Today alone Rio told me more than she has in the 3 months I have owned her.
Our training sessions are very structured. Here's what our usual training session looks like.
Grooming
Tacking (Saddle, surcingle, polo wraps, bell boots, halter, lunge line, bridle, and side reins.)
Warm up 2.5 min walk in each direction without side reins.
5 min walk in each direction with side reins.
Trotting 5 min trot in each direction with side reins.
Cool down 5 min walk in each direction with side reins.
Ground Manners Practicing halt, back, pivot on hind and front end, flex, and pressure yielding.
As she gets older, stronger, and more mentally competent these workouts will get longer and will include canter work. For now we are focusing on obedience and building up her strength so I am keeping things slow.
Anyways, today was different. Due to the extremely wet weather we have up to 9 inches of mud in some places. It was impractical to even try to tack her up or walk through the mud any more than absolutely necessary. I settled on taking her straight to the indoor arena with just her halter and lead rope. (There is a lunge whip kept in the indoor arena for me to use as well.) She was really hyper cause I haven't worked with her for two days so I let her loose when we got in so she could play a little bit first.
There was a yoga ball in the arena that somebody had been using with their horse.
Right away Rio was very interested, and went to explore it. She nudged it a few feet and was totally fine with it. I approached and pushed to ball a little bit and her entire attitude towards the ball changed. She reared, pawed, bucked, and kicked towards the ball. It wasn't out of fear, but play. Even though she was playing, she violently expressed her dislike of the ball. She tried a few times to square up the ball behind her so she could kick it. She didn't manage to work it out but it would have been quite funny. At no time did she act like she was afraid of the ball, she wanted to play with it and dominate it.
I wanted to make sure that she didn't accidentally hurt me. I picked up the lunge whip so I could keep her a little ways away from me. Her reaction was severe.
The whip has never been used to hurt her and is always a tool of communication and respect during training sessions.
She took off bucking, rearing, and kicking. Again, none of it was fear-like behavior, it was play with some resentment. She ran around the arena once and returned to me. I put the whip down since she seemed unhappy with it and she started pawing and biting it. In her structured training sessions I have never noticed any resentment to it. But since she was at liberty she was inclined to show her true feelings about things.
After she was done telling the whip and the ball how she felt about them I put her on her lead rope and lunged her for a little bit. She immediately returned to the calm, obedient manner she has been taught but the beauty or her freedom vanished along with the crazy behavior.
This brings to mind a quote by Xenophon. "For what the horse does under compulsion, as Simon also observes, is done without understanding; and there is no beauty in it either, any more than if one should whip and spur a dancer."
She was not under physical compulsion to perform anything but when the lead rope went on she no longer believed she had a mind of her own.
I believe that before a horse can be worked at liberty they must be reliable while contained in close vicinity. I only lunged her for a few minutes at a walk. Since she didn't have her polo wraps on I didn't feel safe about lunging her at a trot on the short lead rope. I decided to let her loose and try some work at liberty for the first time ever. We were in the fairly large indoor arena so she wasn't super obedient. Using my body language and the lunge whip I convinced her to work at a walk close to me.
After working at a walk for a little bit, I asked her to canter since she had the whole arena to work in. She absolutely loved it. I believe that any time work can be made fun for a horse the more the horse will learn to love its work. A horse can never perform to their fullest unless they love their work with all of their heart. Breed and conformation becomes insignificant when understanding training is pitted against compulsory training.
Now that I know how Rio truly feels about some of her training tools I want to give her more opportunities to work at liberty. She still needs to practice working calmly and get used to her equipment but I need to make sure her training stays engaging and fun. I plan for every 7th workout to be held at liberty from now on. Hopefully the mud dries out soon and when I work her at liberty I can use the round pen so I have a little bit more control.
No comments:
Post a Comment