|
Articles, experiences and advice from master trainer Mary Gallagher at Freedom Farm natural horsemanship, Port Angeles, Washington.
|
My trainee a little further on in his training--a good boy. |
by Mary Gallagher
Trailer loading—a task that needs a lot of practice—was the theme of last Friday’s Ground Work class. Getting a horse to be okay at loading into a scary cave on wheels is a challenge for the horse and handler. We warmed up using our foundational skills to establish communication cooperation and confidence in our horse partner. We did this through exercises like front end and hindquarter yields as well as stepping over and stopping over a pole going forwards and backwards.By Mary Gallagher
Does your horse look to you for leadership?
The reactive horse generally does not, and that’s why we can learn a lot on the subject from teaching a reactive horse to respond in situations with confidence rather than react in fear.
Recently I had the opportunity to work with a horse that did not look to the human for leadership—not his owners, and certainly not me, when we first met. He was what you would call ‘over the top’—scared of just about everything, scared of his environment, and prone to avoiding any connection with humans—to the point of developing some truly dangerous behaviors. He would easily get out of control, spooking and bolting while being handled, snorting and acting totally checked out. His head carriage tended to be extremely high, and he’d be focusing and fully absorbed far out into the distance, ready to bolt (again) at any moment. Not a safe horse to handle.
So here he was, and I needed a plan. I returned to a diagram I have developed over the years (some of you may remember it from earlier blog posts), The Optimal Teaching Gauge. (I used to call it The Leadership Gauge.) It lays out where the sweet spot can be found between the human and the horse, with a range of behaviors to either side. It’s an assessment tool and a sort of compass for planning how to work with a particular horse, while developing your own leadership.
Mary Tulin: So the other day I was riding my Morgan mare Era through shoulder ins down the fence, wondering why she kept drifting off the track. As far as I could tell, I was doing all the things—opening inside rein, supporting outside rein, inside leg back and asking for the hind foot to step, etc. I was thinking things like, “Gosh, she’s a little low energy today.” “Hm, I guess she’s forgotten all the practice we did with this last fall.” “Wow, she must be a bit burned out on this; I should have taken her out for some non-arena time yesterday.”
Take your pick. Commiserating with myself in this way, I continued through a frustrating repetition of tight, unsuccessful attempts.
Mary Gallagher: Excuse me, Mary T… as you know, the stories we tell about our horses are really about ourselves.
Jerry and Jackson, first saddling. |
Wendy Comstock on 3-year old Marcus for the first time. |
It seems like this year we started more horses than ever. They just kept coming every month and we (Jerry Schmidt and I, with our special student Elise Dean) got into the flow of playing with young, promising horses every day. Pretty fun work, when you understand it! Anyway, with the days getting shorter, and knowing that soon the last of the babies will go home, I’ve been reflecting on what really stood out for me over this time with them. Overwhelmingly, the piece that means so much to me and connects our work with each of the horses is building their emotional fitness.