Week 2 (Unwanted) Thyme-Out
And it was all going so well.....
Thyme is my ‘teacher’, but I reckon events can be good teachers too. On Sunday the day after updating this blog, I brought Thyme and Charlie in to work them both. As I was turning them out (leading them together....) a JCB started up and moved at the same time in Charlie’s peripheral vision. He didn’t put his trust in me.
Instead he reacted according to his own instinct and jumped sideways, knocking me down and spooking Thyme too. I fell between the 2 of them and they ran, trampling me. I felt hooves connect with my arm, knee and head. ‘Oh that’s not good’ I thought as I lost consciousness.
I came round after about 30 seconds according to my son, who was with me, but couldn’t move for quite a while. It is that memory of me helpless in the freezing slushy yard that has got me thinking. How to respond? Just one of those things? Horses are horses?? All horses can be unpredictable??? Well, yes, that is all true. And Charlie has never taken off with me – or anyone else – before. But I have a nagging doubt that maybe this should NOT have happened.
Charlie generally seems willing to trust me: I can groom all over his body and move all of his feet at will – forwards, backwards, sideways. He leads on a loose lead rein. He backs up with slight pressure. He backs away from the stable door. He waits politely when I have opened his stable, making no attempt to barge past me. All signs (I thought) of trust and respect in me as a leader. But when the chips were down, he looked to his own instincts.
This made me think of something Anna Reeves wrote on a thread about humans needing to learn how NOT to behave like predators while horses have to learn how NOT to behave like prey animals. Yes, horses can be unpredictable but a sign of a good parternship is if they can suppress their own instincts and place their trust in us. He didn’t. So does Charlie REALLY trust me? And if not, why can I do all those things so easily with him?
I have come to the conclusion that I am confusing TRUST with TRAINING. He backs away from the stable door, because I have trained him to. He backs up with light pressure because I have trained him to. He leads on a loose lead rope, stands still in his own space etc etc etc because I have TRAINED him to. But he does not do other ‘trust/respect’ things that have not been explicitly trained. He will tread on my toes. He will nudge my pockets for a treat. He will use me as a scratching post on occasion. I have never really minded these things so I have not trained him not to do them. But I now believe that these casual signs of ‘affection’ or clumsiness are actually evidence of disregard of me as a leader. He would NEVER shove his head in a higher ranking horse’s face or tread on their toes. What does it say about how he views me, that I let him do these things to me.
So lesson 1: Re-establish boundaries. Re-establish leadership credentials. Sadly not straight away because I have been house-bound :cry: I was unable to help my escaped horses. They were fetched by someone else while I was carted off to hospital and others from the yard have been looking after them. (Can you tell by the ridiculous post count of the last few days!!
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I have consoled myself with some retail therapy and bought this book:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Fearless-Ho...=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1328204124&sr=1-1
Strange really, as it was a fairly whimsical purchase based on not much.... I had planned to buy a Slyvia Loch book next. Perhaps the ‘fearless’ horse bit appealed. But amazingly every page just summed up:
a) my hopes for Thyme and this blog
b) my recent musings about respect
c) the bits I like best from Mark Rashid, Monty Roberts, Clinton Anderson, Heather Moffet & Parelli!
Weird. There is even lots written about the ‘energy centres’ stuff I mentioned last time I posted. There is lots of ‘directing energy’ to places with mental focus or intent. Very ‘Rashid’. The author is a BHSI. And bred Primmore’s Pride – 2 times Badminton winner. So a fair degree of credibility. She turned to nh when a colt she had was about to be PTS because he was dangerously uncontrollable. Nh was his last chance - and was very successful with him.
Anyway, I have read the book from cover to cover and here are a few sentences that have got me excited: “Every effort to learn his language will be appreciated by your horse: he himself is absolutely fluent in the use of body language to communicate, and a very good teacher if you allow him to teach you.”.... “to enable your horse to give his very best performance you need him to be offering you quality in his work because he wants to please you and he respects you as his elected leader – not in submission to dominance”... “we need to learn to overcome our predatorial behaviour; they in turn need to act less instinctively like prey animals”. Yes!
And lesson 1 – as luck would have it – is on ‘Developing Respect for Your Personal Space” – no matter how challenging the circumstance! As I said before.... when the student is ready the teacher appears. Perhaps the universe decided I needed to be just a bit more ready and receptive..... :wink:
Today I got to the yard. Hurray! Finally. Just managed to hobble up to the field and brought Thyme in for lesson 1: backing her out of my space, never yielding to her. It was bit of an eye opener and again reinforced this idea about the difference between TRAINING and RESPECT. Thyme leads beautifully (as she has been trained....) But when I stopped to talk to a friend Thyme casually took a couple of steps in my direction while hoovering up stray wisps of hay. I would normally have stepped away without even thinking about it – giving her a very powerful message about our respective ‘rank’. I didn’t. I squared up to her and bumped her with the rope. She backed away again and I dropped the posture and went back to chatting with my friend while Thyme patiently waited. I then took her into the school and we worked on her backing away from me, just from my body language. She picked it up very quickly. And her head dropped in that nice, willingly submissive ‘ok I’m listening’ way. Charlie’s turn tomorrow.... (Leg not up to working both horses in one day)
Feeling positive about this..... As they say – everything happens for a reason! :skip:
