Hurry Up and Wait - Part 2

In the real world...

I have a horse named Sophie who has been severely sway-backed since she was one year old.  The condition, "early-onset lordosis", involves deformities in the vertebrae.  While some vets say it's not congenital, others feel it is.  We decided to err on the side of safety and not only never bred this mare, but at 20 years old, Sophie has never done anything other than be a pet horse.  She has ended up with essentially no training at all.

The area I am in New Mexico has a lot of volcanic rock, and the horses literally wear their feet down naturally, requiring no foot care at all unless they have conformation issues or are inactive. Even though lordosis supposedly doesn't impact a horse's health or performance, in the last year or so I've noticed Sophie wearing her feet differently, or more accurately not wearing them down like she had been. Sophie's right forefoot was starting to grow much longer than the other feet, and the others were beginning to lose the wonderful balance that they'd been exhibiting for the last 19 years.  Trouble was, Sophie had never had her feet handled, much less trimmed.  In fact, she was pretty sure that my bending over and even touching her lower leg was an act of predation.

Either Spiritual Horsemanship works on the ground, or it's just another crackpot horsemanship approach that amounts to one more way to bilk money out of the frustrated horse owner.  (Not that there is any charge for what I'm sharing, but you know what I mean.) I'm here to tell you that Spiritual Horsemanship works with real horses in the real world just fine.


An aside...

My relationship with my horses has always been along the lines of what I'm talking about in this blog.  Although it wasn't maybe quite at the level of what it is today, from day one my horses have been given a lot of options - so as dubious as Sophie was about my touching her feet, she wasn't unused to me doing things without restraint.  (This is my way of saying that if you do this at home, your results may vary.)

Let me also say that I have nothing against rewards, and I'm using treats as positive feedback for Sophie in the form of alfalfa pellets.  One positive response gets rewarded with one pellet.  Yes, that's not much of a reward, but Sophie doesn't get any pellets otherwise so she thinks it's pretty special.  The idea here is not to feed her, but to provide a spurt of pleasure that quickly and strongly connects her actions to that pleasure.  I could do it with a pat on the shoulder or even saying "good girl", but Sophie hasn't been handled enough for either to be as meaningful to her as the pellet.

And back to the process...

I started out by bending over and simply touching one shoulder, then walking to the other side and touching the other (front legs only at this time).  One pellet for each touch that Sophie allowed.  Two pellets each session, twice a day.

Sophie was free to walk away from me if she wanted to - a very clear communication!  This meant that I had to learn to never cause Sophie to want to say no.  I was the one being taught, I was the one altering my behavior, and Sophie the teacher.  My reward:  Sophie doing what I wanted.

Over the days I worked my way down each leg, a few inches more each session, till I got to the feet.  Total time invested each session: About 2 seconds of actual training and maybe two minutes of preparation (grabbing two pellets and walking over to Sophie, plus moving around her body).

When I got to the point where I could rest my fingers anywhere on each foot without Sophie even shifting her weight, I was ready to proceed to the next stage.  Everyone has their own preferred way of signaling a horse to pick up its foot, and mine is to gently squeeze the soft part of the fetlock behind the cannon bone.  Gently and briefly - and I release immediately and wait for a result.  The waiting part is as important as the squeezing part.

I started this process with Sophie about a month ago.  Today I can pick up each foot and hold it for a full second. Every time I do this I can hold the foot marginally longer than before, and each time the increase in time is by a larger margin.  Still, we're talking a whole month to get to this point, which may seem like a very long time.  And I haven't even introduced rasp or nippers.

What's the rush?

Most of the time we work with horses as we would with human children:  We drill, we repeat, we spend chunks of time going over the same thing.  Horses' muscles may benefit from repetition and increasing stress, but I'm not convinced their minds do.  I have found that when it comes to learning (training the mind vs. conditioning the body) what horses benefit from more than repetition is time to process - time for an incident to be stored in long-term memory rather than being lost in short-term memory that is constantly overlaid with input. The sheer uneventfulness of my one second foot handling combined with the little spike of pleasure, followed by sufficient time for that event to move into long-term memory, means that each time I do this with Sophie she's going a little bit further forward from the last time, making progress that needs no backtracking or correcting.

And that means steady progress, no matter how slow it might seem.

Walk away

Equally important as taking it slow is the removal of pressure.  A big part of how I work with Sophie is moving away from her immediately after giving her the pellet.  Body location is significant to horses.  We use it all the time when we free-lunge horses to get them to move, but keep in mind that it works the other way as well.  In another post I'll talk about how to use moving away from your horse as an inducement for the horse to come to you, but for now just remember that it's important to immediately reduce the pressure of you to give your horse the mental space to process what you really want him to process.  For now, the point is that when you're teaching your horse something new, moving away and reducing the pressure of your body location is an important tool to use.

This is the beginning of applied Spiritual Horsemanship

You don't have to start with a horse's feet.  You can start with anything you want as long as there is one clear, discrete thing for a horse to learn, and as long as you are willing to break the learning into tiny increments well spread apart.  The point here is to establish - to yourself as much as with your horse - that a partnership like this can really work, and to actually experience how it works.

Most of us find it very easy to either up the pressure or push the horse in some other way if the horse offers an opinion the human doesn't want.  But a horse's response doesn't always have to be yes when the human understands the value of a no.

Spiritual Horsemanship is who you are, not what you do

When you let the principles of Spiritual Horsemanship guide you - in your relationship with your horse as well as in your personal life - you will find that the slower you go, the faster you get where you want to be.

Hurry Up and Wait

Long associated with the military, where the grunts are mobilized in double-time to get ready for action and then end up cooling their heels for hours or days until being deployed, "hurry up and wait" applies to horsemanship as well - with a twist.  Giving up the hurry and being willing to wait gets you to your goal faster than you'd think.

I think we all know by now that quitting on a positive note is a good idea, but even so it seems that horses all too often still end up doing things the human doesn't have in mind.  Almost always that is what you get when you push a horse - when you hurry the process along on human time rather than horse time and end up having to backtrack to an earlier stage in the training or, worse, give in to the use of "remedial" training - punishment as a way of gaining "respect", force as a way of getting obedience.  In other words, forget the partnership.

"Longeing for respect"
Seriously - I didn't make that up
Hover over image for link

With Spiritual Horsemanship, partnership is not optional and is not a part-time relationship.  It's not the kind of phony deal where the human makes it "hard for the horse to do the wrong thing and easy for the horse to do the right thing" - a popular "natural horsemanship" sound byte that seems like a good idea but amounts to the horse having no say in the matter.

The partnership of Spiritual Horsemanship is a true one in which a horse can say no and the human accepts that response.

Which is not to say that the partnership can't bring about results the human wants.

A horse is content to go along with what the human wants because horses are herd animals and they are hard-wired to go with what the herd leader has in mind. Thus, if a horse says no, it means that either the horse doesn't believe the human is herd leader (a position mistakenly confused with forced dominance), there is fear involved, or the horse just doesn't understand the issue.

Part of the responsibility of the human member of the horse/human partnership is to recognize even the most subtle of communications from a horse. The trouble is, it's not quite as easy to tell when - or why - a horse is saying no as you'd think, particularly when you're holding a lead rope or reins or the horse is confined.  Is a hesitation and then a continuing a true no?  Is a shifting of weight to another leg a no or is it nothing?  If your horse turns his attention from you for a moment, is that a no or is it something else?

No or not no?

From the Spiritual Horsemanship perspective, the most unequivocal way to know what your horse is saying is to get rid of the reins, get rid of the halter rope, get rid of the fence.  Interact with your horse without anything restricting him and you will learn immediately what he is thinking.  If he's okay with what's going on, he'll stick with you.  If he's not okay, he'll leave. That's what would happen in a herd, that's what a horse understands, and if you are communicating with your horse on a level he understands you don't need anything more than that to get where you want to go.

Everything comes from you giving your horse true choice.  Without the freedom to leave, any interpretation you may have of what your horse wants is going to be shaded by what you want.  Trust your horse to voluntarily partner with you and allow your horse to come to your goals on his own. If you cannot trust your horse enough to do this, then what can you trust in yourself or the world?

Dive in.  Immerse yourself in true partnership.  Change yourself and the world will change for you.  Spiritual Horsemanship is about more than you and your horse - but this is where it starts.


Next week (March 6, 2013 or thereabouts):  Real world application - Sophie

Paean to a Good Mare

In memory of Suletta HCC (*Sukuris x HCC Rusletta)  1983-2013

Spiritual Horsemanship is so much more than a mere horse-human partnership. Even the best of partnerships are limited to a joining of entities with defined and separate roles that allow unequal entities to work together. Spiritual Horsemanship, however, is a much bigger concept. It is based on embracing and opening to all forms of contact on all possible planes of existence, as well as maintaining flexible and goal oriented roles through actively seeking some kind of basic equality. With Spiritual Horsemanship it doesn't matter on some levels that there is a human and a horse involved - it's much more important that there are two souls involved.

Think of it as bonding - a relationship where there's no true line between where one entity begins and the other ends, where the two (or more) bonded entities are One. There can be no inequality in a bond of souls.

Spiritual Horsemanship means an acceptance by the human in the relationship that all things are created of god-stuff, and that while all things may not be precisely equal on the physical level, they are equivalent - and One - on the spiritual level.

Learning by Doing

Suletta HCC was an interesting mare who taught me a tremendous amount about horses and Spiritual Horsemanship. When my husband and I set out for a Hyannis Cattle Company sale in Scottsdale AZ, way back in the mid 1980s, we didn't know that this particular mare would be joining our herd in California. We had checked the pedigrees of all the horses in the sale and had decided on her younger sister, a two year old that would work well with our own bloodlines and would be in our price range. That didn't happen - Su was meant to be our horse and so her sister went elsewhere and we ended up paying the maximum we had budgeted for a half-broke mare with a scarred hind fetlock and an attitude.

It was the attitude that taught me the most, of course. Attitude - meaning something other than a docile willingness to go along with the human program - is what can teach the most about horsemanship, since it's the biggest and clearest communication of the existence of a problem, a lack of communication, a block in the flow.

Su had been broke to saddle for the sale - more or less. We could see as she was trotted back and forth across the stage that she was barely under control, but we figured we'd work it out down the line. We didn't ask Su about that idea at the time, which would have been a good idea since she had a very different idea of what she wanted for her future than we did.

Hyannis Cattle Company horses were bred to be working athletes, so it wasn't surprising that Su was powerful and swift under saddle. Unfortunately, she also was a great candidate for rodeos - not as a roping or cutting horse, but as a bucking bronc. You never knew when she'd decide she'd had enough - it could be a few minutes or an hour or more under saddle, and it wouldn't be every time she was ridden. Su was clever about that - she had perfect timing, which is to say she was totally unpredictable in when she'd dump her rider. And dump them she would, no matter who was on her.

It took a while for we humans to figure it out.  We had enough horses under saddle right then (we were actively competing in endurance in those days) and since we had little enough hours as it was for all the conditioning we needed to put in, we decided there was little point in spending the time with the bucking issue if we could breed this mare.

What a great decision that was. Su was a spectacular broodmare. Her foals were athletic and well conformed, and we made money finding them good, competitive homes. But ultimately for me, the best and most valuable thing about Su was that she was a strong lead mare for our herd and as long as I listened to her, she would do whatever I wanted in that capacity.

Listening and Hearing 

Su wasn't the only horse teaching this lesson about Spiritual Horsemanship - we had dozens of horses at that point. But she was the most stubborn in getting the lessons through my own thick human head.  She was one of them that helped me understand what horses really were:  Fellow travelers along the spiritual path, souls temporarily manifesting in physical form.

Su helped me learn that listening, and then hearing, are an essential part of Spiritual Horsemanship. Both are acts of choice, particularly necessary when what is being listened to isn't offered in the usual human spoken language.

Listening is setting the intention to hear a message in whatever form it is delivered. Hearing is the act of receiving of the message. But it is the acceptance of the message as valid and meaningful that opens the door to Spiritual Horsemanship.

Honor and respect

Although they seem to be fading from our world these days in too many areas, the concepts of honor and respect aren't gone yet. They mean something very similar: Approval, pleasure and even wonder for another being (or object) for their abilities, qualities, or achievements; and to hold a being (or object) in high esteem.

Spiritual Horsemanship is about hearing a horse's message and following up with honor and respect.  It took many years before I realized how important it was to act on honor and respect. On the physical plane, actions are the true expression choice. Promises are empty words and honor and respect are meaningless concepts if not accompanied by actions.

Su's message to me always involved both what she didn't want to do and what she did. She was playing the same game we humans aim at our horses: She made doing the thing she didn't want to do (being ridden) unpleasant, while she rewarded the steps we took towards what she did want (being a broodmare). Being bucked off and hitting the ground hard while your horse runs off with her tail in the air is so much more dramatic than clicker training - yet we persisted for probably long enough that Su must have thought we were really dense.  We did get it eventually, though, and then we took the next step:  We honored and respected that message.  She became a broodmare and eventually the lead mare of our herd, and wow, what a great job she did of it.

Su is gone now, but she not only lives on in her foals, but also in me - the person I became through who she was.  For this is the ultimate reward and point of Spiritual Horsemanship:  Not to make a horse do what you want, but for you to become a better person.  A better person is a better horseman.  Your horse knows that already and patiently waits for you to learn this, too.

"...so in a poignant moment of awareness of another person's undesirable situation,give your undivided attention to the idea of improvement that has hatched from your interaction/observation. And as you learn to do that, not only will you be of increasing value to others, but you will see how your relationships with others adds immeasurably to your own becoming." ~ The Vortex: Where the Law of Attraction Assembles All Cooperative Relationships, by Esther and Jerry Hicks (an Abraham book)