Little Update

Not too much has been happening recently. Sora is doing so much better! She is trotting really nicely and even tried some canter the other day :D Ellie, my neighbor who boards Sora just introduced another horse that she is temporarily boarding and I was quite worried about how Sora would take it especially since there is some ice still in their pen from all of the thawing and freezing. Ultimately it went really well and the horses are getting along really well.

I've been meaning to get some video of us training now that I have a video camera but every day I'm out there something different is happening such as with the new horse so it just hasn't happened.

I did have a really nice time with Sora yesterday though! She was extremely motivated so we did all kinds of things such as shoulder in, different types of yields, targeting, trot-walk transitions (which we kept to a minimum with her leg), backing and I worked a lot on her feet since she was willing to pick up her right hind leg for the first time since she was injured.

Now, unfortunately, we had a huge drop in temperature which makes working with the horses extremely difficult so I drove to my parents house for the weekend for a short break. The weather is supposedly going to be better later this week already so hopefully we'll be able to continue soon!

Amazing Day

Amazing first because this is my second post in two days :P

But also because I got to play with my girl. I just can't even explain how full my heart is right now.

It started with me going out to take care of chores this morning because Ellie got back from a week long cruise at 1:00am and I didn't want her to have to wake up and do chores. I'm sad to admit that this last week while I've been taking care of chores is the first time in too long that I've actually seen Sora every day. Mainly it's because it's been winter and it gets dark too quickly but it's still been hard on me. At any rate, I finished up chores and went home but returned later once it had warmed up.

During the week I've been taking Sora on nice long walks where she basically gets to decide where we go. She has been choosing to walk out along the road but I've normally cut it fairly short so we don't get too far from her friend. Today though I let her go further and she was just so calm and happy it was hard to believe this is the same horse I started with. It was one of those moments in time that you find yourself looking back to the beginning and wondering how you were lucky enough to end up here.

I did finally decide it was time to turn around and head back but when we got back to the tack shed Sora was NOT interested in being done. I would have loved to do more with her but my legs were so tired from tramping through snow at horse speed that I threw precaution in the air and climbed up onto a nearby "mounting block" just to see what would happen. Only partially to my surprise Sora marched up to it and parked herself like she was wondering why I hadn't thought of it sooner :>)

I climbed on ready to jump off at the first sign of discomfort but she just turned and walked us back towards the road. I sort of drew the line at riding a horse with just a leadrope, not even fastened at both ends, bareback and without a helmet (yes I'm sorry) along even a quiet road so I draped the leadrope back around her neck like a cordeo and using my seat, legs and cordeo cues asked her for a nice turn and she gave it. The best part though was that while she would stop for treats when she had done something nice, she also had forward movement the entire time. We never got stuck and even when I decided I should climb off she didn't want me to and tried to keep going. It's awesome when your horse has connected standing perfectly still to mounting and dismounting so strongly that they think you won't be able to figure out how to dismount if they just keep walking lol!

I was just so happy to get to spend the wonderful, warm, sunny day with my horse in such complete harmony. I just don't know what I would be found if I hadn't found AND and so completely changed my riding and training style.

I should mention, so that no one thinks I'm an abusive horse owner, that much of Sora's discomfort seems to stiffness and that after our trail walk, for example, she was walking like normal even when bending or backing. It was because of this and the fact that at even a hint of a limp I would have been off that I risked our short 10 minute ride. So no worries, Sora and her health mean WAY more to me than one short, wonderful ride :)

Encouragement!

I am currently blogging from the very ritzy St. Croix Falls McDonalds because I do not have air conditioning and I was feeling in danger of melting :)

Because of the heat, all I have done with Sora for the past four-five days is bathe her, scratch her (a lot), and share food with her like oranges, apples and granola bars. I feel like she has greatly deserved it!

On Thursday I went out to see her thinking I would do ONLY what she wanted. I brought a bag of carrots and an Orange and brought her in the arena to play and hang out. For awhile I scratched all her itchy places and encouraged her to roll and get nice and dirty and then I left to get her grooming stuff. Sora is far less confident when I leave her so she started running back and forth which quickly turned into a very energetic game. Two years ago she wouldn't have been able to calm herself down and I would have been too scared to go back in the pen with her but when I got back with the grooming tools I went right in and started brushing her. At this point I had an audience of several people and one of them is someone I have been spending more time with who we will call J.

Once again I am reminded not to judge a book by it's cover because she is not someone who I would seek out to ride or spend time with but she has turned out to be incredibly supportive and open minded, and fun! She wanted to ride her young horse and said she would feel better if someone was around so since the other group was leaving I said I would hang around with Sora thinking that I would just play with her on the ground a bit. J started to roundpen her gelding and he started to race around and Sora charged him from outside the fence!!! I think that my normally submissive little horse was getting something from him she didn't like. I smooched to her a little to drive her away and then kept her further from him with my body language.

Eventually J brought her horse into the arena to ride and after some more groudwork mounted. Up until this point I had no plans to ride but everything with Sora was going so well that I led her over to the mounting block by the lunge line, tied it up at the end and stepped up on the mounting block. I left it up to her whether I would mount or not and it took her a couple of tense minutes to relax and finally she sighed and stepped up so perfectly lined up that I knew she was willing and hopped on :D I was holding the lunge line attached to her halter but didn't have anyway to steer her other than my seat. Of course she was incredible!!! I was talking to J about the type of training I do and although she probably thought I was crazy to climb on like that, she quickly saw that Sora was happy and relaxed and started drilling me with questions :) It was wonderful and she was so encouraging.

What is funny is that the thing that made me the proudest is that I listened to Sora and when she stopped in the corner and pawed when I asked her to turn I climbed off!!! Funny when you are pleased with yourself for doing something that most people would warn you away from lol.

Life Changes

Life is good! I'm finally living on my own, in a gorgeous little farm house, and I am so happy! Sora is being boarded at a really nice little boarding stable and I have access to two outdoor arenas and a nice sized indoor which is just as wonderful as I always thought it would be. There are a couple of people at the stable that seem intent on making my life (because of my style of training) miserable but that is for a different post. What is important is that Sora is happy and I see eye to eye with the stable owner on horse husbandry so that is wonderful as well.

The only other bad thing is that the only access I have to the internet is on my phone so lengthy posts are not possible. I have been following all my favorite blogs but because of a glitch I can't seem to comment on them. Now that I am more settled in I am going to try to do more short posts to record our progress so hopefully there will be more content on here soon.

Training is mostly going well. Due to one of the people who is making my life miserable I was contemplating selling Sora for a whole weekend but now I am so glad that I came to my senses. The good is that we have progressed to where I am very comfortable riding her either with a bitless bridle or just a cordeo in the arena and we are working on leg yields in the cordeo. The bad news is that we are still struggling with the trot and she remains very spooky outside of the arena. I am working slowly on the trot but the spookiness has me sort of stumped. I am not at all reactive when she spooks (and I am very proud of myself that I have come that far) and I am working to desensitize her to things almost daily. She is more confident with me around then when she is on her own so I don't see that I'm doing anything wrong. I am beginning to think that she is just a very spooky horse but that is just not a comforting thought. Because of that I have decided to take a step back and do more of what I really love with her just in the arena where she is confident. Her side passing is getting polished and we are just starting to work on some of the other behaviors/movements such as bow and rear. The best thing for me is feeling soooooo comfortable on her back especially since most of the people here seem to think I am going to die :D

The Mythical "Go" Button

Today I decided was the time to work on encouraging Sora to go forward. This was something that she was overwhelmingly good at. When I first got her the barest move on my part would send her racing to the other side of which ever field we were in thanks to her previous abuse and lack of human contact. In other words she was extremely right brain dominant. Now she is so left brain dominant that it is almost hard to get her to move.

This summer I trimmed her hooves right in front of our garage door without any type of restraint, she wasn't even wearing a halter, while my dad revved his Ducati in the garage which made a sound like an airplane taking off. Not only did she hold still, she was actually relaxed. Regularly she stands still in front of me while I jump up and down, cluck, wave my hands around like a nut case and throw a rope at her. I actually am proud of this because it means she will be a willing and nonflighty riding partner, however she does actually need to move sometimes as well and since I am against using pressure, such as a whip, I need to think of a different way of teaching it.

Today I got started by jogging with her jogging next to me. With me moving she happily matches my speed right along next to me but won't go fast or slower. I tried getting her to outpace me by swinging a rope next to me but she was having none of it and I was worried, although she gave me no reason to be, that if I increased the pressure she would kick out at me as she passed. I therefore gave up on that method and started doing some free lunging.

In AND a horse that will lunge freely in a perfect circle around you without a single piece of tack is spoken about in hushed tones but thanks to Sora's high food motivation it was something that I could ask for fairly quickly. The problem is getting her to turn off and leave the circle which is necessary at points both for AND and for my purposes today. The pressure of flapping a rope at her and clucking wasn't working very well so I started to reward any tiny movement away from me and it started to work.

After some work, and exhaustion on my part, she actually started to run in a line away from me, getting extra grain for a canter or gallop. I would wait until she was a couple steps away and then call "check" and she would spin and gallop back to me for her treat. Eventually she was going several strides away from me and I changed up the game a little.

One thing that many people in AND are able to accomplish quickly that I've always had trouble with is mimicry. Sora will do many things to mimic me such as backing up, pawing, almost rolling :) and so on and she will trot or walk right next to me but she won't mimic me from a distance. As soon as I start to move in the same direction as her and not point my front at her she just falls into the circle and comes right to me. So today I used one of her established tricks, backing up when she is in front of me facing me, and would get her started out "lunging" and then start moving in the same direction. This is something that I have tried before but I tried it harder today and in different ways. It was quite rough but I actually got her to mimic me cantering which is what I really want. The reason for this is that if I can get her to canter mimic me at a distance and learn to mimic canter where she can move faster than I can, I can get her to mimic canter right next to me at a slower pace and therefore teach collection at that gait. Something that I am striving for.

Oh, and the picture is two year old Sora from before I bought her although right at this moment her mane doesn't look that much better :/ I truly meant to get some pictures but my camera battery was uncharged. I'm hoping to get pictures this weekend since it has been so terribly long.

More Progress

This morning it was incredibly nice outside and I had a day off work, finally :), so I spent some time working with Sora. It was pretty rough because we are both out of practice and have forgotten a lot about the training that we did before but we made some good progress.

After the trouble we were having yesterday I decided to step back a step and make sure I could yield her shoulders and hindquarters individually, both towards me and away from me. She actually did really well with her shoulders which I didn't expect because at on point she was really sticky with them in either direction. However, I did have more trouble with yielding her hips. All she wanted to do was back up so her head could be closer to the treats. I did manage to get some really nice yields from her after backing her up to a fence but after a couple good ones I took a break from that and spent some time working on getting her to yield from a cue from the Cordeo.

She remembered this one really nicely and will either move towards me when I pull the Cordeo lightly towards me or step away when I push it towards her. She also backs or stops at a backwards pull. I was really happy with that and decided to end on a good note. I am hoping that I will have a chance to spend some time with her after work tomorrow but even if not I will have a chance again on Thursday. If she does really well I might even sit on her again or ride Jackson and work with her from his back :)

Further Goals

Yesterday I had a lovely time with Sora. I worked on her hooves, mainly getting the quarters down on her front two feet. This is something I was neglecting and that my trimmer reminded me about last time she was here. They are looking much better and I'm hoping to take pictures to send to the trimmer soon. I also worked a bit more on the back feet but I've learned that if I don't push it and go at Sora's pace she is much more willing to do more the next day so I was careful not to push her past her comfort zone. We also did a few simple movements like yielding her shoulders away and then into me, backing with me and some more with her front feet. I had a lot to remember about my body positioning and she was a patient (fairly patient anyway :-) teacher.

I also came up with some more goals for the new year. The first is to reduce the amount of treats I feed Sora and to build up more time between treats. Mainly I just need to be smarter about this because I don't always pay enough attention and then Sora gets two handfuls of grain for a simple trick and when she does something really spectacular I'm completely out.

I did make one big change with treats this winter and Sora is getting Purina Senior as treats instead of the unhealthy snacks she was getting before. The senior is a low sugar palatable feed that Sora loves and the grain instead of cookies tends to be easier to feed without getting fingers caught in an anxious mouth. It's also so much healthier thanks to the low sugars.

My other new goal is to push her more when I think she is getting a behavior. Too often I settle for just the beginning of the behavior because I'm so amazed by my incredible horse that I don't want to push. However I realize that if I ever want to make any kind of real progress its time to see what she can do and begin pushing her gently to work harder for rewards.

Hopefully everyone in the midwest will survive this incredible ice storm we are supposed to have. As if our weather hasn't been crazy enough this year already!

Invisible Connection

I'm enjoying this more and more. I realized a few days ago that this is really always what I wanted when I thought about having a horse. I dreamed that it would be like it was for Alec Ramsey, riding bareback and bridle less on the beach with a horse that actually wanted to be with me rather than being forced to put up with me. Reality was sadly very different and Bucky completely shattered that dream in so many ways. Because of that I really forgot about that dream, wrote it off as an impossibility but now it's actually getting closer and closer.

Yesterday I went out to spend time with Sora. I brought two carrots but didn't really plan on doing any training. I used the carrots getting Sora more comfortable around the mounting block but then she wanted to leave me and go with her herd to graze so I let her. She ran out to them and I could tell she was interested in running around and playing so I went to play with her and we had fun =) She ran and bucked and reared. Finally she stopped so I just sat on the grass and we spent some time together. One of our horses chased her and I chased the horse and then she was stuck to me like glue.

Sora just stuck by my side and she kept wanting to just smell me. She'd press her nose up against my hand and just stay like that for several seconds. It was wonderful and when I left she wanted to come with me.

Today the weather is nuts and I don't know if I'll spend much time outside but I have tomorrow off so I'm hoping to start teaching her a new behavior. Now that we're getting better at communicating maybe it's time to start teaching her to rear, or maybe I'll chicken out and teach her how to bow =)

Finally one of my sources of inspiration

Herd, not Human

A change has happened with Sora and my relationship. Starting earlier this week I finally became a treasured member of Sora's herd rather than simply Katlyn. With that said, I am a very treasured, respected and valued herd member that never gets kicked at, bitten or run over. However that really isn't that strange as horses generally don't do these things to each other anyway except in extremely rough play or when vying for dominance.

Currently not much training is going on but there is a lot of learning happening with both of us. I'm learning how to be and remain congruent with positive and appropriate energy. Sora is learning how to read my body language and how much more delicate I can be than a horse which means that it does hurt me when she snaps and that I react with fear if feet start flying too near me. The thing is that right now all she needs as a correction is the fear. She backs off just as I do when she gets fearful and nothing more needs to be done since we respect eachother.

The more specific work that has happened has been working with the Cordeo and teaching Sora that I would like her walking next to me when we are "working" but that she can be where ever when we play.

I have come to a few powerful realizations. First, that working with/playing with a horse either at liberty, doing groundwork or on their back is not dangerous (at least no more than walking to your car) as long as there is respect from and in both parties and as long as both parties are fairly alert. Basically the things I always saw as impossible, dangerous or stupid simply aren't with the type of relationship Sora and I are working on. I wasn't thinking about the fact that riding, for example without a bridle, isn't dangerous at all if you are able to listen to what the horse is telling you. If the horse tells you something is scary or dangerous you climb off and that a horse that respects you just won't buck to remove you, only to show exuberant mood (if at that point you can't stay on that's hardly the horse's fault lol).

These are simple things but I am discovering that I tend to be fearful of everything in my life (the fact that my first few experience with horses were with horses that did want to hurt me didn't help at all). Sora is the same way and we are teaching and learning from each other. A good example of this is when I climbed on Sora for the first time ever bareback yesterday. She wasn't sure she wanted me there and I could tell she thought that feeling me move that clearly was strange but she didn't want to hurt me! She values my friendship and respects me. Even though she knows that I wouldn't hurt a hair on her if she expressed herself that way (natural fear response), she also knew that I would climb off the minute she needed me to. Because of that even though I had a rush of adrenalin and was shaky she stood stock still until I gathered myself a little and when I lost my balance (I haven't had a chance to ride all winter and am disgustingly weak in my core) she stopped and waited for me to regain my balance. All of this in a halter, on a windy day with completely loose reins.

Sora has been learning a lot from our time together as well and has never been calmer. I've realized that if I were to tell someone that something was dangerous and they ignored me it would only heighten my fear whereas if they responded to it and then ignored it I would feel completely safe. I've started to acknowledge everything Sora tells me is scary. I look, smell (breath deeply) and sometimes “shy” while remaining calm with an in control, leader sort of attitude, and most of the time after acknowledging the scary I go back to what we were doing. Between that and the increase in time I spend with her she is now calmer than any other horse I've been around. This is all because of trust. As a member of the herd she knows I'm looking out for both of us and wouldn't lead us into danger. She also sees that I respect her decisions and pay attention to the things she thinks are scary. Yesterday I went to save a rubber ball from the wind and when I tossed it over the fence into Sora's pen, the wind took it and threw it against her legs. She just stood there looking at it. She was ready to run but since I didn't and just smiled and waited she came over to me relaxed not even really looking at the ball. Very impressive (at least to me) from a still three year old Arabian filly.