November 13, 2009
Dear Farley,
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I would like you to know that you narrowly missed being dead last night. If looks and thoughts could kill (which fortunately they can't), you would be dead as a door nail and this letter would be an obituary. In case your little walnut-sized brain has already forgotten the last night's incident, I will remind you of the facts:
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You had warmed up beautifully at the trot and canter - loose rein - and your desire to work, seemed to be back (you were a little grumpy after the LOVE ride so we took it easy for a couple of days). For 20 minutes you gave me decent work at the walk and trot, on the bit, with some decent transitions (thank you). You were the very epitome of obedience.
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I would like to break off the story here and remind you that - as an arab - you are automatically going to be marked down when we hit the dressage court. You are a short coupled, efficient mover which will not garner you high points. As a result you must be MORE round, MORE obedient than the competition. But I digress, because being a smart mare, you already know this.
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As we started the canter, it was obvious that the earlier obedience was a sham. You bucked, bolted, resisted, and was VERY disobedient. You do realize that such behavior will only make the session last longer? Because if you escalate the disobedience after the customary 45 minutes mark has passed, you are going to be out there for and 90 MINUTES. And don't give me that "I'm just a poor little mare" face. You are not young, you are not green, and you are not out of shape. If you can trot and Canter and fight me for 2-3 hours on the trail, you are fit enough to give me quality work for an hour in the arena, especially with all the breaks I give you.
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I'm don't know what your problem is in the arena, but you need to snap out of it. Your canter and canter transitions are acceptable on the trail, but are horrendous in the arena. Flinging your head in the hair, resisting the bit and attempting to buck me off obviously means you need more work at the canter. Because of last night, I'm throwing all my other carefully planned goals out the window and am focusing on one and only one thing in the next year - you will have a decent canter with transitions. So get over it.
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Signed,
Your Very PO'ed Rider (who is going to practice deep breathing at work today at an attempt to clear her mind and start tonight's session fresh and with a smile)
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Foot note: She really was a bad bad bad girl last night. She's very good at pretending to be very obedient, but if I push and dig a bit, I will come upon these cess pools of disobedience. These festering pools of disobedience is what results in the random fights at rides (20 MT, LOVE), and the behavior that "seems to come out of nowhere". In reality, she's NOT being obedient and until the cantering in the arena problem is solved, I'm going to come across these huge blocks of resistance. It's the same old story of the white elephant in the room. I've avoided the cantering issue until recently and now I'm having to deal with it in a huge way. I tried the - "focus on other things and it will resolve itself" and that did NOT work. So now I just have to do it. GRrrrrr....
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Boredom, maybe? I know you're working on basic skills with her, but she may not see the value in it and, honestly, the arena's boring to look at. There's nothing interesting about an arena for a horse. They don't find the same satisfaction in perfect transitions that humans do.
ReplyDeleteI agree she needs to be obiedient, but maybe there's something that she can find to be of value in the arena that may make her more obedient.
Just a thought.
Here's another interesting thing - I can use the canter as a guage - having trouble with her on a trail ride? School her at the canter. If I can that resolved, she's a perfect little angel. Truely, getting her canter is the root of getting her attention and getting her to behave. If I don't have control of her canter, we may be working together, but there's resistence there that will not leave until the canter issue has been worked out for the day.
ReplyDeleteAddressing the boredom idea:
If her attitude was overall one of boredom, lack of impulsion etc, I would believe more in the boredom theroy. HOWEVER, we don't school every day, we get out fo the arena regularly, and while in the arena we do lots of different stuff - including cavalry sword work etc, not just dressage. I do watch for boredom and if I see it we do something different for the day.
Since she's done this since I before I bought her, I sure it's a behavior thing. If it was a pain/ability issue I would expect the issue to show up more consistently than limited only to arena work.
When I got her I babyed her. When I asked her to canter she would buck. it would scare me and I wouldn't ask anymore. Then once I got over that, I wouldn't ask for very much. I figured her resistence was her way of telling me she wasn't fit enough to do it and it was hard for her. Now, after being very fit, given a clean bill of health, and being evaluated by my trainer - there are no more excuses except that she doesn't particularly like the canter. And I'm sorry but this doesn't cut it. I'm sympathetic and will make sure I mix it up with stuff she DOES enjoy, but this is one of those areas that she WILL do because I'm asking her to.
The canter issue is kind of like the horse that doesn't want to cross water. That's not acceptable. There's no good reason why they can't, and they will eventually because that is how the world goes 'round.
The most frusterating thing for me is the fact that she is physically capable of doing it. She isn't because she doesn't want to, not because she can't.
Incidentally she's better away from home. I have more problem with her at my stable's arena than anywhere else. No good reason that I can find - good footing, good fences etc. Millions of other horses canter there just fine. The issue is still there away from home, just not as prevalent.
The best thing I can do is stay calm, not take it personnally, and continue to ask in a clear and consistent manner. And once she gets it, DON'T DRILL IT (I can be so guilty of this!).
Ok, so she's just a mare. I thought of boredom because my mare would invent ways to cause trouble in an arena, but it sounds like you do FUN stuff in yours. I especially like the sound of the cavalry sword work - how cool is that?
ReplyDeleteHahahahaha. I snorted coffee up my nose when you said "OK, so she's just a mare". She's usually such a good mare that I guess she's allowed to have *one* sticky spot. LOL. I totally agree that it's improtant to watch for boredom, so thanks for the reminder. :)
ReplyDeleteCavalry work is so cool. I like the sword work the best - reminds me of polo, which I really miss. My least favorite even is pistols. In fact, I have yet to fire off of her yet....this weekend perhaps? I do really wacky stuff like have her push a big ball around while I pick up paper plates from the gound etc :) I would like to compete at the regional event next summer (June?) Should make from some interesting blogging posts.
That sounds like so much fun. I wanted to get into Cowboy Mounted Shooting, but that's just too expensive for my taste. And I'm more of a modern gun kinda girl, so that doesn't really work. We trained my mom's horse to shoot off of and it was surprisingly easy. Now if we could get my mom to quit flinching and kicking her horse every time she pulls the trigger, we'll be ahead of the game. (Sorry Mom, I know you read this *g*).
ReplyDeleteDo you have any tips for teaching a horse? I was going to start off with caps and progress to full loads. Start on the ground, then mounted. Ignore any flinching from the horse and continue like nothing happned. Add balloons once I can fire from her back comfortably. Good plan or bad one?
ReplyDeletepatience young grasshopper! :)
ReplyDeleteHere is a video I made of Kerry showing me some ground exercises to do with Bo: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ctd_8oJlGE4
Note how she is getting him to cross his hind legs? He was having trouble picking up a left lead, so we need to strengthen that left hind leg (still). It was causing him to rush into a canter and then want to run like hell (which he is quite good at, and strong as a freight train).
Anyway - you may need to spend some time analyzing her strong and weak points and then working on them.
These things take time.
Farley may be being what you perceive as difficult simply because it is hard for her.
In my case with Bo, it also helped to repeat the canter work enough so he learned that certain behaviors were unacceptable - again - be patient! I've been working on this since January with Bo and we still are a work in progress.
Oh that makes me feel so much better!!!!! See your video was like a light going off. Thank you so much!!!! If you are still working with Bo, even with all the training and work he's done, then it gives me hope.... :)
ReplyDeleteI think what I'll do is encourage her to pick up the canter on a loose rein, since she's less stressed that way, so we can work on "this is what the cue means", but leave the "on the bit" stuff and any quality work alone for now.....I think I made my point last night that bucking and bolting is unacceptable.
lalalalala I'm in such a better mood now. :) :) :)
I'm not sure if I can explain how we did Jesse's gun training very well. Basically we did it like clicker training. We started her at one end of the arena with her trainer and when she stood nice and relaxed, I fired off a round (.22 cal). If she didn't flinch, she got treated. We repeated the process over and over, each time bringing her closer and closer to where I stood firing. In less than a half an hour, I was leaning across her back, shoulders and butt from both sides firing. Shortly thereafter, I mounted up and fired with her standing. Then we moved on to walking and shooting. All in all, took less than an hour.
ReplyDeleteThen Mom mounted up. Anticipating Jesse's flinching, Mom actually flinched when she pulled the trigger and hit Jesse with her heels, which then caused Jesse to flinch. Once we got Mom to stop anticipating a temper tantrum that wasn't going to happen, we didn't have an issue.
Interesting side note - my dad's mustang was in another pasture during this training, a good bit away from all of the noise, but when we returned Jesse, we noticed that Ranger had had a bloody nose. We can only assume it was from the stress of the gunshots. He does not like them. At all.
Last year a guy asked me if I could shoot off my horse. "Yep" I said, "once...".
ReplyDeleteBill
Damn, looks like my stepdad beat me to the punch.
ReplyDelete