Disney Horses Don't Bite

There's been polarity in the horse world over many things, blanketing beliefs, 'natural' hoof care, and training practices are just some of them. Luckily, most of us acknowledge that there is no such thing as one size fits all for any of these. If a horse needs shoes, put them on. If a horse doesn't need a blanket, don't use one. And if the training methods you are using don't fit the situation the horse is giving you, change.

I am generally considered a positive trainer. In the dog world, my training was anti-choke chain, teaching based. I firmly believed that if you take the time to teach the behavior you want, the dog would generally chose it. Other training that centered on waiting for the dog to mess up, then correcting, I didn't feel taught the dog and often created a frustrated animal and fear/aggression issues. 

Correction based training also made a huge gap in what people considered trainable breeds and those that weren't since some dogs were naturally more resistant to pain and less inclined to work with a partner. The way I trained, they all learned.

However, there were circumstances when a dog's world needed to come crashing down. They were few and far between, but I wasn't afraid to go there if that's what the dog needed. I once worked with an aggressive dog who removed his owner's nose. Literally. There are times escalating was necessary to save the dog's life and protect a human's. 

I believe the same with horses. If you've read this over the years you already know how much I like Buck Brannaman and Tom Dorrance. I believe in their understanding of horse behavior, their means of teaching instead of terrorizing are exactly what I did in the dog world. Trust is important with your horse. Understanding what it is you are asking is important with your horse.

That being said though, there are circumstances when positive training needs to go beyond "getting along with the horse at all times." There are times when a horse's world needs to come crashing down. Horses kill people and dangerous horses are quickly put down no matter how much you love them. 

Friday morning I went to take Bandon for a ride. I always groom and tack on crossties but I was just going for a bareback ride in the pasture so I threw the bareback pad on him while he was loose in his stall. 

A brief history on Bandon : Bandon came to his last racing owner labeled dangerous. He would literally try and kill people in his stall. The owner fixed his painful teeth, worked with him, and out came his soft natured puppy dog personality. However, if overly corrected, Bandon has no trouble switching his brain back to kill-or-be-killed. We tend to try and encourage the good and not nit-pick him on some of the mild bad stuff. 

With me, Bandon takes a correction well. I hate that expression, "takes a correction". It brings to mind a horse standing there being beaten and just taking it. What it means though is that if I correct him for being a punk, with an appropriate level of force for what he did wrong (and my timing is good) he gets it. He doesn't fight with me about it and usually straightens up pretty quickly.

Back to Friday, Bandon is girthy (yes I start with a loose girth, yes I slowly tighten it over a span of like 10 minutes). He likes to swing his head and snap in the air when you do his breastcollar and girth. If you raise an elbow in his direction or even say something, he'll stop, but he always does it a few times. 

Loose in his stall, bareback pad on, I went to cinch and wham. He nailed me. Hard. He ended up partially tearing the muscle in my arm, through my parka. 

Bandon's world immediately came crashing down, incredibly hard. It did not leave him with wounds of any kind and then it was over. 

As I stood in the middle of his stall, he was pressed against the back wall, looking at me. Then he dropped his head so low his chin nearly touched the shavings as he chewed submissively looking at my legs.

That was enough.

I went back to work without a word and Bandon stood, still loose, not moving a muscle while I cinched his pad. We were back to us again and it was done. 

I believe for a correction to work a few things have to be right: It has to be timed perfectly. It has to be fitting to the crime. It does NOT have to be free of anger. Natural horsemanship gets caught up a lot in "don't act in anger". It's totally okay to act in anger, just don't let it carry you past what is fair and reasonable for the crime. 

Could I have handled it different? Yes. Obviously I should have handled his warning air snaps over time with more seriousness than I did and the bite would have probably been prevented in the first place and no escalating would have been necessary. Should I have handled the actual bite differently? I don't think so. Biting, running over my space, and kicking are not tolerated. Period. Horses are too big and capable of too much harm to allow anything like that to be addressed in a way that is softer than how horses kick and bite each other to get a serious point across. 

I know this is a touchy subject for a lot of people and I don't have all the answers. In a few years I might think there was a better way than what I do now. I do know two things for sure :

1) You can always be MORE harsh/escalate if you were too soft but it is awfully hard to fix things broken by too much harshness in the first place.

2) Without boundaries positive training simply creates a beast with no regard. If you believe 100% positive will work at all times, move to Disney and get one of their horses.

“It’s not so much what we do, it’s how we do what we do. And all you are trying to do is get this horse to where you can operate the life in his body, through his legs to his feet, through his mind. The mind might come last because he don’t understand. But you have to give him space to learn. So it’s got to come from US to the horse. And what is your responsibility? It’s no different than raising a child. So this horse is running over you, walking on you, doing things you don’t want. Why would you let him do that? Who is the instructor? Who is the teacher? Who is taking care of this outfit?" - Ray Hunt

Bandon's Show Nerves

We found out about a local show right before it was going to be held, considering it was only 11 miles away, I felt like I had to haul Bandon out for much needed exposure. The trailer was going to be hooked up that day anyway for Sage to take Spotlight for a ride in the afternoon so it would be easy to load Bandon early and haul out for an hour then be back in plenty of time to get house chores done before Spotlight's ride.

Up early on my one sleeping-in morning, Bandon loaded perfectly. I was so excited that it was a good sign that our training was making progress from the June show. At the show site, he unloaded a little fresh, within about 10 minutes though he was responsive and breaking his time evenly between interest in his surroundings and grazing.

Dump truck? No problem.

Tractor starting up nearby and then tilling? No problem.

Loud speakers with announcers and music, no problem. A freight train literally passed us full speed on the other side of the street, no problem. Two people who had seen him at Rivermont in June asked what I'd done and if I'd drugged him. He was holding his own.

Then the first rider mounted up as the show began and Bandon broke out into a sweat.

He couldn't keep it together and acted like a horse who was herd bound and being left. He began pawing when I wouldn't let him jig in circles. He drug me once (much to my embarrassment) when a horse came close enough he thought he could get to it for a sniff. He didn't care that I had the dressage whip jammed into his chest asking him to back off.

Overall though I was really proud of how he acted. His track trainer reminds me today of just how far he's come from a horse at the track that was considered vicious and so nasty that no one wanted anything to do with him.

Unloading and reloading horses, we took Spotlight out and he did well for his little rider on her afternoon excursion.

Spot spooked and jumped sideways just a few moments after Sage mounted, she was brave about it and he was back to normal pretty quick. He opposed most of her directional choices, she was more adamant and won more often than he did, that's my girl!

Tarps Eat Horses, Adventures In Groundwork

Daily groundwork sessions are getting more creative adding in tarps and kid toys, it's so interesting to see how each horse reacts, what it takes to get them back to normal, and how they respond to scary stuff after the fear is gone.

Each horse spooked right out of the barn.

Spotlight spooked by jumping on top of me since the tarp and toys were on his far side. He literally pushed my hips over and stomped my foot. The hardest part of working him in this exercise was getting his pony body out of my space! Once he gave me space and one ear we moved forward again.

After calming, he never truly relaxed but was responsive to what I asked of him and loaded onto the tarp after one spook learning that it made noise when stepped on.

Bandon spooked by going head-up, snorting, frozen rigid in space. The hardest thing for him was when we walked away from it, Bandon wanted to surge ahead.

Once he was calm he was super inquisitive, chewing his relaxed mouth, and totally trusting of me.

He even let me put some objects on his body after going slow and conditioning both sides.

Czech spooked by running behind me and had a hard time getting out of that position. He was perfectly fine to let me handle whatever it was. Here the tarp and toys are up on the hill in front of him. Where Bandon & Spotlight couldn't take their eyes off the objects, Czech quickly decided not to take his eyes off me.

"You go first."

At the objects he was less eager to interact with them, holding his composure and remaining calm, just not interested in getting up close and personal.

He took the longest to convince to stand on the tarp and never quite got to a point of being happy about it.

Each horse reacted to the same situation so differently. I would have thought Bandon would take the longest to get on the tarp, and he did blow up the biggest, but he was the easiest to accept the new situation.

Not one of them minded being apart from the herd, even when horses in the barn were calling. They had no choice but to turn to me and work out what they saw in their mind as a bigger problem than being away from each other. Another sweaty, humid, muddy day spent well.

Before I leave this particular post, I feel like I need to clarify how I worked through this since there was no way to take video of how it all went down. First off, I believe doing work like this teaches me about how my horses react, how to help them overcome reactive situations, gives them some experience to draw on to condition them for better responses in the future, and makes us look to each other for trust. We worked mostly with forward and backward motion, circles if needed, until the horse was ready for more. Nothing was forced.

Second, I do not believe in simply desensitizing aka sacking out. I don't personally feel that scaring a horse on purpose over and over until it stops moving in response to that particular fear, is teaching anything and can create instability (especially if you are working Thoroughbreds). Same goes for forcing a horse to run every time it reacts, as punishment for a fear response, I don't believe that's a smart way to handle ex-racehorses.

I could be wrong but that's where my beliefs are at on the matter today based on what my horses tell me and I'll probably hold to that until they tell me something different.

“There is no way that the horse will ever try to take  advantage of you. He’s as honest and as truthful as anything you could ever work with. He has no ego that gets in his way. He has no pride that gets in his way. He doesn't know what win or lose is. And those are the four things that get in the human’s way. It’s very sad. All the horse is trying to do is survive; he’s trying to make it. So I try to work with him like he was me, just like I hope he would work with me.”  Ray Hunt 

Clocking In

School has officially started for my entire crew of 5. It was surreal reaching a milestone like that after 9 years of at least one child with me 24/7. All at once I wanted all the time I'd had with them back, it was a tough morning.

The horses must have known that I'd be seeking comfort from them and needed to stay busy, they obliged my need by coming up the first day completely covered in wet mud. Mother nature had not been as considerate of me dumping inches of rain the day before school and likely continuing for at the next 10.

Since riding is out in these conditions, groundwork after grooming was all that was left. We had to do something. 

Groundwork stinks. It's the tedious work that builds great foundation blah blah blah. It's good stuff for your horse and your training, it's dull as tarnish for a girl who prefers to have the wind in her face, and more repulsive when there is sticky boot-sucking mud coupled with humidity so high your clothes are stuck to you before 9 am. But it's needed for a bratty pony and two big boys who need reminding that I'm important in new areas on the ground away from the herd.

Earlier this week I had a great chiropractor from Alabama come out and he spent quite a while working Czech's hip, when Czech would pop he'd stretch his neck out and sigh a groan of approval. Two days later I saw him in the pasture canter on his usual left lead, then choose to pick up his right without cross cantering. Fingers crossed that helped.

This groundwork stuff I know we should be doing diligently all along, but let's face it, most of us on limited time just get on and go with just a little longe first. Now that my time is open for the horses during the day, maybe some October shows would be a good goal. Working the horses out alone is also tremendously good for their minds and their respect/bond to me. Having the time consistently to do the work facing some of these problems is exciting.

I still miss her all the time. I find myself cleaning her stall sign and wishing her head was nudging me while I did it. The skills she taught me I use today and the courage I found with her pushes me to see what heights I can go with the boys.

Barn Work Does Not = Ground Work

It's been an uneventful Christmas/New Years around Seven Hearts as we dealt with weeks alternating days of all-day rain then a sky full of clouds keeping everything a mess. Above freezing days the sop tried to suck off my boots. Days when it was colder, the rivets the horses' hooves had created were solid with ice making a walk to the barn similar to a walk on a stone field with jagged rocks at all angles.

Needless to say, no horses have been worked. As lucky as I know I am to have these horses, it is cruel to finally have Chris home from work with the kids extra days and NOT be able to ride. Cabin. Fever. Sucks. Today is the first day the sun has returned...

I felt like I had to do something with them yesterday since it was Whisper's 11th birthday. Grooming under artificial light in my dry barn is all I could do and she wasn't thrilled with that plan. She's also looking at everything for a reason to spook sending the other 2 into snorting fits as well, yes even my calm headed Spotlight. It's kind of ridiculous that a bird chirp can send Whisper from standing into a dead run (even if you are attached to the leadline attached to her face) and yet she lives with this flock on a daily basis.

Bandon hasn't benefited from the limited handling either, he's being more difficult than usual when it came time for me to start work at his poll. His bridle path has gotten to a length of about 3 inches and we've been working nightly on him letting me touch. As I started to do anything more than that, he fought hard. We ended on a good note, with nothing but a tiny chunk of hair cleaned up. I asked his former assistant trainer how they did it while he was at the track and she relayed that he was usually trimmed up while he was sedated for something else.

This is definitely going to be a work in progress.