have a run around the farm. The arena door is open. There is nothing stopping him, but that's not what he does. He stands waiting for me at the open door. He wants me to come play with him.

It is just too cute. If I take too long with my barn chores, he closes the arena door with a bang and then opens it again. He wants to be certain I know he is there. When I talk to Peregrine, Robin will often nicker, "I'm here, too." He's so cute. Clicker communication. If another rider comes before I am ready to start working horses, and I have to bring Robin in, he is often sticky at the door. He doesn't want to leave. He wants me to come in and play with him.

Now I can really hear the comments from the nay sayers. "You see, I told you. No respect. The horse should follow. You call that training when the horse grows cement around his feet and doesn't want to leave the arena"

And I say, yes absolutely. That's clicker communication at its best. Robin can tell me he wants me to join him in the arena. He can tell me he loves our nightly sessions together. That's valuable information. And I can tell him that we can't work right away, and he has to leave the arena. The momentary stickiness isn't disobedience. It is communication that I cherish.

Telling Stories
How do we interpret what we see? Behavior is just that - behavior. A horse bucks. A horse turns around and swipes at us with its teeth. A horse's feet get stuck for a moment when he's asked to move forward. These are observable behaviors. But what do they mean? How do we interpret them? How do we respond to them? How do we know who is right?

This is where that all important belief system comes into play. What do you believe about your horse and animals in general? How much of your answer is truly what you believe, and how much is simply a parroting back of what you have been told. We do create our own realities, and we create them out of our belief systems. I said in the book that I believe horses are intelligent thinking beings. What I encounter is evidence to support that. My belief system colors what I see, so what I see supports my belief system and makes it stronger. It's a self-reinforcing cycle. I also believe that horses really and truly do enjoy our company, and really and truly do enjoy working with us - as long as they are not hurt or afraid.

And out of that belief system I create the stories that guide me through my training. Now these stories are important. They form the core of my training choices. That means I need to choose my stories well so they work for me not against me.

Here's what I mean by that: This is part of my story for Peregrine. Peregrine is a horse who grew up in a body that didn't work right. His stifles locked and that created many complications, both physical and behavioral. What I have learned is that every time he has given me problems in training there has always been an underlying physical cause. When he was a foal, he started cow kicking when I groomed him around his stifle area. He'd been such a sweet-natured, easy-going foal, I was concerned and called out my vet. The vet did a cursory examination and announced that there was nothing wrong. Peregrine just "needed to learn manners". A week later I saw his stifles lock for the first time. He'd been right. The protective belly kicks had been the first signs of a major problem.

We've had other situations like that where the first assumption others made was Peregrine was just being "difficult", but in the end it always turned out he was hurting. He was doing his best to let me know and to protect himself without hurting me.

Peregrine has always been right, so when he grumps and makes faces, I need to listen to him. He's trying to tell me that something is wrong. I may not always know right away what it is, but if he's grumpy, if he gets stiff or resistant under saddle, I need to be looking for the underlying cause.

I have taught Peregrine the foundation lesson of "happy faces". He perks his ears forward and "smiles" at me when he sees me. Click and treat. But I also let him make grumpy faces. I don't try to suppress them. I want him to feel safe enough to express his discomfort. I need those early warning signs to help me monitor how he's feeling.

This is a story that works for us. Now it might not work for someone else. If it made me view Peregrine as an invalid, I could be creating problems instead of resolving them, but I know Peregrine sees himself as healthy and strong. And I know I can trust him. He enjoys being ridden, so at night when I call him over to the mounting block, if he stands out in the middle of the arena and just looks at me, I know I need to listen. He isn't being disrespectful. He isn't being stubborn. He's trying to tell me something is bothering him and he doesn't feel up to being ridden. Our relationship is so solid I can hear him and allow him to say "not tonight please." He has always been right. Better to listen to a whisper than to put him into a position where he has to shout. When horses need to shout, both horses and humans tend to get hurt.

So here are the questions.

When it comes to horses, what is your belief system? And what is the belief system of your instructor? We've already heard that for many of you, your belief system and your instructor's do not always match up. That's important information, because it is going to have an impact on your long term relationship with your trainer.

If there is a mismatch, you will have to take a much more active role shaping the structure of your lessons. You'll know you are after a limited skill set, not the whole package. When your instructor tells you to kick your horse in the belly because she bucked, or to escalate the pressure because she didn't immediately respond to a cue, you'll know that's coming from the part of the belief system that doesn't match yours. Instead of escalating into force, it's time to listen to your horse to see if something is wrong. And its time to break the training down into small, achievable steps.

"The horse bucked because she was trying to get rid of her rider. You need to show her she can't get away with that kind of behavior." This one-size-fits-all story they are telling is a dangerous one. We need to be asking the deeper question. What is going on that the horse is not able to do what we're asking? When Kathy's mare reached around and threatened to bite, sure, Kathy could have smacked her so hard she stopped biting, at least for the moment. Problem solved? Who knows. Squeeze a balloon and it just bulges out somewhere else. So who knows what the consequences of that reaction would be?

Maybe the horse really did buck because it's "Tuesday" and it just didn't feel like working. A good swift reminder to follow the rules may be just the "attitude adjustment" that is needed. But suppose that's not what is going on. Suppose there really is something wrong. The horse bucked because the rider was applying backwards traction, compressing the horse's spine and creating pain. The horse bucked to relieve the pressure. You need to understand that process, because backwards traction cripples horses. That doesn't mean we accept the behavior, but that story leads to different training solutions.

When you put all behavioral problems into one basket - the horse is being disrespectful - you may miss seeing the situations where the horse is crying out for help.

So Kathy can also tell a different story. This story says that her mare is uncomfortable having her udder cleaned. This story leads directly to good training solutions. Kathy needs to break the process down into smaller steps. I won't go through the process, others, including Kathy herself, have designed a lovely lesson plan to work through this issue. By breaking the process down into many small steps, she will work out a system that stays comfortable for her mare and safe for her. And because you always get a ripple effect of many other good things when you use positive reinforcement, this is a process that enhances training rather than suppressing behavior.

Now in this scenario, suppose you are wrong. Suppose your horse really was fine, and the reason he bit, bucked, baulked, etc., was because it was "Tuesday" and he really didn't feel like working. What have you lost? You've chunked the training down into very small steps. You've been a better teacher. You've helped the horse to be successful. You've found the place where things start to get sticky, where he starts to say "no", and you've worked around that point, experimenting with half as dozen different strategies until you found the combination that worked. You've deepened your relationship, built a huge amount of trust, had positive ripple effects throughout your training, and ended up with a really neat horse who says "yes" to you with an eagerness that you just love. You haven't lost anything by breaking your training down into small steps. On the contrary, you've gained.

That's very different from the first scenario. In that scenario let's look at the consequences of having the wrong story. Your horse is hurting or feels trapped and compressed by what you are asking for. He physically can't do it, not in any comfort, but you make him work because you're told: "He's just testing you. He doesn't respect you. You need to show him who is boss or he'll do it again." This belief system doesn't make room for the possibility that the horse is doing his best and simply doesn't understand or can't do what is being asked. He's made to work until somehow or other he manages to satisfy the handler. But what are the consequences here? You can imagine them as well as I can. They begin with tension, and a shut down, resigned attitude, and often end with injuries, either to the horse or the handler - or both.

So pick your stories well. Pick stories that work for your horse, that make you your horse's advocate. As you "gather data", as you learn more about your horse, more about riding and training, your story may shift. Maybe you will decide that the answer really is "it's Tuesday and I don't feel like working", but that conclusion will be built out of step-by-step evaluation that has evolved out of a caring belief system.

So in your journals, think about what you've been told about horses. Do these stories fit with your belief systems? Do they work for you, and do they support the kind of relationship you want to have with your horse? If the answer is "no", where are the disconnects? That's important to know because it lets you be an effective selective sifter of training information.

What is the story you tell about your horse? Does it lead to good training solutions? Does it lead you into clicker communication? As you listen to the stories people tell on this list and the different training solutions they offer, you may find yourself rewriting your story and finding one that leads to the kind of rich, magical relationship that clicker communication creates.

Alexandra Kurland
theclickercenter.com