Copyright: Alexandra Kurland
These posts were originally posted to the_click_that_teaches list, an on-line study group for "The Click That Teaches: Riding with the Clicker"
The following articles are included in this month's digest:
"Training Plans, The "Why Would You Leave Me?"Lesson and Three-Flip-Three"
"Training Choices"
Single-Rein Riding Mechanics
Helen House Horse
A Riding Lesson:Cone Circles
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March 9, 2006 From The click that Teaches List
Training Plans, The "Why Would You Leave Me?"Lesson and Three-Flip-Three
by Alexandra Kurland
First of all, my usual, Wow!!! What an awesome list. And Katie, you are tremendous!! Your posts have been off the charts outstanding. Many many thanks.* I've been traveling the last two weeks which makes it hard to keep up with the list, and there you are doing such a superb job filling in the details, all steps between the steps. How do you do it!? Inquiring minds want to know. How do you juggle five kids, all your horses, and manage to write so many awesome posts? I'm impressed!
(*You can read some of Katie Bartlett's posts in the Frequently Asked Questions of this web site)
And thank you Anna for all your questions. It's questions that draw the process along. I want to remind everyone that all this single-rein riding was once just as perplexing to me as it currently is to many of you. It took me years of wandering around on my horses in odd little circles to understand how the pieces all fit together. Hopefully, between the book, this list, and input from other sources we can shorten that learning curve considerably. But if you are feeling puzzled, unsure where all this is taking you, know that things do sort out. I am so grateful to all the long-term single-rein riders on this list who are adding in their "trust the process" experiences.
Thank you also, Anna, for your gentle reminder to people to keep the discussions on this list centered around the riding book. I know when people get comfortable on a list it is only natural to want to ask other questions. Since saddle fit, health care, etc. are all related to riding, all topics, in a sideways sort of a way, do fit under this very broad umbrella. However, I would encourage people to take questions of this sort to Clickryder and other relevant lists.
And while I'm on house keeping subjects, two other quick requests: please do remember to clip your posts. Please do not send the entire digest attached to your emails. Also we have new people joining all the time so it would really help if you would write out what the abbreviations you're using stand for. For example, the first time you use "Why would you leave me?" write it out in full, then abbreviate to wwylm.
Also paragraphs. They are wonderful things. That and full sentences. I don't want to sound like an english teacher, but apart from making it easier for others to read your posts, it has an impact on training. Look at Katie's post. You know what kind of a trainer she is just by looking at the way she writes. You can see the order, the thought she puts into the process. You know she doesn't just bounce from one idea to the next when she is with her horses. There are pauses, places to breathe, time to reflect on what is happening. There's order and there's thought behind every sentence and every click.
You can see the development of someone's training skills reflected in their writing. As their paragraphs become more organized, their sentences clearer, you'll see in the content a parallel order coming into their training. So pay attention to the structure of your posts. Oddly enough you may find some of the clues to your horse's training issues embedded in the way you write. When you finish writing a post, take a look at it before you send it. If it is all one block of text, ask yourself if that is also how you train - all one big, non-stop flurry of information bombarding your horse. Take the time to break your post up into smaller units. See where you need to pause for breath. See where you can stop for a moment to collect your thoughts. As you create full sentences and structured paragraphs, you may suddenly find yourself having an "ah ha" moment. You'll often see embedded in the order the answers to the questions you are asking.
Time for a new paragraph. Also, it's time to stop sounding like an English teacher - on to training.
Purists and Plans
Katie wrote:
> I should have mentioned last night that I was not a complete
purist (and am still not, although I am heading that way) about training a horse
only using Alex's work. I don't think you have to choose. If there
> is a response you really want him to have in his body, then teach
it to him."
And Jord-Ann wrote in response:
"A couple of things about this. Once you really understand
reinforcement and shaping, you can look at traditional training and
see clicker training - all the places it lines up. If it's
not "lining up", it's either not good training, or it can be MADE
good training by tweaking to follow the rules of shaping and
reinforcement. . .
The issue is that you must have a clear picture of the end goals,
consistent with the best for the HORSE , and then a clear plan to
get there. That's why , if you haven't felt the end
goal, and don't know if the pieces are lining up that way, it's best
to use someone else's "plan". When you have a clear feel for the end
goal, you can start to pick and choose from "other" plans. In the
end, it's not an either/or proposition - all the truly viable roads
of traditional training lead to Rome too - some are just more direct
routes. The only way you can tell HOW direct they are is to see if
they "line up" with R shaping."
Exactly right!!! I would have to say I am not a "complete purist" either. You use the tool box you have, and mine is an eclectic mix. I didn't start out with the intent of becoming a single-rein proponent. My training "plan" as Jord-Ann refers to it, evolved over time. It is based on the work of John Lyons and others, as you know, but it has been heavily influenced by the horses I have worked with, the books I have read, the horses I have watched being trained. So absolutely, Katie, you won't be a purist. You'll be an experimenter, and there is nothing better. In my first book, "Clicker Training for your Horse" I encouraged people to use the work as a launching pad for their own creative training. I wanted people to see clicker training not as a fixed-in-stone, "cook book" process, but a dynamic training system.
That absolutely holds true as well for the material covered in the riding book. We need to be experimenting, testing, questioning. If we treat this work as a launching pad, who knows what we'll discover.
I love Jord-Ann's comment: "if you haven't felt the end goal, and don't know if the pieces are lining up that way, it's best to use someone else's "plan". When you have a clear feel for the end goal, you can start to pick and choose from "other" plans."
As we explore single-rein riding together, "the plan we're borrowing" is the one laid out in the riding book. So let's review the "big picture" of that plan.
I'll begin by telling a story. I may actually have shared this one already on this list. I don't remember. I know I put it in the riding book. Years ago I was riding a very wiggly Arabian. He was a charmer of a horse, but, oh, such a wiggle-worm to ride. He was also absolutely round like a barrel so keeping a saddle on was an interesting lesson in balance. On top of that he had the ever so not charming habit of stopping unexpectedly and shaking like a dog. All that, plus he was incredibly crooked. Not fun.
So the task I set myself was riding this horse on a circle. Even with two reins this was a challenge. He was a pro at wiggling and meandering all over the arena. He leaned in through his inside shoulder, and bowed out through his outside. The only thing that was connected to his feet was his desire to leave. So all those things people have been describing - the horse rubber necking, over-flexing, meandering off course, etc. - were all things I was experiencing in spades with this horse.
At the start of one ride I decided I was going to use the inside rein, and only the inside rein, to get him to walk a consistent circle. I wasn't going to "cheat" and pick up the outside rein. I was going to rely exclusively on the exercises I was trying to learn. I set out some cones so I would know how far off course I was, and for the next several hours I worked him through the first approximation of the "why would you leave me?" game. At the end of the session this horse was underneath me, following my seat, connected to my hand, walking a consistent pattern. The shaking like a dog had stopped, and he felt straight in his spine. I could sit comfortably balanced in the center of his back instead of feeling as though the saddle needed constant adjusting.
I had learned more about circles in that one afternoon than I had learned in all the previous years I'd been riding. That ride formed the core of my understanding of single-rein riding. So there's one of the principles of training at work: "when you stay with an exercise long enough, you'll get to see all the good things it can give you." That exercise has evolved over time into the "why would you leave me" lesson, and also later into the "hotwalker" lesson.
The "Why Would You Leave Me?" Game
So let's look at the "why would you leave me?" lesson. Where does it fall in a training sequence?
Let me share another story. At the clinic this past weekend we had a great lesson in wwylm, or at least a preliminary step towards that lesson. One of the horses, an eight year old Friesian, was just learning clicker basics. His owner had recently taken him out of training with a very rough trainer. That trainer had succeeded in creating a very shutdown, non-responsive horse with some physical injuries.
Sarah Stuurman has been working with this horse and his owner. When I saw him last weekend his eye was bright. He had that eager, "pick me, pick me!" enthusiasm that I so love. He was learning about targeting, the grown-ups are talking, head lowering, etc. - all the important manners work. At the same time he was having fun fetching and showing his owner how smart he is. She was thrilled by the change. This was the horse she wanted, not the depressed, shut-down horse that heavy-handed training had created.
On Saturday we worked with him in his stall on the clicker foundation lessons. He was a superstar. Bright, eager, polite - everything you would want in a equine student - oh and did I mention how gorgeous he is? He was that, too.
On Sunday we brought him into the arena, and saw the other side of the coin. He panicked as soon as he was in the arena. His panic turned him into a freight train. His owner said he always starts out this way - after shocks from his previous training. Very sad.
We had a circle of cones set up near the door with a mat in the center. Our original intent with him had been to do mat work, but he was plowing over Sarah. I'm sure you can all picture it - big horse, absolutely rigid, ready to spook and bolt at the least little thing. Not fun.
Our goal had been to teach him to stand on a mat, but standing still anywhere was not an option, much less on the mat. We could have gotten him there, but it would have looked more like a rodeo than clicker training. The principles say "put as many steps between you and your goal as you can." The steps we chose were a preliminary lesson leading towards the wwylm game.
I instructed Sarah to walk the circle of cones, and, as she approached each cone, to stop her feet, click, and hold a treat out to him. Then she was to march on very deliberately to the next cone, stop, click and treat. It didn't matter what the horse was doing. She was simply to march from cone to cone to cone, stopping at each one to click and feed.
I know Sarah thought I was crazy. This was a big horse who felt as though he was coming over the top of her. But the cones were placed so close together, he really never had a chance to build up a head of steam. At first, Sarah wanted to use her rope handling skills, her t'ai chi wall to move him out of her way, and to bring him to a halt. This was too much for him. He'd been so compressed in German martingales and so incorrectly forced into a "dressage frame" that this just made him all the more upset. Sarah needed to let go and do less. It wasn't about him at this stage. It was about the pattern, marching from cone to cone to cone, and letting the pattern do it's job.
That's a hard step in training. Trusting the process can seem a little crazy at first. And yes, safety always does come first. There are always other, more, different steps you can add in. If you and your horse don't feel ready for this lesson, know that those steps are there and use them. In this case, with Sarah as the handler, I knew we could stay with this lesson.
Thanks goodness for cones, and thank goodness for clicker training and the power of food delivery. Sarah walked the circle, stopping at each cone for a click and a treat. Note, at this stage the click was not marking any particular behavior on the horse's part. It was marking Sarah's approach to the cone. She stopped her feet, held out the goody and went on.
As she began to see where the lesson was heading, she adjusted the timing of the click, so that she clicked as she approached the cone, then stopped her feet and gave him a treat. This worked better than waiting to click until after she had stopped. That timing created a boomerang effect on the lead. Clicking the approach allowed them to stop together on a loose lead.
In just a couple of turns around the circle, he started to settle. Now as Sarah approached the cone, the click marked a moment when the line was slack. He brought himself to a halt, got his goody and walked on, following Sarah to the next cone.
He was very much afraid of the far end, so in that part of the circle, he wanted to swing around Sarah to get his treat so he was ready to launch himself if needed away from the dreaded goblins. Sarah did a superb job sticking to her course. He became more and more settled. When we ended the session, he was able to walk on a loose lead around the entire circle to the left. We hadn't yet taken him to the right.
We brought him out again about an hour later for another set of work. He was much calmer this second time around. He went right to work following Sarah from cone to cone to cone. So now I suggested to Sarah that she change directions. She did this by walking across the center of the circle, over the mat. As she stepped on the mat, click, she stopped and gave him a goody. A couple more passes later, and he was the one stopping with his feet on the mat - put as many steps as you can between you and your goal. Without ever making an issue out of the board he was standing on it.
So now the board could do its job. It could become a comfort zone. He could stand on his mat and look at the far end. He could leave his mat and follow Sarah towards the far end, but only in the small stages she set for him. She was building his confidence that only good things were going to happen. Now as they approached the mat again, Sarah could slide up the line and give him some directions to help him find the mat more easily. Instead of becoming rigid and resistant to the lead, as he had earlier, he was able to listen to it.
He was following Sarah onto and off the board. He was walking beside her on a loose lead. He was relaxed, calm, ready to listen. He was ready for the "wwylm" version of the game where you ask him to walk with his nose in an imaginary "box". But he had done enough for that session. That lesson would wait for another day.
We could have done many other things with this horse. We could have said he wasn't ready for the pressure of being in the arena. In that case we would have taken him back to his stall or to a small paddock to fill up his toolbox. Sarah commented later that she liked this lesson because it allowed us to stay in the arena and deal with his fear. This lesson illustrated beautifully that training is so much about learning to insert steps. This horse wasn't ready for the wwylm version of the lesson where you slide up the lead and direct the horse's nose into your imaginary box. We had to find the preliminary step that would make that lesson possible and pleasant. No rodeos please! Just quiet "grass growing!"
So what did this lesson give us? When he first came into the arena, the horse was leaving big time. His previous trainer used and abused German martingales, leg, seat, and hands. He was used to being compressed and driven into a fixed, harsh contact. Let go in any way, and this horse was leaving. Before we can talk about softness, bend, lightness, etc. we first have to have a horse that is able to stay with us. So the wwylm lesson begins as a conversation about geography. It begins with a circle. Sarah was saying: "I want to walk this circle, and I want you to walk with me. Is that possible?" The horse responded initially by doing all the things horses do, bowing out, pushing through Sarah into the center of the circle, rushing past her, spooking at imagined goblins. As the lesson progressed, he began to walk next to her, not through her. In riding terms he was following her seat.
So that's riding question number one: does your horse follow your intent? Meaning your seat, or do you have to use your reins and your legs to keep him on track? Are you constantly chasing after body parts to keep things in line? If you are dependent upon your inside and outside leg and reins to keep him on track, there's a lot to be "mined" from the wwylm lesson.
Once your horse will walk beside you on a loose lead, you can begin to influence him via that lead. You can become more precise about where you want his head to be. If he drifts out of the imaginary "box", you can slide up the line and ask him to return his nose to the "box". Click and treat as he keeps his nose in the "box".
You can then begin to move the "box". It may start out level with your shoulder and on a parallel track. You'll gradually move it further ahead of you, and then you'll bring it in so it floats in front of you. Again click and treat as he discovers how to keep his nose in the box and continue to step out of your way.
If he overflexes and curls around you, that just means that you have let the box float in too close to your body. Float it out further ahead of you by extending your arm so his neck straightens a little as he steps up and over laterally.
Three-Flip-Three
As the process continues, you'll suddenly find yourself able to count out a three-flip-three sequence. As you walk along, keeping a steady rhythm via your t'ai chi walk, your horse will match strides with you. With each step you can slide up the lead and ask for a gentle softening into the bend. You aren't making it happen. You aren't forcing it. It is a dance step suggestion, a receiving of balance that feels good to both of you. One, two, three steps. By the time you get to the fourth step his hip is already connected to you within the bend. The asking for the hip is a little thing, just an acknowledgment of his balance, but in that acknowledgment is a deepening of the engagement.
If you ask for too much, thinking you have to do something big and definite when you get to the hip, that you have to "make it happen", your horse will over-rotate into a rein back. (In other words, he'll swing his hips around into hip-shoulder-shoulder. Remember that. Later when you are after hip-shoulder-shoulder you'll realize you already know how to ask for it.)
Your horse may even grump at you. It's not just that he may feel as though you are nagging him. He's already doing what you want and you're there demanding more! But by asking for too much, you may actually be pushing him out of balance into a compromised position that feels cramped or crooked. So if you get a tail swish, or an unhappy face, pay attention. It can mean you have swung the training pendulum too far and you need to straighten your horse out, ask him to go forward a step or two and then begin again.
As you walk forward in the why would you leave me game, he'll bring himself once more into the floating imaginary box and soften into the bend. One, two, three, beautiful steps. You acknowledge the hip, remembering it is a little thing, not a big thing. You feel his balance shift. You've used the t'ai chi walk to figure out three-flip-three in your own body, so you recognize this shift in weight. In the next step you feel as though you could walk walk into his shoulders and they would move over out of your way.
He is learning that his feet do not have to follow his nose. He can bend around you, but move laterally out of your way. At first, the give of the shoulders may be a little thing, just a tiny weight shift, the sort of thing you'd feel if your horse were falling in on a circle and you asked him to move over slightly, to make the circle a little bigger.
As you repeat the pattern, the lateral step of his outside shoulder will become more definite. It will be a true lateral step out to the side. Instead of continuing around the circle, the second half of three-flip-three will take you on a tangent to the circle. Congratulations! You are leaving geography behind!
Geography
You started out with wwylm which is very much a lesson about geography. You walked a set pattern. The question was, did your horse walk the pattern with you? As he matched stride with you, other possibilities opened up. Now you could add all the bells and whistles of a soft lateral flexion. If you follow the natural flow of this pattern, it will take you off the circle. Let that happen.
In a sense it is misleading to say that you are leaving geography behind. It might be more accurate to say you are learning a new geography. The new geography has as its base unit a lateral flexion. So first you must learn how to generate this balance, generate it consistently, and then keep it organized so the drill team of shoulders and hips stay aligned. Once you can ride the pattern consistently, you are ready to reattach it to set patterns, beginning with circles, and then moving on to the three training turns, diagonals and reverse arc circles.
To get to this point you may well spend some rides thinking you have no steering wheel. I know I certainly did. If you feel as though you have swung the pendulum so far out of balance that you have disconnected the feet from the rein, you have a couple of options.
Go back onto two reins for a couple of rides. Use the outside channel to bring your horse into a straighter body alignment. I know I certainly went back and forth as I was sorting through all this. I'd get puzzled, frustrated, and return to what I knew. Each time I went back onto two reins, I discovered how much better things were than before. My understanding of what I wanted from the reins, and how to communicate my intent through my body had progressed. My horses were better balanced, softer, more responsive. So even though I was not being a "purist" I was reaping the benefits of the layer I had been able to tackle.
I'd ride like this for a bit then I'd shift back and explore more of the single-rein work. Eventually I didn't have two separate systems that I yo yoed back and forth between. They became an organized continuum, all part of a unified whole.
Another option if your horse is over bent, is to use the rein mechanics you learned from the head lowering lesson to ask him to straighten out his neck. Once he straightens out his neck, begin the sequence again. Ask for a tiny softening of his jaw, but this time be more diligent about what that means. Bending the neck is not a softening of the jaw. A horse can rubber neck around, bypassing a softening of the jaw completely. This is most definitely not what we are after. He can also twist and lean as he bends his neck. Also not what we want. If he over-flexes to the side, straighten him out again and ask for a little thing, a tiny softening of the jaw so that his nose stays more out in front of him. When he gives in his jaw his head will be in the 11 to 12, or 12 to 1'o'clock zone depending upon which rein you are on (refer to page 113). You aren't looking for the large neck bend you had in the first approximation run through of this exercise. Now you are looking for something more subtle, and he's ready to give it to you.
Now instead of leaning around to the side, he'll be lifting through the base of his neck and aligning his head on his spine. The release of the jaw will be like that lovely feel you get when you are assembling a kit and you're trying to get one piece to slot into another. It's that lovely moment when things align just right, and the two pieces fit together into place. Hopefully that makes sense. When the jaw aligns like this, you'll feel the give in the poll. You won't have an exaggerated bend of the neck, just beautiful engagement. So now as you ask for more, the bend is not a gross level bend of the neck that doesn't connect to the feet. Instead it is a lifting from the base of the neck that keeps your horse balanced, connected, and beautiful.
So why should you do all this? Why not just be satisfied with the simple form of the wwylm game we went through with the Friesian? If you have a horse who is comfortable in his body, and emotionally well settled, that may indeed be all you want to take from this work. Your horse is connected to you, he's easy to ride, you just want to go down the trail and not have to think too much about training. You picked the right horse for the job, so off you go.
But suppose you have a horse who is more like the Friesian. His work experience is full of poisoned cues. The emotional issues his previous training created need to be addressed for him to be a safe riding horse. And tied in with that are physical issues. He's very asymmetrical in his muscling, and he has stifle damage. So all of this work isn't just for healing his mind, it is also for healing his body.
How far into this work you explore is so very dependent upon the horses you have. Some of us are blessed with great teachers. They don't let us sit back and think we know what we are doing. They keep challenging us to learn more. Anna, it sounds as though Skylark is one of those teachers! The good news is that after you have worked through the lessons they have put in their curriculum, all other horses will seem easy by comparison! So have fun, and keep asking questions.
Alexandra Kurland
theclickercenter.com
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March 14, From The Click That Teaches List
"Training Choices"
by Alexandra Kurland
I wasn't intending to write another epic post, but that's what this has turned into. My apologies in advance to those of you who are short on time.
The Training Question
Can clicker training settle an anxious horse? That was essentially the gist of Gail's recent post (March 12). And can it do it as effectively as natural horsemanship?
From Gail's post:
<Not only did she jig all around in the cross ties, she surged against
<them again and again until I finally had to release her and walk her
<around on a lead rope practicing the calm down cue, which she readily
<learned and does willingly
Hi All,
OK, this thread has finally gotten me to bring up an issue that is VERY important to my understanding of clicker training. I have long had a suspicion that clicker training has a “weak spot” that cannot deal with problems like this as well as truly gifted “NH” horsemanship. What I have observed is that a *gifted* NH trainer can, sometimes in literally minutes, take a horse like this and have it standing with its head lowered, relaxed, licking and chewing, with lowered eyelids…looking almost hypnotized.
And:
So…..is there any real difference in the two methods’ ability to deal with that antsy, lapse of attention that any horses (particularly the hotter breeds who tend to act rather than think) can develop on a windy day?
The differences between the two methods that I can think of are:
(1) the addition of –R [good NH trainers do consistently offer +R by petting horse on the withers, forehead, over the eyes, so they DO use +R,
(2) the lack of a bridging signal for the +R that is administered, and which the horse is actively looking for (or NOT if it is windy?) and,
(3) possibly more use of the rope to “lead the horse by the nose” into hind quarter yields, etc. (I sometimes think there is something relaxing to a horse about being led forward by rope pressure,…the “follow the feel” kind of thing or by the fact that the trainer sometimes physically leads the horse forward by walking in front of it. The cowboy who trained my horse likes to teach a horse to walk on a loose lead following him about 4-5 feet behind. The horse is kept from running him over by expertly thrown “rope waves” that set the horse back if it creeps or rushes forward.)
Unfortunately, I have not experimented with clicker training or NH far enough to make a determination. I WILL continue clicker training because I really do not think I will ever develop the rope handling skills that NH takes.
and Melissa Alexander wrote:
I remember watching a Mark Rashid clinic with a friend. Mark
Rashid is hardly a tough trainer and nothing he was doing
seemed out of line to me, but she was squirming. Turns out
she'd been abused as a child so even the mildest of
corrections was too much for her to watch. If you can't
watch it, you shouldn't ask your horse to go through it.
Alex, thank you SO much for posting this. I *don't* believe that my horses
enjoy R- (even mild) as much as R+, but I KNOW that I don't feel comfortable
with it. Thanks for telling me that it's okay for me to feel this way and
that I'm not wrong for wanting to find a different way.
Interesting that the two posts for me are tied together. Here's the link:
I don't see training as being either/or. That's true of my training, and it's certainly true of the NH trainers I've seen. I use negative reinforcement as well as positive reinforcement. They use positive reinforcement as well as negative reinforcement. As I've discussed in the books and in the opening of Video Lesson 2, the language, or if you prefer the cue system, we use in riding is a pressure-based system. Our horses need to understand both moving away from pressure and also moving into it. So the difference between clicker training and other styles of training is not whether or not we use pressure, but how we teach the horse what that pressure means.
So I would say to Melissa, it isn't so much that you are avoiding pressure, but that you are teaching it with so many tiny steps added in that it never becomes aversive to the horse. I think you're wanting the use of pressure to evolve out of other training steps so it is presented only as a cue, not ever as a trigger or threat. I hope I am not putting words in your mouth. Anyway, here's an analogy to help us look at the training choices we make:
Classroom Choices
I board at a lesson barn for kids. The owner of the facility runs a 4-H program. At this time of year that means they are practicing for horse bowl, sort of a Jeopardy-like quiz game with horse questions. The meeting room is directly above the block of stalls where Ann Edie and I keep our horses. On Horse Bowl nights it sounds as though there is a herd of elephants tromping around upstairs. When I'm at the barn, I would like to have a quiet, restful, meditative experience. Horse bowl nights are anything but. I wish someone would practice a little "grown-up are talking, please don't interrupt" with the kids! Apparently last week barn owner agreed with me. The kids were being particularly rambunctious. Normally they settle down once she's upstairs with them, but not this time. Suddenly Ann and I heard the barn owner bellow "Quiet!!". Her voice literally rocked the barn.
It was followed by dead silence. For a moment or two. And then the volume rose up again, but only to the more normal levels. Order had been established.
So the barn owner was willing and able to give the kids a verbal blast. And she had the authority and the relationship with them to make it effective.
The equivalent situation with a horse would mean that she was willing and able to give a leash pop that was so sharp and so startling, that it brought the horse to a stand still.
But now suppose I'd been upstairs with those kids. - Don't laugh, Ann. I know what you're thinking! - But, just suppose, oh nightmares of nightmares, I was up there and it was my job to bring some order to the group. First of all, I don't have a voice that carries. I could no more generate that blast of a verbal leash pop than fly to the moon. So the necessary "mechanical skill" is not available to me. That is like Gail saying she'll stick with clicker training because "she doesn't think she'll ever be able to develop the rope handling skills that NH takes."
I also don't have the same authority or the relationship with the kids that the barn owner does. Even if I could issue a force ten verbal leash pop, it would have a very different effect. I'd get resentment. I'd get a "Who do you think you are!" angry attitude. So the verbal leash pop wouldn't work for me. I don't have the means or the relationship to make it work. I would need to find another way to get the job done.
Now I suppose someone could say, "This is nonsense. You can project your voice. You just need a little training. We can get you sounding like a drill sergeant in no time. You just need to learn a few breathing techniques, and we can have you bellowing with the best of them." My response would be to say: "thank you very much, but no thank you. I really don't want to sound like a drill sergeant, and if that's what it takes to have control and authority, I think I'll pass."
So here we have two different reasons for choosing a "clicker training" approach over the earthquake blast. In the first instance I would be choosing a different course because I don't have the mechanical skills or the relationship to be effective. And in the second I would choose a different course because I have a philosophical disagreement with the other method.
Julie and Ann are both classroom teachers. As much as it might shock me to hear it, I'm quite sure that both of them are very capable of generating an earth quaking demand for silence. They have the means, but I know they choose other methods to maintain positive learning environments.
So here again, it is the philosphical match that determines the choice.
It sounds as though Gail is not particularly uncomfortable with escalating pressure, as long as it doesn't become too rough. She just recognizes that she isn't yet very good at it, so the clicker training helps her to be effective with the mechanical skills she has. In our classroom situation she might be perfectly okay taking some voice training lessons so she, too, could issue a drill sergeant demand for silence. But she might discover that the alternative techniques for classroom control she was learning in the interim were working so well, she just never needed to go there.
So there are lots of combinations, lots of reasons for choosing one course of action over another. All choices will "get to Rome", meaning in the end everyone will achieve a quiet classroom, we will just get there along very different routes, and perhaps with different additional pieces attached.
Horse Choices
With the horses, Melissa would be choosing clicker training over more force-based methods because she would have neither the mechanical skills to make these methods work for her, nor would she be comfortable with the methods. If she tried to use a "get tough" approach it would probably be a mess because she would be giving such mixed signals her horses wouldn't know what to make of her.
The barn owner in my example would choose the a more direct "now hear this!" approach. It's familiar to her, and she's comfortable with it. She's had good success with it. But she also chooses carefully the type of horse she has to deal with. No over-the-top-of-you, fire-breathing dragons allowed. That means she can stay within her own comfort zone in regard to escalating pressure.
What the classroom analogy tells us is that to make the "now hear this!" forms of horse training work, you need two things: the willingness to escalate pressure and the relationship, the authority to make it work. That's why for this type of training there is so much emphasis placed on respect and leadership. Just as I could not blast the kids with a demand for silence without it backfiring in my face, so too, if you cannot established yourself in a position of authority with your horse, these methods may backfire completely. Instead of a well-mannered horse, you end up with an angry, resentful, and sometimes aggressive mess.
Training Time
Back to the original question: can clicker training settle an anxious horse? Gail cited some great practitioners of Natural Horsemanship:
By gifted NH trainer, I am talking about the likes of Ray Hunt, Bryan Neubert, Buck Brannaman (though he can be a bit rougher than the others). John Lyons does not really have it in quite the same way and Pat Parelli did not when I saw him in his 7 games video (he may have advanced since then).
I wouldn't want to even guess at how many horses between them these men have worked with, many many thousands. When you are watching one of these trainers work with a horse, you need to realize you aren't just watching five minutes or thirty minutes or however long it just took, of training. You are watching thousands of hours of training. That's how long it took them to gain the skills needed to create the "magic" that you're seeing now.
Most of us on this list are private horse owners. I loved Anna's post reminding us of the lives horses used to lead: ploughing fields, pulling carriages, working long hard hours. People and horses shared those hours together. Now most of us have other lives. Our horses live out in a field or spend the day in their stalls while we are at work. At best we get a couple hours a day with them, not the ten to twelve hours of riding that a working professional would be putting in.
Most of us throughout our lifetime will own just a couple of horses. Maybe from time to time we'll sit on a friend's horse, or take lessons on school horses, but we do not have the experience that comes from handling many hundreds of horses. When clicker training has developed to the point where there are practitioners who have this depth of experience we will see training that will absolutely astound. I say that based on what I have been able to do so far, and what I have seen others do, knowing that none of us has the depth of horse experience and hours of training time that the great masters have had. And yet, and yet, we are able, even with the level of experience we have, to achieve things with our horses that leave the professionals scratching their heads.
I've seen this so many times and I just love it. I run several series of advanced clinics. Advanced simply means the horses have some prior clicker training experience. The owners are clearly recreational horse owners, just "regular people" who haven't been to Europe to study with the great masters. They weren't riding "before they could walk". In fact many of them didn't start riding until they were in their forties or fifties. Some of them bought the "wrong" horse, horses who were not really suitable for a novice horse handler.
When you've been around horses for a while, you can't help but put people into pigeon holes. You know what to expect from a green rider on a backyard, green horse. The only problem is these people aren't staying in their pigeon holes. Their horses are beautiful, soft, round, calm, settled, doing things that the more experienced trainers watching can't get their own horses to do! Hmm. Definitely head scratching time.
Now these are still novice handlers, so situations can come up that they haven't yet learned how to deal with. They can have moments where they feel overwhelmed, confused, frustrated, scared, but they also have a working tool box that lets them work through these moments safely. It gives them a plan, a course of action to get them past those days when the spring winds are just too exciting for their horse to stay focused.
Tipping the Scales
Gail stated what she thought of as the differences between clicker training and NH methods:
The differences between the two methods that I can think of are:
(1) the addition of –R [good NH trainers do consistently offer +R by petting horse on the withers, forehead, over the eyes, so they DO use +R,
(2) the lack of a bridging signal for the +R that is administered, and which the horse is actively looking for (or NOT if it is windy?) and,
(3) possibly more use of the rope to “lead the horse by the nose” into hind quarter yields, etc. . . . The cowboy who trained my horse likes to teach a horse to walk on a loose lead following him about 4-5 feet behind. The horse is kept from running him over by expertly thrown “rope waves” that set the horse back if it creeps or rushes forward.)
Again I would say that we do not work in pure systems. But our philosophical comfort level plays a huge role in determining the balance of the tools we choose and the ultimately experience the horse has with us.
Reinforcement must always be viewed from the horse's point of view, not ours. When people talk about a pet or a scratch being reinforcing, I always want to refer them to Jean Donaldson's introduction to "Culture Clash". Is the petting truly something the animal actively seeks and enjoys, or does the pet simply mean "you have succeeded in satisfying my requirements and for the moment you have avoided a correction." There is a huge difference.
There are horses who do indeed enjoy a pet on the withers, but for the most part, compared with food, it is a very low value reinforcer. So here we have a tipping of the scales. I do not want to use escalating pressure, or if I do use escalating pressure, I am unwilling to go beyond a very mild stimulus. I still want a safe, calm, well-mannered horse. I achieve this by putting many small steps into my training and using high value reinforcements.
On the other hand, the trainer who is philosophically opposed to the use of food loses out on the power of this high value reinforcer. The pendulum swings the other way. To maintain a calm, working attitude, this trainer may have to escalate and use much higher levels of pressure to establish his control.
With clicker training I have to go through an initial training step where I teach the horse how the game is played, but then the training progresses very fast. In fact it is astounding how fast a clicker-wise horse can learn a new task. And even with naive horses, the learning can be lightning fast.
One of the fun things I've found about traveling to give clinics is I get to experience a variety of horse management styles. In my part of the country, stabled horses are common. At a clinic I did in northern British Columbia the opposite was true. In fact the first seven of the ten horses in the clinic had never even been in a barn. The clinic was being held at a fairgrounds, and we needed the horses to go into a barn and into their stalls so we could get organized. The first five horses went in willingly enough. But numbers six and seven had not only never been in a barn before, prior to that morning they had never even worn halters. I was told I didn't want to know the details of the morning rodeo that got them haltered and on a trailer.
Number six got to the door of the barn and planted his feet. He had clearly had all he was going to take. I've seen that look before and I know the battles that usually follow. I did not want to go down that road, but I also needed the horse to go into the barn. So I held up my hand as a target. This horse had had zero clicker training experience, but he was willing to sniff my hand. Click, I offered him some grain, something he'd never had before. He sniffed it suspiciously. That was no good. I pulled some grass from the weeds growing up around the barn door. He took that. I held my hand up again. He stretched his nose out to sniff it. Click, more grass. Two or three clicks later, and he was walking down the barn aisle, with number seven following right behind. So can clicker training happen fast? Yes, absolutely. Can it resolve emotional issues? Again, yes, absolutely.
During the clinic the owner worked on haltering, beginning with having the horse target his nose to the halter - a huge act of trust given his first haltering experience. He did superbly. Soon he was readily putting his nose into the halter and letting his owner draw it up over his ears. His owner was thrilled, fascinated, and excited by how easy the process had been. We did a show and tell. Even with a crowd of people staring at him, the horse came up to the front of his stall and put his nose into the halter. But then just as his owner was lifting the halter up over his ears, something startled him and he pulled back so he hit his head on the top of the door. We all let out a groan. He'd come so far, and now just as he was trusting people, he was hurt. Everyone thought all the good work would be undone.
I wasn't sure what would happen, but I asked his owner to hold the halter up again. The horse looked at it, hesitated, and then came forward and put his nose through the noseband. Very awesome!
Emotional Side effects
So here we come to another huge piece of the puzzle: what are the emotional side effects of the training? I've watched my share of horse training, and I've seen what Gail describes, the almost hypnotic trance that comes over the horse. In that moment the horse is calm, settled, obedient. Things look good. But what are the long term consequences of the session? How is the horse the next day, the next week, the next time a similar set of triggers arises? Peregrine is twenty-one. He has been my companion and training partner through all those years. I've had to figure out how to handle him through all the stages of his life, from newborn foal to senior horse. Because he is my forever horse, I have also had to live with all the consequences of my training choices - good, bad, and indifferent.
Because I keep my horses for their entire lives I have seen first hand that there is a huge difference between short haul and long haul training. I know from experience that the result I see at the end of any training session is only a small part of the story. When I get my anxious, jittery horse to settle, that's great - in that moment. Whatever method I chose, in that moment of calmness, my choice will be reinforced.
When you see a jittery, upset horse settle quickly for a clinician it can be an impressive, compelling display of horsemanship. But the real question that needs to be asked is: how does the horse process the session? What is he like the next time he's in a similar situation? I know from my own horses that many times I've left the barn thinking I've had a great session, that I have figured out a huge piece, done a great job with the mechanical skills, only to find the next day that my horse is telling me the session created some concerns. Oh dear. I have some house cleaning to do. As the dog trainer, Gary Wilks, is fond of saying: "your job isn't done until the dog's tail is wagging."
So what are the emotional side effects of the different training choices? For many traditional forms of horse handling the fallout is tension. It's seen in the wringing of the tail, or the tuned-out eye. For the clicker-trained horse it is enthusiasm. As clicker trainers we have to learn how to manage enthusiastic, eager horses. Some classroom teachers will tell you that the bright, hand-in-the-air, "pick me, pick me" student is not always the type they want to fill their classroom with. They take more managing than the kid who is just "keeping a seat warm". They can be very fulfilling. These are the kids who really want to learn, but you have to keep them stimulated, you have to give them projects, activities that channel that energy constructively. Ignored or crushed, all that enthusiasm can turn very sour. You can end up with the "class clown" sitting in the back of the room disrupting the rest of the students. So the learning curve for clicker trainers is learning how to deal with these eager-beaver students. If you are used to the more shut down horse, all that eagerness and all that energy can be disconcerting . But as Sarah Benelli pointed out in her recent post, this eagerness is what so many of us love about clicker-trained horses.
Sarah wrote:
We all want safe, reliable horses. But I also want a horse who likes his job, who has bright eyes, and who is engaged. I recognize that creating and maintaining that kind of horse requires
ME to be more aware, sensitive, and educated. Others might find the bright look in a horse's eye
disconcerting. (And it can be hard for us clicker trainers to imagine it would be possible to feel that way!) They want obedience, they want an "easy" horse. There's a reason why "bombproof" is a big selling point. It's an "apples to oranges" situation.
Clicker training is still a very new addition to the horse world. Most of us are cross over trainers. We're having to figure out what part of our horse training tool box we want to keep active, and which part we want to pack away in moth balls. We're having to figure out how to work with our cross-over horses, how to deal with the emotional baggage they bring with them out of other methods.
At the beginning of this rather long winded post I said:
"So I would say to Melissa, it isn't so much that you are avoiding pressure, but that you are teaching it with so many tiny steps added in that it never becomes aversive to the horse. I think you're wanting the use of pressure to evolve out of other training steps so it is presented only as a cue, not ever as a trigger or threat."
If you could clone a horse and give one copy to Melissa, and one to one of the great NH trainers Gail named, I guarantee you that the NH trainer would have a manageable, safe, responsive horse long before Melissa. But that's not because of an "inherent weakness" in clicker training, but because they have been practicing their craft much longer. They've taken hundreds if not thousands of horses through this stage in training. Melissa is still working out the details of horse number one. But give her time, and give the collective clicker community time to work out the details of the lesson plan, and I think you'll see clicker training far outpacing other training methods, both in short term and long term results.
Why do I say that with such confidence? In other training methods you have great masters, skilled horseman who produce horses of outstanding quality - no question. In clicker training, as young as we are, I am already seeing some knock-your-socks-off training emerging. The difference is - it is amateur horse owners who are producing these results. Pretty neat. Can they handle the same aggressive, over-the-top horse that a Ray Hunt or a Buck Brannaman is comfortable taking on? Not yet, or at least not in the same way. But give them time, give them protective contact so they can work safely within the range of their current horse handling skills, and they can indeed bring that horse to a state of peace where relationships can be built and good training can occur.
Trust the process - it works.
Alexandra Kurland
theclickercenter.com
March 15, 2006
Single-Rein Mechanics
All these questions that are flying across the list are so great. It reminds me of that wonderful stage in a clinic where the questions are coming so fast it can make your head spin. I love that energy. In a clinic I'm always reluctant to shut down this process. I love the questions, but I know we also need to get out to the horses. There does come a point where I have to say, that's enough. I always know that leaves dozens of unanswered questions behind, but that's okay, because I also know the questions are really about energy flowing and the building of community. The real answers are going to be provided by the horses.
So while there are lots of questions in posts that I haven't been able to address, I know the best way to answer them is to send you out to the barn. So that's what I want to do. Spring is coming. In January it was fine to focus on ground work and to stay in the house typing on our computers, but the nice weather is coming and it's time to ride. So that's where I want to head with this post. But first a quick review of what we've covered so far in the two months the list has been running.
I started with a suggestion that everyone keep a training journal. We looked at belief systems, our horse's emotional triggers as well as our own. And for exercises we focused on the foundation lessons and the why "why would you leave me?" game. This would be a great time for those of you who have been keeping journals to look back over the last eight weeks and report on the changes, if any, that you're seeing in your horses. You might also make a list of the questions you currently have. I always think of these as strings tied around my finger to help me remember later. The questions aren't necessarily for the list. They are for you to keep track of where you are now, and how your understanding of this work changes as you explore it with your horse. How many of these questions are answered by the process? How do they change as you peel this layer and reveal the next? This is all part of learning to be your own problem solver.
The Rules for Riding
Now a quick word about the riding. First: safety always comes first. At clinics I always say that no one is allowed to fall off - I used to say in front of me, but then I thought someone might take that too literally and fall off behind me, so now I say anywhere in my presence. I will extend that to cyberspace. No one is allowed to fall off. Period. end of statement. If you absolutely insist on falling off, I suppose you can, if you must, just make sure you land on soft ground, no injuries, and you get up laughing. There, safety always comes first.
Many, probably most of you, are working without a ground person to spot you. So if any exercise makes you feel uncomfortable or unsafe, trust that feeling. That means there is a step missing for you or your horse.
KNOW ABSOLUTELY that there is ALWAYS a smaller step that you can break any lesson down into. No matter how miniscule you think the step is that you are currently working on, THERE IS ALWAYS A SMALLER STEP that you can find. Find enough of those tiny steps and whatever was churning away inside you saying this is unsafe will be addressed.
KNOW ABSOLUTELY that you do not have to listen to all the busy bodies, well meaning or otherwise, telling you to just get on and ride. It doesn't matter if they can ride your horse through raging rivers, past herds of wild buffalo, in a hail storm, with the wind howling, and let's see, New York City taxi drivers honking their horns behind you. You don't have their seat, their experience, their naiveté, arrogance or whatever else it is that is saying to them that this is a safe situation. If you don't feel safe, listen to that feeling. If your horse is saying to you: "I can't be responsible for your bones today, please don't ride me", listen, listen to your horse. There are days when really and truly they can't be responsible for your safety. They just don't have it in them. We've all heard the stories of good riders who got hurt because they didn't listen. Do not be one of them.
I know that not everyone reading this list is ready to ride. If you're still working on foundation lessons, on building your horse's emotional self control, that's great. Continue with that work. Just because the conversation is shifting somewhat to riding does not mean you need to feel compelled to ride. Read the posts. You'll learn a lot. And you'll be all the better prepared when you do ride. Continue to post about your ground work. Everything is everything else. Ground work and riding are intimately connected, so a discussion of one does not mean we are excluding the other.
How will you know when you're ready to ride? it isn't when other people are telling you to get on. You won't need any urging from others. Your horse will be inviting you onto his back, and you'll just know it will be okay. This isn't some "out there", "on the fringes", weird statement. You don't have to be a talented animal communicator to pick up on this feeling. Horses who are handled fairly really and truly do enjoy being ridden. When you and your horse are ready, you'll know. He'll be inviting you up onto his back. This is real. Trust it. And know that if you get up on him before you are invited that is just as disrespectful as it would be for me to enter your house uninvited. This falls into the: just-because-you-can, doesn't-mean-you-should category of horse training. Wait for the invitation. It is real, and with clear, consistent, fair handling, it will come.
Let's see, what else? When you are riding and you're working on a particular exercise from the book or something we're discussing here, try to remain as true to that exercise as possible. That means, for example, if you are riding a single-rein exercise, stay with the mechanics. Don't switch to two reins to pull your horse out of a corner or out of a tight spot. Use the mechanics of the exercise to the best of your ability. But also know that safety always comes first. If the wind comes ripping across your riding arena dragging Mary Poppins and Dorothy from Kansas along with it, use your entire tool kit to keep yourself safe. If you need two reins, use two reins. Then go back to the exercise, and maybe next time, you'll be practiced enough in the new "tools" to rely more on them. I say this because I don't want you to think you have only the few tools you've managed to learn so far available to you in an emergency. You can only learn so much at a time, and something may happen before you have a complete enough understanding of this new expanded "tool kit" to keep things safe. As you are learning these new pieces, your present tool box is always there as a back-up.
You are responsible for your own safety. I suppose I should add here that being around and working with horses can be dangerous. You are responsible for choosing the steps you need to keep things safe. That is particularly true when it comes to riding.
Single-rein Mechanics
Core Balance
Okay, I think that covers all the "disclaimers". On to riding - or almost. What I had in mind is some preliminary practice with mechanical skills. This is especially for those of you who have never tried any single-rein riding before. If you start directly with your horse, you may end up in a muddle. So let's begin on a saddle rack first instead of a real horse.
I discovered what a valuable tool this can be years ago when I was working with a client who did milk testing at the local dairy farms. Her job meant she had to be out in the barns at the hours the cows were milked which on some farms meant she was in the dairy at midnight and again at four in the morning. She wanted to keep working with me through the winter, but she also didn't want to get cold. On one of my early December visits she told me she wanted to introduce me to her new horse. New horse!, I thought. That was a surprise.
Puzzled and bemused I followed her up to the house where she introduced me to "Helen House Horse", a wooden saw horse padded with pillows and covered in a decorative blanket upon which she had set a saddle. Her cats thought Helen's skirts made a wonderful tent to hide under, hence the Trojan reference. We spend the winter lessons comfortably beside the wood stove working on body mechanics. Instead of playing catch up with the people who were able to ride all winter, she made just as much progress in her riding as any of them. Those winter lessons reinforced for me the value of good ground preparation for riders. I so prefer to work on the rider's position and body awareness first without the horse. Let's see what the rider brings to the table before we complicate things by adding in the horse, the tack and the vagaries of the environment.
So that's what we're going to do. If you can rig up some way to sit on a saddle, that's ideal. If you can't, you can still work on these exercises sitting in a chair, or if you have one, one of those large exercise balance balls. They work great for this type of work, and they are easy to find in your local discount stores.
Ideally it's also best to work with a partner. While your partner plays the role of the horse by holding the bridle, you sit on whatever version of Helen House Horse you've created, If you are working by yourself, you can hook the headstall over a doorknob. I've seen people who have rigged up an arrangement that lets them practice their riding while they watch TV - much better than being the proverbial couch potato!
So get on Helen House Horse. And remember - no falling off. I once got "bucked" off Helen. My client's husband had a good laugh over that one!
There are so many exercises you can do on Helen House Horse. If you can, take a couple of pictures of your starting riding position. Or set Helen up in front of a mirror. Note your leg position, your "centered riding building blocks" (Refer to Sally Swift's books on "Centered Riding".)
Have your partner gently take your hand and see how stable you are in the saddle. Note: partners - do not pull with such gusto that you unbalance the rider or Helen House Horse. No injuries allowed!!
Here are some directions for the assistant. Stand directly in front of the rider. The rider can bring her hands into rein-holding position. To take her hands you'll cross your forearms so your right hand will take her left; your left hand her right.
Feel for the stability of her seat by gently adding a little pressure, a little pull to your feel. Do not pull so hard that you overwhelm her seat. The goal here is to build her confidence in the structure and stability of her core. If you go in so fast and so strong that you don't give her time to adjust her balance, you'll break down her confidence instead of building it up. So take a little feel, enough to challenge her balance, but not so much that you create a defensive, tension-producing reaction. Ease back if you took too much, and try again.
Question her balance just enough that she has to explore within her breath, and within the alignment of her core building blocks how to meet the challenge so she can stabilize her seat. When you feel her seat become grounded without becoming tense, challenge her balance again. In this way you'll be helping her to find the deep stability of her core. And you'll also be learning about the parallel process you'll be going through with your horse. You're asking for baby gives, little challenges to core balance that ripple through and create huge changes.
What is the rider doing? The rider is to make the decision that she is not going to let her elbows be pulled forward. But nor is she going to tighten up and use the large muscles of her arms, back and seat to hold herself in place. At first this may be hard for some of you. Go through the bone rotation exercises in the book: swimming, flying, and the hip rotations. Note any changes in how you feel, how you look. You may notice a huge difference. Go through the swimming exercise and have your partner receive your hands as you bring your arm into rein-holding position from the backward swing of your arm. She may notice a huge difference in the feel of your seat and the softness of your arms. Be sure to take turns so you get to feel this from the horse's perspective as well as the riders.
When your seat feels balanced, begin to work on the pick up of the reins. Here it works best if the rider can let the head stall rest on top of her own head. I know - it looks silly, but you'll learn a lot that will make you a much more tolerant and patient teacher for your horse. Hold the sides of the bit in your hands, and make sure your own arms are comfortably loose. You won't feel nearly as much if your wrists and shoulders are tight.
Rein Mechanics
The rider is going to practice the pick up of the reins. I've described the rein pick up in the book. I'm going to describe it here as well, but in a slightly different way. The more ways I can describe the same exercise, the more likely it is that the words will connect with you. That's why it is so useful having so many different people describing this work. The more images you hear, the more steps we describe, the clearer it will become.
We're going to use some Tag teaching techniques. If you aren't sure what Tag teaching is go to tagteach.com for a fuller explanation. In brief it is an off shoot of clicker training, an application of the work for people. In tagteaching you identify the tag point, i.e. what is it that is going to get clicked. You let the student earn five or six tags, then you identify the next tag point. That's the quick version. Hopefully that's enough information for you to follow this exercise.
Lifting the Buckle
Your first tag point is simply picking up the buckle of the reins with your outside hand. Lift the buckle up to about the height of your sternum so your elbow bends. You'll be bending your elbow, letting it drop into place as you release any holding you have in your shoulder. With your buckle hand lifted, if your partner pulls on the rein, your hand will be stable and your seat will remain grounded. I refer to this as seeding your elbow.
Lift the rein up seeding your elbow, set it down again on whatever is passing for Helen's withers. Lift the rein, set it down. Lift the rein, set it down. Do this five or six times then switch hands. Repeat until the movement feels fluid and you don't have to think about it. Select tagpoints as needed within this movement for your partner to mark: "yes": that was right. Let the power of the marker signal work for you through this process.
Adding the Inside Rein
Now lift the rein up just as you have been doing, but let your free inside hand float up just above your outside, buckle hand. If you had fur like a cat, your inside hand would be resting over the tips of the fur on your outside hand, but not pressing down on it.
Lift your buckle hand up with your inside hand accompanying it. Set the rein down again and repeat. Become aware of your breathing. Let the pick up of the rein become like a meditation so you breathe your hand up on the inhale and set it down on the exhale. Note the rhythm that evolves in your arms. Think about what has to let go, what has to move in order for you to pick up the reins. This is not an exercise that you do once and then never again. This is something you will learn from every time you do it. If you are very tight in your shoulders, you may be wondering what on earth I am talking about. What does she mean - what has to let go? But as you go through this exercise, you'll become aware of your shoulder blades as you pick up the rein; you'll feel how your collar bones are involved in the release of your elbow and the rotation of your wrist. What other changes are you becoming aware of?
What is your partner feeling? Get feedback. You're working with a "horse" who speaks English! (And next time you ride your horse, ask him what he thinks of these exercises. You'll often feel a dramatic difference in the quality of his gaits after you've worked on ground exercises like this.)
Slide Down The Inside Rein
When this step feels fluid, move on to the next step. Lift the buckle hand up accompanying it with your inside hand as before. As your buckle hand lifts up to its highest point - but before you have fully released your shoulder and seeded your elbow into place - let your inside hand slid down the inside rein.
As you slide down the rein, let your arm rotate, beginning from your collar bone and shoulder blade. The rotation of the bones will mean that in your finished position the front of your shoulder will be open, your wrist will have a straight line to it, and the heel of your hand will rest comfortably against a stable point of contact on the front of the saddle. You will be very level in your ribs, no leaning or collapsing to get your hand to that point of contact.
If you are tight or you can't find the rotation, you'll have to compensate by leaning. This is what many novice single-rein riders do. On the horse this can at first be deceptively reinforcing because the lean will push your inside hip over towards the outside creating a similar lean/bend in your horse. It's at best a first approximation of a lateral flexion, but leaning in either the horse or the rider is not desirable. Follow this route for too long and it will take you down a dead end street. To avoid leaning work with Helen House Horse. As you slide down the rein into position, you'll be learning how to free up your shoulder blades and access the full rotation of your arms. Learn it first on Helen House Horse, then transfer it to your real horse.
Ideally you want your inside hand to settle into position just as your buckle hand is completing its pick up of the rein and settling into its seeded elbow position.
Repeat this on both reins until it feels fluid. Get feedback on the feel down the rein from your partner. And have your partner test your balance and the firmness of your stabilized inside hand. With the rotations of your bones working for you, you should be able to stabilize your hand from your core. You should feel solid and firm, rooted like a post, without feeling tight or forceful. Your partner should feel great stability from you, not muscle power. When you've got this, you'll be able to give your horse a supporting hand as needed; a postlike hand when required, but never a resistant, fight-provoking hand or one that creates backwards traction.
When the mechanics of the rein pick up feel fluid, you'll be ready to go test them out on your horse.
So that's the homework. Go experiment and ask questions of Helen House Horse. I'm about to take off for another long weekend. I probably won't be able to catch up again with the list until next Tuesday, and then it will take a few days to digest all the posts, but there are lots of people on the list who can field questions and add their own descriptions and discoveries about the mechanics of the rein pick up. I encourage you all to jump in. I've just given the bare bones description here. There is lots more that can be said. As as I read through this, I know there is much that needs further translation, clarification, other ways of saying the same thing, and just plain experimenting with and sharing your "ah ha" moments with the group.
Have fun!
Alexandra Kurland
theclickercenter.com
March 23
Helen House Horse
Last weekend's clinic was wonderful! (Refers to a clinic held at Groton NY.) What a great group! It was bitter cold, so we spent a good chunk of the clinic inside working on the rider's body awareness. Sunday morning I borrowed some exercises from the Alexander/Feldenkrais tool box to work with individual riders. I was looking at the habitual patterns of each rider - where is movement fluid, where is it stuck?
As I finished working with each rider, I turned them over to Katie Bartlett to explore rein mechanics on our clinic version of Helen House Horse. Katie may want to comment on some of the discoveries she made with each rider, and some of the images that were helpful.
We completed the sequence by going out to the arena in the afternoon. It was startling to see how much change there was between Saturday's pre-body awareness exercises and Sunday's ride. Helen House Horses absolutely does make a difference.
We spent a good part of the clinic looking at the mechanics of sliding down the inside rein. How do you slide down the rein so the rest of your body becomes connected to the process?
I've watched a ton of lessons. I always figure at some point the shoe is going to fit so all lessons are worth listening to. If the rider is leaning too far forward, at some point I'll be doing the same thing, so I need to listen to the remedy. And if I'm leaning too far forward, at some point I'll be leaning too far back, so I need to listen to that lesson, too. All the shoes are going to fit at one point or another. What you hope is that eventually the "shoe" where everything is wonderful is the one that feels like that comfy old slipper you wear all the time.
Anyway, I digress. So in watching lots of lessons, one of the most common issues is backwards traction on the inside rein. I wish I had a penny for every time I've heard an instructor say "Let go of the inside rein". I wouldn't have to worry about supporting my horses. They'd be set for life!
Backwards traction is such a problem. Without even being aware that you are doing it, you can be dragging back against the inside rein, using it to block and hold your horse to keep him underneath you.
Related to that is the issue of over steering with the rein. That means instead of waiting for the horse to respond, the rider uses the rein to essentially drags the horse around. We're such an impatient species. We want to make things happen. We slide down to a point of contact, nothing happens, so we keep going and compel a change.
I'm suggesting a different tactic, one where you set it up and wait. Now that should sound familiar to a great many of you. But how do you do it? How do you break your old habits and set up a new pattern? Grabbing, holding on, making things happen, these all come so easily to us. How do you instead go to a point where have established contact and then wait for the horse to respond? How do you know when your hand is stable, quietly waiting, instead of taking that extra, little make-it-happen feel?
That's in part what these single-rein exercises are for. They teach the rider how to establish a stable point of contact so the rein can do its job. What is it's job? It's to say "I want something". And then to say, "thank you, you just gave it to me." It is not to drag the horse around by the nose, or to act as an anchor holding back the horse's energy, or to punish the horse for misbehavior. It's message is simple: "I want something". And then, "thank you, you just gave it to me."
As you go on through this work, you will find that other messages can be layered in on top of this simple message, but initially that's all you want to say down the rein. As you quiet down your hands and simplify their job, you will discover how much more clearly you can use the rest of your body to communicate with your horse.
Initially it can seem as though a lot of attention is being paid to the reins and to the rider's hands. That's in part because we have to change habitual patterns. It is not a normal, natural reaction to slide down a rein and wait for the horse to respond. It takes focused training for that to become the dominant pattern.
It can also seem as though single rein riding is all about using just your hands because not a lot of time is spent talking about your seat or your legs. This isn't because they aren't important, but because the process will create body awareness. When you look back at your horse's hip to ask for your horse to step under more with his inside hind leg, you can't not use leg. Your legs are part of that turning back to look.
Repeat the process enough and you will become aware of what your legs are doing. Some responses will work out better than others. What makes the difference? Just as we shape behavior in our horses, you'll begin to shape behavior in yourself. You'll notice the shifts in your seat and legs, and you'll become more deliberate in using them. They will become cues for your horse. The rein will be saying "I want something" and your body will be telling him what.
School provides so many great analogies. The inside rein in particular is very much like that over-eager kid in class who has his hand up before everyone else and is shouting out the answer. He never gives the other kids a chance to respond. That's what happens so often with the inside rein. It's doing too much, taking on too many jobs, so you never get a chance to discover how neat it is to create a change in your horse's balance using just your breath, or a subtle shift of your shoulder blades, or a change in muscle tone in your thigh.
You could take lunge line lessons to gain an independent seat and feel some of these neat responses, but most of us do not have access to a good lunge line horse, so we have to look for other approaches. That's where the single rein riding comes in. Helen House Horse is an important part of this process because you can explore what your patterns are before you put them into action on your horse. Can you slide down the inside rein and feel comfortable and balanced? Or does the slide down make you feel crooked and awkward?
That's important information. If the slide makes you feel cramped and collapsed, pay attention to the way your arm rotates as you slide down. Imagine there is a large beach ball directly in front of you. As you begin to pick up the buckle hand, your inside hand will travel up with that hand, then it will rotate out around the beach ball. The rotation won't just be in your elbow or wrist. It will involve your shoulder blade, your collar bone, your ribs, even, if you are very good at noticing, your pelvis and legs. As you slide down the inside rein, your hand will arc out over the beach ball. As you bring your hand to the stable point of contact, you'll be completing the rotation. If you wait until after you have brought your hand to the saddle to rotate, you'll end up pulling back on the bit.
Katie showed this to a couple of the riders who were working on Helen House Horse. She let the bridle hang down on its own. No one was holding the bit. She slid down the rein without rotating her arm until the very end. The bit moved towards her - a beautiful demonstration of backwards traction. Next she slid down rotating her arm out over the arc of the imagined ball so that the rotation was complete by the time she stabilized her hand. This time the bit remained still.
So go sit on your version of Helen House Horse. Hang a bridle in front of you and slide down the rein. Watch the bit. How much does it move? Is that something you want? Or is it an unwanted side effect of some holding pattern in your wrist or shoulders?
Here's another neat little awareness exercise. Get a friend to help you with this one. Stand upright, comfortably balanced over the four points on the bottom of your feet. Now have your friend press down on your shoulder. If you are aligned, the pressing down will not unbalance you at all. You won't need to use muscle to resist or keep yourself from being knocked over. You'll be able to absorb the downward pressure. In fact it will make you feel more grounded. But if you are crooked, if you collapse a little to one side so your bones are not lined up, you'll have to use muscle to counter act the effect of having someone press on your shoulder.
When you slide down the inside rein, I don't want you collapsing or twisting to find the point of contact. I want you using your joints as they were designed to be used. I want you to find the release of your shoulder blades, the rotation of your arms. That allows you to be an effective communicator.
The inside rein serves many purposes. For some riders the inside rein is part of their seat belt. It's what keeps their seat in the saddle. It's what keeps the horse from falling on his nose, or taking off at a dead run. Experience has taught them that if they let go of the inside rein, all sorts of disasters will occur. For this rider the inside rein has a clear function. I can't ask this rider to give it up, to let go of it without putting something else in its place. That was the problem with all those lessons I watched where the rider was being told to release the inside rein. The instructor wasn't giving the rider anything that would serve that underlying life-preserving function. The rider couldn't let go. The more she held, the more the horse felt constricted and wanted to escape, which only convinced the rider that she needed to hold on even more. That's a tough cycle to get out of.
If you are caught up in that cycle in your riding, the single-rein exercises we'll be exploring will make a huge difference in your riding. They'll give you that life preserver function, but without the backwards traction. And, if you are well past the point where this dynamic is happening on a gross level, these exercises will still be of value. You may have developed a beautiful independent seat, but you may still have remnants of backwards traction hanging on from earlier learning stages. These exercises will highlight those remnants of old habits so you can eliminate them completely.
Alexandra Kurland
theclickercenter.com
March 29
A Riding Lesson: Cone Circles
Last week I wrote about Helen House Horse and rein mechanics. Now it's time to go out to the barn and ask your horse how you're doing. Finally, it is time to ride!
To get everyone started out together I'm going to share with you an exercise that is not in the riding book. It's a very basic riding pattern which makes a great starting point for single-rein riding, and it's also a good check on basics for those of you who are already using these techniques. I've asked myself why I didn't include this lesson in the riding book. The answer is that it is not quite in the progression. It's an exercise that's good to have in your back pocket, but it's not one I use for every horse, every rider. However, it is a good lesson to be aware of, in part because it is such a great transition lesson for riders who are not yet familiar with single-rein riding. I use it especially when I want to give someone an experience with single-rein riding, but I haven't had time to set up the rein mechanics. If we haven't practiced on Helen House Horse, they can still have a productive lesson using this exercise.
It's also a great lesson for the foot-moving horse who needs to settle, the stuck-in-cement horse who needs to go forward, and the "broken-shopping-cart" horse who is wiggling and drifting all over the place. In addition it's a great confidence builder for the novice rider. It shows them that they can turn and stop their horse safely using just one rein. It especially helps riders who have gotten trapped on two reins and feel as though they couldn't possibly let go of their horse.
Some of you may be beyond this lesson. You may already have already accomplished what this exercise is designed to do. However, reviews are always good. You never know what you're going to uncover or understand better when you go back to basic kindergarten lessons. So you may want to ride through this exercise along with everyone else.
So with all that said: what's the lesson?
Cone Circles
It's a very simple pattern. Set out a circle of cones. I used this lesson at last Saturday's lesson day for some of our local clicker trainers. I paced out the circle so I can tell you the circle had a thirty foot diameter: one cone marked the center, eight cones were spaced evenly around the perimeter.
You are going to ride from cone to cone across the center of the circle. In other words, you'll get on your horse and pick out a cone to ride to. As long as your horse is heading towards the cone, you'll leave him alone. You'll be on the buckle. If he veers off and heads away from the cone, you'll lift up the buckle and slide down the inside rein. Your focus, your eyes, your hips are all directed towards the cone. As your horse reorients back towards the cone, you'll release him. So again, as long as he is headed in the general direction of the cone you have picked out, you'll be riding on the buckle.
As you approach the cone, you'll slide down the inside rein and ask him to turn around the cone so he ends up heading back across the circle.
As he completes the turn, you'll pick out a cone on the opposite side of the circle and ride towards it. As you pass through the center of the circle, you'll be changing rein so you'll be turning around this next cone in the opposite direction from the first. If you circled around the first cone turning to the right, you'll be turning to the left around this one.
Sound simple? It is. It's very much like the stand on a mat exercise. With the mat you can start off with someone who is all disorganized and not sure what to do with the lead rope, and within a few minutes things will begin to look smooth and elegant. The same thing happens with this exercise. The rider may start out feeling very awkward, wanting to take up on the outside rein to steer, and hauling the inside hand past the thigh to get the horse's hip to come round for a turn - all very common patterns. It will look awkward - at first -, but within a few turns around the cones, the rider will be sorting out the mechanics. Instead of hauling the inside hand past her thigh to get the turn, she'll be finding the right rein length to make the connection she needs for a pretty turn. It's a fun process to watch because it is the pattern which teaches both the horse and rider.
Here are some of the pointers to be aware of:
This is a geography lesson. You want to get around the cone, but remember that is a goal. Goals are achieved by creating steps towards them. You don't want the goal of getting around the cone to become such a "I-must-succeed-each-and-every-time" fixation that you start dragging your horse around.
Lots of things can happen on your way to the cone. For example: suppose you start across the circle. A couple of strides out from the cone, you start sliding down the inside rein to ask for the turn. A light horse may start turning before you can get all the way to the cone. That's information. It means you may have to wait a little bit longer before you begin asking for your turns. Or maybe the arena gate is on the opposite side of the circle from this cone and your horse wants to stay near the security of the gate. As soon as you suggest a turn, he's zipped around and is heading for home. More information. In either case, don't force the issue. You just collected some data, and you'll have lots more opportunities to get around the cones. The next time you'll be better prepared for his response, and you'll ride the turn differently.
Here's another possible response: Suppose your horse cut in around the first cone. Okay, that's history. So now as you head to the next cone, you wait a bit longer. What you haven't factored in is this cone is closer to the arena gate. The magnetic attraction of the gate takes over, and instead of turning, your horse drifts into his outside shoulder. He's over bent, walking over his outside shoulder, leaving the circle completely. The more he drifts, the more you're going to keep your eyes on the cone. You'll be looking back to the cone with your whole body: legs, seat, eyes, intent. The rotation of your body, and the strength of your intent will take his hips around. You may not end up going around the cone you picked out, but at least you'll be heading back in the general direction of the circle.
Keep riding the pattern. Pick a cone and ride to it. Collect data as you ride. You'll begin to recognize what your horse is going to do before he does it. At first you may not be able to prevent the drift into his outside shoulder, but after a bit, you'll become aware of it sooner. Before he was like a boat drifting rudderless downstream and you had to make big course corrections. Now you're sliding down the inside rein asking for little adjustments - and he's be listening to you. Click and treat!!
If your horse turns too soon, you'll learn to wait a bit longer before you ask. If you are riding a stuck horse, or a fearful horse, riding to a target will give purpose and intent to your seat. You'll learn how to energize his walk. That will give you enough energy to get around your turns. It will give the fearful horse a bit more confidence: "Mom seems to be "marching" right along, saying its okay, so maybe I can march along with her."
If you have too much energy underneath you, and you don't really feel like letting go and riding on the buckle, this is also a great lesson for that. You've got markers. As long as your horse is in the circle, you can let go of him. If he breaks into a trot, slide down the inside rein, take his hips around, let go, and then head off on the buckle towards the next cone. As you turn around cone after cone after cone, all that turning will bleed off the excess energy. He'll start to settle. So the stuck horse will gain energy by riding to the cones. The over-eager foot mover will settle. They'll converge into a happy balance where they are both with the rider, on course, and at an energy level that matches that of the rider.
Variations on the Theme: Developing Brakes
You can use this pattern to find a steering wheel, and you can also use it to find brakes and the "accelerator pedal". To create great brakes, you'll use the cone that's in the center of your circle. That's now going to become your focus. As your horse passes the cone, slide down your inside rein and ask for a tight hair pin turn back in the opposite direction. Release the rein as soon as you feel him respond to you - more on that later.
Keep changing rein and asking for hair pin turn after hair pin turn. The tighter the turn, the better. At some point you will feel your horse stop his feet.
Stop riding forward, release the rein and click - all at the same time. Stopping is your goal. It's easy to get so focused on turning that you forget that you're really after the halt. Very often you'll see the rider continue to ride right through the horse's first attempt at a halt. The willingness to stop is what you're after, so encourage the response by dropping your energy down as soon as you feel the hesitation in his step.
If your horse is standing with his front feet right by the cone, super! Click and treat, then let him stand for a few seconds before asking him to walk off again. If he is standing a little further away from the cone, but still facing it, let him stand, only for a little less time. The further away he is, the less time you'll let him just stand still. Turning is hard work, so part of his reward package is standing still. If he stops but is turned so he is not looking at the cone, accept this a time or two but don't give him more than a couple of seconds of standing still time. As the lesson progresses, you can become more and more particular about which halts you accept. For example, you may start riding him through stops that are oriented away from the cone. Or you'll let him stop, but not click for stops that are too far from the cone. You'll only click for stops that occur close to the cone. That clickable distance will change as the lesson progresses.
This is an important lesson for first time single-rein riders to experience. You need to know where the brakes are, that you really can stop a horse with one rein before you get too fancy and start asking for more complex things. Once you discover that you can turn and stop, you'll be much more comfortable with single-rein riding, and you won't feel as though you need to keep snatching up the outside rein. And of course, once you've got your horse standing still, you have to get him moving again. For every exercise you teach there is an opposite exercise you must teach to keep things in balance. So while you are working on brakes, you will also be working on his accelerator pedal.
One last reminder. Let the pattern and the single-rein turns stop your horse. The goal is not stopping at the cone. That is a reference point. The goal is learning more about single-rein riding and brakes. You can probably get your horse to stop right at the cone using two reins and all your riding aids. That's not the point of this lesson. Getting experienced riders to do less can be quite a challenge. You'll learn more if you let the turns do their job. This is a lesson where the winner truly is the tortoise, not the hare. Getting the stop fast is not the point. Getting the stop well is.
When should you click?
This is a "borrowed" lesson, meaning it comes out of the standard single-rein riding tool box. You can absolutely ride this lesson without adding the clicker to it and have good results. Your horse will settle; he will begin to follow your seat instead of falling in or drifting out; he will match his energy level to yours; he will develop good brakes; you will become more fluid in your rein mechanics, and more aware of the influence of your seat and legs on his movement. So you could ride this lesson without ever clicking, and you would get a good result. That's one of the things that makes it a great crossover lesson.
If adding the clicker into the single-rein riding is more than you can process all at once, ride it at first just picking up the rein and releasing for correct responses. Each time you let go of the rein, you are giving your horse information, and you are giving him something else he wants. He wants you to let go of the rein. He wants you out of his mouth. The release is something he will work for.
As you begin to settle into the lesson, you'll be collecting data. You'll feel those moments when everything feels fluid and connected. You pick up the rein, and without any drift, he'll respond to you. A simple release of the rein just won't seem like enough of a reward. After all, you're just taking away something he didn't want in the first place. You want to highlight that good response. You want bells and whistles to go off!!! So by all means click and treat! You're on your way to understanding how you can incorporate clicker training into your riding. You're beginning with a piggy back lesson. Layer by layer, as your comfort level with the technique grows, you'll find that what began as a pressure lesson with the clicker piggy backed onto it will morph into something very different, but that's a discussion for another time when we have more of this work under our collective belts.
Some of you may find that you can add the clicker in right at the start of the lesson. You can chew gum, pat your head, and recite the Gettysburg Address all at the same time. In other words you can balance on the back of a moving horse, handle the mechanics of single-rein riding, and identify the clickable moment all at the same time. So what should you click? Let your horse tell you. For a stuck horse reinforcing movement of any kind may be where you begin. For the foot mover, you may be waiting until you are turning around the cone and clicking him each time he yields his hip. Finding the clickable responses in this exercise is part of the creative discovery process for the rider.
Letting Go
Once you understand the basic flow of this lesson, you're ready to become a splitter instead of a lumper. It's time to talk about nuance, and to share a story from this past weekend's lesson day. This exercise is a great one for getting started with single-rein riding. For those of you who just want the basic safety tool kit, this will give it to you. But it is also a great lesson for recognizing all the tiny "yes answers" your horse is giving you, and for learning to say "yes" back to him. Here's what I mean by that:
Last Saturday one of the horses at the clinic was "having a day". He came into the arena all charged up, full of energy, not wanting to settle down and focus on riding. Now this is one of those situations where the barn rats among us have a huge advantage. And it's one of those world divides sorts of things. I've been a boarder all of of my horse-owning life which means I've always shared barn space with lots of other people. So I've seen the people who come to the barn, take care of their own horse, and then leave. They have family, work, a life that doesn't always include horses. Fancy that! Because they don't hang around to watch a lot of other horses, they don't have a very broad perspective on training. They don't know what is normal horse behavior. They don't know which responses are just part of the normal "learning how to learn" process, and which ones are something they should worry about. When their horse reacts to something they do, they don't always know how to interpret it. Is this something that they should remain non-reactive to, like water off a duck's back, or is this something that they need to really pay attention to? Watch enough horses, and you begin to have a sense of what is normal, what is just part of the process, and what is off the bell shaped learning curve and needs to be addressed.
That's the advantage barn rats have. They're the ones who can be found hanging over the rail watching lessons. They're the first ones to get to the barn, and the last ones to leave. And because they spend all those hours watching horses, they understand that horses are very much like people. They have good days and bad days; days when everything flows, and days when you have to go back to basics and review kindergarten lessons. Many single-horse owners have trouble putting these days into perspective. "My horse was perfect yesterday. I don't know what's wrong." Nothing is wrong. Today is just today, and this is the horse you are working with, not the one you had yesterday, or last week.
Want a simple example? Peregrine and Robin have just been granted morning paddock privileges. I get to turn them out together first thing in the morning. I've been enjoying watching the interactions between the two of them. I take my laptop computer out with me and sit where I can see them. I am actually writing this post from the "duck blind" of my car. Yesterday the wind was blowing. The three horses in the paddock beyond were very active, lots of halter games, lots of kicking up the heels. Peregrine and Robin were doing the same. Today the sun is warm, the wind has died down. The other three horses are all standing quietly taking naps. Robin has just let a dog walk across his paddock without feeling the need to chase it out. There has been no running, no kicking up of heels. All is peaceful. Yesterday I needed to remind both horses to settle their energy down before I opened the gate to walk them back to the barn. Today, I may need to ask them to wake up long enough to get back to their stalls.
The point. Horses moods are not the same from one day to the next. We need to take that into account in our training and choose our lessons accordingly. At the start of the day on Saturday I asked this horse's owner what she wanted to work on. She's been riding the kinds of patterns I described at the end of the three training turns chapter (Ch. 31, pg. 206). That's what she wanted to work on. Her horse had other ideas. And we needed to adjust our plan accordingly. That's just good training. Before going on to this other lesson her horse needed to ride around cones to get his energy settled in this new arena. My goal is to have a horse who is consistent from one day to the next, from one location to another, who is not effected by weather and other outside influences. But that's a goal, which means to get there I need to create some training steps. Last Saturday this horse needed those training steps to bring his focus back to his rider.
As this rider rode her horse through a series of turns around the cones, she did something very normal. She held on all the way through the turn. In other words she slid down the inside rein at the just the right moment to ask for a turn. But instead of releasing on the first instance of response, she held on until the entire turn was completed. That's what we humans do. It's totally normal. We not only have to learn how to break our goals down into lots of little "yes answer" successes. Once we understand the process, we have to monitor ourselves to make sure we don't slip back into the habit of lumping.
When I was sharing this lesson with clients before I knew anything about clicker training, I would say to them: I'm a much tougher trainer than you are, but your horse will like me better. Why? Because when you go around the cone you only say yes to your horse once. I say yes to him five or six times, so even though I am more exacting, more demanding, I give more information and more acknowledgment of a job well done.
Instead of having just one yes for the entire turn, I wanted this rider to mark each weight shift with a release. Each step of the turn where he was responding to her and coming under her seat was worthy of a release. You don't have to hold on all the way through the turn. If you let go and your horse drifts away from the desired response, you can always pick up again.
This is such an important understanding. It's going to come up again later, especially when you are riding rollbacks (pg. 192). So this is a fundamental skill. This rider has good rein handling mechanics. That means she knows how to release softly and to pick up again smoothly. She can do it in rhythm with her horse's foot steps.
Once we saw the change, just for fun, I had her go around a cone holding on all the way around the turn. Her horse started to get hurried again. For the next cone, she picked up and released for each small yes. Her horse settled. Each step was deliberate. He was with her one hundred percent. It was very pretty to watch. And I am sure it felt even prettier to ride. It certainly showed the power of letting go.
If you are new to single-rein riding, and especially if you are sitting on a horse who is not quite settled emotionally, you will probably start out by picking up the inside rein and holding on all the way through the turn. That's normal. Letting go comes as you gain experience riding this exercise. It comes from recognizing when your horse has responded to you, and from understanding that you do not have to hold on to something all the way through to its completion. Now there's a life metaphor. Get the process started, then let go. If it needs more input from you, you can always step back in.
In riding: pick up the rein, get a response, and let go. If you need to put in more information, you can always pick up the rein again. This is a great lesson for learning nuance. So for those of you who are further along in this process, set out some cones and check yourself. Have you slipped back into a pattern of lumping? Or are you a good splitter? And for those of you who are new to all of this and are just looking for a steering wheel and the brakes - have fun!
Alexandra Kurland
theclickercenter.com