When a horse feels poorly it is always accompanied by a degree of resistance. This resistance can appear as a multitude of different symptoms that range from almost imperceptible (eg a slight leaning on the reins or minor crookedness) to quite severe (eg bolting or uncatchable). Sometimes the resistance has many faces and is not represented by a single symptom.
Commonly, the emotions that are the source of the trouble are so established that it is as if the request from the rider and the ill feelings, and the poor response (resistance) are super-glued together. Every time a horse is asked for a response the emotional trouble and accompanying resistance are triggered simultaneously. They are inseparable. This is often because a pattern of ill feelings and resistance is tightly linked to a rider’s request.
It’s quite a common occurrence that simply adjusting the pressure or changing the timing to add more clarity to the rider’s cues cannot break this pattern. It’s like when asked by a person at the supermarket checkout “how are you?” a person always gives the same response even without thinking about it. It’s a tried and true pattern that isn’t broken by simply changing the speed of the question or the volume or pitch of the question asked. To break the pattern might require asking the question in a different way such as “If I were to ask you are you suffering any health issues today, what would your response be?” This change in the way we were asked might break our traditional response or at least give us pause to think about the question for a moment.
Let me give you an example. A while back I posted a series of stories about my horse Satts. He had developed a pattern of feeling defensive in an aggressive way when I applied leg pressure. He would feel my leg being applied to his sides and instantly swing around to grab my leg. It was almost like a reflex. The behaviour came from ill feelings caused by a lack of understanding about how to yield to a rider’s leg pressure. Just applying more leg pressure or alternating my left leg and right leg pressure or using a tap from a whip to support the notion of moving forward to my leg pressure was not enough to eradicate those bad feelings. The aggression and the attempt to bite my leg persisted.
I knew I had to break the pattern and I chose to break it by doing something different that Satts would not expect and would not automatically trigger his aggression. So I rode with a dog toy that would squeak when squeezed. It instantly broke the pattern of aggression because Satts did not know how to respond – he did not have a pattern of response to squeaky dog toys. He quickly figured out that when he heard the sound, relief was found in moving forward with energy. At first, it was fear-driven, but then it became a response from understanding. Once this was established, introducing my leg to accompany the squeaking was a minor issue. In a short time, I could dispense with using the dog toy and Satts was very comfortable going forward from leg and seat pressure alone.
In a second scenario with a horse that was stuck about going forward from my leg pressure, I used a very different approach to break his pattern. He was a very stuck gelding that would plant his feet harder the more leg pressure I applied. Whenever I wanted a bigger walk or a trot or a canter, the horse would wring his tail violently, flinging his head and making only a token attempt to put out more energy.
This went on for a couple of weeks or so and I wasn’t making a lot of headway. Finally, I was riding in a large arena with a friend. I ask the friend to ride around the outside of the arena at a trot and as she came up behind me I wanted her to ask her horse to canter. At the same time, I would ask my horse to canter (something I had never been able to achieve up to then). So my friend trotted ahead and went around the perimeter of the arena, while I kept encouraging my horse to move more forward. I heard her approaching from behind and when she was within about 4 or 5 strides behind me she asked her horse to canter alongside my horse. At the same time, I asked my horse to canter.
As my friend’s horse started to go past us, my horse took off like a NASA rocket. We went past my friend and her horse like they were a blur. There was no holding my horse back – he was gone and bolting as fast as he could. Everybody else in the arena scattered and we were heading for the fence out of control. My horse was either going to slide to a stop or try to jump and I prepared for either event. But in 2 strides before the fence, my horse skidded to a stop and hit the wall with a bang against his chest. From that time on he showed amazing improvement and I was able to ride him with a lot more forward and far less ill feeling. The pattern was broken. I’m not suggesting you try to make your horse bolt to break a pattern, but there is a lesson to learn here.
When we allow a pattern to become ingrained, sometimes we need to think outside of the box of our own patterns. The link between a trigger (pressure), a response (horse’s behaviour) and poor emotions need to be broken if we are to help horses that carry deep ill feelings change for the better.
We are the smarter species and it seems a shame that we sometimes fail to use our smartness and default to our own pattern with no change in our clarity.
Satts in his racing days