Sweetpeacefuldream Tries Out the Barrels

This morning Sweetpeacefuldream went with me and the dogs to the arena to work.  It has continued to rain here and we were happy to have the covered arena and the good footing.  I lunged her first, and she was ready to play!  She is normally very laid back, but once in a while she likes to remind me that she is only five, really just a youngster despite the fact that she acts so mature most of the time.  I set up some ground poles for her to lunge over so that she would start to focus on what she's doing with her feet instead of just frolicking.  She settled right down into the rhythm of it, and was very careful over the poles.  I also liked seeing her back lift and she started taking longer slower strides with the poles rather than just racing around in exuberance.

When she was done playing on the lunge line I led her over to my barrel jump.  I have several different sizes of blue plastic barrels, and I had the medium size ones lying on their sides with the large ones on the ends looking like standards.  Then I had my fake trees (best yard sale purchase ever) on each end of the jump acting as wings. 

Miss Pea was initially nervous about this setup, and didn't want to go too close while she was on the lunge line.  Once she was done with lunging over ground poles I led her over to have a better look.  She wasn't nervous anymore, and stuck her nose right into the leaves hoping that it was edible.  The horses always look so bummed when they discover that the trees are plastic.  I then let her sniff all over the barrels, tasting and snurrfling them with her lips.  She pawed at them, too.  This was a great way to let her examine the jump without any pressure, and she realized that they just roll away if she shoves them, nothing to be afraid of.  First step in creating a confident jumper.

The next step was to move the center barrel out of the jump, so Miss Pea could walk through.  She did that very carefully, trying to make sure that nothing grabbed her legs as she went.

We walked through both directions, me going first and leading her on the ground, then she followed.  Next I put the center barrel back, and I walked over it again.  Miss Pea went up to the barrel, sniffed it, and put one leg over.

She then paused, looking at me to see if that was the right thing to do.  I praised her and told her it was correct, and said to give it a try with the other foot.  So she returned her first foot to the original side and took a step over with the other front foot.  That wasn't exactly what I meant, but close enough, and she was listening and trying!  Finally after rearranging her paws a few times she just walked over the barrels with all of her feet.  Very calm and confident, just reasoning through the obstacle.

I like to start horses jumping this way, because it gives them a chance to figure out how their bodies work and think through the process.  When they are busy thinking and doing it slowly, they stay calm and it prevents all kinds of trouble down the road that comes from horses being pushed too fast.  Rushing, getting heavy on the forehand, bucking after fences, all of these issues can often be avoided by teaching the horse about jumping very slowly and letting them reason through it confidently.  When they stay really calm they don't ever get into these evasion tactics or fear responses.

While it seems like a tedious process, I tell people that in horse training, fast is slow and slow is fast.  If I push a horse too hard too early, then I have to go back and correct things or fill in gaps in the education, which ultimately takes longer.  But if I go slowly at the beginning like this, the horses not only enjoy their work and remain unstressed, but they have a thorough education to build on later.  We do reach a point when the horse says, "oh, THAT'S why we did all of the arena stuff!" and their riding training will leap ahead and progress very quickly at that point. 

Once Miss Pea had gone over the barrels slowly a couple times with me on the ground, I mounted and we walked around the arena on a loose rein.  This is to reaffirm to her that she's not always going to "go go go" when I ride her, and that she can be as slow and rhythmic as she wants.  We walked over the two sets of poles that were laid out at right angles on each end of the arena, doing figure eights, circles, and changing directions.  We practiced steering using my seat so she gets used to me communicating to her with weight shifts and breathing, very little hands and leg.

I like to do these very simple exercises with horses in preparation for jumping.  I want the horse listening to me so carefully that when I sit up a little and exhale deeply while turning my head, she knows to shift her weight back onto her haunches and turn.  This makes tight turns at speed so much easier for me and the horse, because the communication gets so subtle between us.  Miss Pea pays close attention, and as we rode elaborate figures at the walk with a loose rein she figured out just how small my signals can be.  I don't ever discipline her if she makes mistakes, I ignore them.  I do praise her whenever she does it right, or tries to do it right.  Mistakes merely earn her another try.  I find by using this method the horses quickly start to listen carefully to me and eagerly look for my next cues, excited to see what behavior earns the next "good girl" or scratch on the withers. When we were all done I even rode her over to the gate and she figured out sidepassing to the right and left with my weight shifts so I could open the gate for us to ride back to the barn.   I'm a firm believer that every good dressage horse (and in this case future eventer) should open and close gates.  So far she is proving to be an eager student!