Monday, May 30, 2011

Discoveries, Failures and Successes

It's been almost a month since my last post and the reasons are simple. I just haven't had much time for Matilda this month. I've checked in with her weekly, but only 5 minutes here and 10 minutes there to make sure she hasn't lost too much in the time apart. But now it is the end of May. My car is fixed, a job that I was studying up for has begun and summer is here. Time for me to get back to the project at hand: Matilda.

After the last post and before I checked out for the month, my sister had asked if I knew what had happened to Matilda to make her so scared of the longe whip. When I went to answer her I was surprised to realize that I had no real idea. There were a lot of scenarios that ran through my mind, but all were based on assumptions with no real knowledge. (You know what they say about when you assume??) So I went to Kim and asked her why Matilda was so difficult to handle. The answer sort of knocked me for a loop.

Kim basically said that she thought there had been some inconsistencies in how Matilda had been handled and that Matilda had learned over the course of a couple of years that there were people she could get away from and so she always tried and so she often did.

I was a little bit floored by this revelation. All my visions of Matilda accidentally being popped by whips until she simply feared them and tried to escape them flew out the window. Most of my sympathy went with them. I felt so... used.

This is such a good thing because too much sympathy does an animal no favors. Too much sympathy leads to coddling, coddling to affirmation of fear and bad behavior and affirmation leads to an animal that either won't leave it's comfort zone or knows it can get away with bloody murder and does so.

Does this mean I am changing my plan of positive reinforcement with the clicker training? Absolutely not. Does it change anything? Absolutely. From here on out, at least in my mind, there are two separate things going on with Matilda and I:

First, continuing to work on ground manners. This will go on exactly as before, using Kelly Marks' book to help Matilda go forward learning to give people space, yield to pressure, etc.

Second, longe work or Matilda's cardio workout. I will still use the clicker and positive reinforcement, but I have given myself permission to be much more assertive with things in order to push Matilda into work a little faster. She will have to give me A LOT more of what I want at the end of the longe line in order to earn that click and reward!

Last week I decided to check on this longe work to see where we stand. Admittedly not my best idea, seeing as how I had barely seen Matilda for over two weeks, but by now we all know about the slightly reckless side to my nature.

I started her out going to the right and she did surprisingly well. She was not really in control, neither was I, but we looked like we were doing what we meant to do. Matilda picked up the "I want to run away" trot as soon as I had the longe line in one hand and the whip in the other. (It's funny how putting the pieces together - line and whip in the ring - made it seem like we had done almost no work at all prior to this. But there again, two plus weeks with no time together did us no favors.) I managed to keep her where I wanted in relation to my personage, despite her throwing her considerable weight to the outside, pulling away from me. After much asking and waiting and hanging on, she finally slowed to a walk and I was able to use the whip to keep her at a walk for a couple of trips around the circle - until I asked her to stop. (Her instinct, when she realizes that she is not succeeding at pulling away from me, is to stop and turn into me. Getting her to simply walk, not trot or stop, is a tricky thing as it turns out.)

Then I put her on the left... supposedly her good side. Not pretty. We immediately started what I thought was the same process, with her picking up a fast trot and pressing to the outside. This time, however, I could feel a difference. There may have been little to no control on the right, but on the left there was a distinct feeling of being totally out of control. The more I tried to gain control, the worse it got... let me explain. With most horses that have been longed, if you put a little pressure on the line (and therefore on their nose) they slow or stop or turn into you. The longer you hold the pressure, the more they should slow down. With Matilda, the more I held, the faster she went until she was in a full on canter. The faster she went, of course, the more momentum she had to move away from me until she was all the way at the end of the line. It's a little scary, that feeling of no control, especially as you get dizzy after being spun in circles with no end in sight.

Ultimately, I had to let her go and watch her run happily across the ring, dragging the 30 foot longe line behind her as I said a quick prayer that she wouldn't step on it or get it caught on something. I had lost that battle... one I should not have engaged in to begin with.

I couldn't let it end there. I took her lead and walked up to where she was happily munching some grass. Her lead has a 6' chain on the end (called a stallion chain) and I attached the lead to her halter with the chain going across the top of her nose. This is a practice frequently used to help control an unruly horse and one that I never intended to use on Matilda. However I had to win before we parted for the day and I was short on time, tools and energy.

I walked her back to where she had escaped and picked up the longe whip. She immediately started trotting, but with the chain across her nose and the short distance between us, she simply could not pick up the speed and momentum that she had before. With this configuration, I was able to get her to walk around me, while I held the longe whip, until I asked her to stop. Thus ended the day.

Today I went in fully realizing what I was facing, which is always helpful. I brought Matilda up into the ring and we went through a nice long review together. I wasn't sure things were going to go well, as she was super distracted by people being around. She is going to have to get used to it, as summer is here and there won't be lonely barn days for about 3 months:)

All her old moves were there, albeit rusty, and we have started working on some stretches. She stretches her neck by lowering her head all the way to the ground and then bending the neck from side to side. We have just started this, but I am hoping that there will come a day when she and I can do some morning stretches together.

Then came time to start the fabled longe work. I knew that I needed some sort of help with control, but didn't want to use a chain across the nose. After talking to Kim, I decided to hook her up to the longe line so that the line, which is just like a wide flat cotton leash, went across her nose. I hooked it up so that when I pulled on the line it would add pressure across the top of her nose, encouraging her to bring her nose down and in, rather than just pulling her head to the side as is the case when I just attach the line to the side of the halter.

I also kept her closer to me. No more than 10-15 feet of line. The smaller circle makes it harder and more uncomfortable to speed up.

This combination worked for us today. We still went through the same exciting process of Matilda trying to get away, but she was not able to do so. Through some trial and error, I also found that if I picked up the longe whip close to where the stick meets the lash, so that the whip was further away from her, I could work her down to a walk. She still tried to escape from it as soon as I would pick it up but she would give up, not so if I pick the whip up by the handle. When I pick up the whip by the end and hold it out in front of me, she runs and presses until I drop it because I need both hands to hang onto her... then she stops and turns into me, knowing that I can't encourage her on.

After a lot of work, I was able to get her to walk around me on both sides, while I held the longe whip an inch below the lash. I was able to use the whip, in that position, to encourage her to walk on without her running off into that super chaotic trot thing she does. She was only rewarded if she walked until I asked her to stop.

Since I wanted her to understand that the walk was what I was rewarding her for, I would wait until she settled into a nicely paced walk, made a couple of trips around me at that pace, then I would have to click, say "whoa!" and step into her with her carrot at the same time. I think I got the timing right on that one. It's all about multi-tasking.

So, that is where we are. It was a small success on the day, walking on the longe line while I held the whip in my hand, but a success it was. It's a starting point for this next phase and that was all I needed to get my foot in the door. It will probably be quite a while before I actually ask Matilda to trot on the longe line. I think I will work on building the walk until she can walk at the end of the line (maybe 30 feet out) with the longe whip doing it's full job before I even look for the trot.... I'm sure I'll be seeing it in any event.

Monday, May 2, 2011

Longing Matilda

I know, two weeks. I have seen Matilda in the last two weeks, but the visits have been a hodgepodge of stuff. Mostly she had to punish me a little, because I left her alone for a week, by being a stubborn cheese head last week and I didn't want to write about it. I think the only accomplishment from last week that I care to mention is that neither of us were injured during the course of our "working" together.

BUT it is a new day in a new week and we approached it with enthusiasm and purpose!

I am really bad at these self-portrait things, but I tried to get a photo of myself with Matilda. At least in this one you can get a better idea of how huge she really is. With her head like this, on my shoulder, her nose is down around my waist.... Makes me feel brave to see it:)

Oh, I remember one thing that came out of last week: Matilda and I decided that we should spend as much time working in the riding ring as possible. The added distractions of just being in a different place are important and we both need to learn to focus, even if cars are pulling in and horses are being led past. Plus it gives us time to practice being led politely to and from the barn. We will work there when ever the ring seems to be free from riding lessons.

Since the barn is closed on Monday's, we worked in the ring today!

It's hard for me to keep in mind the many tasks that Matilda and I are supposed to be accomplishing at the same time. Lately, the exercises in Kelly Marks' book have been taking the foreground, but again with all of our recent accomplishments and the (sort of) closing out of a chapter, I thought we might revisit the idea and dream of safely and reasonably longing Matilda.

If you look back at previous posts, you will remember that I had desensitized Matilda to the longe line and overly desensitized her to the longe whip - to the point that I can no longer send her forward or move her using the whip. However, I had yet to attach her to the line and yet to show her the whip while being attached to her in any way. I, also, had not done anything with either of those tools in the ring, where any previous bad experience may have occurred. Today was the day.

I put the longe line and whip on the ground in the middle of the ring before I even brought Matilda up, so that she could see them non-threateningly right away. We did our usual review in the ring before I led her over to where they were laying. She nosed them and didn't seem to be bothered with them, so I picked up the clip of the longe line and tried to clip it to her halter. She balked a little, pulling up her head, but she may have just been trying to mouth it.

Once she was attached, I had to get her moving but was not ready to pick up the whip just to "see how it would go". I started walking with her, encouraging her towards the grass, hoping that with the forward momentum I could stop, hold the longe line and turn her head to get a few steps of a circle. But with Matilda, sometimes forward momentum is forward momentum. When she hit the end of the line, her head did not turn in and she did not slow or stop. She just kept moving with me dragging along behind and I had to let go of the rope as if I meant to do just that.

I didn't let go of the rope lightly. When a horse walks away, dragging a 30 foot line behind them, bad things can happen. If she were to step on it and panic, she could really do damage to herself, but I thought it was the best thing I could do in that moment.

Fortunately my phone started ringing at this point and I had some other business to take care of, so I unclipped the line and let her munch for a while. It gave me a chance to regroup. She didn't come back to me, like on previous days. She just kept watching me and eating. With the lack of recent work I really can't expect much though, can I? Since we haven't been working together so much and we were doing new things, I thought she might be a little on edge and didn't want to walk up to her and try to clip the longe line to her halter while she was happily munching. I remembered that balk and didn't want to risk her running away. I took her regular lead and the target stick and used the target stick, along with the "touch" command to get her to lift her head and move away from the grass where I felt I could safely attach the lead.

A new decision to make. With the longe line, I could get more distance between us and be a little safer if Matilda lashed out, but thought maybe I should just use the lead (about 8 feet long) as a short longe line so that she couldn't work up so much momentum and I would have better control. I decided to keep her on the lead. But none of this solved the problem of how to get her to move in a circle around me. Matilda and I have been working on leading and walking together so long that she just sort of sticks with me and refuses to move away. I had to try the whip.

I backed Matilda up all the way to the end of the lead and positioned her so that I was facing her shoulder before I very carefully bent over to pick up the whip. I kept my eyes glued on her, since this very simple action has caused her to lash out and run off in the past. I was able to get the whip and stand up straight without incident.

We worked hard. Part of the time I ended up walking around her while she spun around her center (who is longing who here?) as I tried to get her moving around me. Then she would put her head down and buck or kick before taking off in a run, all the while trying to pull away from me. The whip obviously made her nervous as she alternated between running and stopping and turning to face it, trying to keep it away from her back side.

But then we hit a few sweet moments. She would break out of the run and fall into a nice steady trot. She would circle me just enough times to start making me dizzy before stopping and turning in to face me and the whip. I could pick up the rhythm of it after watching her do it several times and found my place to click and reward. Very tricky stuff. I had to click while she was moving at a steady pace, after she had gone more than a step or two in the trot but before she stopped or exploded back into the run. Then I had to step in and give her the treat as she stopped, before she could turn and look at me.

She never did settle into a walk. She never lost that nervous look in her eye that told me she was very uncomfortable and on the verge of panic. That's ok. I gave her as much freedom as I could, to do what she needed in order to cope, but kept an eye out for those moments when I could let her know she was close to doing what I wanted her to do.

We didn't do this for too long. It was incredibly stressful and trotting on a small circle like that isn't all that good for her, just a few times to get us started and then back to the classics.

We finished up with back and over (she was able to move laterally along a pole today) and grazed a path back to the paddock. It was an exciting day. Another small step to our ultimate goal. We'll keep chipping away at it until she is more comfortable and at ease with this whole whip and moving around me thing. I was very proud of her today. She didn't freak out when I picked up the whip or touched her with it, and I did get some circles out of her. I'd love to see quiet in her eyes, but I can wait. It'll come.