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.