The Gospel According to a Horse

Often I sit out in the barn and pray.  Whenever I do, this is what happens:

I often say that everything I know about God I've learned from my animals, and an old friend inadvertently pointed out to me today that I frequently write the sermons I need to hear.  The last post about the elk hide had this in it: 

I don't care if a horse never walks across a tarp, what matters to me is that they learn how to be brave when presented with new or potentially scary things, and to look to me for direction and comfort if they're concerned.  

My friend said "Love this: "my goal is to have them be brave when presented with potentially scary new things, and to look to me for direction." ... I can almost hear the Lord saying the same thing. (wow. deep breath.)  The Lord in your words."

It reminded me that God teaches me through these animals.  God would never want me to go through some of the things I do, but He is always support for me and is my emotional safety blanket just as I am for my animals. 

Raven and the Ravens

I named Raven after the brilliant birds that live here at Bit of Honey.  They are incredibly intelligent, and quite personable.  They also have done a fabulous job of evicting all pigeons from the property!

Raven with her namesake on the post.

These birds are so smart.  They talk to me from the rafters of the arena when I go out to ride in the morning, I swear I've heard them say my name.  They have learned to imitate the dogs, so the birds will whine and bark, as well as click and make kissing noises (vocal cues I use with the horses all the time).  They also make a wide variety of humming, yodeling, and other noises that sound like they come from video games.  I'll say hello to them and they nearly always respond with some sort of noise.

In the evenings they are less chatty, but equally personable.  They will hang out on fence posts while I do the feeding, watching and supervising as I go about doing chores at the end of the day.  If I'm not looking directly at the ravens they let me get quite close, nearly able to touch them.  They know if I'm directing my attention at them however, and will only let me get within about ten feet if my attention is focused on them. 

I do get to see some incredible sunsets from my vantage point at the front of Highboy's run in the barn.

 

Desensitizing to Elk Hide

We do all kinds of odd desensitizing exercises here at Bit of Honey Training.  Most recently we took a field trip to Amy and Sue's barn.  Amy's husband (legally and with a permit) got an elk last weekend and had skinned it for the meat for their family, then thoroughly cleaned the hide for use as a training tool for the horses.  Amy had worked with Zora in hand the day before with the hide draped over the round pen wall.  While fairly brave, as a four year old Zora had never seen anything quite like this before and was understandably nervous.

 

The elk hide still had a slightly pungent odor to it, and as prey animals it makes sense that horses would be anxious about a hide.  If there's a dead animal, there could be predators close by!  

After arriving, we got ourselves parked in the driveway and I unloaded the horses.

I took Dewey over to the round pen first, since he's had the most desensitizing over the years.  He's been to a million horse shows, horse expos, done freestyle performances in costumes with the dogs, and generally trusts me even in odd circumstances.  I first took him into the round pen and we merely walked past it, with me between him and the elk hide.  We did several laps of the round pen this way, both directions, always with me between him and the hide.  

Each time Dewey walked past without paying much attention to the hide I'd give him a cookie from my yellow bucket.  Once he was familiar with it but not concerned at all, I let him get a bit closer to inspect, continuing to reward his approaches to the hide with treats.

In general Dewey wasn't worried about it.  This is a great illustration of how over many years of doing weird things with him (hula hoops, mattresses, tinsel, costumes...)  he has learned to be brave in the face of new things.  I don't care if a horse never walks across a tarp, what matters to me is that they learn how to be brave when presented with new things, and to look to me for direction and comfort if they're concerned.  Dewey's nonchalant reaction to the elk hide, a totally novel stimulus, is the perfect example of how he's learned to be brave over the years and to look to me as to how to handle himself in the face of something potentially scary.

 

Eventually Dewey did even touch it with his nose!  I then turned him loose in the round pen with the hide draped over the wall.  He pranced around a little, then returned to the hide to touch it with his nose and get a cookie.

After investigating it at liberty, he decided the hide was no threat, but he should be on alert for whatever predator dispatched the animal.  The neighbor's barn had a few horses working in the arena, but the lay of the land was such that Dewey could only see the horse and human's head periodically as they popped up over the hilltop.  This intermittent movement on the horizon was of some concern, so Dewey spent time staring at it in an effort to determine if that was the predator.  He also looked the other direction at the other neighbor's goats, who were also lurking ominously at the property line.

Definitely a huge success, though, as Dewey was in general alert but really calm.  Love that Super Dew!

 

Ferriana went with us, too.  She had similar unexciting reactions to the hide, with similar inspections of the neighbors.  I did handle her a bit differently than Dewey, as her mind works differently than his.  She's a hotter and smarter horse, so I needed to give her something to focus on to redirect her attention back to me.  If I just puttered around like with Dewey, she would have taken charge of the situation herself and ignored me.  So we did some in-hand work over the obstacles Amy had set up in the arena, like the small jumps (which Ferriana loves).

We did address the hide, but she didn't care much.

I did turn her loose in the round pen with me and she wandered around eating weeds and generally being sociable.

 

Lastly I took the dogs out on their leashes and we watched Amy and Zora work with the hide.  It actually helped a lot to have Zora watch both Dewey and Ferriana.  Neither one of them was very concerned about the hide, so when Zora had her turn in the round pen she wasn't too concerned either.  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LF69BRxR1Q4

 

Rizzo was very attentive, just in case Amy needed her help.  We were sitting just outside the round pen, so Rizzo could watch everything and she definitely thought she should intervene once or twice!

Pascal was more nonchalant about offering assistance.  He was more interested in digging a series of small holes at my feet in search of tree roots to chew on.  He does this at home occasionally too, we always say he's setting booby traps.  Pascal is always willing to pause for snuggles, though.

 

Raven Jumping Issues

I'm suspicious that Raven has something going on with her teeth again.  She really isn’t jumping well.  She’s flatting ok, but refusing even small crossrails again.  I videoed the whole ride today.  Over thanksgiving Jasi showed me how to edit video and add commentary (ah, youth!) with my iphone, so I created this video today that explains what I'm feeling and seeing in Raven.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-VuVsLilAs0

I sent it on to Dr. Landes so he could see what I'm trying to describe.  Raven's just not "right".  Her natural jump form is incredible and she's always been confident and powerful over fences.  For her to be stopping at jumps is highly uncharacteristic of her.  Watching the video has been immensely helpful, I can see that even when she has loose reins she's doing odd things with her head on landing.  I also noticed in the warmup video that she bucks when she tries to move her head and slide her jaw, but it catches.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ReK3vJ0cvhU

You can see over this blue crossrail that she has a loose rein, but she's still holding her head up and twisted on landing.

 

Over this orange cross rail she jumps really flat through her back - almost hollow with her back dropped rather than lifted in bascule.  She's lifting her legs to get over, but not using her trunk/torso at all.

 

Then again on landing she lifts her head way up.

We did some work over the verticals, too.  I was able to get her to be obedient and jump the fences I asked for, but she never really jumped WELL.  It's frustrating, as she's normally such an incredibly athletic and eager jumper.  Hopefully we can get it sorted out again with her teeth next week.

 
 

Ferriana and the Hourglass Gymnastic

Ferriana and I worked a bit on the hourglass gymnastic this week.  She was doing well getting three strides in where she was supposed to (as opposed to Highboy who charged through as if to merely prove he could do it in two).   But the more complicated task of the multiple poles in the line in the middle of the arena were good practice for her, too.  The first time through she scrambled a little to get the footwork, but in true Ferriana form she learned from her first try and nailed it the next time through.

 

Here is her video, such a fun mare who is really a powerhouse.  Here she is working the straight lines in the middle of the arena:

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qeItwpVjAbU

 

Here she is doing the bending lines at the ends of the arena:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N4oyyzdf80A

I like to introduce these exercises in portions so that the course isn't too overwhelming for the horses at the start.  It worked out for videoing with the pivo, too.

Hourglass Gymnastic

Last week I did some pole work to help the horses develop better canter rhythm and adjustability in the canter.  This week I made the exercise slightly more difficult to push them a little and help them use the skills they'd practiced the week before.

This is the diagram I used to set the fences.  Everything was relatively short in height, since I wanted the horses to work on striding not power.  This is a nice exercise to use for practicing bending lines as well as straight lines.  Between each set of two fences the horses should have put in three strides.

"Should have put in three strides" was the tricky part for Highboy.  He loves to go fast, so he kept insisting on doing the middle line in two strides.  Here's the video of him charging through and doing the line much too fast.  He can get away with it because of his size and stride length, but it's difficult to control and honestly not safe to be bombing through courses like that, especially cross country where the jumps are solid.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WUicsDQLEEo

As he did it the other direction he couldn't decide whether to jump the second obstacle or just step over it (the pole had come down and was on the ground).  He compromised by stepping over with his front legs and jumping with his hind legs.  This resulted in some humorous footwork, a maneuver I like to call his Tennessee Walker impression.

To slow him down and get him to do the line in a more civilized manner I added a bunch of stuff to the center line.  It now looked like this:

This setup pretty much forced Highboy to do the line in three strides, because he had a pole or a jump to go over as part of each stride.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xyR75T1_vTM

Highboy makes me laugh, because he has zero difficulty with this more complicated footwork.  It's as if he says, "Oh, I'm totally capable of doing it correctly and in the requisite three strides, I just choose to do it in two to make it more exciting.  If you're going to make it more interesting with extra jumps and poles I'll do it in three, otherwise I'll just spice it up myself."

Highboy is totally capable of being quite a nice horse, it's just getting him to choose civility that's the hard part.

Evening Mash

I often sit with Highboy as he eats his evening mash while I wait for him to finish.  Once he's done I usually put him back out with his friends to eat from the big round bale overnight, but I do enjoy my quiet evenings in the barn as he works on his mash.

Engagement and Collection

I'm always on the hunt for a good way to explain dressage concepts such as collection.  Teaching these ideas is tricky because the terms can mean different things in different equestrian circles.   For example, in some disciplines collection is the same thing as shortening the horse's stride, extension is the same thing as lengthening the stride.  The perspective I'm coming from is more of a classical dressage view, in which collection means far more than shortening the horse's stride length.  

To create collection, first we have to create engagement in the hind end.  What is engagement?  It is increasing the bending of the joints of the hind legs including the fetlocks, hocks, stifles, and hips.  Think of a human doing a squat, and how there are varying degrees of the depth of a squat.  As a human squats and the joints of the leg bend, their butt lowers.  As a horse squats, the joints of the legs bend, causing their haunches to lower. 

Horses have the same anatomy as humans, positioned slightly differently as they travel on four legs instead of two.  But engagement in a horse is like a human squatting.

 

One useful way to create engagement is with cavalletti.  Raised poles, or even just ground poles laid out in succession can have tremendous effects on the horse.  

In this first photo, you can see that Ferriana is really bending the joints of her LH leg.  The poles encourage her to lift her feet higher, which creates the bending of the joints/engagement.

Once the hind legs' joints are flexing more, the horse will start to drop their haunches.  This dropping of the haunches causes the horse to carry more weight in their hind end, which can also be described as shifting their balance towards the hind end, lifting the front end and withers (called collection).

In this second photo I drew in a yellow line where Ferriana's withers are, and a green line where her haunches are.  You can see that her hind end has dropped visibly compared to the front end.  So this photo shows true engagement (bending of joints in hind legs), and the resulting collection (more weight carried in hind, less weight carried in front).

Here's another way to look at it.  If the front half of the horse is sitting on one side of a see-saw, and the back half of a horse is sitting on the other side of the see-saw, the weight distribution would look like these diagrams:  

A horse naturally carries more weight on their front end, so when the horse is first learning to ride the balance of the see-saw is more like this:

As the horse's training progresses, we gradually ask them to carry more weight in their hind end with exercises such as pole work or cavalletti, getting closer to this:

As the horse continues to get stronger you can ask for more engagement in the hind end, with more flexing of the hind leg joints, which lowers the haunches, thus moving weight to the hind end and allowing the front end to lift, like Ferriana has in the yellow/green line photo.

This works on all kinds of horses.  Ferriana is a warmblood, and she's very naturally able to become collected because of how she is built and her conformation.  However, with systematic training and progression (just as a human weight lifter would gradually increase the weight they carry in a squat) any breed can be taught to do it.  

Here is a photo of Raven, a thoroughbred, with extreme engagement in her hind end.  Bending the joints of her hind legs this much is like coiling a spring.  She is carrying all her weight on her hind legs, so that her front end has actually lifted off the ground, which has to happen in order for her to jump the fence in front of her. 

 So her diagram of weight distribution from this photo would look more like this:

 You can also think of the coiling of the springs like this:

 

As Raven sits, the joints of the hind legs bend, the muscles flex, and the spring is loaded for her to push off and jump!

Here is a photo of Ferriana, with lots of engagement in her gait over the poles:
 

And here is Raven, a thoroughbred for whom this type of movement is slightly more difficult because of her conformation.  You can see with proper conditioning and exercises she can do it very similarly to Ferriana:

Highboy has an even more difficult time with it due to his large size and conformation.  Here is a photo of him cantering over the poles to create engagement in his hind end at that gait.  You can see the joints of his LH leg really flexing as it's the leg bearing weight and getting ready to push off.  The joints bending include his fetlock, hock, stifle, and hip:

 

Dressage is the systematic training of the horse to progressively carry more weight on their hind end.  Just as there are varying amounts of weight that the hind end carries at any moment, there are varying degrees of collection.  But the whole thing starts with more flexing of the joints of the hind leg, or engagement.