Episode 230: Are your corrections causing more problems?

Episode 230_ Are your corrections causing more problems_.mp3: Audio automatically transcribed by Sonix

Episode 230_ Are your corrections causing more problems_.mp3: this mp3 audio file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the best speech-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors.

Speaker1:
This is why you'll hear me using words like teach, train, shape, redirect. They're not just a prettier way of saying something, they are a completely different way of looking at things.

Speaker2:
Podcasting from a little cabin on a hill. This is the Stacy Westfall podcast. Stacy's goal is simple to teach you to understand why horses do what they do, as well as the action steps for creating clear, confident communication with your horses.

Speaker1:
Hi, I'm Stacy Westfall and I'm here to teach you how to understand, enjoy and successfully train your own horses. On today's podcast, I'm going to share with you a three step process to evaluate your corrections when you're training your horse. I actually don't like the word correction, but I'm using it because it gets to the essence of the problem. I want to discuss the quickest, and it might sound like I'm splitting hairs with the phrasing in this podcast, but by the end of the podcast, you will see why the phrasing is important. Let's start with the three criteria that I use when evaluating a technique. I think these are easier to understand if you put yourself into a specific situation. So imagine, as I'm reading these to you, that you are loading a horse into a trailer. You are walking up to send the horse into the trailer. The criteria I would use for evaluating your technique would be number one, your emotions. Number two, the specific technique and the question that I would ask to evaluate the technique would be, if anticipated, will this technique create a positive response? And number three I would be evaluating the horses response or reaction because that indicates their level of understanding. Okay, let's go deeper. When you walk up to the trailer, are you already defensive because you've been trying to load this horse on the trailer for a number of days, or you've had problems in the past? How are you showing up? Or have you had problems? But today you're showing up determined.

Speaker1:
Are you curious? Are you frustrated? How are you showing up as you walk up to the trailer, maybe you walk up to the trailer not anticipating any problems at all. So you are shocked momentarily when the horse stops and no longer leads forward and doesn't send on when you switch from. Of course this is going to work. To what? What just happened? Where do you go next? So if I'm watching, I'm evaluating your emotions during this. Now when the horse. Because in this example we have to have a problem. So when the horse asks a question or offers a behavior that you don't want, what is your technique? So let's say that the horse stops and refuses to walk forward. Let's say that you're 5 or 10ft from the trailer and the horse just stops if I'm watching you. Aside from watching your emotional response, I'm also going to evaluate your technique. And again here's how I'm evaluating it. If the horse anticipates your correction does he get better. This is not the same thing as will he choose something different because he wants to avoid my correction? Here's an example. If the horse stops moving forward and you begin jerking the rope and backing him up. This fails my criteria. Number two because if anticipated, this horse logically goes backwards when anticipating your correction. This, in my opinion, is what puts this into a punishment category instead of a training or a teaching category.

Speaker1:
So let's say that you walk up to the trailer and you're pretty open to learning, and you're prepared with a technique. You're like, I've been trying this. I was frustrated a few days ago, but today I'm going to try to figure this out. Take a deep breath. I've got this technique and the horse stops. This time you keep a slight pressure on the rope. Imagine pinching or lightly holding, and you begin to rhythmically tap the horse. In this example, let's pretend it doesn't work. So the horse begins backing up. You are now getting further away from the trailer. Can you keep your emotions level? Can you follow not increasing the rope pressure? You're not trying to pretend you're a tree and you're not increasing the tapping pressure. You're not trying to punish the horse for going backwards, you simply follow not increasing the rope pressure and not increasing the stick pressure. And let's say the horse backs up for ten feet, so you're ten feet further away from the trailer, but then the horse stops backing, takes a step forward, and you release the pressure on the rope and the tapping because your release came when the horse took a forward step, albeit you are further away from the trailer. This. If this is anticipated, it will teach the horse to have a consistent response to light pressure on the rope and tapping. Once that becomes a consistent step forward response that does fit all three parts of my criteria.

Speaker1:
So if the horse Anticipate when there's light pressure on the rope and they begin rhythmically tapping. Even if I move backwards, even if I move sideways, it doesn't go away until I take a step forward. And yes, they may test it a number of times because they're literally just asking the questions about how consistent you're going to be, and maybe whether or not you're going to lose it emotionally. But if you stay steady and you stay with this, this now fits all three parts of my criteria. This is why you'll hear me using words like teach, train, shape, redirect. They're not just a prettier way of saying something, they are a completely different way of looking at things. Here are the three criteria again. Number one Your emotions. Number two the technique. If anticipated, will it create a positive response? Number three the horse. The horse's response or reaction which indicates their level of training. I'm glad that I chose to focus season 18 on showing, because I think having the idea that there is a judge that judges things is actually a really useful way to look at a lot of the training that we do. And what's interesting is even if you go back to the show season of this episode, the judge whose job is to evaluate you is still not correcting or punishing you, even if you get a score that is essentially the equivalent of an F when you were in school.

Speaker1:
It's still not a punishment or a correction. It is an evaluation of your performance on that day. So what does cause people to choose? Corrections or punishment? Things that don't fit all three of my criteria. Here are some of the primary causes I see. One is that the rider has been taught to punish or correct. I told a story a few podcasts ago about when I was in school. If we were leading this particular stallion and he talked, they taught us to jerk on the rope and back him up. And so we were taught to do that. That is a primary cause. Another cause is failure to preplan. So essentially a rushed rider, a rushed writer will often exhibit poor emotional control and poor technique. An incorrect assessment of the horse's level of understanding. I'll go into more detail about that in a minute. A rider who is reacting to emotions like frustration or disappointment. So imagine you've been trying to load the horse in the trailer day after day and you're frustrated. You're disappointed in what's going on. Maybe you're even angry. A rider who's reacting to the emotions. Another would be a limited understanding of improving communication. The layers of training. To me, these include your habit patterns, which your horse probably knows better than you do, and other supporting cues that are available. So I'm about to do an example with teaching a horse to stop. And in that example you could use the bridle reins, but you could also use additional cues.

Speaker1:
So you could use the rider's legs to support, which means that you could actually use less rein and get more response. Now that you've heard this in the trailer loading example, and you've heard some of the leading causes of this way of thinking, let's look at a more complicated example. Again, as we're looking at the example, think I'm evaluating this through number one your emotions. Number two the technique if anticipated does it create a positive response in the horse. And number three the horses response or reaction which indicates their level of understanding. So let's use the example of teaching the horse to stop and back up with a rein cue. So this is specifically using the reins to ask the horse to stop and take a step or two back. And again, the criteria are your emotions. The technique, if anticipated, does it create a positive response and the horse the horse's response or reaction which indicates their training level. And that's the one that I really want to illustrate more deeply. So let's use the example of teaching the horse the rein, cue to stop. In this example, imagine that you're trotting along and you pick up on the reins, and you apply pressure to the reins to ask the horse to stop and then take a step backwards. In this example, imagine that when you do this, the horse tosses its head. There's resistance to your reins being used. My first question is, is he reading your emotions? Were you trotting along? And when you picked up on the reins, you were kind of in this go ahead, make my day kind of a mood, which your horse knows is then followed by punishment.

Speaker1:
Is that where you were at? Because they might just be predicting that when you're in that mood, that you're typically use a punishment type situation that makes them want to throw their head, which would be not a positive anticipation of the technique, by the way. So this would actually be a combination problem right here. It would be a combination of your emotions not being helpful and also a technique that is punishing. And again, my definition of that is that when anticipated, if it causes a problem it was probably a punishing technique. Now let's use an example where you are feeling steady in your emotions while you're training and you're trotting along and you pick up on the reins and you ask the horse to slow down and they toss their head. One of the most common comments you will hear is that the rider was probably moving their hands too fast. This is actually a really interesting thing to ponder, because it could be that the hand was too fast for the level of training. Now for sure it could be considered too fast. If the rider has a habit of jerking the slack out of the reins. So let's say that there's actually a drape or slack in the rein, and the rider has a habit of very quickly moving their hand, and the horse goes from no contact to a sharp contact on the rein.

Speaker1:
That will definitely promote a horse tossing their head. If, for example, this rider already had the slack out of the reins, but when they felt the horse not slowing down, They also quickly moved on the reins and jerked because somebody taught them to do this. This will also typically teach the horse to throw their head because they're throwing it in anticipation of that technique. If I see this, probably the primary example I see is that riders are not accustomed to moving from a loose rein to contact, and so they're not very good at that. That one's a really big one, unless obviously the rider has been trained to use this technique. So let's go a little deeper. First of all, on the surface it might sound like really logical to say that your hand always needs to be slow. I think it's an oversimplification of the issue, because I don't think that the hand speed is always as slow as you might think. Here is an example. Let's imagine that you are starting a coal, or you're riding one that's got 3060. Not that much training, just it's on the greener side. And let's say that you have taught the horse to bend their head around and that means stop. So on the ground you can stand there, you can ask the horse to if you pick up on the left rein, you can ask the horse to bend its head around.

Speaker1:
And a horse can typically touch their side and scratch their side or touch the saddle. And you ask them to bend around like that. And that's how you've taught the horse to stop. So essentially, you've taught the horse to bend and stop. I was teaching a clinic one time, and there was a person riding in the arena that during the lunch break that was not a clinic participant, and I had noticed that she had been working on her bend, but it was very, very slow. As in pick up, very light pressure, the horse moves the head to the left, an inch. Soften. Repeat that. Pick up very slow. Another inch. Soften. Pick up very slow. Another inch. Soften. And that's how she brought the horse's head around. Mind you, I have no issues with that. That is actually an excellent way to teach the horse to bend. Not moving their feet, moving yourself slow enough. You're not causing any of the problems of throwing. However, where it doesn't work is she got on the horse and she was riding around, and because there was a lot of activity, that was probably unusual because we had a clinic going on, the horse became startled and when the horse became startled. If you are riding on a young horse, who's going to bolt or buck, let's think about how quickly you need to be able to bend their head around.

Speaker1:
I'll guarantee it's not going to be one inch, and then soften one inch, and then soften one inch and then soften because you can be covering ten feet of ground every single time I said and soften in there. So before I get on a horse to ride, I want to be able to quickly and smoothly take that horse's head from straight, smoothly around release, run around to the other side, pick up the rein,, bend it smoothly around release because quick isn't necessarily a problem if it's jerky, if it's not smooth, and the horse's level of understanding. So the first time you pick up on the horse to do this, you don't want to be moving at this speed. But the first time you mount, I would highly suggest you are able to bend at the speed you will need if you're using this for your emergency stop. So I would argue that smooth is always going to be on the table, and that you're always building on the knowledge the horse has. So if you are preparing to mount up on that horse and you notice that when you go to bend them around yesterday, you could smoothly get them all the way around because you had done one inch at a time, and now you're going faster and faster, but it's nice and smooth, and then you get them out in four days later you go to do it, and halfway through they kind of toss their head.

Speaker1:
I'm going to go back down through and try to figure out what went wrong. I can reevaluate my technique, but I can also reevaluate, like was there something else going on? Like like being at a clinic and there's all kinds of horses around, and it's a whole different environment, because that would just indicate that the horse's level of training in that situation wasn't strong enough. So I'm going to return to a more base level. That might mean not mounting up, because if I can't do the bend smooth and effectively, I'm not mounting up because it's my emergency stop. I hope that helps you begin to see that quick is not always bad with your hand. It's the horse's level of understanding and your hand does have to be smooth. This becomes very apparent when we go to a higher level of training when riding like raining. So for me, when I'm training my reining horses and I'm either running down to a sliding stop or I might be running my circles, and let's say I'm running a large, fast circle and I want to slow my horse down. And I give my real subtle cues where I change the way that I'm sitting, and I adjust a couple of things if I want to draw the horse into the ground, whether it's on the circle or whether I'm preparing for the sliding stops, we call it drawing the horse into the ground because it's not jerking the horse into the ground.

Speaker1:
It's a smooth, steady removal of the looseness in the reins to a steady pulling motion on the reins, not unlike what you would use when you were asking a horse to back up, but it's done very smooth. This for sure means my hand is moving smooth, but maybe faster than you would think. It's actually shockingly similar to the speed that I'm using in that bending before I mount the colt. So this is not the first time my horses have felt this, but it's smooth. But it's it's quicker than many people would think. But my horse has been systematically prepared for it all the way up through my horse is reading way more than my hand. And if I'm getting negative reactions from the horse, like if I start sliding that hand and the horse is tossing its head, that is actual feedback that the horse is not ready for this technique, that I have miscalculated and moved too quickly through the layers of training, I would have to go back to a lower level of training. So for me, when I am running and I go to draw my horse into the ground, what is interesting is that it does fit all the criteria. So when I begin to slide and pull that rein, through my hand, then what happens is the horse actually stretches their neck, engages their hawks and slides. So I'm getting a positive, a repeatable positive response from the horse during what you could call a correction.

Speaker1:
So my horse's response to this technique is telling me about their education level, which helps me know whether or not this technique is correct for this horse. So I know that I'm not just taking an elementary level horse And now using a technique that a horse in high school or college could easily understand and would fit the criteria. But literally that same exact technique applied to an elementary level horse will not give you the same results. That doesn't mean that the technique was wrong. It means that the horses level of understanding was not prepared for that technique, and that's a major difference. So one more time I'm going to evaluate on your emotions. I'm going to evaluate on the technique if anticipated. Does it create a positive response in the horse and the horse, the horse's response or reaction because that indicates their level of understanding. And you may be using a technique that works very well with a college age horse, but will not work with an elementary level horse. I love teaching this stuff. If you would like to understand what I'm teaching here on a deeper level, go to my website and sign up to get notified the next time the Resourceful Rider program opens up again. In the program, you will learn the techniques that I use and why, and you'll also learn the skills that include your mindset, which is hugely important while you're training your horse. Thanks for listening and I'll talk to you again in the next episode.

Speaker2:
If you enjoy listening to Stacy's podcast, please visit Stacy Westfall. Com for articles, videos and tips to help you and your horse succeed.

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