The Power Of Neutral

Hey all! Thought I'd pop in and tell you what I've been up to lately. First off-I HAVE to show off Chase's awesome studly new trick. :)



Second, I'd like to share what I've learned with both horses since I last blogged. Mainly, the game with Chase has been learning how to really emphasize neutral and keep my energy in check. I did succeed in getting assertive and playful, and it really helped our relationship in the respect department. However, I got into the habit of throwing my energy around for fun, and..well, my horse didn't like it. LOL. He put up with it, but we were losing rapport fast-especially in the change of direction when I draw back and then fly at him like some sort of bat. So, the next lesson with Fran was all about getting back into the habit of being light with my signals and re-introducing an old concept-neutral. I thought I was being neutral already-but in reality I wasn't-and our communication had some grey lines because of it. For instance-because I was never truly neutral, I was never giving him warning when I was about to signal him to do something on the circle-stop, slow down, speed up, or change direction, ect. So we really focused on that.
Next up-fran set us up to start achieving excellence on the figure eight. I was REALLY micromanaging him through the figure eight-drive, draw, drive, draw, ect. And while that's fine at a level 2 standard, with us heading into level 3, we needed to up our partnership in it.
So instead of driving him through the figure eight, I only used my focus and finger, while fran instructed me to wiggle the rope if he didn't think about going around the cones. We did that a couple times in the lesson-and then stopped when after a few minutes he went around the left cone asking me a question.
Fast forward to tonight's play session. We played with that particular pattern for the majority of the session-and he was beginning to turn around the left cone without my instruction consistantly. But the right cone was a different story-for some reason it wasn't clear to him that he was to turn around that one too. After 30-40 minutes of interrupting his pattern to keep going on a circle after the right cone, I decided to stop when he made a habit of stopping and turning to face me with a question at the cone. Decided to lick and chew on that. So that's where Chase and I are at this point of time. Oh-I got sidetracked. What I've noticed is that while I was starting to easily go to neutral in the circle-when we played with the figure eight it was really a bigger challenge.

Next in line-Ginger gets her first blog! :)

Alright-so for those of you that don't know, I'm leasing Ginger. Her owner is very, very sweet.
Ginger is an eight year old (I think?) quarter horse mare. She has the biggest trust issues with people that I've ever come across in a horse-so it's definitely a different challenge for me when compared to Chase. ;) For that, I'm thankful. In the four sessions I've played with her so far, she's forced me to slow waaayyy down. For instance-she's taught me the importance of the catching game. Our first session I didn't get the halter on her-I went out and played the catching game with her for an hour until she took a few steps towards me and then stopped there. I am so thankful to be able to work with her-she's really teaching me that every little moment counts. Every little action truly means something, and makes an impression to the horse.
The next three sessions have all been about confidence-I've been desensitizing her to plastic bags and the carrot stick, and have been playing with her squeeze game with doorways. She'll go through a doorway if she's nervous if I ask her to, but it's not really her idea, and she doesn't have the confidence to consistantly go through one on her own. It's been a lot of approach and retreat with that.

This horse has only begun to teach me, and she's already boggled my mind. You can easily force her into things she doesn't want to do-but if you force her into them, they could set back the whole session. There's only been a couple of times when she's really 'connected' with me, and taking that into consideration, I've decided to modify my approach with her and incorporate at least 15 minutes of UDT every session, and to always, always reward her by retreating when she looks at me.
What puzzles me is the fact that she's innately left brained. It's apparent in how fast she blinks and sniffs and explores things-but as I realized today, she's really afraid of people. I realized that that was the real puzzle when I sent her out on a circle and she sniffed everything that was in her path, but still was extremely reluctant to come to me and join in a horseman's handshake. Maybe more petting?
So then, tomorrow I'll start off differently with her-knowing that it's me she's afraid of. UDT to start off with, and then maybe I can gain her trust by petting her all over with my hands-with her permission, of course. We'll see. I'll keep you guys updated on this awesome mare. :)