SWS026 V2.mp3: this mp3 audio file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the best speech-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors.
Podcasting from a little cabin on a hill. This is the Stacy Westfall podcast. Stacy 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 today's episode, I want to talk about intentions, your intentions and your horses intentions, whether they're good, whether they're bad and how this influences the training. When I talk about intentions, let me slow down just a minute and explain what I mean. A quick Internet search reveals that the definition of intention is an intended thing, an aim or plan. She was full of good intentions. And when you go out to work with your horse or when your horse is working with you, because remember, this is a conversation between you and the horse, it is very important that you know what your intentions are and that you also pay attention to what your horses intentions are. I think the easiest way to illustrate this quickly so we can get on the same page is if we talk about bad intentions, because I think it's a lot more clear when someone or a horse has bad intentions and then we can work our way back to healthier intentions. As several of my clinics this year, I've had different horses that were experimenting with bad intentions. And the way that that looks is if you can imagine that you have a horse that truly intends to dominate. That's gonna be a horse that I'm going to say has a bad intention when it's coming to interact with you and it could be going to interact with another horse.
It you go to turned out in the pasture and it just flattens its ears and its intentions are to go and attack this other horse. That would be what I'm labeling a bad intention. Instead of good or bad, we could use healthy or unhealthy. But for right now, for simplicity, I'm just gonna use good and bad. So we're gonna say that the horse that you go to turn out and it just pendency years and goes runs and attacks another horse has bad intentions. Well, that same thing could happen towards people. You could have a really aggressive let's just picture in a really aggressive stallion that has bad intentions when he comes. And again, this mislabeling of bad is from our point of view. But if his intentions are to dominate us, the person handling him, we're going to label this bad intentions. Now, on the other extreme, we have horses that have mostly good intentions. They're very sweet and easy to get along with. But there are a lot of horses in between those two. A few of the horses that have come to clinics this spring have been doing what I call experimenting with bad intentions and what that looks like, especially during groundwork. It's easy to see is that when the handler goes to ask them to do something and let's just use changing direction as an example.
What I have observed is that very often while the person is teaching the horse how to do turns to the inside. Sometimes when people are backing up constantly and backing away from the horse, they don't realize that every time they keep backing and backing him, backing away from the horse, they're drawing that horse towards them, which doesn't seem like an unhealthy thing. But every once in a while you'll get a horse that starts to step boldly in towards the handler. And when they step boldly in towards the handler like that, a lot of them are asking a question, but the handler doesn't recognize it in that horse's intentions can shift from coming to you with good intention to this bold step. And don't take it wrong. Bold could be a good thing, but it can cross a line towards now going from boldly stepping with confidence to boldly stepping and now coming to dominate you. And it's kind of an interesting thing, because when I see it happening, you'll see I'll see these horses that are not naturally strong leaders. So they're not just naturally trying to dominate across the board, but they've stumbled on to the fact that the handler is a little bit awkward with the tools and that on the horses offside, the handler is not as comfortable moving the horse away out of their body space.
And so the horse will accidentally or by mistake will crowd the handler just a little bit on the off side. And because the handler doesn't know how to use the tools correctly or effectively, the horse will get this little open door release and maybe the person steps one step back out of the way so that they don't get their feet stepped on. And what happens is that horse starts to be like. When I make this turn, I can move the human's feet if I step in towards them boldly. And then because it didn't work well for the handler and they haven't figured out how to handle the tools every time they go through this turn, the horse keeps experimenting more and. Or with this stepping into the space and the person stepping out. And this will perfectly fit into a horse starting to really look for these places to move the human. And that's where we're going to label this a bad intention. So thankfully, these horses that have been showing up at the clinics, it's been just because the handlers missing some of these signals that this bold question right here where the horse kind of boldly steps toward you and you can't drive it away, is the beginning of a big, big problem.
And how big that problem is is going to be told or called out when you actually do try to drive that horse's shoulder off from the top of you, because the horse should not be allowed to run over the human horses that learn that people are squishy and learn to run people over. Don't get a good reputation and don't have great long term prognosis is this isn't because they can't be, quote unquote, fixed. But it's also a dangerous habit for them to get into. This is why I'm saying intention matters when I'm watching people or horses, I'm watching and with the horses. It's very interesting to me to see, did this horse intend to move this person or was this an accident that matters? And I do grant you that maybe sometimes some experience is needed to be able to see that on the surface. But if you've been working with your horse for a while and you're starting to suspect there are places where your horse is really trying to control you, those would be the places where you want to watch and try to see, even if you have to set up a video camera and see if you can read what that horse's intention is. Because if the horse steps into your space in this example again, but he doesn't really intend to drive you anywhere when you go to move him, he'll move out of your way without kind of a penny eared resistance to moving.
Is that penny ered resistance to moving out of your space? That is kind of the tell. That he was actually trying to control you and he's resistant to giving up that idea. The reason it's really important for you to begin to at least contemplate the idea that intentions matter as you're working with your horse is because right now I've been using bad intentions as an example. But where I see it way more often, but it's a lot more subtle is when the horse has good intentions. And so the horse is trying something new. And the horse is making mistakes. He remember the episode about making mistakes in the right direction for humans when the horse is making mistakes. It matters what their intentions were. So, for example, if you ask for the inside turn and the horse thinks you want him to turn and face you and stop and stand, he could be making that mistake with a good intention. And we're going to know because he's going have this really sweet look on his face and he's going to be standing there expectantly like I think I got this right. How you then handle this matters. You can move the horse the rest of the way through the turn. And this because it's happening, a slow motion will give you a little bit more time.
The horse turned and faced you. And that's not the right answer. But because his intentions were good, you're not going to go really hard after the correction, but you're going to just pick up your tools and ask the horse to complete the rest of the term. And the horse will get a slightly confused look because they thought they had the right answer. But that's OK because we're both making mistakes in the right direction. However, if your horse turns and faces you and you go to ask him to move to continue the turn because he made the mistake, or maybe even you made the mistake and you weren't as clear as you wanted to. If you ask him to turn and continue through that turn, to move out of your space, if he becomes resistant to getting out of your space, if he becomes angry, if you see any of what I call swearing. If your horse is swearing at you, biting, kicking, rearing, that's what I call swearing if your horse is swearing at you. That is one of the clearest indications that his intentions are not good. I would rather have the horse thinking get out of my space than swearing at me. Does that make sense? Can you hear why? So if the horse is naturally confused but thinks about getting out of my space, that's going to keep both of us more safe if the horse starts to get in the habit of swearing at humans.
This does not have a good long term outcome for the horse. We'll just even take the human. This equation for a minute. It's no good for the human in the equation, but if you think about what happens to horses, they spend years swearing at people. It doesn't usually end well for them because they get passed from home to home. At best, if they don't end up someplace, even worse intentions matter. A lot of times people that come to the clinics are really, really concerned that they're asking too much of their horse, that they're being too hard on their horse when they make a correction. And very rarely is this the case. I'm not saying that it's never the case, but very rarely is somebody over doing the correction. And here is why. Because most of the time, the people that are worried about overdoing the correction are not doing enough because they're already worried about doing too much. A lot of people are worried about abusing their horse. I read an e-mail the other day where somebody was saying where somebody was responding to an email that I wrote about teaching your horses to tie for longer. And the response to this email said something to the effect of, will you please cover that people don't tie their horses heads to high, because I've read somewhere that this happens at horse shows and maybe they don't know that's wrong.
And I would propose that the people who are intending to use those abusive techniques are intending to use those abusive techniques. I find this to be much more the case. If I see mistakes being made in the other direction. I tend to see mistakes where people are trying so hard not to do something that could be deemed restrictive that they end up excellently making mistakes in the other direction. So let's go back to tying. I'm going to say I've never seen a person accidentally tie their horse as high as what people do when they're being abusive to show horses. I've never seen that naturally happen out in the world without the intention of somebody meaning to do that. If, on the other hand, I go to a 4 8 show, it is very common to see horses tied very, very long. Dangerously long on their lead ropes because the intention there is to be kind to the horse and they don't realize that when they tie them so long that they actually increase the odds of the horse stepping a leg over the lead rope and now causing a really awkward situation where the horse's head is essentially tied down underneath the horse's leg because they stepped over this lead rope that was tied way too long.
Now, the intention was to be nice to the horse by not tying it to restrictively. But can you hear how there was danger involved because of the fear of the restriction? This is why so often the very person who's worried about overdoing it is not very likely to be the one overdoing it. When I'm out working with my horses, knowing that my intentions matter so much and knowing that my horses intentions matter so much is very freeing because I intend good things for my horses even when I'm working them like an athlete. I run and I've been working on myself running 5ks. I know how hard I can push my body and when I'm out working my horses and I'm pushing their body. I am doing it out of love. And I know that my intentions matter. And I also recognize that when my horse is really trying, which is a feeling of their intent, I know that when my horse is really trying that as long as he's not crossing into an area where he would be physically endangering my safety, I will take a lot of his offered tries because at the end of the day, I can actually help to shape the way that he learns because of me rewarding his try.
But that's a subject for another episode. Thanks so much for listening. And let's talk again next week. Thank you.
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I think the concept of Intent is really important. I know when I first started leasing the gelding I ended up purchasing, he was incredibly herd bound and would rear up, acting a bit like a wild beast when I would pull him from the field. At first I was worried he was way too much horse for me. I spent a lot of time in the field watching him with the herd and then a lot of time just spending time with him. Once I could see he wasn’t a mean or aggressive, he just really didn’t understand what I was doing or who I was and that it wasn’t his intention to hurt me, I just needed to take time to explain things to him; and once he could see MY intentions were good we started to make progress.
I do still think sometimes he does “swear” at me though! When he is a bit stressed he will flip his head – it’s his little coping mechanism lol
I love this…lots of little things…more info please