Post by Elaine on Oct 27, 2009 17:53:16 GMT
It is perhaps the greatest contradiction that lies within the horse: that an animal so big and so powerful can be at the same time so very subtle. On the one hand, they can bite and kick each other, then in the next moment dial that down to a glance or flick of an ear.
Working with horses is not a science. It’s more of an art in a lot of ways. It’s about creativity and feel and making it up as we go along. Working with horses is a lot like the horses themselves: it’s got its not-so-subtle parts and its subtle parts. The not-so-subtle stuff, I suppose, we could say is technique. That’s the “press on this and the horse will do that” kind of stuff. The subtle stuff is more along the lines of thoughts, attitudes, and “energy”. I guess we could see the not-so-subtle and subtle stuff as layers of the same things. Some of the layers are thinner than others, and some are maybe so thin we can’t even really see them.
Now, this energy thing is something that can be a daunting theory for some of us. Electricity is energy and even if we can’t see it visually, we accept that it exists (think electric fence). We accept that the energy between two magnets exists despite its invisibility. We’ve all seen magnets move each other. Wind is energy, water is energy. We can go so far as to say that thoughts, emotions and attitudes are energy. If technique is a thick layer in horsemanship, the thoughts, emotions and attitudes that underlie our horsemanship are an even thinner layer.
Language
Many of us haven’t given much thought to the words we use in relation to our horse training. But sports psychologists, motivational speakers and sports coaches have long acknowledged how powerful our self talk is. The words we use say a lot about the attitudes and beliefs that lie beneath our choice of words.
Years ago, it wasn’t uncommon for me to describe a horse I was working with as “lazy”, “looking to take advantage” of us, “trying to get out of work” or even “piggy”. Now, if I’d used those same words to describe a person, I think we’d agree that I wasn’t describing a very nice person. I thought I loved horses back then, but from the words I’d used to describe them, it sure didn’t sound like it.
What if that “lazy” horse was stiff, sore, or confused? What if that horse who was “looking to take advantage” of me was just trying things in an attempt to learn? What if what the horse was doing had nothing to do with me? Calling a horse’s character into question didn’t give me a whole lot of places to go as a trainer. If we can look at a horse’s behavior as neutral, then we’ve got somewhere to go in a training context.
When we call a horse a name (“lazy”, “piggy”, “mareish”), we prevent ourselves from asking why the horse is doing what he’s doing or isn’t doing what he isn’t doing by blaming it on his poor character. A few years ago, I made a conscious choice to believe that when a horse wasn’t doing what I needed him to do, he either couldn’t (physically or mentally) or didn’t understand what I was asking him to do. I figured that true or not, this belief would give me somewhere to go and would keep the lines of communication open between me and my horses.
I worked with a dog trainer once who stressed that we needed to tell our dogs what to do, rather than what not to do. She claimed that telling a dog what not to do would leave a “void” or blank space that the dog would fill with something. As she saw it, the dog had to do something at any given time, so he might as well do something we prescribe to him. So, “don’t bark” becomes, “Come, sit, heel.”
This idea is old news in sports psychology and coaching. Many coaches would confirm that they believe there’s a big difference between a team that is playing to win and one that is playing to not lose. The difference is in the words, and the energy and attitude carried by the words. Are we riding to have fun and connect with our horses (the positive goal), or riding to not get hurt or scared (the negative goal)?
If we can modify our language to cast a more positive light on our horses, ourselves and what is going on between us, what is possible? At the very least, what does it hurt? If I believe my horse is trying, I can believe I am trying. That’s all any of us can do.
The Basics
It’s funny, but the more I learn about horses, the more I feel like it’s all about the basics. By the basics, I mean the B-A-S-I-C-S. For me, the basics are: go, turn left, turn right, stop and back up. Everything a horse will be asked to do for the rest of his life (including spins, piaffe, pirouettes, opening gates, roping, etc) will be a version of those five things. Everything.
I have a very good friend who is a second-degree black belt in Karate. She’s been studying and practicing for many, many years. As we spoke on the phone one night, she told me that she was struggling to teach a large Karate class filled with people of varying ages and abilities. Her source of confidence in her Karate teaching, she decided, was that as she put it, “I know the basics.” That really made an impression on me, coming from someone of her skill and experience.
The thing about the basics is that if something is lacking at the most basic level of the basics, then we’re building on sand, so to speak, rather than on rock. We’re trying to put up the second floor of our building when we haven’t finished framing the first.
There are a lot of reasons we can neglect the basics. There’s time and money, of course. We just don’t have time with a sale horse to do the basics. We don’t have the money to do the basics because who wants to pay for a lesson to learn how to stop?? And it gets more complex from there. We can neglect the basics because our horse is particularly quiet, or particularly smart, particularly cute or particularly well-bred. The thing is, the cute card kind of runs out when the cute horse doesn’t understand how to stop and runs away with us.
We can also neglect the basics because we think we’re “past” the basics, that those things don’t apply to us. We can get to thinking that we can ride well enough to ride past the basics, through anything the horse may offer. Maybe we think we don’t know enough to adhere to a good understanding of the basics. We have to start somewhere, and there’s no time like the present.
The basics start on the ground, where it would be nice if our horse could go, turn left, turn right, stop and back up with a minimum of pressure or trouble.
This might beg the question what a “minimum of pressure” is. This is, of course, relative to the person making the judgment. But one way to look at it is to put the pressure that we use on a scale of zero to 10, with zero being no pressure and 10 being as much pressure as we can possibly use. For the most part, I personally will try to get things to where I can use a one or less on that scale and get a consistent response. We may not start there, but that’s where I’d like to head. Then I’d call that a “minimum of pressure”.
So if we can do those basics with a minimum of pressure on the ground, then we need to get those same basics working under saddle. Again, it would be nice if our horse could go, turn left, turn right, stop and back up with a minimum of pressure consistently.
Time spent on the basics comes back to us exponentially down the line. Once we get the basics working consistently, when we move on, those transitions to the new stuff can be smoother and quicker. Every riding horse needs to have a good understanding of the basics in order to be safe and useful.
Peace and Quiet
This is something that we don’t really talk about much in relation to training horses. I’m starting to think that it’s a lot easier for a horse to learn something if they are quiet in their mind. If the horse’s mind is racing, troubled or overwhelmed, he just can’t take in new information.
Now, I’m not saying that a horse will never be bothered when we’re working with him. That’s going to happen sometimes, and sometimes it needs to happen so a horse can get to a better place physically and mentally. And we’re not talking about external peace and quiet here, it’s more of an internal peace and quiet.
This might be one of those things that good horsemen do that we don’t know they do because we don’t really see them do it. If we closely watch folks who are really good with horses, they’ll spend some time getting that horse quieted down and thinking and asking questions. Then they’ll present the information to the horse and like magic, the information goes in and the horse learns it.
It’s the same with people. If our minds are full-up with miscellaney, or our thoughts are running off with us, it’s difficult for us to be present and take in information. That miscellaney can be anything from planning our grocery list to reviewing what we read in the latest issue of Practical Horseman. The kinds of thoughts that tend to run off with us are things like “what if’s”, fear and self-doubt. Those thoughts can take up so much room that there’s no room for much else.
If we can get to a place where our mind is quieter, we can see what our horse is offering for what it is, rather than through the muddle of all the stuff that’s cluttering up our minds at the time. All that stuff will still be there when we get done working with our horse, and we can pick it up then.
I picked up a little magnet this summer at a book store that kind of summed up this idea for me:
Peace.
It does not mean to be in a place
where there is no noise, trouble
or hard work. It means to be in
the midst of those things and still
be calm in your heart.
(unknown)
That would be a nice place to be able to be with my horse, I think.
____________________________________________________
Kathleen Lindley grew up showing hunters and jumpers on the “A” circuit in the Midwest. She worked with horseman/clinician Mark Rashid for over 10 years. Today, Kathleen travels the states and the UK giving horsemanship clinics, working with riders of all disciplines. She is the author of two books, “In the Company of Horses” and “A Life With Horses: the Spirit of the Work”, co-written with Mark Rashid. You can find her on the web at www.kathleenlindley.com.
Working with horses is not a science. It’s more of an art in a lot of ways. It’s about creativity and feel and making it up as we go along. Working with horses is a lot like the horses themselves: it’s got its not-so-subtle parts and its subtle parts. The not-so-subtle stuff, I suppose, we could say is technique. That’s the “press on this and the horse will do that” kind of stuff. The subtle stuff is more along the lines of thoughts, attitudes, and “energy”. I guess we could see the not-so-subtle and subtle stuff as layers of the same things. Some of the layers are thinner than others, and some are maybe so thin we can’t even really see them.
Now, this energy thing is something that can be a daunting theory for some of us. Electricity is energy and even if we can’t see it visually, we accept that it exists (think electric fence). We accept that the energy between two magnets exists despite its invisibility. We’ve all seen magnets move each other. Wind is energy, water is energy. We can go so far as to say that thoughts, emotions and attitudes are energy. If technique is a thick layer in horsemanship, the thoughts, emotions and attitudes that underlie our horsemanship are an even thinner layer.
Language
Many of us haven’t given much thought to the words we use in relation to our horse training. But sports psychologists, motivational speakers and sports coaches have long acknowledged how powerful our self talk is. The words we use say a lot about the attitudes and beliefs that lie beneath our choice of words.
Years ago, it wasn’t uncommon for me to describe a horse I was working with as “lazy”, “looking to take advantage” of us, “trying to get out of work” or even “piggy”. Now, if I’d used those same words to describe a person, I think we’d agree that I wasn’t describing a very nice person. I thought I loved horses back then, but from the words I’d used to describe them, it sure didn’t sound like it.
What if that “lazy” horse was stiff, sore, or confused? What if that horse who was “looking to take advantage” of me was just trying things in an attempt to learn? What if what the horse was doing had nothing to do with me? Calling a horse’s character into question didn’t give me a whole lot of places to go as a trainer. If we can look at a horse’s behavior as neutral, then we’ve got somewhere to go in a training context.
When we call a horse a name (“lazy”, “piggy”, “mareish”), we prevent ourselves from asking why the horse is doing what he’s doing or isn’t doing what he isn’t doing by blaming it on his poor character. A few years ago, I made a conscious choice to believe that when a horse wasn’t doing what I needed him to do, he either couldn’t (physically or mentally) or didn’t understand what I was asking him to do. I figured that true or not, this belief would give me somewhere to go and would keep the lines of communication open between me and my horses.
I worked with a dog trainer once who stressed that we needed to tell our dogs what to do, rather than what not to do. She claimed that telling a dog what not to do would leave a “void” or blank space that the dog would fill with something. As she saw it, the dog had to do something at any given time, so he might as well do something we prescribe to him. So, “don’t bark” becomes, “Come, sit, heel.”
This idea is old news in sports psychology and coaching. Many coaches would confirm that they believe there’s a big difference between a team that is playing to win and one that is playing to not lose. The difference is in the words, and the energy and attitude carried by the words. Are we riding to have fun and connect with our horses (the positive goal), or riding to not get hurt or scared (the negative goal)?
If we can modify our language to cast a more positive light on our horses, ourselves and what is going on between us, what is possible? At the very least, what does it hurt? If I believe my horse is trying, I can believe I am trying. That’s all any of us can do.
The Basics
It’s funny, but the more I learn about horses, the more I feel like it’s all about the basics. By the basics, I mean the B-A-S-I-C-S. For me, the basics are: go, turn left, turn right, stop and back up. Everything a horse will be asked to do for the rest of his life (including spins, piaffe, pirouettes, opening gates, roping, etc) will be a version of those five things. Everything.
I have a very good friend who is a second-degree black belt in Karate. She’s been studying and practicing for many, many years. As we spoke on the phone one night, she told me that she was struggling to teach a large Karate class filled with people of varying ages and abilities. Her source of confidence in her Karate teaching, she decided, was that as she put it, “I know the basics.” That really made an impression on me, coming from someone of her skill and experience.
The thing about the basics is that if something is lacking at the most basic level of the basics, then we’re building on sand, so to speak, rather than on rock. We’re trying to put up the second floor of our building when we haven’t finished framing the first.
There are a lot of reasons we can neglect the basics. There’s time and money, of course. We just don’t have time with a sale horse to do the basics. We don’t have the money to do the basics because who wants to pay for a lesson to learn how to stop?? And it gets more complex from there. We can neglect the basics because our horse is particularly quiet, or particularly smart, particularly cute or particularly well-bred. The thing is, the cute card kind of runs out when the cute horse doesn’t understand how to stop and runs away with us.
We can also neglect the basics because we think we’re “past” the basics, that those things don’t apply to us. We can get to thinking that we can ride well enough to ride past the basics, through anything the horse may offer. Maybe we think we don’t know enough to adhere to a good understanding of the basics. We have to start somewhere, and there’s no time like the present.
The basics start on the ground, where it would be nice if our horse could go, turn left, turn right, stop and back up with a minimum of pressure or trouble.
This might beg the question what a “minimum of pressure” is. This is, of course, relative to the person making the judgment. But one way to look at it is to put the pressure that we use on a scale of zero to 10, with zero being no pressure and 10 being as much pressure as we can possibly use. For the most part, I personally will try to get things to where I can use a one or less on that scale and get a consistent response. We may not start there, but that’s where I’d like to head. Then I’d call that a “minimum of pressure”.
So if we can do those basics with a minimum of pressure on the ground, then we need to get those same basics working under saddle. Again, it would be nice if our horse could go, turn left, turn right, stop and back up with a minimum of pressure consistently.
Time spent on the basics comes back to us exponentially down the line. Once we get the basics working consistently, when we move on, those transitions to the new stuff can be smoother and quicker. Every riding horse needs to have a good understanding of the basics in order to be safe and useful.
Peace and Quiet
This is something that we don’t really talk about much in relation to training horses. I’m starting to think that it’s a lot easier for a horse to learn something if they are quiet in their mind. If the horse’s mind is racing, troubled or overwhelmed, he just can’t take in new information.
Now, I’m not saying that a horse will never be bothered when we’re working with him. That’s going to happen sometimes, and sometimes it needs to happen so a horse can get to a better place physically and mentally. And we’re not talking about external peace and quiet here, it’s more of an internal peace and quiet.
This might be one of those things that good horsemen do that we don’t know they do because we don’t really see them do it. If we closely watch folks who are really good with horses, they’ll spend some time getting that horse quieted down and thinking and asking questions. Then they’ll present the information to the horse and like magic, the information goes in and the horse learns it.
It’s the same with people. If our minds are full-up with miscellaney, or our thoughts are running off with us, it’s difficult for us to be present and take in information. That miscellaney can be anything from planning our grocery list to reviewing what we read in the latest issue of Practical Horseman. The kinds of thoughts that tend to run off with us are things like “what if’s”, fear and self-doubt. Those thoughts can take up so much room that there’s no room for much else.
If we can get to a place where our mind is quieter, we can see what our horse is offering for what it is, rather than through the muddle of all the stuff that’s cluttering up our minds at the time. All that stuff will still be there when we get done working with our horse, and we can pick it up then.
I picked up a little magnet this summer at a book store that kind of summed up this idea for me:
Peace.
It does not mean to be in a place
where there is no noise, trouble
or hard work. It means to be in
the midst of those things and still
be calm in your heart.
(unknown)
That would be a nice place to be able to be with my horse, I think.
____________________________________________________
Kathleen Lindley grew up showing hunters and jumpers on the “A” circuit in the Midwest. She worked with horseman/clinician Mark Rashid for over 10 years. Today, Kathleen travels the states and the UK giving horsemanship clinics, working with riders of all disciplines. She is the author of two books, “In the Company of Horses” and “A Life With Horses: the Spirit of the Work”, co-written with Mark Rashid. You can find her on the web at www.kathleenlindley.com.