insurmountable

For a long time I’ve had this idea stuck in my head that there are some obstacles Murray and I will simple never get to the other side of. For example, our dressage tests are consistently inconsistent: I never know what horse is coming out of the warmup or what is waiting for me in the sandbox. Obviously this is to the detriment of my riding and our overall performance, but that’s not really the focus of this particular blog. I thought I’d always have this horse that could really be beautiful at home but would never show himself fully away from home – and I was becoming resigned to that. I thought I’d probably always have a horse that would get a little sticky in stadium, peering at strange filler, floral arrangements, or you know, whatever he felt like. So I planned on riding a horse that was strong in warm up and backed off in stadium and never being able to appreciate the bold, brave jumper I knew was hiding in there.

Only took 14 fences to get to “brave”!

And then this weekend while I was listening to podcasts and mucking, the Dressage Radio podcast came on (part of Horse Radio Network! Free podcasts! So fun!) and they were talking about the 10 Habits of Highly Effective Dressage Riders. The first one they talked about was

6: An effective Dressage rider knows success happens one ride at a time, day in and day out, remaining consistent and realistic in their daily goals and expectations.

And that really struck me. Day to day, I feel like I have pretty reasonable and consistent expectations. Today: be through, be supple, use your body correctly. Tomorrow, be through, be supple, and use your body correctly. Saturday: be through, be supple, use your body correctly. I’m good with that. I get it, and I understand it – perfect practice makes perfect. But it was certainly something to hear really upper level riders talking about using these tiny, teeny weeny increments to train the movements. And obviously, obviously, right?! You can’t expect a horse to hold their body up in a pirouette day after day and not get sore and pissed off – they don’t do the same movements day in and day out. But they do work slowly, with what their horse can do, and that is the road to success.

Next up was Linda Parelli, talking about using the principles of Parelli to help horses understand dressage. A lot of people think dressage is about control and rigidity and structure (Linda pointed this out, but it is also something I have noticed), but it’s not. It’s about – among other things — cooperation and building understanding. I, myself, can’t treat dressage like a place to control and bring rigid structure and my command and will down upon my horse – even if I previously thought like that, someone would disapprove.

Let your body do the talking

Linda talked about taking time with a horse so they understand the game of dressage – that this is something they have a part in as much as the rider. In the Parelli structure this starts with the game of contact, but Parelli or not, taking the time, the little bitty steps and many repetitive hours, of getting your horse to understand their part of the relationship is essential to success. And it seemed, to me, that a big part of this equation was persistence. If you keep changing up your teaching strategy, how is your horse supposed to learn?

After the Dressage Radio Show, on came the US Eventing podcast and who was a guest on it but — lo and behold – Bobby Covington! Bobby was talking with Chris Stafford about his win at the AECs and Chris, as she tends to, asked a lot of questions about how Bobby and Halo came together and their riding and competition history. Now I’m on Team Amanda all the way, but you have to admit that Bobby and Halo have an impressive competition record. They have finished in the top 3 at their last four events at beginner novice, and finished first at their move-up to Novice this year. I mean, no matter who’s team you’re on, that’s impressive.

Impressive indeed.

The interesting part to me, however, wasn’t just how well these two have done. It was actually the amount of time they have been together (since 2008! If I recall correctly). Hearing a bit about Bobby’s history – that he evented through Prelim with his warmblood mare and after college was finally able to get a second horse, Halo, and started at the beginning again – really made me think about learning and time. Obviously Bobby and Halo have a great relationship, and Bobby knows how to ride his horse for the best performance. But more than that, they have clearly really, really taken the time they need to get it right.  And make sure it stays right.

I know right?! BeyondPod was hammering the message home on Saturday.

There were the pieces. Do things incrementally and a tiny bit at a time. Be persistent. Even spooky thoroughbred can score under 30 in dressage consistently. They percolated while I mucked and fed approximately nine million horses and dropped hay off the wagon and had to go back and pick up the flakes I dropped every time I turned a corner so that everyone would get fed.

And I realized – what kind of crack have I been smoking that I think it’s impossible for Murray to ever be consistent in the dressage court and I’ll just have to accept the wildly shitty and disappointing rides for the frequency that they are likely to come?! That isn’t logic. That isn’t what I understand of animal learning. That isn’t what I want. I don’t want to move up the levels accepting my shitty dressage tests and hoping for clear cross country and stadium runs to get in the ribbons. I want to be strong in all three phases. I know we can be strong in all three phases. I want people to see my name on entries lists and fear competing against me because we can kick such ass.

Weird/fat/drunk/sad tiny shoulder Napoloen is back!

This isn’t something that we can never get past. In fact, I doubt that with time, creativity, and the right learning structure there is anything that Murray will never be able to get past. He is smarter than I am, especially about learning things, but I am stubborn as hell, and now that I’ve got this idea in mind I am not giving up on it. It’s just that somewhere along the way I got wrapped up in all the other distracting things that come along with riding and competing – shiny things, satiny things, bigger things, lower-numbered-things, jealous things… all the things. I’m not sure that I ever completely equated those things with success or reaching my goals, but they seem to be correlated often enough that it’s honestly a bit hard not to. It’s hard not to think that the goal is the move up, or the ribbon, or the score, or the next level. But that’s not the end goal, is it? The goal is total eventing world domination being really kick ass all the fucking time*.

As I seem to pledge to every few months on here, I am anew-committed to taking the time we need to kick ass and take names. I’m sure in a few months I’ll get all ahead of myself again and have to remember to get back to this place.

*Or as much of the time as we reasonably can.

farrier tales & that time I accidentally Parellied my horse

I adore my farrier.  She is so great for me and Murray, and we blab and blab during our appointments.  We very much share the same philosophy for shoeing — do as little as you need to — and she explains everything to me in great detail so that I really feel like if she told me I needed to do something for Murray, I would completely believe her (perhaps this is the long con?! kidding).   Most importantly: Murray likes her, and she is GREAT with him.  Oh, and my farrier is a LADY, which is not the most common thing in the world and I do believe in women being badasses so you know.

We are not in posession of the world’s greatest feet

However, Murray and I did not always have such a positive relationship with farriers.  Doubtless the kid had all four feet shod at the track, but when he got to our barn he started out barefoot, just getting trims (from another lady farrier in the area, actually!).  Eventually, he graduated to front shoes, and that’s where I picked up.  After a couple of months of work, I noticed that Murray was wearing his hind toes down quite a bit, and asked my farrier if we could put hind shoes on to protect his feet while we worked on fixing the root of the problem.  It got put off for two appointments, until I finally put my foot down and asked for them then and there, as I knew I would be starting to ask the kid to do some harder stuff in the coming weeks — running XC on harder ground, for example.

Farrier man was in a bit of a rush, and with some bribery and minimal hijinks we got on the left hind shoe.  By the time we got around to the right hind though, Murray was done.  D-O-N-E done.  He kneed the farrier in the chest three times, and ripped his foot away while the shoe had a grand total of one nail in.  He pulled back, I popped him with the stud chain, and he happily backed away from me, twisting the shoe in his foot as he did.  He backed towards another horse in the barn aisle, shoe all askew and weaponized on his foot, and the farrier yelled at me to just get Murray away from that other horse.  Fortunately, Lisa showed up at just this moment and managed to placate Murray into some kind of submission.  At which point the farrier man uttered this very final statement:

“I’m not putting hind shoes on that horse. If you want hind shoes, call another farrier.”

I did find another farrier, of course.  And I love her!

Anyway, along the lines of this farrier I adore, I’ve worked really hard to make sure that Murray and she get along well.  This involved a lot of stuffing cookies in his face while lady farrier worked on his less-acclimated feet (hinds) and distracting him or reminding him to be a good boy during shoeing.

So with all this treating, I figured I would just clicker train Murray a bit to get him to be better while I was grooming him.  So every day, I pre-masticated a few carrots (read: bit up into tiny, treat-sized pieces), stuffed them in my pockets, and would click and treat him as I curried, picked, and brushed, targeting good behavior.  Murray, unfortunately, would be super mouthy whenever I was near his face, and would practically try to crawl into my pocket to get to the carrots he could smell and sometimes even see.  So I trained a “head down” command, and clicked and treated specifically for him keeping his head down.

Yes you really must wear this baling twine

But instead of getting steadier and more reasonable, Murray got fussier.  He started to wander all around the tie when I was grooming, and repeatedly picking up and slamming down his front right foot, a behavior I had been specifically trying to train out of him!  He would put his head down, up, turn around to look at me, and then shuffle all around.  I tried to click and treat only for the good behaviors but there were so many bad behaviors in there that I felt like I was really missing the point.

And then I realised what was happening.  Murray, thinking that this was training time, was offering me every single behavior I had ever rewarded him for in an attempt to get treats.  He knew the treats were there, and he was willing to work for them.  Constantly.  Forever.  Always.  Just to get more treats.

I mentioned this to lady farrier at our latest appointment, and told her how I’d had to back off the clicker training because of it (upside: Murray is much more well-behaved during grooming now).  She laughed at me and said “Well, you know, that’s one of the goals of Parelli! To have your horse to the point where they understand the game and are offering you all these behaviors to participate in the game!”

I was like UMMM WUT?

So there. I accidentally Parellied my horse.  No carrot stick or waving lead rope needed.