Archive for It's About The Horse The Free Forum for those Doing Parelli - and a whole lot More! "Anything forced and misunderstood can never be beautiful." Xenophon (430-355 B.C.),
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Playenatural
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The Fire DrillMy mind keeps going back to this article I read last fall. It was in the Eclectic Horseman issue 49 (PDF back issues are $2.50 for anyone interested) The article was called Survive a Fire Drill by Martin Black.
Now in my beginning Parelli we did Controlled Catastrophe and we dodged the bull (instructor trying to skewer your horse with a CS, actually fun) but I feel like this is an area I lack in big time, because of the "get off if you get scared" deal. Sometime you just need to ride through it. And I haven't been doing that and as a result Rooster doesn't see me as a leader when the going gets tough and this is why I'm not hauling down to Salt Lake to ride with Carol or riding down my own road onto the gorgeous High Desert country of Idaho.
Now in the Article, Martin talks about being a kid in a Fire Drill and how you were pushed just on the edge of panic to do the right thing so you could be safe again. Do the right thing, under pressure. How at first it is very uncomfortable but then later you learn to not worry and just respond because everything would be all right. He said there was no analyzing how you "feel" about it and no thinking, just trusting.
| Quote: | | We were not offered a "soft feel" and they didn't "wait on our feet," they made sure we got from point A to point B. They made sure nobody had a nervous breakdown over it, but the point was to teach us to handle pressure. They would put the right amount of pressure on us, just short of panicking us. |
He says this is a valuable lesson for the horse:
| Quote: | | He can learn to follow our guidance no matter what, learn that when we ask of a change of speed, faster or slower, or change of direction, he can do it. We need to be careful that we don't expose the horse to more than he can handle, but we need to expose him to enough to know how much he can handle. |
My problem is he is using metaphors the whole way through and I don't know how to put this into practice.
Here is what has happened in my life, again from the article:
| Quote: | | If the horse gets upset and we remove the stimulus or circumstance that caused the rise in emotion, the horse just learns to be a cry baby. Anytime he starts to become uneasy he overdramatizes it to get the comfort situation back. He gets the people trained. This is not how the real world works... |
He goes on to talk about how horses respond to each other and how the horse can run into more trouble after the horse has learned to act as above from people. He also makes a point that softness is still necessary for the horse but that dealing with pressure is doing the horse a favor.
Back to the last quote, I have met many horses that do this, you can see them at the end of the rope screaming "STOP THAT!" when in fact what ever the person is doing is not that bad, they may only be asking for a step back or for the horse to go out on the circle. My daughters horse is one of these. She has serious social problems because of it, but she is better than she was. Rooster does it on a different level, in new environments. This would take us to the levels of confidence, self, environment, herd, you... I think I have them...
One thing I have learned only recently is that the Freestyle rein (ride on the buckle) is way bad when your horse needs support. Rooster has taught me he likes me holding his hand. This has actually gotten us out the gate and to the ear-eating-kid-crossing sign. Next up the hoof-dissolving-cattle-yard (I have wrote about it in the past).
But really as a rider who's mind screams, "GET OFFFFF!!!!" how do I learn how to handle the blow up? How do I be there for Rooster? How do I keep him where it is safe? For me having a plan has always helped. Yes I know other riders would help but they aren't an option till my husband decides to ride again. He stopped after falling off under another horse and couldn't remember his birthday, but the bugger still passed his L2 that day. 
These oh no situations are what concern me about some methods of horsemanship. Having a happy willing partner in whatever I want to do is my goal.
How have you all handled this?
Just wanting to get a conversation going...
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Thunder Hollow
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Playenatural
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Thank you Ann,
It's interesting because it happens on so many levels but really comes down to having a horse comfortable or at least tolerating the human world.
Little does my boy know that I just want to take him out to country that is like the range he came off of. I think he would love it if we could just get there.
But I too would like to keep it together if things get tough, like a dirt bike flying by or a tractor heading down the road.
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Tammy Sorenson
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Re: The Fire Drill | Playenatural wrote: |
Now in my beginning Parelli we did Controlled Catastrophe and we dodged the bull (instructor trying to skewer your horse with a CS, actually fun) but I feel like this is an area I lack in big time, because of the "get off if you get scared" deal. Sometime you just need to ride through it. And I haven't been doing that and as a result Rooster doesn't see me as a leader when the going gets tough and this is why I'm not hauling down to Salt Lake to ride with Carol or riding down my own road onto the gorgeous High Desert country of Idaho.
Now in the Article, Martin talks about being a kid in a Fire Drill and how you were pushed just on the edge of panic to do the right thing so you could be safe again. Do the right thing, under pressure. How at first it is very uncomfortable but then later you learn to not worry and just respond because everything would be all right. He said there was no analyzing how you "feel" about it and no thinking, just trusting.
| Quote: | | We were not offered a "soft feel" and they didn't "wait on our feet," they made sure we got from point A to point B. They made sure nobody had a nervous breakdown over it, but the point was to teach us to handle pressure. They would put the right amount of pressure on us, just short of panicking us. |
He says this is a valuable lesson for the horse:
| Quote: | | He can learn to follow our guidance no matter what, learn that when we ask of a change of speed, faster or slower, or change of direction, he can do it. We need to be careful that we don't expose the horse to more than he can handle, but we need to expose him to enough to know how much he can handle. |
My problem is he is using metaphors the whole way through and I don't know how to put this into practice.
Here is what has happened in my life, again from the article:
| Quote: | | If the horse gets upset and we remove the stimulus or circumstance that caused the rise in emotion, the horse just learns to be a cry baby. Anytime he starts to become uneasy he overdramatizes it to get the comfort situation back. He gets the people trained. This is not how the real world works... |
He goes on to talk about how horses respond to each other and how the horse can run into more trouble after the horse has learned to act as above from people. He also makes a point that softness is still necessary for the horse but that dealing with pressure is doing the horse a favor.
Back to the last quote, I have met many horses that do this, you can see them at the end of the rope screaming "STOP THAT!" when in fact what ever the person is doing is not that bad, they may only be asking for a step back or for the horse to go out on the circle. My daughters horse is one of these. She has serious social problems because of it, but she is better than she was. Rooster does it on a different level, in new environments. This would take us to the levels of confidence, self, environment, herd, you... I think I have them...
One thing I have learned only recently is that the Freestyle rein (ride on the buckle) is way bad when your horse needs support. Rooster has taught me he likes me holding his hand. This has actually gotten us out the gate and to the ear-eating-kid-crossing sign. Next up the hoof-dissolving-cattle-yard (I have wrote about it in the past).
But really as a rider who's mind screams, "GET OFFFFF!!!!" how do I learn how to handle the blow up? How do I be there for Rooster? How do I keep him where it is safe? For me having a plan has always helped. Yes I know other riders would help but they aren't an option till my husband decides to ride again. He stopped after falling off under another horse and couldn't remember his birthday, but the bugger still passed his L2 that day.
These oh no situations are what concern me about some methods of horsemanship. Having a happy willing partner in whatever I want to do is my goal.
How have you all handled this?
Just wanting to get a conversation going... |
Hi Shannon,
I think this is one of the incongruencies that has happened lately in the parelli program. I have talked quite a lot with some instrucotors on what 'I' feel like should happen. I guess it all "depends."
Early on, Pat wants us to help our horse to calm, smart, and brave. At that time we might have gone to a phase 4 to accomplish this. Then we learned about Liberty and horse behavior. Where we should not cross boundaries and blow through thresholds. Now sometimes we are at an impasse as to whether we should "wait" for the horse to have confidence and slowly work through the thrusholds or Call BS you just need to try a little more. Where do we make the distinction in what road to take?
I am certain that I have seen just what you are referring to. Some dominant horse telling the owner "can't you SEE I am scared! DON'T you dare make me do it......." Seems to me like we need to very good at deciphering what the horse is really telling us.
Early on when I was with the Dan, I wanted him to help me with my young "eventing" prospect. This kind of horse needs to be brave, forward and trusting of the rider. When there are 30 cross country jumps ahead of us, my horse needs to trust that I am the leader. He needs to know that his resposibility is to figure out the puzzle of the jumps not question whether or not he should go over the. Dan help me loads in working with him first on the ground at 12 foot and then all of the way to 45feet. He is so fun to play with cause everything is a game. Riding him now after having that kind of Rapport on the ground has been a blast. Every once in a while I will have to get off and send him out on line. Then its back to wahoo!and where were we going? and what is next.
I guess my thought are it really all does depend. I really belive that my horse should understand and be OK with pressure. If the Train is coming and he is scared, am I going to do whatever it takes to save our lives? Hell Ya! Do I really care if I push him over a threshold at that moment in time? No, not really. But then in retrospect maybe I could have better prepared us for the situation.
You have a little different situation with Rooster that the rest of us with domestic horses. He does know what it is like to fear for his life. I think that I would amp up his life online and at llonger and longer distances with more and more scary things, until the riding down the road is just a sunday jaunt.
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TrickMule
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My mule spent six years more or less on the range in Montana before she was shipped to the UK where there are no natural predators for horses and mules. But she doesn't understand this. Everything that looks suspicious to her is a potential killer. Kinda like when we as women (and perhaps some of you guys too) walk alone at night and get to worrying about killers, rapists, bears, whatever. Fearing for your life is not trivial, as I am sure we can all agree on.
So. How to deal with it and get things going? I could not ride off the property when I first got my mule. Not because I didn't want to but because she would not go. We would go some strides, she would stop and run backwards, seemingly no matter what I did. And if she didn't stop, she would spin and bolt. I was a very confident rider at the time, but after coming off her a few times, I lost my mojo.
Losing your mojo just makes it worse. But it is equally hard to pretend to have it and my mule saw right through my feeble bluffs. When I did not have the courage of my convictions, how could she look to me for leadership? I couldn't even lead myself well enough to even try to lead her at one time. But as well, she was not really interested in being led by me anyway. Her survivial instinct trumped anything I could do at the time. She did not trust my judgement and I have had to earn it.
The only thing in my favour is that I am dedicated and I don't give up on something if I decide I want it (unless I decide I don't want it anymore). The amount of times I have screamed, wept and stewed inside over that mule over the years are very numerous indeed and I did come close many times to thinking I will never get her how I want her to be, so maybe I should just give up.
So for a while (many years back) I diddled about on the ground with her and got her to a high level - not hard if that is all you do and if you have a watchful, sensitive mule. But I rode my horse if I wanted to trailride.
Over time, I got to wanting to ride her again. So I did. And I had learned enough of the natural ways then to mostly make good bets. I thought very carefully about what would work and chose my riding deliberately. I made use of riding buddies to follow to get her some exposure and just gradually amped it up. Started to stretch the things we would do. A course here, a challenging trailride there, etc, etc. And things got better. Not great, but better. At least were were getting out some.
However, my proper turning point was at a cow clinic three years ago now where evey day we were made to do something by the clinician which made me feel VERY uncomfortable because of all the dangers I could foresee, but the weird thing was that she would start off by giving me a better than expected feel, which would give me confidence, which rubbed off on her which rubbed off on me and which rubbed off on her and then rubbed off on me.
This rubbing process has been exponential. What I mean is that the things we can now cope with grow at much greater increments that I would have imagined possible at the beginning. The envelope is being stretched exponentially. At first, when I started to ride her again the rate of progress was so slow that I thought she might die of old age before I could do x or y on muleback. But the exponential nature of the improvement since the cow clinic has meant that I am doing things I could never have imagined. Riding out alone wherever I want to go without a single stop, leading other riders on rides (I did that very thing today), tackling challenging terrain, cracking a bullwhip while cantering along, spending 18 months following Philippe Karl's teaching (and this finesse style riding meant that I was able to get to her mind much more) and now, riding in the hackamore. I hope to progress to the two-rein one day and finally I feel like it is not an impossible goal - as long as she stays healthy and I continue to be able to find saddle time in amongst work and other life commitments.
So, if I had to distill it all down to a single paragraph, what I needed was to start feeling good about riding her - to survive some rides to make me feel more capable and to regain the mojo of my past when I was fairly fearless (and, looking back, often stupidly so). As soon as she showed me some of the good things she could do, it gave me confidence and made me feel good about riding her, which then started a positive and exponential cycle of behaviours from both of us.
She is still spooky by nature, but she copes so much better with things and I can get her mind back so much faster than before. So because it no longer upsets me too much if things get western, it doesn't dint my attitude and feelings the way it did when I first got her.
For you, I don't know what would be the right catalyst to get that positive cycle going as it can be quite an individual thing. A steady riding buddy, or a regular circuit that you take by leading him and gradually riding more and more of it (i.e. create a routine and a safe route - think of it as checking out your "land"), or taking him somewhere like a clinic or a trail to "see God" (and to give you the opportunity to overcome some challenges that will help you to get that edge of confidence and thus a positive spiral going), or riding exclusively with contact/finesse for a time to hold his hand (and have his mind which is what I think is the real key here), or something else. It is hard to know exactly what will work for someone and if you had said to me before I did it that a cow clinic would be the catalyst for us, I would have guffawed in your face (because although we were making progress before it was so slow that I could not imagine it accelerating so massively from a single experience), but it sure helped me to have something other to focus on (i.e. cows/a job) other than all the dangerous things she could potentially do from fear. This then allowed me to live through and become confident in more extreme situations. I mean, at one time I could not ride in a slicker because if it rustled or creaked or made some other noise she would bolt. But at the cow clinic there was torrential rain and we had to get from one part of the Dales to another, no question. So we did it and slickers have been fine since then. I have many other examples of previously unthinkable things being doable now, some of which have been the result of meticulous and painstaking strategies (progressive, slow desensitisation) and others from just having the courage of my convictions which seems to create more rapid habituation - I act like it is going to be OK, and then it magically is. But having said that, this could just be the result of me having an attitude shift, rather than anything else. As I was saying to my friend only yesterday who expressed surprise at her horse acting sweetly - if you think of your horse at sweet, then he is whereas if you think of your horse as evil, then he is. Because in the first scenario you focus on the sweet things and don't notice the rest, whereas in the latter scenario, you focus on the evil things and don't notice the rest. Once I got to thinking of my mule as being good, then she was.
So I hope you can engineer something to come up with your own catalyst so that you can go from strength to strength with Rooster! 
Oops, was going to update the Hackamore Mule Experiment thread, but have run out of time as dinner is nearly ready, so will do that another day....
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Playenatural
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Thanks so much Tammy and Liz. You have me licking and chewing. I'll be back when I can put my thoughts together.
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fairhavenranch
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I just said this on another thread but I think it really applies here:
| Quote: | | For me it is about learning to tell the difference between 'fear' and 'anxiety'. Both mine and the horses. |
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kristie
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Re: The Fire Drill__
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