Today Sara and I took Drew and Sully, the mare she is training while waiting for her to get pregnant, over to Tarrin’s to film the obstacles test for the Q2 Working Horse Central show. We were ready for fun!
In our horse show outfits.
It went pretty well, other than Sara’s first video failing. Luckily Sully did just as well the second time. She’s learned so quickly! And it’s beautiful to watch her trot.
They are friends now that they’ve trailered together. Before, Sully wanted to eat Drew.
Drew did okay. He started out refusing to do the figure 8, which confused me, because he hardly ever refuses to walk with me. Then he got better until he fell down heading into the slalom! I did the right thing by checking on him.
Oops. Dramatic film footage.
It got better after that and he did fine on the other parts. Tarrin said his jump was beautiful. That made up for the other parts.
That’s my boy.
It was a good experience except I got all upset with myself for not leading Drew well enough and that he fell. Normally I’d be fine but you know, it’s been a hard week.
I’m proud of what we can do, since we’re both rank beginners.
Also, since I get overheated so easily, I gave up trying to do a second take. It’s just like an in-person show, you lead the horse that showed up and accept the performance. Tomorrow we do the Functionality test. Maybe this time we will do better on that! If not, we will learn things and know what else to work on.
Here is the raw footage. Six minutes of our lives.
Back at home we are all happy and eating dinner. Life’s good if you are one of our horses!
Dinner time.
Lots got done here, too. Both the Hen House and the Suna Shack got latches to hold the doors open, and lots got done of the living space for Lee’s brother (no photos yet).
I will admit that softness is a thing I always wanted to have with horses, but I thought I was just making up, since nothing seemed soft about dealing with them for much of the time I’ve been around them. I have always been told to be harder, be more assertive, and be more of a leader (which is what I learned about in the previous book about passive leadership).
I know why that all is, of course, but I was intrigued to read how Mark Rashid and some of the people he’s worked with have gotten to a different level with horses, to where they don’t have to do much at all to work together as a team and achieve goals. The softness does require concentration, attention, and effort, so it’s not a breeze. And it’s a lot of working with energy and intent – something that I actually am good at! How about that?
I got some great ideas about how my attitude and intentions when around the horses can make things go better, and I was eager to try them out when I got back from my trip.
Who knows if it’s “working” or not, but I have enjoyed keeping positive intentions and kindness in my heart as well as taking everything that happens as the right thing. It’s been nice to think the horse has a voice in what we do, too. That was great with Mabel when she was sick, and in both my lessons last week. I’ve continued it all week when I work with Drew and Apache.
Another thing Rashid talks a lot about is aikido concepts of meeting force with less resistance. I don’t explain it well, but he told a story of when a man showed up at the ranch where he worked all bent out of shape, aggressive, and rough. Rashid’s mentor didn’t react much, just asked quiet questions and moved slowly in response to the man’s aggression. Soon, the man quieted down, and the mentor was then able to give him some suggestions. The idea was the more violent the guy got, the more passive the mentor got, so that the average of their energy was in the middle. Rashid talked about doing that with horses as part of his softness energy work.
I thought about doing the same with people and even got a chance to act on it when someone in my life got angry and acted out. I didn’t respond until they began to settle down, and I am pretty sure that happened faster because I didn’t add energy into the mix. That wasn’t easy for me, but I breathed and thought of lovingkindness. I’ve been doing that a lot these days.
Back to the book. An added bonus to this book is that he included some stories from people he’s worked with, about how they found softness in various aspects of their lives in addition to the horses they worked with. That was invaluable to me. This book was well worth reading and had way fewer typos than the previous ones.
Here’s a short book report, since I talked about this book in a recent post already. Whole Heart, Whole Horse: Building Trust Between Horse and Rider, by Mark Rashid (2009, 2014) is another book that helps you put a finger on what’s going right and what’s going wrong with your relationship to your horse. And there’s some human-human wisdom in there as well.
As usual, Rashid tells a lot of stories about his younger days with his mentor, as well as stories about people and horses he met during his clinics. One of the things that struck me with this book is how well he combines intuition with knowledge of how both people and horses work. His clinic attendees must really get a lot out of their interactions.
From this book, I learned how important balancing your reactions to things, so that horses can mirror your reactions and minimize their own reactions. His discussion of using energy to cue horses as much or more than physical cues makes a lot of sense to me. I can see where I’ve done my own horses a real disservice, but at least I have a plan for what I can work on moving forward.
We will keep working on it.
I just hope I haven’t ruined poor Apache’s life with all my emotions, fear, and inability to remain calm no matter what. I’m getting better, though, and hope I can be more consistent. That’s the other thing Rashid talks about, how horses learn to trust people through consistency. That has always been hard for me, since most of the time I’ve been with Apache I’ve not lived with him, and have been gone a lot. But you know, I also have to live my own life, so I’ll just do the best I can. I’m sure that’s what he’s doing too.
And I will try my best to forge a good relationship with Drew, now that I am getting more training and have learned more. I guess the oldest “child” is always the one that has to deal with inexperienced caregivers.
Just feed me.
I recommend any of his books to people who want to learn more about how the relationship between horses and people works. The more you learn, the more nuggets you can take and apply to your own life with equines. Plus, you’ll grow to love the horses he has worked with as much as Rashid did.
You may remember that a couple of days ago we were surprised by a fire alarm in the building where we are staying, right in the middle of important meetings I was supposed to be holding. Going down all those stairs, then trying to train people in software from an overly sunny condo balcony was hard on my nerves. I am not convinced that it was traumatic, but it was most assuredly unnerving. I ended up getting rid of all my nervous energy by taking a very, very brisk walk up and down the Myrtle Beach boardwalk, which is about a mile and a half.
Some of the boardwalk area is not even a little sleazy.
I felt a lot better after that and was able to get through the day. I must admit, however, that I walked more briskly than I realized, because my legs still hurt today…and I’m used to doing a lot of walking! I’m sure I look like I’m old and arthritic when I try to haul myself up out of a chair or go downstairs.
Latest reading matter
Anyhow.
Here’s some more of that synchronicity that’s been happening to me ever since I declared myself someone who didn’t believe in such things. I sat down in bed last night to read more from Mark Rashid, the horse trainer who talks about people’s relationships with horses and how horses’ minds work. One of the first stories I read in Whole Heart, Whole Horse: Building Trust Between Horse and Rider was about a horse who had been through some rough times just could not settle down and whose person had tried “everything” to get it to do her bidding. Except one thing.
I feel as if some trauma is about to happen.
Rashid suggested that if the horse wanted to run, to let it run. Sure enough, after the horse ran all its energy off, it calmed down. He shared how his mentor had done the same with another horse that was a bundle of nerves. They just ust let it go run and run until it got all of the nerves out of its system and felt better.
Perhaps I will need to run and run to feel better after this lady takes away the torture device and stops shining scary lights in my mouth.
Huh, I guess that works with people as well as horses, because I’m just great now (other than sore legs), even after enduring a sales meeting!
I think I will take a nap, instead.
I remember letting Drew loose to run and run soon after I got him back in July of 2021, too. He came back much calmer and has not acted jumpy or upset since then. Rashid posits that it’s how animals who get scared often, like prey animals, get rid of their post-scare adrenaline and go back to calmly grazing and otherwise going about their normal prey-animal lives. Interesting.
I may be woozy, but not so woozy that I don’t want to cuddle up with some hay. And my teeth feel better.
Back at the Ranch
As you can see from the photos above, Drew got a visit from Bonnie, the equine dentist, yesterday. He has a cracked tooth, so she looked at it and did some work to make it less likely to get worse. He did just fine and thanks to sedatives, he was not traumatized. Dental care is really important for young horses whose teeth are still coming in, so I’m grateful that she was able to get him seen along with her horses.
Now Drew is back home with his friends at our part of the ranch after his little vacation among the green g
Someone had fun hereAll traces of fun are gone thanks to the high tide
We’ll see if tomorrow brings more adventures than canceled meetings and gale winds, but I’m afraid my fun field trip on another boat tomorrow may be canceled. I may just have to watch the lifeguard making fun tracks in the sand that will soon get overwritten by the high tide. That’s fine. I’m safe and warm and my family is mostly all right.
I read another horse book on my way to South Carolina, Horses Never Lie, by Mark Rashid (2011) (Sara tells me it’s pronounces Rash-idd). It’s the kind of book I enjoy reading, with lots of stories used to make the point, rather than a lot of pontificating and such. It also backs up my gut feelings about horses and explains why some methods of horse training (such as forcing a horse to keep going on and on until it bows to your wishes) make me uncomfortable.
Note that it’s the second edition.
The book talks about passive leadership, a concept Rashid explains in his comments for the second edition to have been a hard one to make sure people understand. I like the idea, and it makes sense after my limited amount of horse observations.
The idea is that horses don’t necessarily follow a leader who pushes, prods, bites, kicks, or hits them (human or horse), but rather a leader who is calm, seems to have a clue what they are doing, and treats them with respect. That’s what passive leadership is. In horses, these leaders don’t set out to lead, they just end up leading because they are the horse with the most chance of keeping the rest of them safe, at least in the other horses’ eyes.
The dominant horse (mare, stallion, or gelding) is obeyed, but never trusted or sought out for companionship. Interesting ideas when you apply them to people. Rashid provides helpful examples, both of how horses act when left to their own, and how they act with people. I know that I’ll be a better horse leader having read this, which is good, because I have been repeatedly told what a sucky leader I am, because I can’t “make” Apache do what I want to do. Now I see that sometimes I am letting him have a say in his life, and sometimes I do need to show him leadership…just the right kind.
In any case, there is always more work to do when it comes to horsemanship, and the big lesson I’m getting right now from the books I read, from my trainer, and from wise friends is that you should take what works for you and leave the rest – but make informed decisions based on your learning. Where did I hear that before? Oh, yeah, back when I was a La Leche League Leader and trying to figure out how to best feed and parent my children. Ha, maybe I’ve just moved on to a different species for my caring and nurturing focus.
By the way, if you’ve read this far but didn’t read the review of the horse book I read before this (hardly anyone read it), I encourage you to read the Horse Brain, Human Brain book. It also provided great insights into both human and horse behavior that can be helpful.
Why the Three-Star Review
You may have noticed that I gave this book only three stars. Well, besides the fact that not every book can have five stars, I just got annoyed by the typos in the book. My guess is that it was self-published, but if I spot three typos in a book, I get disappointed. In this one, I found three separate instances of the letter “a” appearing where there should be a letter “u” in the word. And it wasn’t some weird dialect of English either.
Ran for Run, p. 91 and 176
Rash for Rush, p. 201
Ok, yeah, editors should not read self-published books. I know that. The last one I read had a whole bunch and the person wasn’t even interested in hearing about them. OK, fine. Hope someone buys it anyway.
By the way, yes, I know my blog has typos. A lot of posts are written on the phone, and my ancient and chubby fingers end up making some doozies sometimes. I would appreciate it if you pointed them out so I can fix them. I typed this post. Let’s hope it’s not too bad.
I’m probably going to read another of Rashid’s books, so I didn’t get all that upset with the typos; I’d just prefer to not see any. Back to staring at the ocean.
For the five of you who read my review of Horse Brain, Human Brain from this morning, you might find what happened this afternoon really interesting.
Not me. I’m a hen.
The author of that book, Janet Jones, claimed that horses can learn from observing other horses. She shared that she’d seen horses learn to open gates and do ground work just by watching. I didn’t think I’d seen that before. Well, I saw it today!
Kathleen and I were measuring Mabel with the horse height tool we’d found. (16 hands) we accidentally left a gate open, and of course everyone except Dusty went out. We were fine with it, because we knew they’d come back at feeding time.
We’re free.
I ended up out there with them for a while, because I was urgently searching for the beverage cup I’d left somewhere out there. I wanted to take it on my upcoming trip.
I was too slow. Buh.
I watched Mabel as she purposefully strode across the grass. Where was she going? She went to the new trailer! What? She looked all over it for treats.
The grass IS greener here.
Now, she has never been through trailer friendliness training. Only Apache has. She was watching! Wow.
Any more treats on this thing?
By the way, in a minute, Apache walked right up to his former enemy and thoroughly checked it out. Looks like I did a good job with the trailer thing. Now to cut out the treats and just do praise, as Jones suggested.
Freedom. For a while.
I love it when you get validation of new knowledge so quickly. Thanks for escaping, horses.
There haven’t been many book reports lately, thanks to all that knitting of baby blankets I’ve been doing in my off times. But I did manage to get through Horse Brain, Human Brain, by Janet L. Jones, and I’m glad I did.
Anyone who rides, trains, or just loves horses will want to read this book, because it sure helps you understand what’s going on in the “noggins” (the word Jones uses repeatedly) of our equine friends. It will make interacting with them much more successful and rewarding.
I have to like Jones. Once I read her biography and saw that she wrote her dissertation on how brains process ambiguous words, I knew she was a like-minded soul in more than just mutual love of horses. (Little known fact, after pragmatics and syntax, my favorite subject in my academic career was neurolinguistics. I came very close to studying that in grad school. I guess everything would have been different, so I’ll just drop that tangent.)
I have a brain? Whoa.
Readers of this book will find a lot about how brains and neurons work, but Jones does a great job of explaining technical terms in ways that are relatable to your average horse-loving human. She also provides a great glossary you can use if you forget what the hypothalamus does, or something akin to that.
My brain tells me to eat more grass. It makes me happy, as you can tell. Dopamine.
You’ll also find stories of real people and real horses to back up the scientific information Jones shares, which really helps you see how knowing the way a horse thinks can help you with your own horses.
I have to say that my biggest takeaway was that horses don’t have prefrontal cortex. Zero. None. That’s the part of the brain that lets us plan and evaluate a course of action before doing something. A horse, as a prey animal, can’t afford to mull over the options when a mountain lion is approaching. They need to run first and think later. Just knowing that little tidbit helped me a lot.
Pardon me, but when is the donkey brain book coming out?
The other part of the book that fascinated me was her assertion that horses and humans are two of the few (if not the only) examples of two different animals communicating instantly, almost as one, which is what a good horse and rider pair do. Jones explains how our brains and muscles coordinate in a feedback loop to each other.
I’m hoping Jones’s work encourages more research into how the equine brain works, even though horses do not make ideal research subjects (they are expensive to maintain and not particularly interested in cooperating!).
Want to know more? Get this book. I’m glad Tarrin recommended it to her students. Even if you aren’t a horse person, the information on how our brains work together is just plain interesting.
It isn’t summer yet, but Drew went off to Camp Wild Type yesterday, like a little man.
I’m gonna cry cause you’re making me leave.
Really, what’s happening is that I’m going out of town later this week, and Sara offered to take care of him most of the time I’m gone, since she has a really healthy pasture someone needs to nosh on while Aragorn deals with some issues. It’s like going to camp!
Camp? With food? You can see my ribs, you know.
We walked over to Sara’s property, and Drew was such a gentleman. I never had to pull on his lead, he never bumped into me, and he walked with me. That boy has learned. Even when he neighed, he paid attention to me. I was so proud. Once we got there he went to meet Lakota, the older palomino gelding who she’s taking care of in his retirement years.
Hey there.
We were a little worried, as you are when two strange horses meet. But these guys just sniffed faces, sniffed shoulders, and sniffed butts.
Yep. You smell just fine.
It was sweet to watch them immediately start hanging out together. Drew hasn’t made any good friends in our herd, so that pleased me so much.
We like each other.
I hope they are going to have a nice time together. The beautiful Sully is also going to be there. She’s probably going be a boss mare, so introducing her is going to take a while. Sara is on it! It’s so good to have a trusted friend who cares as much as I do about our horses.
I’ll never forget the day, myself. It was Easter and Lee’s friend, Matt, was with him. Matt said he’d take some pictures of me riding, which I thought might be useful for identifying things to work on and such. I wish.
Tarrin’s horses thought it was a great show.
Instead of me working on Apache’s inability to jump, me learning to leg yield, or anything remotely calm, I got a series of photos of Apache having one of his stress meltdowns.
I could do better than THAT, says baby horse.
I’ve decided it’s pretty educational, though. You can see my technique issues, my poor posture, Apache’s annoyed disconnection, and more. Matt already posted 51 pictures on Facebook of me and Tarrin working on this, so I’ll make the best of it and turn it into a fun picture story for any readers who are interested in what was going on in the photos.
Nope. Not going to trailer. Stop pulling on me. No, leaning will not encourage me to back up toward that nice other horse. I think she has food. I’ll look at her, not you or Tarrin. Ok. I’ll pay attention. You’re kicking me enough. Ooh. I’m parallel to the trailer. Danger!I have no control over myself, but Suna is projecting calm. I’ll calm down a little. No! I want to spin and back! No forward for me!Basically, I’m in a tizzy. Oh boy. More backing up. La la la, humans are invisible. I’ll go over to this nice pen with a Paint in it. I guess I’ll stop since you asked repeatedly. Going the other way! I think she’s trying to get me closer to the Evil Trailer. Nope. Gonna go see that nice horse. I accidentally backed myself closer to the trailer. I must show my disdain of all that. Let’s run into the fence now! I’m just a mess. Boom. Spun around. Oh, someone is riding me? ah yes. Suna is kicking me pretty hard here. Hey! I zipped way over to the barn in a straight line. It has horses. I like horses. All right. I’m tired. Guess I’ll head to the trailer. Suna kept asking and Tarrin won’t stop telling her to kick me. My head tells you I’m not too happy getting this close. OMG. I’m right by the trailer. Panic. Ok. I stopped by the trailer. Suna is pulling on the reins. She needs to stop doing that. Yay. That human got off! Wait, she is not taking the saddle off. Why is she not taking the saddle off?Camina enjoyed hanging out with Lee [not shown, Tarrin gets on and schools Apache’s ass and gets him to pay attention. He regrets his behavior, perhaps]I got right in the trailer and just want Tarrin to go away. The trailer is my friend. Not evil. Drew: hey, what was all the ruckus? I enjoyed being in a stall eating hay, and I got a new Drew-sized halter! What a nice day! Apache: Now she locked me up. I’m so sweaty. Take me home!
All that took about 20 minutes of our lives, which are seared in my brain. But, by gosh, we did it! Apache made it to the trailer. Now you know why yesterday’s approach was an impoverishment.
Much needed sweaty hug of relief! Lee and the baby horse approved.
I’m proud of myself for being patient and willing enough to move through this and make progress. I have different goals from many of my equestrian friends, but by gosh, I’m getting there.
Today Apache and I had our first lesson in a while, since Tarrin is recovering from some surgery that will improve her quality of life, if she survives her convalescent period. That’s hard for an active person! I just brought Apache, since Drew is doing well.
Fine. We will just bond.
This was one educational lesson! Tarrin did great scooting around on a 4-wheeler and Apache did amazing for the first half of the lesson. He jumped the right way at least twice. We were proud of him! This is going to build good muscles! He and I both did well doing some circle things that we can easily practice at home. I’m getting more balanced, and that feels great.
Hey, Dusty, did you get enough food? No, Apache, we’re not special.
However, as soon as he got tired, Apache started to act up. We got some great practice with not putting up with that…stuff. I’m improving. We practiced me getting off, having him run in circles on the ground, then me getting back on. That way he doesn’t get to think he can get me off him so easily.
We get special food. Ha ha.
It was much better than last time, and I was more assertive. Plus, once he calmed down he went right up to the trailer, ate one treat, walked around, went back, and got another treat three times! No drama! And like Tarrin said, I had to do it myself, because she couldn’t jump on Apache and discipline him. Go team.
I love you all, silly animals.
I’m getting the hang of it, slowly but surely, and Apache is really getting to be more of a partner. We’re enjoying each other and not just thinking any time we get together is only for work.
The Hermits' Rest 