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Bella and Me |
In the first article “It Depends,” we talked about the four goals for your horse of directed movement, flex of the neck, loose feet, and connection or “feel” between your horse and you. We introduced three methods to work towards these goals: movement work in the round pen, poling, and rope work. Please use “It Depends” for review or for more background to this article. Visit http://www.wildhorseandburro.blm.gov/news/winter2005/depends.html to view this article. MOVEMENT Now let’s get our horse to move in the direction we want. You do this by turning him either towards the rail or towards the inside of the round pen to change directions at your request. This connects you with the horse, literally, as his director. From the center of the round pen, get the horse going easily in one direction, and pick a place on the rail where you want him to change direction. Several horse lengths before he gets there, step a little in that direction, essentially blocking his forward motion. Raise your front hand slightly. You want your body english to block his forward movement and turn his eye away, and towards the other direction, so it becomes his outside eye. This is a “turn towards the rail.” It is harder for some horses, because they lose sight of you in the turn, which makes them vulnerable. If they resist or blow through your request, immediately set up for another try and be more firm. Having a lariat or cotton rope in your hands is helpful here. You can toss the rope as an extension of your blocking hand. Keep going at this until you get a successful turn. REMEMBER, as soon as you get a turn, Release! You will see your horse lick and chew in understanding when he is successful and YOU give him a release. You should try to stay as close to the center of the round pen and use as minimal a request as possible. Bump it up if you have to. Don’t let the horse cheat in off the rail. But if there’s a place where he does give himself a little more space, turning him there might help make the turn a little easier. Repeat going the other direction – Side Two. Don’t expect it to be exactly the same. In further sessions, continue this work at different gaits, gaining smoothness and control. Now the inside turn. Many horses do this naturally as a more defensive posture. It is a wheel towards you on the hinds: “I’m turning toward you, so I can keep my eye on you!” So we use a horse’s natural behavior to become his leader by telling him when and how we want him to turn. So get him going on the rail again. Ask for your turn when his eye is on you and/or his ear is cupped towards you. With some horses, they may actually be looking in to you and ready to try. Take a step or two in the forward direction like before. But this time, instead of blocking him with your front hand, open your front shoulder, that is, pull it back away from the horse, as you take a step or two away from him at the same time. Raise your front hand a little, and as you back away a step or two, hold your hand in a subtle inviting motion to bring his head in. As soon as his front legs start to swing in, direct him in the new direction with your other hand, lean that way, and ask him to move with the hand that invited him in. You may have to wait seconds, or many seconds, while he stops, and then looks or steps in. That’s ok! Get him going again, and build on it. Release every time your horse is successful, and then ask for a little more. Reward the try. That is how he works, too. Again, bump up your request if you need to. Be ready to move if you have a quick, very afraid, or very challenging horse. Get out of the way if necessary and set up again, until you can get some success. Pass the test as his good and caring director, and he will be directed. Don’t forget Side Two, an inside turn from the other direction. When this works, he will want to follow you. The horse will look in to you, step in, and even start to “come up” to you. You can continue to back across the round pen in short steps and ask him to “come up” instead of directing him to the inside turn. “Coming up” is connecting for your horse and a trust step to successful catching and haltering. POLING Use “It Depends” to review being touched all over by the pole. You now can use approach and release with the pole for the eventual goal of touching your horse, but don’t get in a hurry: You want to touch him on the INSIDE with respect and release, before you ever touch him on the outside. So, take your time. From the center of the pen, take up your neutral position even with his shoulder and start at the sweet spot with your pole. Don’t stay still; keep your body active and your voice soft and normal. Move your feet. Decide how much closer up the pole you can move your hands without alarming the horse; maybe an inch, maybe 3 or 4. Slide your hands up while you are working the pole, and move your body and feet in, or just lean in with your upper body. Your horse will notice all of this. If he moves, keep the pole with him until he settles, and then when he stops and relaxes just the least bit, release! The goal is to do approach and release with your distance to the horse on the pole and anticipate how close you can get without having him move. One way to move in is to notice something in the dirt where you will move. You can even make a soft mark with your boot. Eventually you will be within reaching distance of him. DON’T REACH! To him you are a cougar jumping on his back. WAIT until you are close enough for the back of your hand to naturally bump up against his sweet spot as you move the pole, because that is how close it is. Continue touching him in this way as part of the pole motion, until you can release the pole with that hand, and hold the pole with the hand closest to your body. You are now touching him with the pole and your hand. Play with this until you can touch him only with your hand. Don’t forget to release. Don’t tickle him lightly. You don’t want to build up a static charge. Horses groom and rub each other with vigor. Talk nice. Release. Back off a step, come forward. At some point you will go for two hands rubbing at once. This will prepare your horse to accept you being busy around him for haltering, for example. To get your second hand up there, move it slowly along the upper part of the front of your body. Then move down your arm that is rubbing the horse, bit by bit while the horse is comfortable, until you can bump it against the horse where your other hand is rubbing. Then you will have two hands on your horse. Step away and release. Watch your horse turn towards you, lick, and chew, and you’ll know you are connecting. Your next goals here will be to work your rubbing onto different parts of the body and down the legs, step by step. Be safe and effective. Anticipate how far you can go and be in the comfort zone before releasing. Do Side Two. ROPE WORK Continue with the work described in “It Depends” until you can get each end of the rope in one hand. Then flip and seesaw the rope back and forth around the horse’s body, smoothly, from the center of the pen. If the horse bolts or struggles, keep the rope in contact until he stops. Then, Release! That way, he will learn to accept the rope, and to stop if he ever in his life gets tangled up in one! It’s ok if your session goes western a time or two. Set it up so that you keep your hands on the ends of the rope and when he stops, he gets a release! The easiest way to do this is to think water skiing. Ask a water skier if you don’t know what I mean. You have to keep enough “feel” in the rope so that it doesn’t fall around the horse’s feet and enough slack so that you are not binding the rope on the horse’s body, giving him or you rope burns. If he moves, keep the “feel” without getting too slack. The easiest way to get the “feel” is to pick the ends of the rope up over your head, taking up slack while he is running around and you are in the middle of the pen waiting for him to stop. It is like a water skier lifting the line when he has too much slack between himself and the boat. Having your horse easy with two hand touch and rope work prepares him for two important parts of gentling: haltering him and working with his feet. The video referenced at the end of this article is great for poling and rope work. HALTERING Here is a brief introduction to haltering. I recommend a stiff rope halter. They are less noisy and shiny and they are better training aids. Knots are at points on the nose and poll that helps the horse learn. If you need to practice haltering to get handy with it, PLEASE for the sake of your horse and your gentling sessions, do it outside your sessions. Use another horse you can approach and halter, or something besides your mustang. Basically, you will be introducing a different kind of rope to the horse in a way that he is already used to. Give him the grace to see this as new ground. It IS new ground to him. You should be reviewing with every session anyway. Go back and rework what is easy and comfortable with him, and then go forward. Show him your hand and let him smell it the way you showed him the pole and he smelled it. Then show him the wadded up halter and lead line the same way. Rub him with your hand, then rub him with the wadded up halter and lead line. Don’t forget to release and reward when he accepts each little step. At some point start holding parts of the halter and lead rope so it slowly starts taking its shape. You will want to start planning how you are going to hold the halter to put it on. Get him used to that in micro-steps. Because of this work and what you did leading up to it, you will be teaching him to put his face in the halter without fear. This will happen by degrees and it can still get western, so let him go and come back to it until you can release to a success. FOOT WORK Do some work connected to gaining control of the feet in every session. This is for your horse’s health (and yours) as well as his gentling. You can do this with the pole, rope, and eventually your hands. Review pole work about the legs and feet from “It Depends”. Use approach and release going down the leg. Start with the pole; anticipate staying in the horse’s comfort zone, and release while it is still and quiet. Make progress down the leg. Then do the rope work the same way, leg by leg. Dangle a rope when you are able to safely so that it contacts the legs as it dangles. Get creative, but always be able to release when the horse does well. Get to the point where you can get a long enough rope to be safe around one of the horse’s legs. You have an end in each hand. Then seesaw it back and forth down the leg bit by bit until he is comfortable with the rope around the fetlock. Then ask the horse to “pick it up” while giving several light pulses to the foot through the rope. If it doesn’t work, pulse more firmly. If that doesn’t work, pick the foot up a little and move it a few inches out from under the horse, to the side. Wait no more than a few seconds after your request. Don’t forget your water skiing lesson if it gets western. Release and praise the horse if he moves his foot without bolting or shying. Give him a big release if he picks it up without a lot of pressure from the rope when you ask. If he appreciates being rubbed at this point, definitely rub him and reward him. You have three feet to go. All of them will be a little different. You are doing this with the rope because he knows the rope and for now it keeps you a lot safer. IN CLOSING · My teachers – I can’t go any further without acknowledging the work of Jerry Tindell on movement for a horse, and John Sharp and his granddaughter Kitty Lauman for their work on poling and ropes. Thank you to my teachers. · Check Tindell’s website for his training videos, especially about movement. www.jerrytindell.com · A great video for poling and the rope is “From Wild to Willing” by Kitty and Rick Lauman of Lauman Training www.laumantraining.com. Kitty’s grandfather John Sharp pioneered the use of the bamboo pole in modern gentling, and has been doing it for 80 years himself. · Ask Rob a question: Write to Rob at robp9@yahoo.com with a gentling question or comments. He will try to answer it for you. The Newsletter will publish a question and its answer in every issue. · Watch the BLM National Wild Horse and Burro Adoption schedule at www.wildhorseandburro.blm.gov. Find out if there are demonstrations at your area adoptions. View the demonstrations even if you are not adopting! · Rob demonstrates gentling at southern California and other adoptions and workshops. Finally, if you are within a 2-hour drive of Hesperia, CA, contact Rob to discuss forming a gentling group in your area. Rob can demonstrate the work and help you learn. Top of page |
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Official Newsletter of the National Wild Horse and Burro Program
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