Be with your nutcase

Weekly horse report ahoy! Lear again.

I had the tacked gloves that worked so well last time, but for most of the week I've been reading Be With Your Horse, which focuses on rewarding your horse with moments of zen. Ask for a thing, and if the horse does it, stop for a second. Stop doing, stop being, stop talking, stop trying. Just give the horse a moment where you're quiet and have released all pressure, physical or mental. It's tempting, especially with a hot feisty horse, to try to keep moving with successes and to try to push through failures. Instead, the author says, if you get the result you want, use a brief release to tell the horse, "Yes, that was right." He also advocates waiting a few seconds after a cue to see whether the horse figures it out; some of them need more time to process, and if you keep piling on the cues, they get confused and resentful and start trying to find a way out of being with you, because they think that there's no way to make sense of your demands.

Well, what harm could it do. I walked into Lear's stall and clicked to him, and he turned toward me. I swung the lead over his neck and asked him to turn further; he paused for a moment, then stepped around. Now well within nipping range (but also ready to deploy an elbow), I paused by his shoulder and tried to project calm: eyes soft, breathing slow, body relaxed. He stood still. I brought the halter up and fastened it on, then again with the mellow routine. No bites. Out of the stall and onto the crossties. Still no nipping.

And so it went, through grooming, saddling, and even bridling, when he usually tries to chew on the noseband. He tried to push into my space as we walked to the ring and once nipped at my sleeve while we waited for the gate, but both times just making a sharp gesture made him back off to a polite distance, and he stood quietly for a final girth check and the mounting block.

Honesty compels: I didn't do as well with this in the saddle, and our yield work especially was uneven. We did some beautiful trot work, though, going from a forward trot to a slower collected trot and back on cue. Lear is getting better about going onto the bit and seeking contact; he used to be very nervous of being popped in the mouth, but now he'll reach down into the long rein and seems to enjoy the chance to stretch his neck and back muscles (which, by the way, have gotten glossy and buff over the last six months, and now he looks jest darlin').

It's hard to tell whether Lear was having a calm night anyway or whether the "small still point" approach made the difference, or whether it was some combination of the two. What I do know is that I found myself paying a different sort of attention to what I was doing and how Lear was reacting and that I enjoyed the work more. It was surprising how subtle I could make the ground cues to stop or walk on and still have him respond, as long as I was willing to wait an extra half-second for him to see whether he would do what I'd asked. Willing myself calm is not one of my strong suits, but going through the physical effort to relax helped; so did approaching it as an experiment, rather than a technique I had to get right. With a school horse that I don't work with every day, our progress is bound to be uneven, but clarifying and gentling my cues and rewards is transferable, as is the effort to cultivate patience when I ask for something. One of these days I might even know what I'm doing.