Episode 242: But all the doors are closed….why some horses exhibit resistance.

Episode 242_ But all the doors are closed….why some horses exhibit resistance..mp3: Audio automatically transcribed by Sonix

Episode 242_ But all the doors are closed….why some horses exhibit resistance..mp3: this mp3 audio file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the best speech-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors.

Speaker1:
And act like a detective. Try to figure out why. Why is your horse hesitant to go through that door? Or why does it feel like your horse is pushing down that door and trying to bust out it?

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. In this episode, I want to explain why the more advanced systems can often confuse your horses. And yes, sometimes the riders. But before we go there, I want you to think back to a time when you personally felt like all the doors in your life were closed. Maybe you were at a job that you didn't like, but you didn't know where else you could go. Or maybe you wanted to do something, but you did not see a path forward. The doors I'm talking about are options. And when I say that it felt like all the doors were closed for you. I want you to think back to what was that experience like? If you feel like all the doors are closed and you don't see any options for some people, that will shut them down. For other people. When they feel that type of a situation, they will fight back. Today when I'm talking about the advanced systems that we use with horses, I want you to keep in mind the idea of doors being opened or doors being closed. This has come to my mind fresh and new because although it is the beginning of July, I am just now starting to ride presto after breaking my hand back in January. And for the first time I broke out my dressage saddle and started riding him towards what I want to do with him, which is showing him in dressage.

Speaker1:
And it reminded me of the differences between early rides on a horse and the more finished rides on a horse. And one major difference are the ways that the cues are used in combinations. The beauty of watching an advanced horse and rider is that the cue system seems very subtle to the point where on very advanced horse and rider teams, it's often hard to see the cues. This is true whether you watch dressage, where the rider maintains a level of contact throughout the whole test, or if you're watching reining where the contact on the reins appears very light. But what both of these have in common is a subtleness to the cues. When you watch an upper level dressage horse, the reins are held close together in front of the rider. When you watch an upper level reining horse, both of the reins are held in one hand and that hand stays relatively central. It hovers just in front of the saddle horn, returning to a neutral space after it offers steering. So if that's true, here's a natural question Why don't riders just start out riding in that position with their hands very centrally located in front of the horse? If you haven't watched Young Horses first being ridden, I think it's worth exploring. I documented the first year of training with a horse named Jack, and you can go watch that on my YouTube channel. There are many other people who have Colt starting information out there, and you can even watch Colt starting competitions like The Road to the Horse.

Speaker1:
And the advantage of watching something like The Road to the Horse is that you can see multiple riders all working in the same situation with no editing. You can see them dealing with the questions that come up when horses are first being started. And many of these questions are similar to what people may struggle with later on if the horse didn't get a solid foundation to begin with. One thing that is noticeably different if you watch Riders for the first few rides, is they are very rarely advised to get their hands close together and in front of themselves. But if that's where they're headed, why not just start there? Hold that thought. So before I continue, let's clarify what Aids I'm talking about. To keep it simple, let's talk about the rider's left leg, the rider's right leg, the rider's left hand, the rider's right hand to keep things simple. Those are the doors that could be opened or closed. A door can be open. And when I say that, that means the rider could move the left leg away from the horse's side and that would open a door or a door can close, that would mean the rider could close the right leg and press against the horse's side. A door can open and a horse can be led through it. So when a rider uses a direct rein, let's say the left rein, and they pick up on the left rein and they begin to open it out, away from their body, out over towards their knee and out around that pull out and around that is going to have a leading type of a feel to the horse.

Speaker1:
Now, imagine that that was a human standing on the ground. If you wanted to lead the horse to the left, it would be really natural to apply pressure and have the horse lead to the left. So when you mount up. If that mounted leading hand feels similar to what the horse has experienced on the ground, it makes sense They're going to know the answer easier. When that hand goes further away, it opens up a gap between the rein and the horse's neck or shoulder. It opens that door and it leads the horse through. So doors can be open. Doors can be closed. Horses can be pushed through a door. Led through a door. A door can slam shut. Okay. Back to where we left off. If we are headed to the point where we ride with our hands close together in front of the saddle or neck, reining one hand with both reins in the same hand in front of the saddle, Why not just start there on the first ride? I believe the answer is for clarity, because for the sake of clarity, what happens when all of the advance cues come together and are very subtle and close together is that it's a lot easier for the horse to not understand what to listen to when you go to the extreme of why not to start there on the first ride.

Speaker1:
It becomes a lot more obvious that having both of your hands close together in front of you wouldn't offer as much clarity as if the horse felt like the left rein, felt like the lead line from the ground, and that the right rein could feel like the lead line from the ground. That offers a higher level of clarity, but it also offers less refinement. So the game as the horses move up through from elementary school to high school to college is to keep the clarity first, create clarity, and then keep the clarity as you move up through to more and more levels of refinement. If your horse begins to seem confused or hesitant or resistant, I highly suggest that you video your ride. Many times when riders are trying to ride, quote unquote correctly, what they will do is they will put their body into a very advanced position, like they're riding a finished horse. And when you do that, it is possible for you to bring your hands close together and for you to close your legs. And you may think you're working on collection, but your horse may experience it as all the doors are closed and they're adding pressure. If that happens, your horse will choose to blow out through whatever door they perceive is weakest. Sometimes when riders are working on something like collection and the way they perceive it, they don't realize that they themselves are the one that is making the horse feel trapped between all of the aids until the horse doesn't understand and just gets heavy and pushes through a door.

Speaker1:
The horse doesn't understand. So when you start feeling those questions, you need to decide how you're going to handle it. And many times going back down in so that something is more simple and working on the clarity of transitioning between gates go from a trot to a walk, go from a walk to a trot, do transitions of gaits and clarify when the door is opening and when the door is closing. Another really common thing that horses will react to is if the rider has been fast with an aid, whether that is quick with the hands or whether that is quick with the legs, then what'll happen is oftentimes the horse will be trying to predict when that door is going to slam. And so even though you may not have been intending to slam the door, if your horse has perceived it as the door has been slammed, then what will happen is the horse will try not to go down the hallway. That led to the door that was slammed. So sometimes you'll see horses that are acting like the rider is pulling on the reins and they're refusing to go forward. And that could be because the horse has felt like the reins.

Speaker1:
The doors in the front have been slammed before, and now the horse doesn't want to go through that doorway. Can you start to see how the doorways help you understand your horse's experience? So if you're having issues with your horse, whether they are the bigger issues that involve tossing the head, refusing to go forward, or whether they are the smaller issues, like they are raising themselves up and they're using their head and neck in a way that you wish was a little bit different. Go look at your video and see which door your horse is hesitant to go through or even which door your horse seems to be busting through and act like a detective. Try to figure out why. Why is your horse hesitant to. Go through that door? Or why does it feel like your horse is pushing down that door and trying to bust out it? Your answers could be as simple as the horse doesn't see the opening. So he feels under pressure and he's trying to push down that door because it's the one he's most comfortable with. Or you might discover on the video that you were riding and all of your cues being very close together might feel very advanced. But for your horse, maybe he doesn't even perceive that the door is open. The one question you could continue to ask yourself over and over again is what could you do to make the answer more clear and that might be opening your hands wider or giving bigger releases than what you perceive a finished horse has? Because that finished horse has learned how to discern the difference when all the aides are close together.

Speaker1:
That's a skill that the horse learns from a rider who can see why they're confused and can also help clarify to make the answer more clear to the horse. One of the things I love the most about advancing a horse's training is when it feels like the training is about opening doors, not shutting them or leading them through. In the beginning, it does feel like I'm leading the horse through doors, and then as I continue to progress, the horse will increasingly be able to see that when I crack the door open, probably the next thing I'm going to do is lead the horse through it. Through a progression of training like this, you eventually can produce a horse where it looks like you're doing less and less and the horse is doing more and more. And that is because as that horse trained in that method advances, they will see the door crack open and they will begin to go there on their own before you feel like you have to lead or push them through it. That is one of the coolest feelings. But it's only possible if you have the awareness that you are opening and closing doors and that you understand that gently closed doors are not the same thing as doors being slammed. The rider has to be able to contain a level of closeness to be able to open a door, but that in the beginning can be too much for the young horse.

Speaker1:
In training. So we ride loose in the beginning and then we start to build more and more clarity to what we call collection or lightly closed doors so that we can then also open a door and the horse can go through it. If the horse is progressed through this in a way that makes sense to them, their emotions will get calmer as they understand that doors closed are not a trap. Doors closed are a hug. Doors closed are security and that the rider is going to be mindful of how they open a door and that they're going to be consistent enough that the horse can eventually see that the door opening is a direction to go there. And then when the door closes, it never slams. This is the understanding that leads to a horse clearly neck reining. This is the information that helps a horse understand the invitation to stop instead of having to pull heavily on the reins. It's a system of training that has the horse thinking and participating and therefore not feeling trapped and confused. If this sounds interesting to you, head over to my website and join the waitlist for the Resourceful Rider program. The next time the program opens, you can come in through that open door and learn more. 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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