Magical patience

Once upon a time there was an old man named Yu Gong, he was almost 90 years old. In front of the entrance to his home were two big mountains which made it very inconvenient for his family to come and go. One day, Yu Gong said to his family, “These two mountains in front of the entrance, they are just too inconvenient, why not get rid of them?”

His son and grandson heard this and they said, “What you say is true, tomorrow we shall start to do it!”

His wife felt it was too difficult to move a mountain and said, “Do you guys see how tall those mountains are? How can you move such large mountains? And where will you put so many rocks and stones?” 

They all replied, “We only need to work hard, and then we most certainly shall be able to move those mountains. We can take all the stones on the mountains and put them into the sea.” On the second day, Yu Gong and his family began to move the mountain. His neighbor joined them and happily they went to move the mountain together. They weren’t scared of strong winds or if it was raining, in summer they didn’t mind the heat, in winter they managed the cold, and everyday they worked non-stop. Many people thought that the project was ridiculous and said to Yu Gong, “Is it really possible to move the mountains?”

Yu Gong replied, “We will move the stones on the mountain little by little and it shall become smaller. If we work everyday non-stop, why should we not be able to move this mountain?”

There is a happy ending to this story, the heavenly emperor heard about how hard Yu Gong was working and asked the mountain gods to move the mountains away.

I had a bit of a project myself over the last couple of years with a young horse that really was extremely troubled about going out into the big wide world away from my fields. Taking her out for a walk, day after day in rain, shine and wind seemed quite a bit like moving a mountain one stone at a time.

Magic is rising 3 now, she is already a huge dark bay warmblood and has been fantastic in all respects, except for being very frightened about things out in the countryside, especially living animals, large and small things that move.

I don’t do a whole lot with my young horses before they are four or so but I do like them to be able to go for short walks in hand away from their field and friends from as early as is possible.  Before they can do this they need to lead well, stop, back and turn in order to manage gates.  Out in the big wide world they will have an introduction to traffic on my lane and get to meet ponies, cows and donkeys out on the New Forest, just a short walk away.  I much prefer to get this done before introducing a saddle and rider.

For Magic there was nothing simple about this idea, she was terrified of pretty much everything outside the field.  I went very slowly and wasn’t too concerned about this for the first couple of days but started to get a bit puzzled when things just didn’t improve.  Days turned to weeks, which turned to months and still Magic was very, very concerned away from the field. 

So I had to put my thinking hat on.

The keystone to Mark Rashid’s work, and central to what I aim to teach myself, is softness.  By this he is talking about both muscular relaxation (so that the horse will move readily without excess tension) as well as mental availability.  What we mean by availability is that the horse is a willing partner in our activity and, more than that, we are striving for a connection between the inside of the person and the inside of the horse.  That’s what Mark is talking about when he uses the word softness. 

The principle is that if the horse is soft you are going to be able to take that softness with you wherever you go as it’s a physical and mental state of connection.  So it followed that if Magic was struggling so much away from home I must have missed out something at home in our ground work.  When the horse seems fine at home but explodes in a new environment we talk about this as a horse being “light” but not “soft”, quite often when a horse is “light” everything looks and feels as if its OK but it all unravels when in a new situation.  Generally speaking it pays to go back and look at the relationship between you and your horse in more detail at home to find those tell-tail signs.

By now a year had passed, about 5 months of that over the winter had been spent taking Magic on short walks with a relatively small amount of progress to be honest. Then we stayed at home for the summer, partly to see if she was just too young mentally to deal with the questions asked by the big wide world and also to take the time to build the relationship further with some gentle long lining and attention to our basics of ground work.

In Autumn 2009 I decided to raise the subject of going out into the big wide world again.  By this time I was very happy with the relationship between us, Magic did seem to be very soft most of the time and there was a good deal of trust between the two of us.  So I was a little disappointed that things outside were not really any better at all. Going for a short walk was manageable but not especially pleasant.  However, as I was now really happy with all our groundwork I couldn’t see any option but to stick with it until we started to see some progress.  And that’s where I was reminded again of the story about moving the mountain one stone and a time!

The single most important thing I learnt from Magic is that some things can take a really, really, really long time.  Even though this was a young horse that had certainly had no bad experiences to do with going “on the trail” she really needed a lot of time to build confidence that it was going to be OK out there.  There were no particular separation anxiety issues to do with the other horses, it seemed to be a case of very genuine fear about things when out and about.

Now, in February 2010 she has definitely turned a corner.  She can go out for longer walks and cope with a wider range of things that happen such as the feral ponies, donkeys and dog walkers.  The explosions turned to balking and shying which turned to snorting which then turned to heavy breathing and now I know when she is challenged as the rhythm of the breathing changes.  I also get the feeling that she is much better able to control herself and does not need to resort to an instinctive behaviour as soon as she is challenged in some way. 

In total the project to get her walking out fairly calmly has taken 2 years work. Interestingly Magic is still not as confident, nor can she go a far, as her field companion of the same age went happily on her first ever walk out. 

In my work I frequently meet people who are having problems with hacking out, or trail riding.  Having had this experience with Magic I am coming to think that some horses really, really struggle with this.  Very often traditional horse training methods would back a horse at 3 and only once backed would the horse start to go out for walks.  Normally the horse would have a rider to think about as well as the new stimuli of the outside world.  I wonder if many horse just can’t cope with this amount of new information all at once, they need to understand what is expected of them when they go out, then repeat the process with the saddle and then again with the rider.  This doesn’t apply to all horses but for some I think its critical and fixing the problem later on could be even more time consuming that it was for Magic at the outset.

The are some other general observations and things that were clarified for me by this experience:

• Softness - Immediately before we had a big breakthrough I felt a very definite increase in trust between the two of us.  The feel changed. I trusted Magic not to explode in front of oncoming cars and I think she trusted me that I was not leading her to certain death.  I would describe this as the two of us getting on the same page and a lot of more softness was the result.
  
• Courage – there are times when there is no benefit in pushing a horse a little bit further as they are already fully stretched with what they have going on right now.  It would be dangerous and counter productive to try to do more.  But there are times when its essential to push further because you won’t get any learning until you do.  That means that both the human and the horse will be pushed beyond their comfort zone for a time.  Its easy for us humans to put that off as it’s a challenge but an essential one to progress. Courage does not mean that we are not frightened, just that we are able to deal with that fear and still function.
  
• Leadership and boundaries – In a potentially dangerous situation like this its essential that you are in charge and have clear boundaries about space (i.e. the horse cannot jump into your space if frightened).  I noticed a big improvement when I stopped worrying so much about how Magic was feeling and if she was OK and started being really clear about speed, direction and destination.  Kathleen Lindley described this type of situation beautifully by talking about how women tend to lead by consensus and men tend to just say what it is that we need to do.  A simple example would be that when a group of women are deciding what time to break for lunch they will check with everyone that 1pm is going to be OK.  A man is more likely to say “lunch is at one”.   We need to have a “lunch is at one” attitude with our horses, they often appreciate that.
  
• Time - I have ridden horses at the yards of some professional trainers and quite often there is a well schooled horse there that you will learn “cannot be ridden out”.  I wonder if these are the Magic’s of the world that really struggle, many people don’t have the time to invest in fixing the issue at the outset. 
  
• Breeding - Magic is a very specifically bred German dressage horse.  Could it be that even in a relatively short space of time we are artificially breeding horses that excel in their field (exaggerated movement in the arena) but accidentally we are breeding out qualities such as courage in the outside world, or we are just breeding more neurotic horses? If you read Temple Grandin’s book, Animals in Translation, you will find examples of how selective breeding can influence temperament in extremely short periods of time.
  

Sometimes I think that people want progress very quickly with their horses. Sometimes we can make a relatively simple change and there is a huge and immediate positive response, but not always.  What my experience with Magic has taught me is that sometimes you just need to work away at an issue one stone at a time and then when you are least expecting it you find that you have managed to move a mountain.