new year’s adventure

Eastern North Carolina

I am moving to North Carolina.  In a month.  YIPEE!!!!  I accepted a position as an intern at a mid-size hunter-jumper barn about an hour from the north coast.  It’s a very rural area and not at all a snooty show barn, but it’s just the right kind of barn for me to get back into shape physically, emotionally, and mentally after this incredibly fatiguing year.  I am shipping both of my horses back with me (now, more than ever, I am kicking myself for buying another horse, but then I know I just couldn’t leave Tico in his previous situation, so….) and it feels weird to think about that, being as I’ve seen them so little in the last six months.  Like we’re all going to show up in this place we’ve never been before and look around and see each other – hey, fancy meeting you here!

I have gone up, down, and around about this move emotionally but ultimately feel really good about it.  Folks who know me only moderately well keep asking, WHY would you want to move THERE?  Besides the fact that I have been drawn to NC for about 5 years now, it’s pretty easy to answer:  The people are nice.  The air is clean.  The property values are reasonable.  The land is beautiful.  The weather is moderate.  And there are lots of horses.  Capiche?

I saw my boys the other day and they have turned into shaggy ponies.  Mojo has rubbed the same part of his mane out that I have been trying with little success to grow for two years now, so I am seriously considering roaching the whole thing and starting over, which is basically where he was at when I got him.  When I moved him to the ranch back in March, I had just trimmed his mane and tail into a reasonable semblance of an English horse, but there’s no hope of that now.  Tico’s roan markings are more pronounced with his winter coat but the furry look doesn’t help his general lack of refinement.  If there ever was an Appaloosa who fit the stereotype of “Indian pony”, he’s it, albeit with a pretty great tail.  Ah well….beauty is as beauty does.  I’m just wondering what the barn will think when these two Western boys step off the truck a few weeks ahead of me… Like, Dear God, what did she bring us?  (Actually, it’s the South, so they would probably say, My word! I am really going to have to practice not saying the Lord’s name.)

I should get there, after a cross-country drive via the southern route, a few days before Christmas.  I’ve spent Christmas alone before and didn’t mind, but this year I have a special trip in mind – a pilgrimage to find the wild Outer Banks ponies:

Hopefully I will be able to take some photos of my own.  I have missed the ocean so much since I moved from the North Coast of California down here to the dusty and dry Central Valley, that I am just very excited to be able to spend time by the water, on beautiful beaches, looking for wild horses….

*click on images for more info

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in the clear light of day

Of course the largest font on my author tag cloud in the horse fiction library is Dick Francis, who, as you most likely already know, was a champion steeplechase (or, more properly, National Hunt) jockey before he became an incredibly prolific writer. Having read all of his novels, I thought I had some idea as to what a National Hunt race is like, but it turns out I really didn’t have a clue.

Wiola posted a video of the 2008 Cheltenham Gold Cup – a race Dick Francis never won but described many times in his novels – and I was totally amazed, watching it, to realize I had never seen a National Hunt race. For some reason, all of the imagery I had absorbed from reading tricked my brain into thinking I had actually watched steeplechasing – but seeing the real thing, it was completely different from what I had imagined.

Given the dramatic action of the race scenes in Dick Francis’ novels, the pace seemed slower and the fences looked lower than I expected. I do realize that if I was riding the course – a completely and unequivocally absurd thought – it would most certainly be the other way around (and since Dick Francis writes in the first person that makes sense), but having adjusted my sense of speed from flat racing to harness racing, I still wasn’t prepared for the initial circuit’s lope towards the fences.

In reality, of course, the fences are at least 4½ ft. high and it’s only the talent of horse and rider that makes them seem smaller, but perhaps because of the camera angle they didn’t seem to loom above the horses as I thought they would. I know it’s an optical illusion, but somehow Grand Prix showjumping has ruined my eye for what constitutes a tall fence.

The course itself seems to go on forever – 3 miles 2½ furlongs – and the fitness and stamina of the horses blew my mind, particularly with Cheltenham’s famed uphill finish. It makes a flat racing course, even the most strenuous, seem like a sprint. Harness racing horses are jogged for miles daily to increase their wind, but the actual races are only a mile (longer in New Zealand and Australia.) I can’t imagine the amount of work that goes into conditioning a ‘chaser.

When the narrator in a Dick Francis novel describes a race, it sounds like the course is full of twists and turns, dark alleys where misbehavior can’t be seen by the stewards and hidden pockets out of sight of the cheering crowd where a bystander could be lurking to string something across the jump to fell horse and rider. It’s a testament to the skill of his writing that the atmosphere of his suspense novels is nothing like the cheerful, endlessly green course of the real race in the clear light of day.

It’s interesting how the mind works. I’ve had memories of things that seemed much larger, or imposing, when I was a child, only to find as an adult that they weren’t intimidating at all. I just never realized that the same dynamic could occur with memories that were, literally, fiction.

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when the world is your arena

I had an epiphany today.

It was my second day of training for a new job, and we were role-playing and running mock situations. When I was presented with the information in a step-by-step manner and given a chance to practice things until I got them right, I excelled, and felt eager to learn more.

When I was asked to do things for which I felt insufficiently prepared, where I wasn’t sure I knew the correct way to act, and where I didn’t have a good foundation to draw upon, I not only felt slightly panicky – I also felt resentful. My voice rose about an octave and my words in asking to go back a level and start from a place I understood were rushed and even quavery at times. I knew that if I was pressed to go further into more complicated scenarios without getting a chance to feel secure about what I had to do thus far, I was going to have a mini-meltdown, and that my behavior wouldn’t be attractive or appropriate.

I was fortunate that the two times in the last two days I had these reactions, my trainer listened to me, and backed off. I was relieved that my increasing discomfort was both noticed and addressed without censure. And given the opportunity to learn at my pace and in the way that felt best to me, I performed beyond my trainer’s level of expectation when we returned to the advanced scenario.

Afterwards, I thought: This is how the horses feel. This is the same chain of actions and reactions, the same emotions, the same principles at work. I get it.

So many times I understand something on an intellectual level without grounding that knowledge in a viceral way. I am then unable to use the concept with consistency, since I don’t own the knowledge. I don’t feel it; I just think it. I grasp it, but I can’t live it, since it isn’t a part of me.

And then, after floating around in my mind for ages, I will experience something that allows the empathetic part of my self to come forward, and suddenly I get it, down to my bones.

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tune-up

I’ve been sidelined for the last month with a knee injury. Since I was initially on crutches and couldn’t drive, my visits with Mojo were few and far between, when either my mom or my lovely boyfriend took pity on me and drove me to the stable. Of course, I couldn’t lead Mojo or do groundwork, so they not only had to drive me, they then had to put up with me telling them what to do (control queen) while they handled my horse. I am obviously indebted to them both.

Mojo seemed to miss me, which was nice, and wanted more affection than he usually permits. The day I was able to hobble without crutches, he walked very slowly with me leaning on him, as we did a slow-motion version of our usual jog at liberty around the arena together. It touched me deeply that he put his normal exuberant boisterousness aside and tuned in to my level of ability. Although he is known to be quite the tester, he seemed to understand that I couldn’t participate in our games, and he never put a foot wrong. God bless that horse – I love him so.

I’ve been off crutches for two weeks now and my mobility has improved to about 80%. So my beloved quarter horse has decided I don’t need any more freebies. Yes, he seemed to say today, you’re agile enough to play, so guess what? I’m going to make you work for it.

My boy needs a tune-up.

I’ve always been envious of the people I’ve known who have been able to just hop on their horses after a lengthy hiatus and ride off into the sunset with no fuss and no drama. More than envious – incredulous. Maybe their horses are ancient, or maybe just better trained than mine – I don’t know. What I do know is that Mojo is not like that. Not at all.

It takes approximately three days of not working with Mojo before he starts to subtly press the boundaries of our relationship to see who’s in charge. Three weeks? Hah! He’s been in blissful full-turnout mode, with only himself to answer to, and you know? He kind of likes it that way, and isn’t too quick to give up his autonomy.

Now, to be fair, if he’s consistently worked, he’s very easy-going. By Sunday, he’ll be all ho-hum about lunging and whatever else I ask him to do. But today? When I pulled him out of his turnout pasture and said, Hey buddy, it’s time to get back to work? Right.

Nah. Can’t really see the benefit in that, thanks. I mean, I do like you and all, and I’m glad you’re feeling better, but I’m thinking that eating grass beats trotting in a circle any day. And why would you want to put us in the indoor arena when it’s a perfectly nice day out, anyway? Not to be rude or anything, but I’m going to have to exercise my executive veto here.

Mojo being Mojo is never bad – he’s not a jerk. He’s just very stubborn, and totally convinced that his opinion weighs in just as much as mine. I’ve learned through our time together that, although I don’t like to argue with him, it doesn’t pay to back down. I have to hold my ground until he respects my request, or it just reinforces his conviction that he should have his way. I love his self-confidence. I also value obedience, and when I ask him to stop, or to back up, I don’t care if we’re next to a field of oat hay (we were) or if the field is full of saber-toothed tigers (clearly not) – I expect him to do as I ask. Period. And we are not quitting, and he is not getting one blade of grass, until he does.

Once Mojo realized that the reward for good behavior was the oat hay he was so keen to obtain, it was easy. But getting that initial obedience was a drawn-out process. Just like Mojo, I was rusty and less effective than I’d like, which prolongs the debate. When I finally led him back to his turn-out pasture, he didn’t even stick around for belly scratches. He just walked away with nary a glance, as if to say, I’m in my pasture now and I don’t have to listen to any more of your crap. I’m going to eat grass and so be it.

It’s the first time he’s ever done that. A year ago it would have hurt my feelings. Now I just laugh – he’s true to himself to the end.

And tomorrow will be better.

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the power of positive

I subscribe to an email newsletter from The Horse that pops up in my inbox with almost annoying frequency. However, there’s always at least one or two articles of interest to me, on a good mix of topics ranging from health care to news to training. This week we have the ongoing Trexler abuse story, which smellshorsey has been covering, and also the situation in Romania, which Simply Marvelous recently wrote about and the Transylvanian Horseman lives daily.

The article that caught my eye, however, was a recent study lending credence to clicker-trainers everywhere:

Study Correlates Food Rewards with Positive Responses during Training

by: Christa Lesté-Lasserre March 03 2008, Article # 11436

Young horses learn faster and have more positive interactions with humans when they receive food as a reward during training, according to a new study presented at the 34th Annual Equine Research Day held in Paris, France, on Feb. 28.

Yearlings that received grain pellets as compensation for appropriate reactions to vocal commands were up to 40% faster to acquire new skills than a control group of yearlings that received no rewards. The training primarily involved respecting the words “stop” and “stay” and remaining immobile while the trainer performed certain grooming tasks and veterinary procedures on the horse.

The article goes on to say:

On average, the reward group [those who were given food rewards] finished their training in 3.7 hours whereas the control group needed 5.2 hours to acquire the same tasks. “There wasn’t even any overlap,” Sankey explained. “The slowest horse in the reward group still learned faster than the fastest horse in the control group.”

This is a significant finding, because one of the long-held myths of horse training is that horses respond better to negative reinforcement operant conditioning (i.e. applying a source of discomfort, such as pressure, and removing it when the horse gives the correct response) than to positive reinforcement, such as a food reward. Clicker training, which utilizes food rewards, has been shown to quickly and effectively train horses (and other mammals) to do all kinds of things, but for some reason a large segment of the horse community still seems to view it with skepticism or scorn.

At this point, I feel a need to digress from the subject matter for just a moment to say this: There is no training method, no technique, no clinician, no author, no piece of equipment that is the Holy Grail of horse training. I am not saying that clicker training is the way to go and that anyone who uses negative reinforcement operant conditioning is ignorant, or anything of the sort. I use it myself, all the time. What I am saying, and will continue to say over and over again in this blog, is that people need to be open-minded. Be flexible and adaptable when working with your horse. Try new things, learn new ways of thinking and being, and go outside your comfort zone. We ask that of our horses and expect that they will honor our request but so often we will not do the same!

Side note: Also, for reasons I can’t quite figure out, people tend to lump clicker training in with Natural Horsemanship. Because the NH label gets bandied about so much without a clear definition, many people don’t even actually know what they’re referring to or where it came from or to whom it actually applies. In my opinion, clicker training is not an NH technique (although it shares many positive qualities with NH) because what we call NH today can be traced back to the methods of Tom Dorrance, Bill Dorrance, and Ray Hunt, and they were most certainly not using clicker training. However, the definition of NH is a subject for another post, and I will leave it at that with the suggestion that anyone interested in tracing the history of NH read The Revolution in Horsemanship by Dr. Robert Miller and Rick Lamb.)

Back on topic, it will be interesting to see what, if any, response this study generates in the American horse community, since the researchers are French. Will American researchers take the ball and run with it, or will this article slip quietly into the archives?

I hope that this kind of scientific finding will be a reference to be used when the nay-sayers and the tradition-bound try to tell us that their way is the only way. Then we can smile and use the power of positive when we say, “Have you read the latest research?”

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