Brain Fizzle

OK, so after I said I was going to take pictures of the fantastically dirty Stella mare, I had an even better idea...if I was going to go through all the trouble of trying to get decent photos, why not make them ones of her CLEAN and SHINY and do a conformation assessment? I've never done a post on her conformation specifically, and most of the photos that have been up of her aren't conformation critique-able.

So I set out on said mission. Then life happened, boyfriend had a bad day at work (and said boyfriend was supposed to be my horse holder) and Stella just wasn't in the mood to stand still (it was feeding time, probably my bad...) I got a few shots but they are so horrendous, so horrible, so unflattering that I could never in a million years post them here. I don't care to make my lovely, feminine mare (almost-mare, she'll be 6 this April!) look like a jug headed, imbalanced baby yak. Seriously, they were awful. I can deal with the winter fuzz and some residual mud, but nothing about the photos were flattering in the least.

We'll go for round two when we get a decent sunny, dry day, although based on weather.com that won't be happening in my neck of the woods until after the weekend.

But, in other news, we have a great couple of sessions this week. Monday was fabulous. We're working on the concept of "come": it occurred to me after listening to one of Dr. Deb's audio horsemanship lessons that my mare doesn't understand the concept of "come". She understands "go away" because that's all I've ever asked, but it makes much more sense to teach "come" before to send a horse out and then expect them to want to join up with you.

Here's what I learned: round penning in the sense that everyone knows it today (where you immediately send the horse away, make them run, and then ask them to step towards you and follow you) is completely backwards. In order to set the horse up to really succeed and understand A) what is being asked of them, and B) that the person in the pen isn't a monster giving them an ultimatum (i.e., "either run 'till you drop or give in and follow me around"), but a teacher they should want to be with, the horse needs to be taught how to "come" before they are asked to "go away". Before you even teach a horse to come, they need to understand the principle of untracking the hindquarters. Some call this disengaging the hind end, but they aren't the same thing. Disengaging the hind end is a term/method invented by self-advertised horse trainers who saw what greats like Tom and Bill Dorrance, Ray Hunt and Harry Whitney had done and tried to replicate it without understanding it. Disengaging the hind end is these trainer's way of getting the horse to move away the most dangerous part of his body, therefore giving the trainer the horse's head. It's a psychological tool that doesn't serve a higher purpose after it's taught. Untracking, on the other hand, is teaching the horse that, under pressure (which starts out as just a tap from a rope or whip and ends up as nothing more than a position taken up by the handler on the ground), he should pick up the appropriate hind leg and bring it up and under his body, crossing it under his navel. By doing this, he is not only psychologically yielding to the trainer, but he is also learning the first lesson of how to use his body to carry a rider. Bringing the hind leg under the body effectively sets the horse up to lift the abdomen and raise his back by tucking his pelvis, which he has to do to protract the hind leg.

This lesson of untracking then goes on to be used in the round pen. Instead of asking the horse to go away or chasing him and pressuring him to force him to make the choice to follow the handler, the horse is asked, while moving freely, to untrack the hind end. By asking for the untracking and then "inviting" the horse to come to you by bending slightly at the waist and opening the angle of the arms, you set the horse up to A) round in the turn towards you, and B) continue moving in your direction. You reward the horse for his efforts (no matter how small), and immediately he understands that you control where his hind end goes, and he is MORE than happy to follow because the message is so clear. There's no running, no flying dirt, no sweaty horse at the end. I'm happy to report that as of Monday Stella understands "come" and will oblige at both the walk and trot. I haven't allowed her off the line yet but the lunge is absolutely slack when I ask and she comes without hesitation. The next step is to do it in true free movement, so I am not attached to her in any way. We're getting there; what we've accomplished so far is so wonderful I can't wait.

Be on the lookout for picture overload, Stella's got some interesting conformation to discuss...