{"id":1240,"date":"2018-12-27T12:40:38","date_gmt":"2018-12-27T19:40:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/articles.amazinghorsecountry.com\/?p=1706"},"modified":"2019-02-21T13:07:41","modified_gmt":"2019-02-21T20:07:41","slug":"introducing-horses-to-obstacles-5","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/articles.amazinghorsecountry.com\/index.php\/2018\/12\/27\/introducing-horses-to-obstacles-5\/","title":{"rendered":"Introducing Horses to Obstacles – Part 5"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’d like to\u00a0introduce five of our Strategies for Success<\/i> that we follow when we start working with horses on obstacles or anything new and unknown.<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. We build it in the groundwork, then ride it in the saddle.<\/li>\n
  2. We never force a horse to go on, over or though something they’re scared of. We\u00a0do<\/em>\u00a0go forward when the horse is in release and following our focus.<\/li>\n
  3. Find ground zero.\u00a0 This is the position, proximity to an obstacle, or a maneuver that we\u00a0know<\/em>\u00a0the horse can achieve.\u00a0 We can always start successfully from our ground zero point.<\/li>\n
  4. We define success as, \u201canytime the horse tries for us,<\/em>\u201d and reward and encourage our horse when he tries.<\/li>\n
  5. We allow the horse the time he needs to investigate the obstacle before we continue to ask him forward.<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    In this article, we’re going to focus on #5.\u00a0 You’ll need\u00a0to\u00a0read Part 1<\/a>,\u00a0Part 2,\u00a0<\/a>Part 3<\/a>\u00a0and Part 4<\/a> first.<\/p>\n

    \"horsesOur fifth and final point is a great learning opportunity not only for your horse, but for you.\u00a0 You’ll see a the process a horse must go through when he’s investigating whether something is safe or not.<\/p>\n

    Fear and Curiosity – What are they?<\/h3>\n

    I believe that fear<\/em> and curiosity<\/em> are almost identical.\u00a0 There are many articles you’ll find which discuss them as opposites.\u00a0 But they’re really not that different.\u00a0 The reason is that both fear and curiosity have an overwhelming factor in common – focus.<\/p>\n

    Here’s an example:<\/p>\n

    Bill is a gelding that has some trail time, but has always been scared of big rocks.\u00a0 Whenever he walks by one on the trail, all of his focus goes to the rock and he’s scared to let it out of his sight.\u00a0 His\u00a0 rider is nervous about going out on the trail because she knows he’ll spook at rocks.\u00a0 This is fear.\u00a0 All of Bill’s attention is on the rock.<\/p>\n

    Jill is a mare that is new to the trail.\u00a0 She’s young and bright.\u00a0 When she sees her first big rock, she stops and looks at it.\u00a0 Her owner notices her interest and allows her to walk over and check it out.\u00a0 She spends a few minutes sniffing and looking at it.\u00a0 This is curiosity.\u00a0 All of Jill’s attention is on the rock.<\/p>\n

    The difference in thinking from the perspective of the horse would be:<\/p>\n

    Fear: “That might kill me so I’m outta here!”<\/p>\n

    Curiosity: “That might kill me…but…it’s not killing me right now.<\/em>..hmmm…”<\/p>\n

    \"horse<\/p>\n

    Consider that fear, from a prey animal’s point of view, is an instinctual response to anything<\/p>\n

    they consider life-threatening, and anything unknown IS life threatening until proven otherwise.\u00a0 Curiosity is an interest<\/em> in something unknown.\u00a0 However, both share the commonality of focus or attention.<\/p>\n

    Turning fear to curiosity isn’t that hard.\u00a0 It requires two ingredients: time, and you.<\/p>\n

    Time.\u00a0<\/strong> Given time, a horse will realize that something they’re nervous about is not going to kill them.\u00a0 This is closely tied to the distance to the object.\u00a0 If you’re working at leading or riding your horse up to something he’s scared of, when you recognize his fear, let him stop.\u00a0 Now wait.\u00a0 The horse will, in short order, realize that at that distance, they’re not going to die.\u00a0 When that happens, they’ll release tension and their focus may go elsewhere.\u00a0 That’s the moment you can ask for forward again.\u00a0 We covered this strategy in part 4.<\/a><\/p>\n

    You.\u00a0<\/strong> When the horse is confident in your leadership, he’ll be looking to you<\/em> for an answer to whether or not this scary thing is safe.\u00a0 Horses communicate in several ways, the important one here is empathic communication.\u00a0 That is, they are aware of how other horses feel.\u00a0 This could be fear, calm, energetically forward, or just about anything else.\u00a0 It’s a survival mechanism – they can communicate “safe” or “run now!” throughout the herd almost instantaneously.\u00a0 The important part here is this: how you<\/em> feel about the scary thing is what your horse should be looking for, or picking up on.\u00a0 To make this successful, you must project confidence and release any tension you have in your body.<\/p>\n

    Because this type of communication is so intrinsic to the horse, I like to capitalize on it by taking it one further step:\u00a0 thinking that the object is the best place<\/em> for our herd to be; the closer we get, the better it feels.\u00a0 Now I have to reiterate – you can use this only if your horse is confident in your leadership.<\/em>\u00a0If your horse does not trust in you OR he thinks you are below him in the herd order, he’ll not believe what you’re “saying”.\u00a0 Remember that trust is earned or built.\u00a0 Your horse (or people, for that matter) will trust you somewhere between 0% and 100% depending on past experience.\u00a0 Your job as a leader is to get that percentage higher.\u00a0 We’ll explore this concept in a future article.<\/p>\n

    Note – people communicate this way too, we just don’t think about it.\u00a0 Have you ever heard a news anchor ask a reporter, “How is the mood there?” in reference to a group of people?\u00a0 Consider a mob or a group of people panicking.\u00a0 Panic spreads through a group.\u00a0 In contrast, consider the ability for a motivational speaker to instill positive energy into an entire group of people.\u00a0 With prey animals we can clearly understand that their empathic ability is based on herd survival in a threatening environment.\u00a0 As predators, science’s best guess at our ability to communicate this way stems from ancestral survival as a group or tribe, including hunting and gathering as a group.<\/div>\n

    Inspiring Curiosity – Eliminating Fear<\/h3>\n

    That fear and curiosity are so closely related is a distinct advantage to us as leaders and a valuable tool in our horsemanship toolkit.\u00a0 It’s really not that hard to flip the switch from fear to curiosity.\u00a0 And when you do…mission accomplished.<\/span><\/p>\n

    When your horse moves forward, he’s demonstrating that he’s overcoming fear.\u00a0 When curiosity takes over – and it will – you’ll see your horse go through a sequential list of steps:<\/p>\n

      \n
    1. Sniff it<\/li>\n
    2. Muzzle it<\/li>\n
    3. Bite it and\/or paw it<\/li>\n
    4. Look away because it’s boring<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

      When a horse\u00a0does this in my obstacle course clinics, I encourage it.\u00a0 It’s a clear demonstration that they’re engaging with something unknown, versus avoiding it.\u00a0 This is the horse’s way of making sure that an item is safe.\u00a0 It’s not bad<\/em>, nor is it rude<\/em>, for a horse to bite or paw something they’re unsure of.\u00a0 In fact, it is critically essential that you let them go through this process.<\/p>\n

      Let him take all the time he needs to do this.\u00a0 It might be 10 seconds, it might be 10 minutes. It’s time well spent.\u00a0 We need to make sure that the horse does not have any lingering thoughts of fear.\u00a0 If he does, and we add more pressure – for example asking a trot instead of a walk – you’ll see those lingering fears reappear, because we didn’t take the time to clean them up in the first place.<\/p>\n

      When you see their attention drawn to something scary or unknown, encourage them but do not force them closer.\u00a0 Sometimes its better that you just let them do what they have to do.\u00a0 When they’ve satisfied themselves, they’ll look up and left or right.\u00a0 We’ve discussed in previous articles that a horse has a singular focus.\u00a0 What that means is that their focus will be on the highest pressure (or most engaging thing) in their environment at any given moment.<\/p>\n

      Question: So when they look away, what does that tell you?<\/p>\n

      Answer: That something else is more important than the item they just sniffed or pawed.<\/p>\n

      That is a great, because it tells you that the horse is comfortable with the object in his current position.<\/em><\/p>\n

      I put the final words of the last sentence in italics for a good reason.\u00a0 Once you’ve introduce a horse to something and he has gone through the investigative steps – and then turned away, it’s now time to ask him to follow your focus forward again.\u00a0 Look ahead and ask your horse to move forward with you.<\/p>\n

      \"horses<\/a>
      Click here to watch “Introducing a Horse to Obstacles” and “Zeus on the Obstacles – Episode 1” to view points made in this article.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

      Now something interesting may happen.\u00a0 Your horse might stop, and go through all those steps again.\u00a0 Remember at the beginning of this article I mentioned that distance was an important factor.\u00a0 Just because a horse can be comfortable at 4′ away from an obstacle, does not in any way mean he’ll be comfortable at 3′.<\/p>\n

       <\/p>\n

      There is one time when we might deviate a little bit.\u00a0 This is the case for the horse that will not look at the obstacle or scary path.\u00a0 The most interesting I’ve seen was a mare at a clinic of mine in 2018.\u00a0 When faced with something uncertain, she’d turn her head right around to her hip.\u00a0 She had a difficult time facing anything scary.\u00a0 In this case, instead of focusing beyond<\/em> the obstacle, we focus on<\/em> the obstacle.\u00a0 By doing this, we’re asking the horse to look at the object they think is too scary to look at it.\u00a0 Simultaneously, we are communicating that this thing is not really scary at all.\u00a0 At that point, they’ll likely investigate it.<\/p>\n

      In most other cases, however, you’ll see I’m always on your case to focus forward<\/em> because that gives a horse a focus to follow.\u00a0 He has to be thinking beyond<\/em> the obstacle to go over it.\u00a0 Focusing at<\/em> it will cause him to stop.<\/p>\n

      And thus, this is a repetitive exercise.\u00a0 At this point I’ll sum up the entire article series:<\/p>\n

        \n
      1. Start the exercise in the groundwork.<\/li>\n
      2. Ask the horse to follow your focus forward.<\/li>\n
      3. If he stalls or stops due to fear or uncertainty, you stop with him.\u00a0 This is your ground zero point.<\/li>\n
      4. Ask your horse to release.\u00a0 When he does, go back to step 2.<\/li>\n
      5. Now that you’re near the scary item, you’ll see your horse go through the investigative steps.<\/li>\n
      6. When he looks up and away, go back to step 2.<\/li>\n
      7. Remember to praise and encourage your horse every time he moves forward with you.<\/li>\n
      8. Now you’ll be at or over the obstacle.\u00a0 Success!<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

        By using this article series, you’ll be able to calmly introduce your horse to anything new and uncertain.\u00a0 By remaining focused, positive and encouraging, you’ll be building trust in your leadership with your horse.\u00a0 And by doing that, your horse will be more apt to follow you in the future, because you’ve proven yourself.<\/p>\n

        December 2018<\/p>\n

        Scott Phillips<\/p>\n

         <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

        Horses are curious creatures. As a prey animal, their thinking is fear-based. Learn to turn fear into curiosity!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1240","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/articles.amazinghorsecountry.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1240","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/articles.amazinghorsecountry.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/articles.amazinghorsecountry.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/articles.amazinghorsecountry.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/articles.amazinghorsecountry.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1240"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/articles.amazinghorsecountry.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1240\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":889,"href":"https:\/\/articles.amazinghorsecountry.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1240\/revisions\/889"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/articles.amazinghorsecountry.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1240"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/articles.amazinghorsecountry.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1240"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/articles.amazinghorsecountry.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1240"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}