The Training Of Two (now Three) Baroque Dressage Horses. Bella pics p20 Grace 19

[Bejay]

OK - so they're actually two Dales Ponies (horses really, at 14.3 and 15 hands), but it sounds good!

I dont know if anyone will want to read this, but I think that I would like to write it, so I'll make a start and see where it goes.

This was Bella, aged just two years old, taken four years ago, when the three of us first became a family:






And this was Jack, aged three and a half:




Our story began five years ago , but my internet connection is looking dodgy, so I will post this and then return!

[Bejay]

5 years ago, when it was becoming obvious that my two mares, who had been with me for 18 years, were nearing the end of their lives (they  both had Cushings and chronic laminitis), I started to look for a youngster to ease the inevitable. I always tend to keep my horses for the whole of their lives and at my age I realised that my next youngster could be my last (I will be in my 70s, hopefully, when these two reach retirement age), so it was important to me that I found the right one. I hadn't even dreamt of having another two!

I have always loved, but never owned an Iberian, and I felt too old now for the adrenalin rushes of competition jumping, so a horse suitable for Classical Dressage was my dream.

I showed my long-suffering husband adverts for Andalusians with 5 figure price tags, which made him gasp with horror, and then spotted an advert in H&H for a Dales yearling filly. Something about the expression on her face shouted to me “I am your perfect horse”, and I loved her beautiful neck and shoulder, so I showed OH the ad. He looked straight at the bottom line, and before I knew it we were on route to see her. This could have had something to do with her not even being 4 figures. There is a strategy message in there somewhere!

We arrived expecting to see a scruffy, muddy hairball running around a field, and were met with the sight of a beautifully groomed, shiny pony, hooves oiled and glistening, tied up outside the stables all by herself with all her mates out in the field, dozing in the sun. I knew then that there was no way that I could leave without making her mine.

We brought her home a week later. She had never before left the stud where she was born, or seen animals other than horses and dogs, but she walked straight up the ramp onto the lorry, travelled the 2 hour journey without a sound, ate nearly all the hay on route, walked carefully straight down the ramp, cool as a cucumber, passed a stable with pigs in it, passed my goats who were on top of the muckheap, passed a paddock full of sheep, and into the yard, all without turning a hair. I had been told that Dales were brave, but this was unbelievable! I had worked full time with horses all my life and never met anyone like her. I was reasonably sure that I had chosen the right horse!!!

A year later her previous owner, whom I had kept informed about her progress, phoned me in tears to say that she had to sell Bella’s year older almost brother (same stallion, different but closely related mares), due to her own ill health. She had seemed only too happy to part with Bella, so I thought that he must be incredible! She mentioned a very tempting price and I managed to persuade OH that there was no harm in looking!

She forgot to mention the fact that Jack was born with a deformed eye. Although she reassured me that he could see out of it, it was obvious that his field of vision must be very small (the eyeball is very small and sunken, and the third eyelid covers about half the pupil). I was a bit uncertain, because I had read somewhere that partial vision in one eye is more difficult for a horse to cope with than total blindness in one eye, and I had never before had any dealings with either, but he seemed very sweet natured and I was so delighted with Bella that I decided to hope for the best.

Jack hasn’t been as easy as Bella, and for a long time I found it difficult to guess what he was thinking, because on his bad eye side he always looks shy, introverted and sad, and he is usually feeling quite the opposite. It made me realise how much I rely on the expression in the horse’s eye when I am on the ground. I have had to learn to pay far more attention to ears and head carriage as guides to mood and emotions. He finds sudden movements on that side quite unsettling, and Alexandra Kurland’s calming strategies have been a huge help (more later, if anyone is interested) in new situations and difficult conditions. He is also very intelligent, but needs lots of thinking time, and hates being rushed or hassled, which make him either get nervous or, more often, shut down and tune me out.

 They are both very big characters, very similar in some ways and totally different in others. They also loath each other with a passion, even though they have known each other since Bella was born, and lived together longer than they have lived apart. To be honest neither of them is very keen on other horses, although Bella tolerates her elderly field companion, whom she has been with since she arrived. However, when I take her away to work her, he screams the place down, and she pretends that she has no idea who he is! Jack prefers people, and would quite happily spend all his time in his stable, or better still come into the house with us.

So that’s how we started our journey 4 years ago; me, getting on in years, not as brave as I used to be, with a fearless 2yo filly and a sometimes very brave / occasionally very panicky, unbacked 3yo, who wasn’t scared of anything but was sometimes terrified by nothing!

[Mandeigh]

That's a real pair of hunnies you have there....lets hear more!

[tollertwins]

COOL! We can start a 'baroque pony' club!!

I, for one, need to hear more about the 'calming exercises'...

[Sisterinstitches]

What a great story, and they are beautiful! I would also love to hear about the calming exercises, when you get time.

[Bejay]

Thank you for your lovely comments, and I will get to the clicker training soon, I promise!

Bella and I spent the rest of 2003 getting to know each other. She very quickly started to test the boundaries, as one would expect of a very confident youngster. She had no interest whatsoever in being well behaved and ‘good’, but she can never resist the opportunity to show how clever and admirable she is, so once I had discovered that, she was a piece of cake (poor Bella, how she would hate to realise that!!).

In May 2004, on her 2nd birthday, I took her to her 1st show. It was a small, local club show and she was very interested in everything, and behaved immaculately. 2 weeks later I took her to quite a big 2 day county show. She said that when you’d seen one show you had seen them all, and practically fell asleep in the ring!

 5 weeks after that we went to The Royal Show, England’s most prestigious agricultural show. It is a 4 day show, and although I had shown sheep there before, I had never taken a horse, so I went there on the opening day to have a ‘horse’s eye’ look at it. I walked down the horsewalk to the grand ring, where our class was to be 3 days later, and thought that it looked absolutely terrifying for any horse, and to take an inexperienced 2yo was utter madness!

I should have had more faith. Bella loved every single minute of it. She was totally disinterested in all the other horses, even the poor young Welsh Cob that spooked at a low flying Jumbo Jet, slipped, and fell over, right in front of her. She just picked her way around it and carried on down the horsewalk as if on a mission. She was fascinated but totally un-phased by everything else; the flags flying overhead, the banners, the crowds and the grandstands, and in her trot up she flew, really showing off and enjoying herself. I so proud of her I could have burst!

I decided that would do for show experience for that year, and 2 months later Jack arrived, much to her disgust! She looked at him with disbelief, with a ‘I thought that I had got away from you’ look on her face, so it was a good job I hadn’t bought him with a view to driving them both as a pair!

Jack was nowhere near as confident as Bella had been, but he settled in quite quickly, apart from his stable. He had been in barn type stabling before and took a long time to get used to more traditional stabling. He used to keep his head over the door all the time, and I was going to try a mirror, but 1st tried a ‘Likkit’, hung in the back of his stable, and that did the trick. He loves his stable now, and would rather be in there than anywhere else.

I just had to have a sit on him 4 days after he arrived. I now owned 2 Dales and as yet had never sat on one. I had never even met a Dales before Bella, so I was desperate to see how one felt! I fed him carrots from up there, and he felt great, like a big, comfy, if somewhat overstuffed armchair, so we were both very happy and keen to repeat the experience! I then did it properly, and got him used to saddle, bridle, lunge, etc., and rode him around the farm, at walk, for a few minutes each day for a couple of weeks, before leaving him until he turned 4 the following March.

Jack had arrived in September and it soon became obvious that, although he was as chilled out and relaxed as Bella in still weather, windy conditions made him very nervous, especially things blowing about on his bad eye side (even grass!), and he didn’t even like being turned out in the field when it was very windy. I could only hope that he would, in time, learn to trust my judgement and leave the worrying to me when he was working. For now I just avoided asking him to do anything in these conditions, although even leading him in and out could be interesting when it was very blustery.

[Bejay]

2005-7: The Cracks Start Appearing.

I began 2005 with high hopes. Bella would be 3 in May and old enough for me to have a sit on. I couldn’t wait to see how she felt. I had been eagerly waiting for the moment for the last 2 years. Jack would be 4 in March, and I could continue his education. It was going to be wonderful!

As she approached her 3rd birthday it was obvious that Bella was having some trouble cutting teeth. She spent hours fiddling about with her tongue in the back of her mouth and huge teething lumps appeared on her face, which were very tender to touch. I had seen teething lumps under the jaw before, but never on the front of the face, and they were the biggest my dentist had ever seen.

I didn’t want to put a bit in her mouth while she was having trouble, so backed her in a carefully adjusted halter (to avoid putting pressure on the lumps). She felt great and was as happy with the whole experience as Jack had been. I did the same amount as I had with Jack, and then looked forward to starting again the following year, hopefully in a bit.

Her teeth took a lot of dentistry and 2 years to sort out. She had impacted upper molars and overgrown lower molars, and while all attempts were made to keep her comfortable, the problems couldn’t be fully resolved until she finished teething and her adult teeth were fully up and in wear. In the meantime the tongue habit became more and more ingrained.

By her 5th birthday I got the all clear from the dentist and began trying to get her used to a bit – any bit! It wasn’t that she didn’t like having one in her mouth – she couldn’t get it in there fast enough – it was like a toy to help her with her favourite pastime of ‘tongue in back of mouth fiddling’.

To begin with I thought that familiarity would do the trick and make her forget about it. It didn’t. Then I thought distraction – hacking out. No joy. Then perhaps a different style of bit – straight bar, ported, cheeks, hanging – no difference! The fiddling was almost endless, from the moment the bit went in to the moment it came out, to the point where I couldn’t get her attention on anything else. She was horrible to ride in a bit. I couldn’t steer properly and her balance was awful. It was like riding a plank of wood. I tried everything I could think of, even led her out for miles with a bit but leading from lunging cavesson, so it was just there doing nothing. Occasionally she would stop fiddling for a while, but never for very long. I bought her a hackamore.

Jack, in the meantime, had become a plod, completely dead to any forward aids, from the floor or the saddle. He has never been a ‘high energy’ horse. He likes life in the slow lane, taking his time and meandering around at his own speed. He would always do as he was asked, but put as little energy into it as possible. All attempts by me to sharpen him up made the situation worse; he seemed to take it as a challenge – how much nagging could he tolerate before he felt the need to move, or speed up, and his tolerance grew ever greater the more I did.

I tried every known strategy to make him more sensitive to my leg, but only succeeded in making him less sensitive. It wasn’t that he never listened to me; requests for downward transitions were met by a sliding stop that a western horse would be proud of – literally, even a hint of a wh sound would do it – but he only heard what he wanted to hear, and it took repeated kicks to make him sigh and lurch into a walk from a halt. It was no different out hacking, even heading for home he dawdled along, and I always returned feeling like I had been carrying him!

I had tried to teach him to move off my leg in the same way as I had every other horse I had ever started and it had worked with all of them, including Bella, so why wouldn’t it with him? The reasons for this are so obvious to me now that I clicker train and think like a clicker trainer, that I can’t believe that I couldn’t see it then, but I couldn’t. I didn't want to try spurs because I knew that the end result would be the same - I would have to use them more and more forcefully to produce less and less result. I needed to change his attitude to going forward, so that he went with the same enthusiasm as he stopped, but I had no idea how to do it.

At the same time, on a windy day, he would get more and more anxious. I had plenty of forward movement then but it was tense and horrible, and he wanted his head free to twist around so that he could see what was happening on his bad eye side. I felt very sorry for him and understood his difficulties, but I needed to find a way to make him calm down and listen to me, and to build his confidence in me and in himself; that there really was nothing to be frightened of. I tried reassuring him, but that was ignored, and I tried stronger leadership, trying to get his attention and make him focus on me, but my attempts to do that increased his anxiety.

So there we were at the end of last summer; stuck in a training rut that I had no idea how we were going to get out of. I can go out and work my horses every day with energy, patience and enthusiasm, even in the face of problems, as long as I have a plan. I was right out of plans. I had nothing left to try and my two potential dressage horses were turning into beach donkeys. Bella was fine to hack about on in a hackamore, but though I am sure there are riders skilled enough to produce correct dressage work without a bit, I don’t think that I am one of them. Jack was a plod who made me work twice as hard as he did, unless it was windy, when I couldn’t do anything worthwhile with him at all. I had nowhere left to go.

I shouldn’t have worried because salvation was only weeks away; a way of training that would give me the tools to deal with all these problems and any more that might occur, and would turn my horses into enthusiastic workaholics, who would turn themselves inside out to do whatever I asked of them (even Jack), and I might never have tried it if it hadn’t been for one ‘Becky Holden’!

[Bejay]

Discovering the power of the clicker.

I looked around for some dressage training that we could successfully do and bought Richard Hinrich’s in hand DVD and video. Jack could do it all in walk, so he was happy, and Bella could do it in a hackamore, so I was happy. They picked up lateral work very quickly and were good at it. I concentrated on it for a few weeks and then found out that Becky was doing a clinic not too far away. I thought that I would go and watch, to pick up a few tips. It must be the best decision I have made since buying Bella and Jack!

Becky was brilliant. I loved the way she worked with the horses, so sympathetic and positive, and she obviously really knew her stuff, but she was enthusing about ‘clicker training’. I had heard of it, but thought that it sounded gimmicky and a bit cranky where horses were concerned. I had never met anyone who used it with horses before, but I also hadn’t met anyone whose training style I admired so wholeheartedly before either. Everything else that she said made perfect sense. I needed to investigate further!

I bought Alexandra Kurland’s 1st book and a clicker, introduced Bella and Jack to a target, which took no time flat, and we were away. I used the clicker to highlight improvements in their in hand work, and they came on in leaps and bounds. Then I spotted an Alexandra Kurland video on eBay, bought it, watched it mesmerised, bought all the others that I could find on eBay and ordered the rest from America, along with her 2 latest books. I tend not to do things by halves, but that worked in my favour because clicker training is like horses – the more you put into it, the more you get out.

I was beginning to realise that clicker training was the answer to all my prayers. I began to see ways I could deal with all the issues we had been having and to understand why Jack had no motivation to work. I could even see how I could tackle Bella’s tongue habits, which I still think would have been impossible without the clicker. It was all there for the taking.

The fundemental principle of clicker training is that whatever you click you get more of. All you have to do is wait until you see the tiniest hint of what you are after, click and treat it, and you WILL get more. As long as you ARE clicking what you want (timing is everything) you can’t fail, and if you wait long enough you WILL see a hint of what you want; ‘everyone sits down in the end’ as Alexandra Kurland calls it – the nuttiest horse will begin to tire and slow down and the sleepiest (or nappiest) horse will feel the need to move slightly, if you wait long enough. The quicker you recognise (click) the tiniest shift towards what you are looking for, the faster the horse will offer more of the same.

It really was that easy – all of it. Jack’s calming work in the wind is ongoing, but his enthusiasm for going forward and Bella’s relaxed jaw are givens. They are transformed and, on my part, it was effortless, and to put a time scale to it, by the time I had collected all this information together it was already March 2008. I can’t believe the changes we have made in less than 3 months, not only to the problems we were having, but to our whole relationships with each other.

Click training not only rules out any confusion and misunderstanding, but it also works on emotional control and stability – how to work through, and deal with, frustration and impatience, on the part of both horse and trainer. We now, just 3 months later, understand and communicate with each other on a level I never dreamed possible before - possible for me anyway.

[Jane C]

What a fantastic story Bejay - I can't wait to read more especially about you gaining Jack's confidence in difficult situations for his partial sightedness.  My youngster lost his right eye just before Christmas and is doing amazingly well without it, but he can have a scare quite understandably on his blind side and when he is confused about what I am asking him to do on that side, he just offers backing up so we have got some similar issues to overcome together as you and Jack.

I wish Becky was not so far away!!

J

[Hat Dancer]

I loved reading your report, can't wait for further instalments. 

[Bejay]

Thank you both and very sorry to hear about your youngster Jane C, it must have been awful for both of you. I hope some of Jack and my experiences are of some help.

[Bejay]

Before I describe the clicker work I have done with my horses, I just wanted to say that I am NOT an expert on clicker training. I am only just scraping the surface myself. Every time I open the books or watch the DVDs I notice something else that I missed before (the DVDs are all about 2 hours long) – another piece of the jigsaw. I am doing this as a personal record of what I have done with my horses and the results I have had, and if it is of interest to others, that’s great, but if anyone wants to try Alexandra Kurland’s methods, you at least need to get hold of a copy of ‘The Click That Teaches – A Step By Step Guide’ and preferably ‘Riding with the Clicker’ and some/all of the DVDs as well. I will also add a summary of some of the feedback that she has had from her discussion group that is relevant to the work that I have done.

I also haven’t said why I was so impressed with Becky. One of the horses at the clinic was a Fell type mare who came into the school looking totally bored and switched off. Her eyes were glazed and she was taking no notice of anything. When Becky took hold of her it was as though someone had flicked a switch in her head. Her ears pricked and she looked at Becky with a ‘wow, you’re interesting, I need to pay attention to you’ look on her face. She really put herself out to do everything that Becky asked, and her owner was amazed, it was so out of character. That’s why I knew that I needed to pay attention to what Becky said; because the pony did!

[Bejay]

Working on Jack’s anxiety; Tai Chi walls, head lowering and mat work.

Head Lowering

Alexandra Kurland uses head lowering as a calm down cue, and it’s one of the foundation exercises of ‘The click that Teaches’ program. I think that the theory behind this is that by making a horse look like a bold, confident horse, he will feel like a bold, confident horse, and that horses with their heads high in the air are nervously looking to see what is coming over the horizon. If you can get your horse to lower his head when he is scared, he is entrusting you to keep him safe and letting you do the worrying for him.

I needed a way of getting Jack to calm down when the wind was un-nerving him, but when I asked him to put his nose on the floor he looked really miserable and worried (this was in the yard on a still day, when he wasn’t nervous). This quite upset me. I realised that it was because he could see even less than usual with his head down there, so I emailed Alexandra Kurland to ask if she thought that I should use head lowering with a horse with impaired vision.

She replied within hours and said that, although she had no experience of such horses, head lowering was such a powerful calming tool, that I shouldn't worry about whether I taught it to him so much as how I taught it to him. She told me to teach it in a place where he felt safe, keep it on a very high rate of reinforcement for a long time and to teach it in as many different ways as possible (free shaping, following a target, poll pressure, halter pressure, verbal cue, etc) and to build duration very slowly. She said that when he was really comfortable with it I might find that he actually offered it when he was anxious, and that is exactly what he does do when he’s only mildly anxious. We need to do more work on it, especially under saddle, to deal with greater anxiety levels, but we are making good progress. The way he wants to use head lowering to calm himself down shows that he wants to be calm and confident, and to trust me to keep him safe, even if he can’t always quite manage it yet.

I emphasise (to the horse) that "head lowering is not a forward moving exercise" (A.K.) to begin with, and the horse is not allowed to move forward. He can move backwards or stand still, but allowing him to move forward too soon can encourage him to put his head down and drag you off. Later, she has a 300 Peck Pigeon exercise, which teaches the horse to walk around for an extended period of time with his nose on the floor and builds enormous emotional control in an over-energetic horse, so that they learn to settle down and work straight away, without needing to whiz around on a lunge for half an hour first (not a problem mine suffer from!). You need the ‘Riding with the Clicker’ book for that one.

As well as calming down, working on head lowering under saddle straightens out all the crookedness in the horse’s body when he is ridden. There is so much to know about this work, all about glass floors and filling in all the gaps between normal head carriage and the floor, and the ‘Head Lowering’ DVD is really a must, to get the full benefit out of it.

Tai Chi Walls

I will try to explain how I have taught my horses this but, although it’s very easy to teach the horse, it’s hard to describe and really helps to see it done (Tai - Chi Rope Handling Exercises DVD). It ties in with the head lowering work because you can make a pushy horse move away from you, or back up, with ease (once you’ve taught it to him) but it’s also brilliant for lateral work, in hand and at liberty (when I just pretend I have a rein), and makes them really light to work with, opens up their shoulders and increases their respect for your personal space. You can also use it to cue head lowering, as a demand cue, when they won’t listen.

Once the wall effect is really solid all you have to do is lift the rope or rein in a certain way and they lift their shoulders, engage their hips and glide over. I will try to get some photos of Bella doing this because she is ace at it, light as a feather, and Bella used to be very pushy and forever trying to move me out of her space!

The idea is that you use the lead rope or inside rein to create a boundary – a wall that the horse must move away from and won’t even think of trying to push into, because if he does it will "bounce his energy back at him" (A.K.). Basically, I stand alongside the horse and take hold of the rein or rope with both hands in the middle of the rein and slide my hands slowly apart keeping the rein taught between them, and slide right up to the bit/lead rope clip with one hand and down toward the shoulder with the other, overhand. I stop both hands at the same time and keep the rein taught between my hands. This creates the Tai- Chi wall. I then step slightly towards them and just wait, with an attitude of ‘this is a wall, you must move away’, although you can use it more proactively if the horse barging. As soon as they show any sign of moving away I drop the rein as though it was red hot, click and treat, and start again. I don’t know if I’ve explained it very well but the horses I’ve tried it with have understood very quickly. The power is in the rotation of the wrists as you slide your hands apart.

If this sounds like gobbledegook, I can only say that it really does work and you will find it easy if you see the DVD.

[Bejay]

Mat Work

This is much easier to explain, but no one, including Alexandra Kurland, seems to be able to explain why it has the powerful calming effect on some horses that it does. It is another foundation exercise and is featured on the ‘Shaping to a Point of Contact’ DVD.

The idea, as I understand it, is that you get your horse comfortable with approaching a spooky object (the mat) then get him to put his front feet on it, to teach him to think about what he is doing with his feet. When he likes standing on the mat you get him to stand squarely on it, to improve his balance, and then play about with his balance by rocking him gently very slightly backwards and forwards, as a preparation for teaching him to engage his hindquarters. You do all of this on a high rate of reinforcement, clicking and treating repeatedly when he is doing what you want, so that he loves doing it.

People who did a lot of this work started to report that they were finding that their horses loved their mats so much they were happy relaxed when they were standing on them, regardless of what was going on around them. One person said that it was as if her horse felt that he was in a protected bubble, as long as he was standing on his mat. People were putting them in the spookiest places they had, putting several of them out on trail rides (so they only had to go from one to the next for reassurance) and taking them to shows and clinics, all with the same result – wherever they went their horse would stand still and relax, as long as he was on his mat. One person with a highly-strung competition horse had got it down to a beer mat. At shows, as long as he had one foot on that he was happy and without it he was impossible.

I had started doing mat work with my two on a stable mat in the yard, but when I read about these experiences on the discussion group (you get an invitation to join when you buy the ‘Riding with the Clicker’ book) I looked for something more portable. All I could find to start with was an old carpet tile, which I thought would be just about big enough, but Jack is has a very wide chest and it was too small, but he loved sniffing it. This combined head lowering with the mat effect, so I took it into our very spooky school (even Bella occasionally finds it spooky, so it must be bad!). Jack made straight for it and sniffed it, and I clicked and treated repeatedly.

The result of this has been that I now have it in the spookiest part of the school and, even when it’s windy, he heads straight for it. He used to hate going in the school at all when it was windy but now he would rather go in there and find his mat than walk past the entrance. I have proved this by letting him loose before we get to the entrance and following him, letting him choose where he wants to go. This might sound ridiculous, but I promise that it is the truth.

People reported that some of their horses preferred a noisy mat, such as a piece of wood, and that their horse would jump onto it to make as much noise as possible, as if they found the noise reassuring. I have tried a sheet of plywood and a railway sleeper, and Jack loves standing on all of them, but, left to his own devices, he still heads for his ‘sniff’ mat first.

[shoveltrash]

WONDERFUL descriptions!  i'd love to *see* the Tai Chi Wall exercise......any chance of bribing you to video it? 
thank you so so much - what great & informative posts!!!!!