Episode 234-Pressure: Do you prefer sensitizing or desensitizing?

Episode 234-Pressure_ Do you prefer sensitizing or desensitizing_.mp3: Audio automatically transcribed by Sonix

Episode 234-Pressure_ Do you prefer sensitizing or desensitizing_.mp3: this mp3 audio file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the best speech-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors.

Speaker1:
The same rules apply in the pasture as they do in the arena. But again, you're going to need to figure out what your comfort level is with the concept of pressure.

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. Today I'm answering a listener question that came in from someone who has two horses, one that's very responsive to pressure and another one that doesn't respond to pressure. Let's listen to the question.

Speaker3:
Hi Stacy. Thank you so much for what you're doing. I continue to learn so much from you. I have an interesting question. I think I have three horses and I want to zoom in on two of them. One of them is my mare. She is 12 years old. She's very responsive to pressure, like very respectful of my space. I can move her when I'm 20ft away in the herd, like she listens to me. She's very good at reading me and I think she accepts me as a leader very well. However, I also have a gelding who just turned one. He's a newly yielded also and he doesn't respond to pressure very well. He's very bold, he's very brave. And the problem is, when I want to take my 12 year old mare with me from the herd, basically, so I lead her away, he tends to get possessive. He starts bumping into her like he doesn't want to leave her side. And I try to send him off. I want to keep him out of her space. However, he doesn't respond to me trying to keep her out or keep him out of her space. And the bigger I get trying to send him off, my mare starts to react to me because she gets worried, because she notices that, you know, something's up. I want something. She's trying to give me an answer when I'm sending my energy to him. So she responds to me, even though my energy is towards him and he doesn't really respond, What do I do? Thank you so much.

Speaker1:
Thanks for the question. And the very first thing that popped into my mind and made it down on paper was You're going to learn so much here. I love it when a person gets to experience the two kind of opposite views with two different horses, because long term, I actually think it's really beneficial to understand the horses that tend to be sometimes I'll call them a little bit hotter. That may or may not be the trait, but tends to be that the horses that are a little bit more reactive, a little bit more responsive naturally are a little bit lighter and they can possibly come across as a little bit hotter. Not a lot. My scale tends to be balanced as zero. So if you've got a horse that's a plus one or a plus two or a plus three, a lot of people would consider those horses to be zeros if they were using their own scale. Mine is a little more nuanced. Maybe. So when you get really close to zero on my scale, they're just pleasantly easy to get to go. Now, on the other side of it, we get those horses that are more bold, more confident, and a lot of times they also can tend to be a little bit more willing to accept pressure, which can make them feel a little bit more dull at times because maybe not quite as responsive if we use the word that you did, because that bold and brave will also kind of question.

Speaker1:
Now, keep in mind, both of these horses, even if you have a horse that's way up like plus seven, eight, nine, 10 or -7, eight, nine, ten, these horses can all be balanced out. It's just the more extreme the horse naturally defaults to, then the more work it is to get them to balance out a zero. If that's even your goal, it's my goal. But that's another thing you have to question. So when I first heard your question, my first thought was you're going to learn so much here because your mare has certain views on pressure. And one of my questions for you, when you think about her, you've already said she's responsive. Where is your line for when responsive becomes reactive? So, for example, if you are asking him to leave and your energy is going up, at what point does she go from being responsive to what you would consider reactive? Because one of my pieces of my own definition of responsive includes the ability to respond. By not avoiding pressure. And my guess is that when your mare senses your increased pressure to drive the gelding away, she is. Air quotes responding by getting away from the pressure.

Speaker1:
Plant the seed that one of the responses a horse could have to pressure is being able to read the body language of the person who is exuding that pressure and knowing whether or not that is aimed at them or whether it requires them to respond. We're going to talk about that more in a minute. Another way to view it is. When you think about. When I think about pressure, think about it like this. There's emotional pressure, like a stadium full of people clapping. That's not touching the horse, but the energy in the room would go up. It would be an emotional pressure. Often times things like crossing across the tarp or a plastic bag being flapped around, even if it doesn't touch the horse. Those are forms of what I would consider emotional pressure. Obviously if you start sacking the horse out with the plastic bag now, the thing that's making the emotional, the energy in the room go up could also be crossing over and exuding like some sort of physical pressure. So if you're touching the horse with the plastic bag, even if it's very lightly, you could then put it into both categories. And we do a lot of things that include physical pressure, tightening the girth, expecting them to let us sit on their back. Those are things that the horse to accept. A rider is going to be accepting a form of pressure, even if it is just the seat pressure.

Speaker1:
In my world, I want my horses to accept my legs. And this comes from having grown up riding a barrel horse that I trained that required me to hold my legs braced way off, as in if my legs were 12in away from her side, it meant don't run off. And if I was my legs closed to ten inches from her side, she was like, okay, I should probably go faster. And I mean, I'm not even kidding You like getting my legs. Letting them just hang down was not an option. So that is a version of a horse avoiding a physical pressure. So I had accidentally over sensitized my barrel horse to my legs. Now she accepted the tightening of the girth and the pressure of me sitting on her back, but she thought my legs meant run, and therefore she got gotten to the point where she didn't accept the physical pressure of just my leg weight hanging there. Now on to your gelding. I am glad that you noticed that the same things that make him challenging in this situation are also possibly good traits in a balanced out way. So he's bold, he's brave. Those can be good things. And in this situation, they might be contributing to your challenge.

Speaker1:
So the question I have for you here is how will you teach him? What method will you choose to teach him to move away from pressure? Because that's one thing you're reporting he's not doing. And keep in mind that you do still also want him to accept pressure. So same as the mayor. The mayor is going to need to accept levels of emotional pressure being around her without reacting. So therefore responding by not avoiding. And you also want him to respond to pressure in his case, move away from it when it is aimed at him. And yet at other times you still want him to accept it. But what I'm hoping your hearing and everybody who's listening is that if you're mayor, I'm just going to make up numbers. Let's just for fun say she's a plus for insensitivity. And that's why you can communicate with her 20ft away out in the field very subtly. Let's say she's a plus four and let's say that he's a minus four. So as you're doing the work to balance them out, be able to get them to move when you ask them to move, but stand when you ask them to stand. That's going to be the game. And what's interesting about this is so much of it's going to come down to your views on pressure. Your views on emotional pressure, that idea of a stadium full of people.

Speaker1:
But let's take it to you, whipping the ground around them, you creating a storm of energy around them. What is your view on doing something like that? What I notice after coaching for decades is that people tend to naturally either sensitize or desensitize just sort of their natural way of being. Obviously, if people have been doing a lot of work to balance out and understand both sides of handling hot horses and handling colder horses, for example, then you're going to get better. But even I understand I have a natural default. So if people tend to naturally sensitize or naturally desensitize, what category would you put yourself in? Here's where it gets a little more interesting. When I look and I see that people tend to fall into one of the categories or the other, let's say they naturally sensitize horses. It doesn't always mean that they pick a particular horse, but what it does mean is that different horses, let's just use the labels hot and cold. The person that naturally sensitizes will have a different experience when they're handling a hot horse versus when they're handling a cold horse. A lot of times, whatever the rider is less comfortable with doing will inform them to gravitate towards a different horse. So if a person.

Speaker4:
Tends to dislike adding pressure.

Speaker1:
Then what happens a lot of times is that they will notice that when they're around a dull horse, that duller, quieter horse requires that of them. Now, on one hand, if they choose that horse because they naturally sensitize it, can work out really well. The horse's natural traits and the rider's natural traits will tend to create a little bit more balance there. However, many people who dislike raising the energy level will pick a naturally sensitive horse because they can tell that the horse is more responsive to light pressure. Then the challenge becomes it's true the horse is more sensitive to light pressure. However, if you're both really sensitive and you sensitize, the horse can get more and more sensitive. So even if you prefer that sensitive responsiveness, which it's actually completely capable in both horses, you can get the quieter lazy horses can become just as balanced out and sensitive. It's just that when I talk about where they want to naturally be drawn to, that tends to be where they'll default to if not maintained. So if you take that naturally sensitive horse and you put it with a person who doesn't actually want to apply pressure, so they naturally are a sensitizing kind of a person, they tend to have really good releases and make horses really sensitive and they kind of avoid pressure. And pressure, by the way, can be desensitizing.

Speaker1:
Desensitizing is a version of pressure that means don't do anything. So if that person doesn't learn how to desensitize, a lot of times the horse and rider that are the sensitive paired with sensitive can run into issues later on when everything just gets too responsive, aka reactive. This means that there are multiple combinations because I just did sensitive, sensitive. And I briefly touched on, you know, the sensitive person, the duller horse. You can crisscross this several different ways and then you have to, on top of it, layer on the idea that it's not just a category of sensitive versus dull. You've got all those on my scale plus one, two, three, four, five, all the way to ten and minus down to ten. So it becomes really interesting because you've got the original way that the horse presents. So you've got that sensitive horse. It's like, Oh, nice. It's easy to get them to do things, but you also need to be able to make sure you don't overly sensitize to the point where they're. Crossing the line that you have to decide where that line is. Where is your line from? Responsive to reactive. So now let's go back to your horses for a minute. I'm imagining you go out there, you get your mare, you start moving. He comes into the bubble, and I want you to picture that once you are attached to the lead rope, that's your bubble, too.

Speaker1:
So for me, once I go in there, it's my bubble for a good 20ft around me when I go into the pasture. But as I go in there, and especially when I'm ten feet from the horses, they're in my bubble and they start following my rules. That's my rule, is that when you are in my bubble, you start following the rules. But right now your mare senses. That the gelding is adding pressure. You described it really well. He's physically adding pressure. And I want you to imagine that he's also radiating his intention, which is his kind of that feeling of whatever. He's like mine. Stay with me. I want the I don't want you to leave that that energy that he's exuding. She's got the pressure, physical and mental coming from him. And then you're adding whatever you're doing to try to shoo him away. And now she's seeing you are adding pressure and she's just like, okay, we got to go. So for me. The answer doesn't begin in the pasture with both horses. The answer begins one on one and teaching each horse about my rules. So what I'm going to give you right now is my test for groundwork. Emotional control expressed through an actual physical action you can take. Now, everybody who's listening, you don't go out and test the horse unless you've set the horse up for success.

Speaker1:
Right now, I'm trying to get you to visualize what type of a test my horse's pass that then has this carryover in the pasture that I'm talking about. So my test for groundwork, emotional control. For a horse that I'm about to mount and ride for the first time. They have to pass this test multiple times before I'm going to trust them with my life by mounting my test for groundwork is Can I put you on a 20 plus foot long lunge line? And can I stand holding a stick and string? It's a heavier weight Lunge. Whip. Because it it actually makes a different sound. And I can control the string differently because it's weighted unlike the flimsy end of a lunge whip. So I've got my horse in a rope halter on a longer lunge line and I've got my whip. Let me tell you how a horse passes this test. So I'm going to tell you as though it's working. So I'm standing there and I've warmed the horse up doing whatever for getting them going. And then I had them stop facing me near the end of the lunge line. So let's just say it's a 24 foot lunge line. They're 20ft away from me. They're facing me. I whipped the ground around them.

Speaker1:
Now I'm 20ft away from them, so I'm whipping. If they are 12:00, I'm whipping towards 1:00 and 11:00. So I'm not whipping nine and three, I'm whipping towards them. But in that cone shape and I'm 20ft away from them and I want the sense that they are staring at me through that ball of energy that I'm whipping up, but they're watching my body language. Then I stop whipping the ground, which, by the way, I was whipping as hard as I can. So I'm not just tapping the ground, I'm actually whipping it hard. Then I stop whipping. And let's say I'm going to send them counterclockwise. I raise my left arm up and indicate that I want them to go counterclockwise. I move my whip into a different position when I stick and string to ask them to go that direction. They pivot and begin moving that direction. And then I kiss. So I vocally cue what I've trained. Remember, don't go testing something you haven't trained. It's not kind. So I kiss and I want to know, can I get them to lope off in the first quarter of the circle? So let's say that they were located at 12:00 on my circle and I'm sending them counterclockwise. So can I have them pivot and turn and lope off before they get to 9:00? So preferably maybe, let's say 1030.

Speaker1:
So they lope off and they're loping, they lope around and I want to stop them at 12:00. One revolution. I want to stop them facing me at 12:00. And then I want to whip around them again. Can you hear how this would require a horse to be able to demonstrate a high level of physical and emotional control? Because now let's go look at what each horse's problems will be. The sensitive horse will typically have a challenge with the whipping around them. They're going to be challenged by that level of energy and being able to look at you and discern that they're not meant to move, even though you're stirring up all this energy. Then that same sensitive horse that you are challenged to get to standstill. They tend to go really easily, but then they're a little more challenging. Once you have got them up to going, there tend to be a little bit more challenging to shut down and stop at 12:00. Now, remember, when I'm doing this, I'm about to ride this horse, so I do ask them to be this precise and I do ask for this big transition. I do not begin training it like this. And when I train weanlings, we're only doing walk and trot. So it changes as the level goes up. But for me, this is definitely something I'm doing before I ride them.

Speaker4:
Now, let's talk about the.

Speaker1:
Quiet horse, the one that's more like your gelding. A lot of times, once they figure out that when you whip around them, it's a desensitizing thing, they're like, awesome. I just stand and stare at you. This is good. The challenge comes when you get them to turn well. Can you get them to turn and then can you get them to go? By 9:00? Because oftentimes the ones that stand really easily don't really have that much get up and go. And again, you get them up and going and then you want to shut back down. And they started at 12. They made one pass around. They didn't circle a couple times. They started at 12. They were loping by nine. Do you have to cue at 1:00 to get them to stop at 12:00? Do you have to cue at 2:00? That doesn't matter as much to me. As much as they can stop and turn and face you and again, accept that whipping emotional pressure without physically reacting to it.

Speaker4:
So what this does for the horses is it teaches them to.

Speaker1:
Read your body language, despite the fact that you are throwing up all of this energy, this energy in the room, that is also the whipping around them.

Speaker4:
For you.

Speaker1:
It will help you identify what you're more comfortable with doing. Are you more comfortable with teaching that horse to stand and not letting them move? Or do you tend to not really pay attention to if they stand really solidly, but you're happy that they move really easily? You'll find out a lot about yourself doing any modified version of this. Much, much more gentle. Again, if you're listening to this podcast, don't just go out and try testing this if you haven't trained the individual pieces. What's fascinating about this.

Speaker4:
Is that.

Speaker1:
When you become comfortable with a concept like this, which has you wielding a lot of energy and clarifying when the horse should be standing still and ignoring you, creating the energy and when the horse should be moving easily. When you have clarified that.

Speaker4:
It's fascinating how.

Speaker1:
Little the horses need this done before. It works very well. So back when I got my three minis, I taught them groundwork, but I didn't spend tons and tons of time really perfecting it. And then I happened to have a round pen set up at one point, and I took the three in there because round penning three cute minis at the same time is adorable.

Speaker4:
And without having trained.

Speaker1:
Them to do this. So it wasn't a trained response, I started sending them around and controlling their direction. And whoever the troublemaker was, whoever was pushing on the other mini, I would add a little bit of pressure to that horse and I would leave the other ones alone. I would isolate the one little troublemaker. And then I also rewarded anyone who came in closer to me by ignoring them. So the troublemakers ended up being further out, I should say, troublemaker. There was primarily one, although it started a little like game of tag out there. What they started to notice was they started to notice that I was aiming my intention at individuals and that when they came into my bubble, when they came closer, they're in this big round pen. As they came in closer towards me, they also realized that they then fell under those rules that I had trained them with the whipping around them, and that's when they would come in. Of course, the one that caught on to this first was happened to be the quieter one.

Speaker4:
Who didn't want to work as much.

Speaker1:
And wasn't being the troublemaker was like, Oh, wait a minute. If I come in and hang out near you, I'm kind of out of the mix and I'm under your umbrella.

Speaker4:
So it's super cool to see how quickly the horses start to really.

Speaker1:
Understand that these are my rules. I'm aiming at you. I'm focusing on pushing you, I'm allowing you to be here. But all of that started with the individual.

Speaker4:
Just this bare minimum.

Speaker1:
Of teaching the horses. When you are facing me and I whip around you read my body language, it doesn't mean anything. Yet if my body language changes, I move my arms like this. I change my intention descending. I begin whatever the rules are you're going to follow. For me, it's like a rhythmic, pulsing, pushing kind of energy that is aimed with an intention to send them. I send them. Then I obviously also get more specific with like, am I sending them at a walk or a trot or a Canter All of this matters.

Speaker4:
But the minis were not even to the point where they would have.

Speaker1:
Clearly passed that riding test because I wasn't aiming to ride them and I hadn't put in that extra time to really clean it up. But they did.

Speaker4:
Understand.

Speaker1:
My rules of being in my space and they did understand the idea that not all energy.

Speaker4:
Means leave, but it can.

Speaker1:
So just that minimum gave me the ability to communicate enough.

Speaker4:
That it was.

Speaker1:
So fun in the round pen to be able to control and single out and do these different things with the minis. Not that you need to do the round pen idea with your two horses. It's just to illustrate what's possible.

Speaker4:
For me when.

Speaker1:
I go out into the pasture. I'm comfortable understanding that every day when I feed.

Speaker4:
I walk out there.

Speaker1:
And I.

Speaker4:
Have the ability to send.

Speaker1:
The horses away from me. If they're newer horses and I'm not quite sure I will carry my stick and string and I'll follow the same rules out there that I do in the arena. Then later on, when I go out to.

Speaker4:
Halter, a horse.

Speaker1:
As I go out.

Speaker4:
I have that ability to send.

Speaker1:
Everyone away, but I also have the ability to turn and face one. And like with your mare, communicate, Hey, I'm coming over to get you as I'm doing that. If I have done the training with the other horses, I can say to the one horse, I'm coming to get you, but I can actually.

Speaker4:
Pulse a.

Speaker1:
Sending energy towards the other horse. Look at the other horse and maybe it's the stick and string my hand, whatever that's going to be. I can pulse that energy.

Speaker4:
And add.

Speaker1:
That other horse.

Speaker4:
Needs to follow that.

Speaker1:
Instruction.

Speaker4:
By at least.

Speaker1:
Stopping or leaving, depending on where they actually were. Had they already started to put the pressure on or were they just kind of coming into that bubble? If I've done this work.

Speaker4:
In the arena.

Speaker1:
And I sense that there is that mine and I'm not going to leave, I will even go as far as when I return to the pasture with the Haltered horse. I will walk around leading the Haltered.

Speaker4:
Horse and whipping the.

Speaker1:
Ground in front of us, whipping the ground around that horse, and basically just establishing.

Speaker4:
That this.

Speaker1:
Is my space. The same rules apply in the pasture as they do in the arena. But again, you're going to need to figure out what your comfort level is with the concept of pressure. Thanks for the question. Thanks to all of you 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.

Sonix is the world’s most advanced automated transcription, translation, and subtitling platform. Fast, accurate, and affordable.

Automatically convert your mp3 files to text (txt file), Microsoft Word (docx file), and SubRip Subtitle (srt file) in minutes.

Sonix has many features that you’d love including generate automated summaries powered by AI, secure transcription and file storage, automated subtitles, automated translation, and easily transcribe your Zoom meetings. Try Sonix for free today.