Episode 24: Is Your Horse Being Creative?

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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.

Hi, I'm Stacy Westfall, and I'm here to teach you how to understand, enjoy and successfully train your own horses in this season of the podcast. I'm focusing on the horses mind. And today I'm answering a voicemail question that was left on my Web site. Here's the question.

Hi Stacy. Marie-Claude that the Horse Institute. I love your article on matching horses and riders. I have a quick question. What do you mean by a creative horse? Thanks.

I will put a link in the show, notes of the podcast over at the website to the article that was referred to in here, which is titled Why Writers Often Experience Fear, Frustration and Confusion with Their Horse. In that article, I talk about a mismatch in things being mismatched.

And one of the phrases that I used in there was a creative horse. When I talk about or describe courses, you may have noticed if you've been listening to the podcast, then I'm very particular about the way that I phrase things when we're referencing horses. In last week's episode, I described why it was so important for me to say that your horse has questions or my horse has questions because this thought will have a positive feeling in your body. It might be difficult if you're riding round in a circle and your horse is pulling to the gate to have a positive feeling in your body, because the most natural thing is to feel a little bit of frustration that the horse isn't doing what you want. But since this isn't a robot, it's more healthy. If we can have a positive view of, oh, my horse is asking a question, I need to answer this and that way it's not really a judgment. It's not my horse as being bad or doing something wrong. It's simply my horse as a question. And then you open yourself up to make an answer. When I say that a horse is creative, a lot of times I'll use different words like that, whether I say created or complicated or different things like that, because I'm trying to describe things in a way where you won't be passing judgment, good, bad.

So if I say it's a problem horse or if I say it's a creative horse, can you feel the difference? A lot of times a creative horse is a horse. That would be traditionally labeled a problem horse. Now, it doesn't have to be that way. And I'm going to describe it both ways inside of this podcast. There's a bunch of different ways to look at the idea. But I'm gonna go go with a couple here and then if you have more questions, feel free to call them in. So to get you started, imagine that you're a schoolteacher and let's make it a second grade classroom. And every year you ask the class questions. You can imagine that after you've been teaching for a number of years, as you've had students go through, you start to see a pattern in very similar answers that you get year after year. But you would also notice that sometimes you get kids that give you answers that are really unexpected or sometimes we call them outside the box. You see that in adults, you see kids. And that can be a sign of a creative thinker. It can also be, you know, the group of people, adults that they're hanging out with if it's kids or different things. But let's just go with the simple version of it can be a creative thinker in a way, no matter how they got there.

They're viewing the question from a different angle than the majority of the other kids that you've been seeing. In an example with a horse, you can imagine that a horse trainer could be like a schoolteacher. So generally, when the trainer does certain things, they typically get a certain certain number of answers. So, for example, if the trainer applies some kind of pressure generally behind the horse and I'm going to stay, say non specifics on whether that's flapping a bag or whether that's, you know, the way that they use their body or whether that's using a stick and string or whether it's using a lunge. I don't care for this example. What I care is that you have the idea. The trainer applies some kind of pressure from a generally behind the horse idea. And typically, let's just say the most common answers are the horse goes forward or maybe he's got an ornery one and the horse kicks out or maybe the horse runs sideways. But what you can say is just like the kids in the classroom, there's kind of a typical grouping of answers that tend to happen. Now, if you were that trainer and you applied that pressure and the horse laid down on the ground, you'd be like, that's unusual.

Or someone might say, that's a problem. I would say, that's creative. I wonder what's going on there. Sometimes horses are simply creative. You can see them when they're born and they're just really creative. Have you ever seen the YouTube videos of horses unlocking and doing gates? I actually found a YouTube video. I don't know if I'll be able find it again for this, but I actually found a YouTube video of a horse opening an electric fence handle. You know, the plastic electric fence thing that you have to like stretch to open. And I was like, no way. Even if somebody train the horse to do that, that's still super impressive. But anyway, you'll recognize that some breeds of horses have been labeled really smart and that a lot of times those same breeds are also labeled, you know, too smart for their own good or different things. But it's definitely not a breathing just. Horses can be really creative. Now, if you notice how I've been talking about this, when I've been saying creative, I have been more consistently using it as the same as a problem or a possible problem horse. Because here's the other swing to this. In the first part of this, I was calling a creative horse, a horse that maybe was potentially a problem horse.

But another thought I want you to have is that I actually want to encourage creativity in my horses. I just don't want to encourage misbehavior. That is a form of creativity in those breeds or horses that are labeled too smart for their own good. A lot of times that's a way to say that that horse is coming up with a lot of creative things. Now, a lot of times people will quickly move towards this busy horse that's constantly trying to undo latches and and constantly testing and trying the rider and constantly just kind of maybe labeled the class clown because there's always these little things going on. What I also want to say is that all horses can be creative if they're allowed to express it in healthy ways. A horse that I currently have in my barn that could be easily labeled as more simple as in that people sometimes want to say creative horses are really intelligent and the horses aren't really a creative are less intelligent. That's not true. Presto, the horse that I adopted from Last Chance Corral, the nurse mare full. He's my favorite current example of a horse that you could easily consider to be kind of simple. When Jesse was trimming his hooves the other day, it was really kind of interesting because I had him in the cross ties and he just simply stands there almost a little bit of a blank look on his face. And it's it was funny because he's not he's young, but he's not trying to make any trouble.

He's just standing there very simply enjoying his pedicure or whatever we're going to call it. I jokingly do that. So he's just stand there. And it's very simple. He's not doing anything bad, which is great. I want a horse that's gonna be easy to get along with. So there's a lot of places where presto looks kind of simple. He makes a lot of very traditional decisions, like when you do A, you get B, like his very much in line with what you would expect if you were a schoolteacher or a horse trainer. That's been doing this over and over again. I have a habit of turning the horses out with that big blue equine activity ball of mine and I love watching presto play with it because he's fairly low on the Heider hierarchy totem pole of of the herd. So he really likes pushing around the ball because the ball doesn't fight back. So he really enjoys pushing around the ball. And what I noticed one day was that he's got this little thing where he likes to put the ball under his belly. So he likes to stand there with the ball resting perfectly underneath his belly. I didn't think that much of it when I first saw him doing it because I thought, well, that's just interesting. He looks like a nesting hen. He's like standing over this ball. Then as I was watching him, I have a giant red activity ball, which is much bigger. And he was turned out with the blue and the red will.

The blue easily fits underneath him and the red one doesn't because it bumps up against his belly. And I was standing there watching him loose in the round pen side, passing over. I was riding a horse in the other end of the arena and I had the round pen set up and one in the arena. And he's trying to side pass over this red ball. But obviously his belly keeps moving it because it won't actually fit under his belly. No big deal. You know, horses are kind of creative. This is what I like to watch them do, is play well. A few days later, I actually turn around and I see that he's got it wedged under his belly. And I'm thinking, how in the world did he do that? Because, you know, if he side passes, it should just roll out away. And I thought, that's weird. I wish I'd seen that. So the next few days, I'm watching him more intently. And I kid you not picture that. I'm looking at this. Presto is standing there and the ball is on his right side. His side passes over. So the ball is right beside his barrel. He then I am not making this up. I tried to videotape it on my cell phone, but the zoom wasn't good enough. He reaches up the balls on his right side. He side best over with his left hind. He reaches up, puts his left hind as high as he can up on, pass the midpoint of this red ball, and pulls down on that ball and pulls it underneath his belly.

I am not making this up. I couldn't make this up if I wanted to. How did he figure out what angle his hoof had to reach? This also shows you how flexible he is. Any is, I will mention 16 hands, a little bit taller than 16 hands now. So he is getting fairly, fairly up there in height, but that is a fairly athletic move to take the left hind reach up across his body, put it and above the midline of that red ball and roll that ball underneath him. And I thought, well, first of all, this doesn't look like a fluke because this is way too planned out. And then I've seen him do it multiple times. One of these days I will be at the right angle. But every time I sneak closer with my cell phone, he turns and comes over to visit me. So it makes catching him in the act of doing this hard. I do have one video I'll make sure that I post where you can see him with underneath him and some stuff. So we'll make sure to do that. But presto. Who could seem simple is creative. Here's why it's important to let the horses be creative. It's important to let the horses be creative because that is where their brilliance is found. When you see a horse in a video or somewhere in person and you see something that you think that horse looks amazing and there is what you something you would label a brilliance or a wow factor, that is when somebody has allowed that horse to go beyond just the training and actually express some of its own uniqueness.

And I would make the argument that that brilliance comes from their creativity. One last example, as I wrap it up, one of the things that I do, a lot of the clinics and you've probably been catching on if you've been listening to many of the podcasts, I use this blue activity ball well, we teach the horses to roll the ball and that means I send them up. And I already described this in a podcast. Send them up and teach them to roll it. Well, here's what I didn't mention. Horses learn to roll it in two main ways. Although there's more than that as they get creative. Horses tend to go up to the ball and either roll it with their nose, which means they approach it and they actually put their nose and flip their nose out and roll it ahead of them. Or some horses will prefer to roll it with their feet, so they'll actually bump it with their knees and their legs. And as we move the horses around and do this, we notice that there's at least these two different ways. So years ago, I had three young ladies that were working for me and we used to teach the horses all this stuff. And because there were a bunch of us riding together, we came up with this game of soccer.

So we would have the horses that would roll the balls down the arena. We would stand a horse sideways and we'd make that the goal posts and be able to roll the ball underneath the horse from the other horse. So we're doing this all mounted. And what we noticed was that the horses, we would call them servers, the ones that would roll with their nose. They were always called the servers because they would kind of roll it out in front of them so they might flip it and it might roll 10 feet out in front of them. But those horses, the ones that were more like servers, were easier to steal the ball from because they were flipping it out in front of them. Then we had horses that would be the kickers and they would want to use their front feet, their knees. And you can kind of steer if you can figure out that when the left knee hits it, it's going to send the ball a little bit more, whichever direction, depending on the angle of hits it. So we had this whole thing worked out and it was really fun. And then popcorn. I love popcorn. The horse, not just the food. Popcorn is the very dominant horse in my field. Dominant horse in my pasture. And he really likes playing with the ball. So I figured out because as I was riding him, I could feel that he wants to be naturally a kicker.

But he also figured out that if he kicked it too hard, that it would go out in front of him, somebody else could steal it. So Popcorn started participating with me. He would do this. I would send him up to the ball. He'd go to kick it. He would stretch his head neck out over it so that he could hold it between his knees and his chin. So he's kind of like dribbling it, but he's catching it at the same time with his head neck so that he doesn't send it out there. And then to top it all off. I could take it anywhere I wanted to, because if somebody came close to me, he would just rotate his ear slightly back and they're all like, OK, we're not stealing the ball from popcorn. This is the stuff we do in our bar. What I'm trying to tell you is that the horses will have some of their own unique ways of doing things, and that is where that brilliance. That is where that creativity is so neat. So when you're watching your horse, I want you to be asking, how is he creative? It's not. Is he creative? He is creative somewhere. How is he creative? You might be thinking he's creative because he wants to get out of work. Great. How does he express that? Maybe he's creative because he wants to put himself to work. Great. How does he express that? But open your mind to the idea that creative parentheses sometimes labeled problem children, problem horses.

They can actually be really brilliant.

Thanks again for joining me this week. I hope I give you lots and lots of ideas to chew on when you're enjoying your time with your horses. Thanks again for listening. And I'll talk to you again next week.

If you enjoy listening to Stacie's podcast, please visit Stacy Westfall dot com for articles, videos and tips to help you and your horse succeed.

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