Posts Tagged ‘mounted games
Controlling Emotions
Yesterday I set out working with my mom and Chesapeake Lightning (Blitz) with clicker training. Blitz is an extremely left brained horse – click on the link to learn exactly what this means. Taken from the Parelli site:
LB horses are not afraid of people, they are self confident, brave, are relatively insensitive, playful, mouthy, exuberant and dominant. At minimum, these horses can be pushy and disobedient, and at worst they are aggressive. Keep in mind, these horses can be dangerous when they don’t like or trust people.
LB horses need you to become a lot more interesting. They need things to do. They are usually quite playful and are easily bored by riders who are fixated on perfecting a maneuver, and that’s what makes them act up. Because they are so confident they are fast learners.
Blitz shaking hands with me
This describes Blitz’s personality EXACTLY! For months my mom and I have been taking natural horsemanship/Parelli lessons with our two Chincoteagues, Blitz and Boomer (hence how we learned about the different horsenalities). We started taking these lessons because the ponies began acting up due to the fact that we had to ride/train them in a wide open field with no structural boundaries. I’ll save Boomer’s problems for another day – but Blitz had developed a spin and bolt maneuver when something upset him. Mainly he was using rustling in the woods from deer, or a passing car as an excuse to act up – more simply he didn’t know how to control his emotions. What we learned at our lessons improved Blitz greatly – we were giving him alternatives to his spin and bolt, and we began placing “hidden” treats on barrels in our “riding area”. The treats were a big motivator for Blitz as he soon began seeing this scary field as something that produced food for him. Until yesterday I hadn’t really introduced my mom to the Clicker Training way – I had already taught Blitz about the clicker with ground work – he successfully targets objects as well as numerous tricks (shake hands, kiss me, say no, play fetch, lay down). But I hadn’t yet helped my mom with working him using clicker training under saddle.
Blitz attempting a buck when I first bought him
So after convincing my mom that Clicker Training would change Blitz’s attitude (old school training habits are hard to break) we set out to our “riding area” with treats and clickers. Now being left brained Blitz can be a notoriously sluggish pony (a common trait). So we started out rewarding him for moving forward off of leg pressure – within a few minutes Blitz had a nice forward moving trot, and he was actually excited to be working. We noticed he was even tuning out the sounds coming from across the street (which typically would of sent him into his spin maneuver). After working with him some (really just introducing him to idea of being clicked and rewarded while under saddle) we decided to test him out on the trail – where a lot of him bad habits for controlling his emotions seem to kick in. On the way out Blitz spooked at a rock – after remembering the video I had seen about trail riding with the clicker – I instructed my mom to have him touch the rock and when he did he got rewarded. (see the video below). This quickly calmed him and he began to associate the scary rock with a good thing.
So then out to the trail…we typically have hills that we let the ponies race up (being in mounted games training we are trying to teach our horses to be competitive – I don’t recommend this unless you have a reason for your horse to want to race) and usually after our race Blitz has a difficult time controlling his emotions and excitement. He won’t stand still and he most of the time jigs all the way home. So this time after racing up the hill (Boomer beat his big brother this time I might add – go Boomer!) we asked Blitz (who was jumping and jigging around I might add) to stop and stand still. Once he stood for a few seconds he got clicked and rewarded. All of a sudden his body relaxed and he seemed to ignore his emotions. We asked him to stand longer and he got rewarded again, and when we saw he was calm we asked him to walk off slowly towards home. Now let me say at this time my mom is now completely convinced that clicker training is going to help Blitz improve, she was even more convinced when a jogger came out of the woods and scared us and the horses to death – yet promptly Blitz stopped and stood and waited to be rewarded. A HUGE contrast from his typical spin and bolt for home.
Rewarding Blitz for laying down
I wish I had gotten more videos of our training session – but I dropped my camera in the woods after our race up the hill – needless to say the ponies got 2 training sessions on the hill as we had to go back to look for it. Luckily its safe and sound now – phew!
Anyway, Blitz had a successful learning day on how to control his emotions – and my mom is now in love with Clicker Training (as I am too). We’re going to continue working with the ponies and I hope to post more about their training soon. I’m looking forward to having some great training sessions this weekend as its going to be gorgeous here in Eastern Pa.
Clicker Training Under Saddle
I found this neat video about training horses under saddle using clicker training. I love how it addresses the “scary goblins” horses typically find while out on the trail – luckily for me my Boomer is unflappable when it comes to “goblins”. He’s never once batted an eye at anything, quite impressive considering he’s only 5 and doesn’t have many miles on him yet. He’d never been trail ridden when I got him either, and the very day I bought him I took him out on a trail to “test” him before I made the big purchase. Boomer very calmly went through the woods with me where he crossed a bridge, went through a horse “car wash” and galloped up a dirt road – all with a rider he barely knew. If that doesn’t make you buy a horse, what will? It was quite a contrast from my start with Minnow who was terrified of everything I encountered with him, but if it wasn’t for Minnow I would have never discovered clicker training in the first place. Minnow is the pony I credit for teaching me how to teach horses.
Anyway, watching this video makes me scheme more about all the things I want to work on with Boomer using clicker training. I’m sort of waiting until our big move to Iron Horse Farm to get officially started, because a lot of what I would like to work on would be easier to accomplish once I have a ring to use. I can picture it all in my head though, a pony very light on his forehand that moves gracefully off of slight leg pressure only, very collected without much rein pressure, amazing turns and spins, a killer stop, and FAST! I know its all possible with the help from my trusty clicker, I’ll just have to be patient and take it one small step at a time.
Me giving Blitz a kiss for a job well done
As I think about my “ideal mounted games pony” I can’t help but think about many of the horses that we compete against on a regular basis. In a sport that has such parallels to horse racing I see a lot of pulling and pushing on the ponies (not that they are all like this). Some people seem to run their horses into the ground all for the sake of crossing the finish line first and the answer to my “my pony won’t stop” is to always bit it up. I have been slowly seeing a shift in “horse humanity” lately though. Rulebooks are eliminating teams for any sort of hitting of their pony (even with the flat of a hand), whips are most certainly not allowed as well as spurs, bits are slowly moving towards bitless as many riders are now in favor of the hackamoore. These changes are all great, but I still rarely see any of the “top” horses in the sport brake to a stop without rein pressure – something that seems so basic to me. Not to be critical of everyone but it seems in a sport where stop and go is so critical, that trainers/riders should have that AMAZING stop with just a shift of the seat before speed is ever factored into it. Deep down I sort of hope that by training Boomer the right way (basics before speed) that I can show some of my competitors what can be achieved when a horse is started on games correctly. Maybe I can start a movement within this very young sport about the importance of proper training for our mounts. I’m excited to be “starting all over” again with Boomer, after I trained Minnow for 5 years when he was suddenly diagnosed with ringbone I definitely did not want to start over. But now I see this opportunity as a way to do it right from the beginning, Minnow was such a learning experience for me and I’m so glad he found me and I was able to learn from him, but now I have a better understanding of the proper way to train Boomer. I’m very excited to create my “dream” horse. 🙂
Alternative Competitions
As I have mentioned before in Mid-May my family and I will be moving our 5 horses, plus 2 borders out to our new farm, Iron Horse Farm. In order to be able to afford our beautiful place we need to make a certain amount of money each month. Our borders will cover some of the costs, but it isn’t going to be quite enough. So to defray some of the costs associated with our new farm I have been brainstorming ideas of how we can achieve this. I thought about taking on some project ponies to train and resell, but while the ponies are at our place they will cost money, and honestly I have never had to sell a horse. I am certainly capable of training a horse (I have countless ponies/horses I have trained over the years) but having to give up a horse you worked so hard to develop might be difficult for me – not to mention I have my own ponies to train. There is the option of taking on some other borders (we have 2 more open stalls), but honestly we like the idea of a “small private farm”, so its an option, but more of a last resort.
Iron Horse Farm's Large Outdoor Arena
So my final conclusion was to hold some competitions – certainly our enormous 150′ x 280′ ring will be a wonderful asset for competitions. The only drawback is that currently we have screenings put on it as a base for atleast 6 months when we can then apply a footing to it. Most serious competitors will not travel for inadequate footing – and honestly I’m not really interested in the typical hunter/jumper show – or even a dressage show. My first choice would be a mounted games competition (being that this is my discipline of choice), but again the footing will not be ready for this high-speed action yet. So I thought the perfect solution would be a gymkhana/trail class/skill challenge type event. I saw something similar to this at a horse expo this year where they took riders from all disciplines and asked them to complete a series of challenges where judges judged them on how well they completed the tasks. In my area we have a very large Parelli barn that is always interested in taking their horses to events such as this. I think it would be a great way to provide all disciplines with a competition that could hone skills, introduce their horses to new things, and just be a lot of fun to attend. Now I have to set about developing this competition – I’m determined to make it unlike anything else that is out there today – I think I have a lot of work ahead of me. Running through my mind right now is a mixture of timed events, skill completion events, and strictly fun events. Any and all suggestions are welcome – above all I want to make it a positive experience for everyone who attends, I think it should be a competition tailored more to achieving goals with your horse rather then earning a first place ribbon. If I held these once a month I think it would give people a goal to work towards – like last time my horse wouldn’t go near that ball, maybe this time he will calmly walk past it.
View of our farm from my father's plane, you can really see the large arena!
I’m looking forward to starting a new trend in competitions in my area – or so I hope. I feel very up to the challenge!
A Natural Connection
I came across an interesting video of a horse training process called “natural connection” which has been developed by Uri Peleg. His website doesn’t go into much detail about how he achieves this connection with his horses, but its very interesting none-the-less. He briefly touches on the benefit of riding his horse bridless, and the harmfulness of using a bit.
I thoroughly enjoy riding all of my ponies bridless when possible, but I don’t think it would be possible for me to compete with them without some sort of bridle (I currently use a bitless bridle). My boys would definitely need a lot more intense training to achieve this – but it would be amazing. I do have a goal in mind of having my current project pony, Boomer, competing in mounted games with barely any rein pressure while executing tight turns and spins at top speeds. He’s got the foundation right now, but we still have a long way to go. Its very difficult to train him more precisely without a riding ring currently, but when we make our big move to Iron Horse Farm I hope to have a much more suitable place for his training. Anyway, watch Uri’s video and I hope it inspires you to create a much better partnership with your horse.
