Is the horse´s personality changed through schooling?

Now and then I'm caught in philosophical pondering concerning what the heck I'm doing in relation to my horse. What have I the right to ask of him? These ponderings can be fuelled by a day when my horse and I have had completely opposite ideas of what to do that day. But I can also be attacked by them after a day when my horse has been quiet, calm and responding to my every thought.

It is the dream of having such a light and close relationship with my horse that gets me out of bed all these early mornings. One would think that the days when the dream comes true that everything would be just fine. Apparently not. After a day like that, I sometimes take a step back and look at what I've accomplished with amazement mixed with horror at the extent to which the horse have given himself to me. The better leader I am, the better posture and balance I have when I ride, the more influence I seem to have.

Let me give you two examples.

The first is my mum's Arab, Pargon ^OX. Those of you who have been through the seat training with me know him as a very quiet and steady horse. He has not always been like this, very far from it. Today he is 16 years old. When he was 9 he still wasn't started under saddle. The previous owner said it couldn't be done. Pargon ^OX was afraid of everything and would take off in a complete panic,. He would not allow you to even brush him, let alone put a saddle on his back and mount. That was Pargon ^OX seven years ago. Today he is the most mentally stable horse I know. This change is visible, not only in his way of interacting with humans and the human world, but also towards other horses. He is more prone to defend his space instead of running away from other horses in the field. Has his personality changed? Has his soul been taken away from him? Or, deep down, has he always had these traits but the high level of stress he lived with made ​​him seem half crazy, spooky and unmanageable?

The other example is my Connemara, Hagens Yeats. He is a former school horse and has had some difficulties in adjusting to life as an individually and privately owned horse without the constant company of all the other horses in his herd of school horses. I vividly remember the first few weeks after I brought him home. He was fully aware of where all the other 20 horses in the new stable were at all time. Me he didn't notice. He walked on my feet,squashed me against the wall and dragged me around at the end of the lead rope. Not that he was trying to be mean, it was just that he did not see me and definitely did not understand that I was trying to communicate with him. Today it is very different. I have his attention and, although he probably still knows what all the other horses are doing, he communicates with me and can even leave the herd and be OK with being alone in the indoor arena or out on the trails. Since he is calm, I have been able to school him according to classical principles, giving him a whole new way to use his own body. Today, just as before, he occasionally runs around the hilly pasture playing happy, frisky horsey games. The difference is that, in the past, I used to close my eyes and pray that he would not take a tumble because his movements were so uncoordinated, heavy and clumsy. Today I enjoy just looking at him because he moves with such grace and ease. The stiff school horse has turned into a master of motion and posture. Have I changed his self-image and his use of himself? Or have I helped him to rediscover a way to be that he had as a foal? Even if I have changed his self-image, would that be a bad thing?

That horses are affected by the people that surround them has been shown by research. There are, for example, studies that have shown that a nervous rider makes the horse nervous. But this is a temporary emotional reaction. What I believe I see with my horses is a change that is there even when I'm not in the close vicinity. My intellect tells me that this change is positive. Is it not better for a horse to live without high levels of stress than with them? And even if both of my horses now interact with other horses in a different manner, and also use their own bodies differently, is there anything wrong with this? Yet, my heart trembles with the realisation of the incredible power of influence I seem to have.

Such possibilities. Such responsibilities. 

Thanks to Mark Stanton of Horsemanship Magazine for checking my spelling and grammar! All other errors are my own.

Leadership = emotional balance?

This fall there have been a series of entries discussing leadership here at The Quest for Equipoise:

*) Leadership, something to strive for. Or?

*) Leadership is all about relationship

My leadership ”over” my horse Yeats was put to the test last week. I've decided that we should go out on the trails to enjoy the beautiful autumn days. The test this day came in the shape of the brand new hunter's tower that had been set up on a field about 50 meters from the road we usually go on. That Yeats noticed there was something new is an understatement.

Soon after Yeats started to stare and tried to make a 180 degree turn to run back to the barn I made the choice of dismounting. Since Yeats still isn't 100 % secure in leaving the barn without a fellow horse have I made a habit of leaving the rope halter on underneath the bridle. This gave me the option at this point to give him the space he needed, instead of hanging on to the reins. I could also ask him to focus on me by asking him to yield his hind- and fore quarters rather than on the – according to him – lethal tower.

Since I didn't bother to look at the watch I don't know how much time we spent on getting by the tower. Since we were there, we did go back and forth a couple of times. On the way home we passed it without me having to dismount. The day after, when we passed the tower with another horse as company, he didn't even raise his head to look at it.

So, what made Yeats go past the tower? My leadership? The equipment I used? The technique? My attitude? What is most important – how I present myself to Yeats, or that I achieve a certain goal (in this case getting past the tower)?

This is what I think:
About the equipment – Since I'm used to handling the rope halter and the rope I also trust my ability to not have Yeats get loose and run home, possibly getting hurt in the process. The rope also let me give Yeats the extra space he needed to deal with his own emotions without me finding myself pulling on the shorter reins and by doing so hurting him in the mouth.

About the technique – the ground work I have done before has not only opened a bridge of communication between me and my horse (Six Keys to Harmony) but also gave both of us a familiar and well-known routine to lean on. The way I approached the situation was with the goal of not getting by the tower, but to gain and keep Yeats attention.

About the attitude – For the non-Swedish readers I might need to explain a little about the attitude toward the horse that is prevalent at most Swedish riding schools. The horse is usually seen as someone that the riders “need to put in his place”, and it is said to be important to “make the horse do” whatever we ask of it. When the horse tries to communicate back this is often seen as the horse having a bad personality.

This day I made a conscious decision not to make the horse do anything, but just to offer him the possibility of relying on me by remaining calm and assertive instead of getting frustrated (that my plans for the day were spoiled), upset (with the horse for “making trouble”), insecurity (what if Yeats hurt himself?!) and so on. Time was of no importance since horses don't have the same mental capacity as humans to measure time anyway. What they remember is not the time spent achieving something but the emotions and level of stress involved. By remaining calm and assertive I could grasp this opportunity to deepen my relationship with my horse.

I think that the attitude together with the equipment and the technique worked in this instance to produce the successful outcome. What do you think?

PS Thank you to Mark Stanton of Natural Horsemanship magazine for proof reading!

Leadership is all about relationship.

When I started with horses, no one talked about leadership with me as it is talked about today. I remember being pushed and shoved around by cunning ponies, had my share of bruses and aces and that it somehow was considered to be the kind of lessons a rider needed to have.

I do believe (in retrospect, of course) that these bangs and bashes laid the foundation for the fear that I actually had for horses for many years, without ever believing I was scared! I felt a lack of trust, I knew that even if horses were said to be "nice" they could actually cause real pain.

What made life unpredictable was that I could not see the pattern for when the horse would be "good or bad." It meant that my action was based on the principle Guilty By Suspicion with the horsemanship I have learned, and that would be to jerk the reins roaring "Stand still you biiip-ing horse".

We've talked leadership in the blog, and I thought I'd add to that on the basis of two books - All the King's horses by Emelie Cajsdotter and Finding the Magic of Dan Sumerel.

A quotation from Emelie's book. "If you communicate with wild horses, they seldom speak about leadership. But they often talk about survival. For a flight animal, it is necessary to detect a potential danger, and when it occurs, already be in motion. When all this happens in the split of a second, there is no time for doubt or a peer discord. Each herd member must know his place. From a human perspective, we have studied this behavior and decided to call it ranking. By doing so, we assume that the leading horse is the group leader. We assume that this horse is the fastest, strongest and most intelligent horse. As a result, there are many animal owners who ask me to find out who the leader is in the stable. Alternatively, which human they regard as the dominant. But if you ask that question to a horse, you always and without exception get the same answer. They describe the different herd members' personalities, horses as well as people. --- It seems to be impossible for them to define a specific leader. Instead, they describe a sophisticated interaction, where the foundation of the structure is that each individual first and foremost knows himself. "

Within a horse herd there is a situation-based leadership. Different jobs have different 'leaders', some individuals are responsible for certain stages of the every day activities of a herd. One is good at finding water, one being the guard, one finding herbs, minerals, one fostering the fillys and one being ready for defense, etc.

In Dan Sumerels book is a wonderful section that shows that this situational leadership includes us. After an distance competition Dan and two friends rides out to remove all the paper-strips that has marked the track. When they turn back home they realize that it will be dark "Can-not-see-hand-in-the-black" and with at least three hours of riding ahead of them, along the winding and brushy mountain paths he will experience something extraordinary.

I quote "My concern and fear started to release and I handed over my well-being to Cisgo. My whole perspective on the ride changed. I had to trust him, because I had no opportunity to control the situation. We humans always want to be in control, because we believe we can and know everything. Sometimes we do not know everything. Lose the possibility to see when riding in the Colorado mountains and you will notice how little control you have. " (This is a quote based on the swdish translation of Dan’s book and therefore not an exact quotation.)

Leadership is about the relationship between individuals more than determing who rules and who obey. But nevertheless, it must be a certain degree of rule and obey in the horse and human relationship.

I take my own ladies and as an example. When I itch my 17 year old, I let her itch back, because she has learned just to rub me with her muzzle. My 1-year old can NOT itch back because she wants return the favour with her teeth. That sort of mutual grooming is ok with a horse but not with me!

In everyday chores, there are many moments that qualify for the application above, for the simple reason that we humans are so much more fragile (and slower and weaker) than horses.

Trust is a basic requirement for any relationship, and it grows out of friendliness, comfort and clarity and is made possible by the fact that "every individual first and foremost knows himself." as it says at the end of the quotation from Emelie Cajsdotters book.

Rein tension, something horses get used to?

During the ISES Conference an danish/ukrainian team had examined how much rein tension a horse was ready to accept in order to obtain food reward. The horses in the study was 2 years old and not experienced to bridles before.

At the test the horses had reins attached by the bit to a girth and the length of the reins created the resistance which the horses experienced when they stretched to reach the food. The researchers assumed that the first time the horses were subjected to tests, they would put a little pressure on the bit, but when they had realized that there were titbits involved they would be willing to increase the pressure of the bit to access the food.

The results showed otherwise. The horses applied the highest rein tension on the first day 10,5N +/- 1,4N (10 Newton or approx 1 kg) but for the following sessions they avoided to put so much pressure into the bit (6,0N and 5,7N). Instead of getting used to the pressure (habituated) the horses learned to avoid the pressure in the mouth. It was concluded that horses ability to avoid tension could be used in horse training by increasing focus on the timing of pressure release.

Of course I make (fully unscientifical) connections to the controversial training method roll kür and LDR varieties. Bone-wise the bars are razor sharp ridges that are covered with a very thin layer for protection. The bit is placed on these ridges. A high pressure on the bit creates such discomfort that the horse just "takes the pressure once" and then make whatever it can to avoid the discomfort in the future.

For me, it may be a way to understand how an animal that is so much stronger than us can keep itself from breaking free from the position that roll kür and LDR puts them in. They "curl themselves up" in a (desperate?) attempt to avoid the discomfort that pressure from the hands, through the reins and bit create on the bars.

During the conference suggestions were made to introduce so-called pressure gauges on the reins during dressage competitions. But I think it's too late to measure the pressure at that point. It must be done during training. Because if the horse seeks to avoid the pressure it will have learned to take the position itself that creates the least discomfort and that without the rider necessarily putting much pressure in the reins.

The focus must shift from what we can see on the competition grounds to what we can not see during training. Ethics will have to range from training to competition and, as another scientist said, "even if it is not illegal, it need not be ethically correct".

A system is alright as long as it is all right...

Sitting in the car on our way home my travel companion and I tried to sum up all we'd experienced during the ISES conference.

The theme for this years conference was safety and horse welfare. It was quite obvious that hyperflexion (including LDR), cranked nosebands, swishing tail and other signs of detrimental riding upset the majority of attendees.

On Sunday we were all exposed to the official system of horse and rider training in Sweden and being swede in the audience that day made me wanna seek asylum in what ever country that had accepted my application. There were sounds of astonished disbelief on more than one occasion.

My intent is not to accuse the teacher/trainer, rider or horse - they were all well educated according to our present system. It is the system that fails.

In our system we seem to have inherited procedures that we upon a straight question really don't know why we do as we do.

Why do lungeing of the young horse require two persons, one holding the horse one the whip. The answer started with - I think it's because we have a tradition if showing our horses with the help of a separate whip carrier. Her answer remindes me of the story of a woman copping off both ends of the christmas steak and at one time her mother saw what she did and asked her why she did it. -Well, you used to do it, the daughter answered. -But that was because my pot often was too small.

One question was regarding the saddle used on the present horse, it was noticeably bad fitting. The answer stated "It's a tradition to use bad saddles". I do think that she ment that we usually use old, cheap saddles not bad in the sence ill fitting - but at that time the audience was prone to take her answer literally.

The education process of the rider showed discrepancies between the wordings and the action on several occasions, and what was said was more in line with good riding than the actual riding.

On a straight question of why the horse seemed to resist the work by opening its mouth and swish its tail it was explained to us that this was how this horse behaved when he was ridden.

Only the day before Andrew McLean urged us not to put any blame on the horse as an individual if it showed signs of conflict behaviour, the behaviour was a result of the training and not its personality...

So, what do I feel is necessary for thing to improve?
Well, first of all I wish them a good horsemanship trainer to teach them how to walk their feet forwards when lunging, so that they stop dragging the horse towards them as they want him to trail outwards. I want them to stop the use of a separate whip carrier. The pair we saw were not syncronised at all, as the whip carrier tried to engage the horse the one in front janked on the horses head.

In riding it is essential to introduce them to the concept of neck extension and to stop the use of draw-reins. Then I'd go for some lessons in non-doing because lightness is not something you get by doing, it is given to you by allowing.