What I Wanted to Share

I'm wondering if I posted on my Eureka! moment too soon.

My thoughts had nothing to do with my one-on-one relationship with my horses, it had more to do with how I ride and the most effective way to get a horse moving out in a responsive, quick and calm manner.

This new thought process is giving me a very interesting approach to getting what I want and at the same time, cleaning up my communication so my horse can work through the training process without a lot of muddled cues messing things up.

My first post on this thought process was to state my previous predator/prey approach, which works for me, and explain a change of thought which should help me succeed with my horse, while riding him.

I didn't want to get caught up in yet another NH discussion, I think I've covered my thoughts on that one ad nauseum.

My thoughts, right now, are about improving my forward motion while riding, clearing up my cues with legs and spur, and eventually, taking me to correct and stress free collection. I'm hoping to gain a quicker, cleaner response with less work, for both me and my horse.

Littleblackmule understood me completely. Thank goodness, I was beginning to think I was speaking Klingon.

"So...
Hang on to your horse, tie it down, stop it moving, and you're acting like a predator and the horse will treat you like one.
Push it forward, allow it to move, and you are a trainer.. or another horse."

When I ride a horse, broke or not, I want to start directing his movement the way another horse would, at least as close as I can come.

Why? Because I think my colt will then go into a calmer, quieter place and be able to follow my direction without argument or fear.

In the previous post, my sample photos of horses being driven by another horse told me a lot. 

I'm going to call the driver, the horse creating movement, horse A.

The horse being driven is horse B.

I'm going to try to avoid the worlds dominate, alpha, lead or belle mare so we can stay on track.

What I really want is to ride my horse effectively, as a human.

That being said, here's what I'm playing with. I got the chance to study herd behavior extensively at my last job before retirement. I had a clear view of  our 40 acre broodmare pasture from the barn and the arena. 

Several years ago I read Monty Roberts - The Man Who Listens to Horses. Now don't get excited, I know all about his personal failings. What I took from his book was the idea of closely observing herd behavior and applying that behavior to training.  Since reading the book I have watched horses interactions between themselves for years with as much an eye to how it can help me train as how beautiful they are to watch..

When horse A wants horse B to move away from him she will apply pressure by lashing out and biting or kicking.She will be pretty random with the bite or kick because A simply wants B out of her space.

B will move, fast, bug-eyed and without specific direction, because the only desire is to get  away from A. He calms down and begins plotting on how to get A's feed the second she takes the pressure off and quits coming after him. B doesn't seem to be afraid or hold a grudge, as a matter of fact, he tends to hang around hoping A might decide he can move in closer.

A is good with that because she just wants to eat/sleep/drink without being bugged by B. 

I'm not interested in this dynamic at the moment, because I need to safely ride B, not eat lunch with him.

When A decides B needs to understand he can never try to eat her food, she will drive B away in a specific direction after she gets him moving away, like out of the herd, or the top of the manure pile.

Horse A sends Horse B in a chosen direction first by applying pressure with lunging, biting or striking. Once B is on the move, A then begins to control direction, sometimes for quite a distance, keeping her forward motion by biting B's hip or back of the rib cage. She will control the direction by biting  B in the ribs and flanks, or by biting/leaning/kicking his shoulder/neck. 

Horse A works one side at a time. She doesn't worry about how fast B is going. If an old, fat mare is chasing a lively 2-year-old, she will make the colt repeatedly change direction in order to slow him down, rather than try to win a race.

The only time you will see A create real terror in B is if she traps him in a corner, turns, and proceeds to kick the crap out of him. This scenario is where horses can get hurt -- forward motion has stopped. B might even turn against A and start fighting back, since flight is no longer an option.

Horse A is directing Horse B's movement by controlling his feet. If she wants more speed she will close in on  B's hindquarters and push or bite. If she wants less speed she will fade off, giving B more room, and he will slow.

If Horse A wants to change Horse B's direction, she applies pressure on the off side and he moves away.

This pressure can come from a bite, kick, strike or simply crowding into B's space.

This is where I want to point out that steady pressure will cause a horse to push back. Intermittent pressure will cause a horse to move away from the pressure. 

Ray Hunt said, "Control the feet, control the horse."

Tim Unzicker said (and probably will again), "Janet! Get off her face!"

Horse A controls the direction and speed of Horse B by controlling the feet. B's face doesn't even come into play.

This is where my thoughts started hopping. 

Please keep in mind, this is not changing my training method. It's clearing up for me why I do it, why it works and where I need to improve my approach.

Any restraint on my horse's head is going to stop or hinder my horse's forward motion. A bit, hackamore or halter anything that takes control of the head, is going to translate as a predatory action. I am going to make the most sense to my horse if I emulate one animal at a time. 

Eventually, after the forward motion and foot control is established, I can add my head control. The horse can absorb the change in my riding because he already understands I not only allow, but encourage forward motion. He can have his flight, I'm not going to force him to fight. I've set my precedent and if I do things right, he'll know he can trust me to stand by it. 

Why do I want this? Because a horse that is moving is thinking. A horse whose legs have been stopped has also had his brain stopped. He is going to become reactive and do what he thinks is needed to get moving again.

This is where I like to be riding in either a large round pen or a small arena. I can give my colt his head and control his direction by first diving him forward, then use my hands and legs to simulate the bite or push to get my turn.

I'm not brave enough to put myself in this situation without a rope halter and lead rope. If I blow it, and the colt starts to pitch, I don't care whether I'm predator or prey to the horse, I just want to haul his ass around and save my bacon. This hasn't happened often, and when it has, it almost always comes from human error. 

Anyway, I played with this concept over the holiday (Merry Christmas everybody!) and had some interesting results. I was riding Madonna in her hackamore, but I dropped my reins and tried to ride her as if I was a horse driving her. It was really interesting. I had plenty of forward, good turns to the left and at first, almost nothing to the right. After a few minutes I got the right back in play, but it was very clear I've been overusing my hand and not using my legs correctly on her right side.

If our weather breaks I'm going to try to film some and I'll show you what happened.

Madonna is broke, broke, broke. I know she will figure me out ASAP and comply, but it still seemed the clearer my thoughts were (I was very firmly horse A) the better she rode.

It will be interesting to see how Odin does.