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.
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