Post by Elaine on Nov 1, 2010 19:09:01 GMT
Finding the Profound in the Mundane by Kathleen Lindley
A couple years ago, when my horse Daisy was a four, coming five-year-old, we'd been having a lot of trouble with bridling. I'd started Daisy mid-way through her three-year-old year, and she'd bridled fine for almost a year and suddenly (it seemed to me) began literally running backwards from the bridle. When I did finally get her feet still, she would lean backwards and lock her feet and her jaw. I'd get her bridled from there as quietly as I could, but it didn't feel good.
The Vaqueros tend to move a young horse out of the snaffle bit and into the rawhide hackamore about the time their mouth turns into a mess of caps and permanent teeth coming in. I decided that using a hackamore was a good idea for Daisy, and we successfully changed over to the hackamore for about 18 months. We didn't have any of the bridling issues with the hackamore that we'd had with the bridle.
hackamore
When Daisy's teeth had grown up and it was time to come back into the snaffle, I found we still had the bridling issue. She carried the bit fine now that her mouth was stable, but what had perhaps begun as a physical/discomfort issue had become a behavioral/training issue regarding the process of bridling itself. So it was time to address it as such.
It's worth noting that I COULD bridle Daisy, by myself. It didn't take half a football team to get it done or anything, but it wasn't "to standard". It didn't feel good between us and it was certainly not something I'd show to a student and say, "This is what's possible if we work at it."
I was kind of stuck with the whole thing. I'd used the techniques and ideas I was familiar with, and things had changed so far and no further. So I swallowed my pride and asked my friend Jim to take a look at it with me and perhaps point me to some things I was missing.
Jim watched me and Daisy kind of "do our thing" for a bit, and began by asking me to just tip her head toward me when I went to put the bridle on. When I did this, I could feel the rigidity of Daisy's whole spine, down to her feet. Holy Cow! I'd been so focused on her head and jaw that I hadn't felt how HARD her whole body got when the bridle was presented. That explained why she would lean backwards and lock her jaw. Her mind was leaving out the back door and she was locking up her body because that was the best she could do. If I'd have let her body go with her mind, she'd have run away backwards.
As Jim and I talked through what he was seeing and what I was feeling, I decided to back up to haltering and have Jim look at that too and lo and behold, there it was again, but smaller: Daisy leaning backward away from the halter!
Ray Hunt, in his book "Think Harmony with Horses" briefly talks about how when we "reach" for our horse, we'd like him to "reach" back for us. " Ray had used that word, "reach" and I'd really liked that word in the context in which he used it. I can reach for my horse mentally, emotionally and/or physically. Then my horse can reach back to me mentally, emotionally and/or physically. Or not. When I go to the pasture, I reach for my horse mentally first, and he may flick an ear when he hears or sees or feels me. That's him reaching back to me. Then when I approach with the halter, I reach for him physically and it'd be nice if he reached for me physically right then. A horse who's reaching isn't pushing - that's different.
So that's what I was missing with Daisy, and why bridling was so troublesome between us. There was no reach in her. I was reaching, but she was withdrawing. And it went all the way back to the halter. With the halter, it went all the way back to the presentation of the halter. When I slowed the whole process down and paid attention (rather than haltering thoughtlessly with no feel or awareness), I could feel the single moment when Daisy withdrew and we lost all "reach" between us. Once we moved to the bridle, the withdrawl became exponentially bigger.
So I had my work cut out. I knew that in order to get the whole thing softer and feeling better all the way through, I'd need to get that reach working for us in everything we did. I'd need to be aware when Daisy withdrew and have that end in a reach instead. She'd need to get confident in that reach and then it could get soft.
One of the things I need to say here is that I had TAUGHT Daisy to withdraw instead of reach. She had a lot of reach in her when I got her, and some push too. When I took the push out of her (doing the best I could at the time), I took the reach out too. I could write a whole book on how we worked on getting that reach back in there. I think how we did it is less important than the fact that we did it, period. Suffice to say that we didn't use food and I didn't really use any substantial degree of pressure. What I did was study how it felt to "draw" a horse in the round pen and then get that feel working during haltering and bridling. That's the best way I can think of to describe it. It'd look different with different horses and different people anyway. But if you're really interested in it, if you see me sometime, ask me about it and I can show you a couple things.
This bridling stuff was a really big deal for me and for Daisy. I can't speak so much for her as I can for myself, so I'll just focus on why it was so important for me.
Once I began to examine the problem, I found that it went further back in our interactions than I thought it did. It turned out to be the embodiment of that seeming riddle, "What happened before what happened happened?" As is usual, there was plenty that happened before what happened happened. In order to truly get things better, I had to go back to what happened before what happened happened and then move forward again from there. It was a lesson in humility, patience and responsibility.
There are a bunch of reasons why I'm telling this story. You'll get out of it what you get out of it. But let me offer a couple things that have really stuck with me so far.
1. Most of us are terrified of making "mistakes" with our horses or "screwing our horse up." We're doing the best we can at any one point in time. Two or three years from now, if we're working hard, we may have more technique, more mileage, more confidence, a better understanding, a different feel, etc. So that's going to change how we go about things. If we keep a horse long enough, we'll end up living with work we did a few years ago. It's not a mistake, it's just where we are. So we're always going to need to go back and change some things when we develop a different feel or explore some other ideas, if the horse is willing. It's not about mistakes, it's about developing an organic relationship with the horse and with ourselves and with our individual journey.
2. The little stuff can be SO important. Sometimes students actually aplogize to me for wanting to look at something as "simple" as leading or haltering or saddling their horse. This is the profound stuff, where having things to standard and everyone feeling good about it is so important, I think. What I found was that Daisy and I were starting our time together with a huge disconnection between us, and that's what I was trying to build each day's work on. I had to decide if that's what I wanted our life to be like. Sure, I COULD ride her, but how much better would she ride if she haltered and bridled better? We get good at what we practice. I was practicing a lack of awareness and feel and practicing skipping things that weren't working well so I could ride. That's not the kind of horseman I want to be.
3. Things can change, and it's not a matter of "fault". While I am responsible for what happened with Daisy and her bridling, it's not my "fault". The best way I could think of to accept that responsibility in a positive way was to think, "If I was good enough to teach her THAT, I'm certainly good enough to teach her THIS." I had to get to a bit different place on the path in order to do it, but what's the rush? If we can accept where we are, and do the work needed to move to another place, I don't know that we have a lot to complain about. So I won't complain. I'm just glad I can get a bridle on my horse now and we both feel good about it.
4. Horsemanship (at least my own horsemanship) is a circle, or circle upon circle upon circle. I think one of the first things an instructor taught me was how to halter and then bridle a horse. Now here I am, 35 years later, working on how to halter and then bridle a horse. These "simple" things don't go away; we don't learn them and leave them behind. As our awareness and our feel grows, so does the standard to which we can perform such "mundane" tasks.
A couple years ago, when my horse Daisy was a four, coming five-year-old, we'd been having a lot of trouble with bridling. I'd started Daisy mid-way through her three-year-old year, and she'd bridled fine for almost a year and suddenly (it seemed to me) began literally running backwards from the bridle. When I did finally get her feet still, she would lean backwards and lock her feet and her jaw. I'd get her bridled from there as quietly as I could, but it didn't feel good.
The Vaqueros tend to move a young horse out of the snaffle bit and into the rawhide hackamore about the time their mouth turns into a mess of caps and permanent teeth coming in. I decided that using a hackamore was a good idea for Daisy, and we successfully changed over to the hackamore for about 18 months. We didn't have any of the bridling issues with the hackamore that we'd had with the bridle.
hackamore
When Daisy's teeth had grown up and it was time to come back into the snaffle, I found we still had the bridling issue. She carried the bit fine now that her mouth was stable, but what had perhaps begun as a physical/discomfort issue had become a behavioral/training issue regarding the process of bridling itself. So it was time to address it as such.
It's worth noting that I COULD bridle Daisy, by myself. It didn't take half a football team to get it done or anything, but it wasn't "to standard". It didn't feel good between us and it was certainly not something I'd show to a student and say, "This is what's possible if we work at it."
I was kind of stuck with the whole thing. I'd used the techniques and ideas I was familiar with, and things had changed so far and no further. So I swallowed my pride and asked my friend Jim to take a look at it with me and perhaps point me to some things I was missing.
Jim watched me and Daisy kind of "do our thing" for a bit, and began by asking me to just tip her head toward me when I went to put the bridle on. When I did this, I could feel the rigidity of Daisy's whole spine, down to her feet. Holy Cow! I'd been so focused on her head and jaw that I hadn't felt how HARD her whole body got when the bridle was presented. That explained why she would lean backwards and lock her jaw. Her mind was leaving out the back door and she was locking up her body because that was the best she could do. If I'd have let her body go with her mind, she'd have run away backwards.
As Jim and I talked through what he was seeing and what I was feeling, I decided to back up to haltering and have Jim look at that too and lo and behold, there it was again, but smaller: Daisy leaning backward away from the halter!
Ray Hunt, in his book "Think Harmony with Horses" briefly talks about how when we "reach" for our horse, we'd like him to "reach" back for us. " Ray had used that word, "reach" and I'd really liked that word in the context in which he used it. I can reach for my horse mentally, emotionally and/or physically. Then my horse can reach back to me mentally, emotionally and/or physically. Or not. When I go to the pasture, I reach for my horse mentally first, and he may flick an ear when he hears or sees or feels me. That's him reaching back to me. Then when I approach with the halter, I reach for him physically and it'd be nice if he reached for me physically right then. A horse who's reaching isn't pushing - that's different.
So that's what I was missing with Daisy, and why bridling was so troublesome between us. There was no reach in her. I was reaching, but she was withdrawing. And it went all the way back to the halter. With the halter, it went all the way back to the presentation of the halter. When I slowed the whole process down and paid attention (rather than haltering thoughtlessly with no feel or awareness), I could feel the single moment when Daisy withdrew and we lost all "reach" between us. Once we moved to the bridle, the withdrawl became exponentially bigger.
So I had my work cut out. I knew that in order to get the whole thing softer and feeling better all the way through, I'd need to get that reach working for us in everything we did. I'd need to be aware when Daisy withdrew and have that end in a reach instead. She'd need to get confident in that reach and then it could get soft.
One of the things I need to say here is that I had TAUGHT Daisy to withdraw instead of reach. She had a lot of reach in her when I got her, and some push too. When I took the push out of her (doing the best I could at the time), I took the reach out too. I could write a whole book on how we worked on getting that reach back in there. I think how we did it is less important than the fact that we did it, period. Suffice to say that we didn't use food and I didn't really use any substantial degree of pressure. What I did was study how it felt to "draw" a horse in the round pen and then get that feel working during haltering and bridling. That's the best way I can think of to describe it. It'd look different with different horses and different people anyway. But if you're really interested in it, if you see me sometime, ask me about it and I can show you a couple things.
This bridling stuff was a really big deal for me and for Daisy. I can't speak so much for her as I can for myself, so I'll just focus on why it was so important for me.
Once I began to examine the problem, I found that it went further back in our interactions than I thought it did. It turned out to be the embodiment of that seeming riddle, "What happened before what happened happened?" As is usual, there was plenty that happened before what happened happened. In order to truly get things better, I had to go back to what happened before what happened happened and then move forward again from there. It was a lesson in humility, patience and responsibility.
There are a bunch of reasons why I'm telling this story. You'll get out of it what you get out of it. But let me offer a couple things that have really stuck with me so far.
1. Most of us are terrified of making "mistakes" with our horses or "screwing our horse up." We're doing the best we can at any one point in time. Two or three years from now, if we're working hard, we may have more technique, more mileage, more confidence, a better understanding, a different feel, etc. So that's going to change how we go about things. If we keep a horse long enough, we'll end up living with work we did a few years ago. It's not a mistake, it's just where we are. So we're always going to need to go back and change some things when we develop a different feel or explore some other ideas, if the horse is willing. It's not about mistakes, it's about developing an organic relationship with the horse and with ourselves and with our individual journey.
2. The little stuff can be SO important. Sometimes students actually aplogize to me for wanting to look at something as "simple" as leading or haltering or saddling their horse. This is the profound stuff, where having things to standard and everyone feeling good about it is so important, I think. What I found was that Daisy and I were starting our time together with a huge disconnection between us, and that's what I was trying to build each day's work on. I had to decide if that's what I wanted our life to be like. Sure, I COULD ride her, but how much better would she ride if she haltered and bridled better? We get good at what we practice. I was practicing a lack of awareness and feel and practicing skipping things that weren't working well so I could ride. That's not the kind of horseman I want to be.
3. Things can change, and it's not a matter of "fault". While I am responsible for what happened with Daisy and her bridling, it's not my "fault". The best way I could think of to accept that responsibility in a positive way was to think, "If I was good enough to teach her THAT, I'm certainly good enough to teach her THIS." I had to get to a bit different place on the path in order to do it, but what's the rush? If we can accept where we are, and do the work needed to move to another place, I don't know that we have a lot to complain about. So I won't complain. I'm just glad I can get a bridle on my horse now and we both feel good about it.
4. Horsemanship (at least my own horsemanship) is a circle, or circle upon circle upon circle. I think one of the first things an instructor taught me was how to halter and then bridle a horse. Now here I am, 35 years later, working on how to halter and then bridle a horse. These "simple" things don't go away; we don't learn them and leave them behind. As our awareness and our feel grows, so does the standard to which we can perform such "mundane" tasks.
