I guess it's been a while

            I'm actually not sure if anyone reads this blog, since no one has left comments here. But one way or another, I sometimes find it valuable to write my thoughts out about what I've been doing. I hope that whoever is reading enjoys that.

            This post was drafted in the beginning of January, but I haven't had a chance to proofread and post it until now. 

            Talana and I have had a good couple of months (November to early January). I have learned a lot about hoof trimming, and her feet are really starting to look good. She has started moving in ways I have never seen her comfortably move; picking up her hind feet higher and offering to jump and canter just for fun.
            We are making progress on her training, as well. I am starting to re-teach her lunging. I am also working on getting her more focused and trusting when I am riding her.
            The lunging is kind of a big deal, because she was so terrible at it. What happened before is that she would just stick her nose out of the circle and trot faster and faster without paying any attention to what I was actually asking her to do. I have successfully lunged horses before, so it was clear that she wasn't getting what I was asking of her. She was just tensing up and trying to escape.
            To lunge successfully, there has to be a balance between leading the horse and driving the horse. You want the horse to move in a forward fashion, but not zoom away from you in a panic.  You want the horse to have her attention inward, on you, but not fall in and end up standing on you. What Talana was doing was responding excessively to my driving pressure - swinging the end of the rope or whip a little to send her forward - and failing to "hear" the balancing cue asking her to keep her focus inward toward me. I knew I was not using excessive pressure, but Talana seemed to think that even a tiny bit was too much. She was going into the exercise with the assumption that she couldn't get the right answer, so she was tense rather than focused and engaging with me.
            So I just took away that pressure. Rather than standing next to her and cuing her forward with the combination of a leading gesture in the direction I want plus a driving pressure from behind, I led her on a long line. She is great at leading. She knows what I'm asking, and is not tense. When my gaze is turned in the direction we are going instead of at her, she is less worried about what I might do to her and feels safer about watching me. So we did a lot of walk-trot-walk-halt transitions where I gave her four or five feet of the rope to work with and expected her to come along with me and move at the speed I was cuing, but not looking at her. (Well, I did look at her. I cheated and peeked out the corner of my eye at her to make sure she was coming along and see how she was responding.)

            When she seemed comfortable with this exercise, I re-introduced the driving pressure a tiny bit at a time.
            Leading her forward at the trot, I brought my left arm forward and pointed her in the direction we were moving, while dropping into a walk beside her. When she slowed to stay behind me, I clucked and verbally encouraged her to keep trotting. I did not introduce further pressure yet. I just wanted her to figure out that I was asking her to keep trotting while I walked next to her (and further away from her) with my body angled toward her. As soon as she was trotting forward nicely like this with me beside her for a few strides (not swinging her head around either toward or away from me), I asked her to walk again and went back to leading by her head. This way, she could figure out what I was asking, but not have a chance to decide she was worried about it and swing her head out. She had to watch me to find out what we were doing.

            We did this a whole bunch, and then I gave her a break to just stand. She's getting better at standing when I ask. I can tell that she understands now that it is all right to stand still - that sometimes that's all I'm asking her to do and she doesn't have to tense up and move around.
            I slowly increased the length of time asking her to trot next to me rather than behind me. Then I introduced turns so that we could begin moving in a circle this way. At first, she would turn but drop the trot into a walk as she came around. She would bob her head a little and tense up as she became concerned about what I was asking. But I was able to ask with just a tiny bit of pressure for her to continue trotting - it did not take very much to keep her moving forward. Then, before you know it, I was walking a small circle while she was trotting a larger one around me. It wasn't perfect, but she was watching me about eighty percent of the time. The other twenty percent she spent tensing, looking around, and apparently trying to decide how worried she should be about what we were doing. And the cool thing was that she slowed to a walk when I asked, and went back up to a trot when I asked, and halted when I asked. This is new. The big obvious problem I had with lunging her before was that once she started trotting, she tuned me out and just kept going no matter what I was doing. But now I had enough of her attention in a relaxed enough frame of mind for her to understand the game we were playing: Watch the human and see if you can figure out where she wants you to go.
            It seems that she likes this game. She is certainly very good at it. Talana really wants to stay with me; she is interested in what I am doing and where I am going. She wants to come along. If I am able to teach her that it is always safe to do whatever I am asking - that as long as she is trying, I am happy with her - then I can use this as a tool to teach her new things. Lunging isn't exactly a new thing for her, but we are approaching it in a novel way. This is helping her remain engaged and relaxed as we play the game. What I want when we are playing the lunging game is for her to focus on me and try to figure out what I'm asking her to do. This focus allows both of us to be safer, since we are able to take care of each other, and it also helps us have more fun, because teamwork is a lot more fun.
            The next game, which I've already started introducing, is driving with two long lines. It's great that we are able to do circles. But... that's kind of limited, don't you think? It would be much more fun if we can go in any direction. Driving with two long lines, we could do all sorts of things! We could have adventures in the meadow. I could get her to practice jumping over small things without bucking, without having to also practice falling off of her. So I'm introducing a second long line. I'm using her sidepull as a halter anyway, so it's easy to just clip the lines on like reins. More on this in my next post!