Stories I Tell Myself About My Horse: A Conversation

by Mary Tulin and Mary Gallagher

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.

Building Emotional Fitness in Yourself and Your Horse

Wendy Comstock on 3-year old Marcus for the first time.

by Mary Gallagher

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.

Riding in Sync with the Feet, Part 2

by Mary Gallagher

I have been having so much fun continuing to develop the ‘riding in sync’ exercises I introduced in my last video. It’s basically a flexible warm up program that gets you and your horse moving and feeling together. How we warm up and the attitude we express in our hands travels down to the horse—who feels everything. Sure, he feels our body move, and our hands move through the reins, but even more importantly, he can feel our intentions and attitude. So it’s as much about managing ourselves as anything. Horses pick up on everything!

Body Language 101: the Value of Quiet Work

by Mary Gallagher

Nina and Mary working quietly.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the deeper aspects of communicating with our horses. We all know, more or less, that we humans tend to express ourselves with words, and that horses are more about body language. Most of us are accustomed to our horses watching and responding to us in our daily interactions. For an obvious example, your  horse notices when your hand enters your pocket, right? and responds by asking for a treat? Or when picking out your horses feet—does he offer his hoof to you before you ask? or even better, does he shift his weight as you prepare to ask? If your horse can do this, how much more might he perceive?

Things go along pretty well as we use all the horsemanship tools we’ve been given to direct the actions of our horses. We even call it ‘schooling’, with us as the teacher and the horse as the student. Horses pretty much buy into being schooled, as they are hard-wired to accept leadership. But if we really pay attention as we school our horses, we may discover that they are teachers in their own right. How many times have we thought we have things going pretty well, only to have our horse show us something we missed? Or maybe it’s just that we aren’t getting the result we were looking for, and despite our best efforts, we seem to be at an impasse…?

Emotion and Consequences for Predator and Prey

 by Mary Gallagher

Mary Gallagher and student.

I was reading this week’s excellent short article by Grace Mitchell, one of my students, on consequences in horse training. She pointed out that effective consequences—our actions—in communicating with our horses needed to be appropriate in degree and timing to correct or reinforce behaviors in the horse. Importantly, Grace also reminded us that consequences are either positive or negative, and that we create consequences intentionally or unintentionally which impact our horse’s learning.

Timing and Degree of Consequences in Training Horses

Grace and Cysco in conversation.

By Grace Mitchell

Hoof Beats Beach camp is our best horsemanship camp for our advanced students. Each summer we spend 5 days at the beach immersing ourselves in our horsemanship as well as having a lot of fun with our horses.

We combine ground skills, on line and at liberty, to test the strength of our connection, and define the weaknesses in our communication so we can progress in our relationship with our horses.

Model student Grace Mitchell had some very wise insights to share with her fellow students this camp. I was so impressed with her ability to articulate this to the other students I asked her to write her thoughts down for our online students (and wrote a companion piece). Here are her words. -MG

Connecting the Dots: How Horses Learn

 by Mary Gallagher

Horses are highly perceptive animals who learn faster than humans do.  They have to learn fast to survive as prey animals. In our human effort to communicate with the horse, we tend to forget to take advantage of their quick learning abilities. In our rush to fulfill our agenda, we go too quickly and sometimes impatiently, through force (e.g., heavier bits and leverage reins) which causes the horse to engage his survival instincts, rather than his intellect. When the horse is in survival mode, there is no lasting learning effect on the horse. He is merely trying to live for another day; there is no cooperation or communication happening.

So what to do? Learn to call on their intelligence and  quick learning abilities in our interactions with them. Horses love to learn, and relate best to clear patterns that can be broken into clear parts. They understand intentions and are masters at reading body language; connecting the dots is their superpower. So we must slow ourselves down and learn how to break our ideas into smaller dots that the horse can enjoy connecting.

If we can break our ideas down into smaller and smaller pieces for the horse he will connect the dots on his own. Try slowing things down to a walk. Do your training in the walk first and evaluate how well your horse is getting what it is you are teaching. If he is having trouble, give him simpler tasks (or easier dots) to interpret. When you are sure he understands the lesson, then try it at the trot. When we train at the walk first, it gives us the time to let the horse soak on a particular part of a lesson he may be having trouble understanding. Also, we can work on ourselves, making sure all our aids are working softly. If you develop the skill of slowing down and making smaller, simpler dots for the horse to connect when needed, you will find you do not need to repeat lessons, and your training will actually go faster.

Inspiration: When the weather turns chill...

By Michelle Grimmer

Fall has arrived, and the weather has turned. More rain, and chillier temperatures means that we must begin to turn our sights toward spending more time riding under the cover of the fabulous Freedom Farm arena.

So what are we doing in there while we're riding around in circles? What are we working for? Working towards?

Inspiration: Creating a Program for Yourself

By Michelle Grimmer

Well, it's getting close to the end of summer, and everyone has been doing great work with their horses. I am truly inspired by the progress I am seeing! Just today, Tucker (Jess' horse) learned how to do a half-pass, which turned into HUGE improvements in his canter transitions. Marilyn's horse, Dallas, gets softer and more balanced every week. Mary's girl, Regan is just about ready to jump a small house, and Charlie trots like he is floating on air.