Episode 295: Allowing Choices: Empowering Your Horse’s Mind

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rough episode 295.mp3: this mp3 audio file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the best speech-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors.

Speaker1:
It becomes this black and white struggle in the writer's mind that the rains are having the horse slow down and the legs are having the horse keep going. And for the horse, the experience is, let's just say, unpleasant. Because in the way that I described it just now, you're making the horse slow down and you're making the horse keep going. There's no allowing happening.

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 help you understand, enjoy and successfully train your own horses. In this episode, I want to talk about a powerful concept that is always at work. Sometimes it's working for you and other times it might be working against you, but it is always part of the equation when you are with your horse. And the concept is allowing for simplicity. Let's pretend there are two options. In reality, it's definitely not black or white. There are many shades of gray involved in what I'm about to talk about, but for this conversation, it's going to be easiest if we think about two options. And those two options are allowing versus making The danger of saying that there's only two is that it will vilify the word making. The word making could get a bad rap in your mind, but I actually have a great relationship with the idea of making, because I often call it shaping or helping or hand-holding or guiding Those to me all fall in more of the making category. So as you listen to this, try not to vilify the idea of making, which you might not do intentionally, but if you glorify the idea of allowing, you will accidentally run the risk of vilifying the opposite. So let's take it outside of horses for a moment, and let's think about something like teaching a young child to brush their teeth. You could make a young child brush their teeth, and in the making you could create a miserable experience.

Speaker1:
Or you could make the child brush their teeth through a game. Make in the way that I'm using. It just means that you are somehow in charge of or responsible for, which is different than just allowing the three year old child to be in charge of whether or not they brush their teeth. Does that help a little bit? You would be making it a game to get them to brush their teeth, and inside of that part of making you would be responsible versus just saying toothbrush, toothpaste, three year old child, whatever you want to do, I'll allow you to do it. See the difference? You could actually make either one of them to be a problem. But for the simplicity of this, I want you to think that options and allowing can be a very powerful tool when we switch over to thinking about horses, I like to think about setting the horse up for success. Setting the horse up for success, in my mind, means that I'm ideally setting the horse up to make the choice that I prefer, and then I reward them when they make that choice. Let's put this in an example. One place that I use this very early on and forever is how I teach a horse to slow down. From very early on, even starting right now with Lefty and Stormy, who are only a few months old, and Ember, who I'm not riding yet.

Speaker1:
From now and for always, I focus on allowing them to slow down when I'm lunging them, for example. It also applies when I'm riding them, but in order to allow them to slow down, I actually must be willing to ask them to go. So when I ask, let's say Ember to go, I'm willing to make her go, and then I'm going to stop making her. And I'm going to allow her to slow. And what's fascinating about this is that the horse begins to see both the power that I have in that ability to make them go, but also that they have options. So in this case it would be allowing them to slow. And here's what's fascinating. All horses pick up on this. Hot horses pick up on this pattern of behavior. Cold horses pick up on this pattern of behavior. Lukewarm horses. All the horses in the middle. They all figure it out because I'm consistently operating by these rules. I ask them to go and then I will make them go. My version of make is annoy. I will annoy them until they go. And then when I want to let them slow, I will allow them to slow. What this does is this teaches them to hunt or look for the idea of slowing down with the correct application. Even hot horses catch on to this very quickly.

Speaker1:
They catch on to this, and they choose it because they see and appreciate the interaction, not necessarily because they're lazy and want to stop. Sometimes people think that only a lazy horse is going to catch on to this, but that's not true. Horses actually love to engage. They like to discover they are always seeking to find the rules, to test and to explore. Don't underestimate your horse's intelligence and curiosity, because I do this from very early on, the horses have this thinking pattern well established before I ever ride, so I let the horse slow down. Allowing or letting is a very powerful tool for influencing your horse's mind, and it can be used for you, or it can be accidentally used against you. Some of the common mistakes that I see of allowing are allowing the horse to choose when to eat grass, or allowing the horse to choose when to change directions, or allowing the horse to choose when to stop, or allowing the horse to choose when to go. One particular area that stands out to me is how many riders allow the horse to do things. When the human perceives that the horse might like them more if they allow the horse to do the thing. So, for example, maybe the rider allows the horse to go because it seems like the horse wants to go. Or maybe the rider allows the horse to eat grass because it seems like the horse wants to eat grass.

Speaker1:
Now hear me clearly on this. Eating grass is not a problem. Going faster is not a problem. But do pay attention to what you allow, especially if you start to see problems that occur from it. So let's look at allowing the horse to go when the horse wants to go. When I was a kid growing up, we did this all the time. We were kids. We were almost fearless. And when the horse wanted to go, we let them run and we had no idea that we were going to be causing lots of problems that were going to show up later on, like the horse became really hard to stop or the horse became almost impossible from keeping from running in spots where we always let them run. So even though the horse and I were both in agreement about running, it actually made a huge difference that the horse was asking. And then I was allowing. Another great example is allowing a horse to eat grass. I personally hand graze my horses all the time, but the difference now versus when I was a child is now. I lead them to the grass and then I allow them to eat the grass. But when I was a kid, it was far more common for my horse to drag me to the grass and not allow me to lead them away.

Speaker1:
Do you hear the difference? The grass isn't the problem. Hand grazing isn't a problem. Allowing your horse to drag you to the grass and then eating because you think, oh, I can see you really want it, that is a problem. It's two different experiences. If you allow the horse to eat the grass after they drag you to it, versus leading them over to it, and then allowing them to eat the grass. I actually discussed a different version of this back in episode 292, The Invitations That Horses Offer Riders. So when you think about it, what I'm doing here, when I'm, say, lunging the horse, and then I allow or let the horse slow down, I'm actually allowing them to slow down. But I'm also noticing when they ask the question or when they volunteer to slow down, because I actually want to reward that type of thinking. Let me put that into an example. So right now with Ember, I am ground driving her, and for me that means that she is saddled, she is bridled, and I am using two long lunge lines that are run through the stirrups of the saddle so I can drive her before I ride her. And when I initially started doing this, it was very important to me to keep her moving because I don't want her asking questions of rolling back or reversing directions or backing up. So the first few times that I was ground driving her, I required her to trot pretty quickly and stay in a trot.

Speaker1:
Because of this, she gathered the idea that when I was ground driving, I wanted her to trot and she appears to be a slightly sparkier horse, so doesn't appear like she's going to be really on the lazy side. Maybe a touch on the hotter side. And so because of this combination of her having questions, being a little unsure about everything that's going on, and then me insisting that she trotted right away because I know that I want to prevent some of the other problems that could happen if she doesn't go forward because of all those things. The first few times that I was ground driving her, I gave her the impression that when I start ground driving, I want her to trot. So now what's happening is I'm sticking with it, and I'm letting her trot. But I'm no longer making her go forward. Technically, I'm allowing her to slow down, but she's not noticing it because she's kind of stuck in the idea of going forward. When I watch her right now and let's just call it stuck in the idea of going forward, it tells me a couple different things. Number one, it's where I start to get the idea that she might be a little bit hotter horse, because she very easily got stuck in this idea of going forward.

Speaker1:
Now, maybe she also just kind of got the impression that that's what I wanted. But think about it. If she got that impression that easily, that also tells me a little bit about her thinking. So for me, it's not a problem that even though I'm saying it like stuck in this thinking, for me, it's not a problem that she's stuck in this thinking. It's revealing that she's thinking this way, and I'm not in a rush to make her slow down. Instead, I'm using the same theory that I did before, which is that I am allowing her to slow down. So what's happening is that on, let's say, day four and five, she really started to experiment with, wait a minute. I noticed that you've been allowing me to slow down, and I notice that I was trotting around for 10 or 15 minutes before. Could you allow me, would you allow me to slow down after three minutes? So she was eventually finding it after I sent her forward. But now she's beginning to ask the question sooner and sooner. So these concepts start to overlap when she again is set up for success. When she starts to see the pattern that I'm allowing her to slow down, that's when she will start asking the question that I want her to ask, which is could I slow down? And then I say, yes, you could slow down initially.

Speaker1:
I said, when we're ground driving, I'm making you go to the trot and then I will allow you to slow down. So I'm actually using the same rules that were there in the lunging before, and now I'm allowing her to ask those questions to see that pattern, to volunteer, and then I'm choosing how I respond. Let me give you a less clear example of something someone might do that would be confusing to the horse. Let's say that they started ground driving just like I did with Amber. Let's say that they read in a book somewhere that they should ask the horse to move out, go to a trot, because that way the horse won't learn to run backwards or roll back or do a bunch of other problems. And let's just say they were like, great, sounds good. I'm asking the horse to trot. Let's say that they hit day 3 or 4, and they want to be able to slow down more effectively. A problem that people run into a lot of times is that they made the horse go, and now they want to make the horse stop. And for the horse, this becomes a very trapped experience because the horse is like, wait a minute, you were telling me to go, but now wait a minute. I don't understand what's going on with the bridle. I don't understand the reins very much. I'm confused about what's happening. Many times in my world, what I'm doing is one of the sides of the teeter totter is make and the other is allow.

Speaker1:
Where I see people get in trouble is when they're both make make the horse go make the horse stop. And again, hold on to this being a concept where we can influence the horse through our habit patterns, but we do want a sense of there's one that the horse is being allowed to search for. So in my example, they're being allowed to look for the slowing down. I can make them go, but I can allow them to slow down so I can require the increase of speed, but I'm going to allow them to decrease. The reason this works so well in lunging or in my case in the ground driving, is because it is a situation where I could allow the horse to continue going. So for example, if Ember's trotting around and she continues to trot around for five, ten, 15 minutes, I can outlast her in this situation, which will allow her to have the idea of slowing down. Does that make sense? So remember that while you're teaching this concept, it really is a concept that is best taught in areas where you can allow the horse to make the quote unquote mistake. So in allowing the horse to make the mistake of keeping going, when I stop making them go, I have to be doing something where no one's going to be injured by them.

Speaker1:
Making the choice of continuing on. Allowing involves educated guessing, meaning that when I go out there, if Ember looks really fresh and I have her begin trotting around and she looks very energetic, and let's say it's a cool day and she looks like she has a ton of get up and go. This is not the best time to decide to allow her to walk. She's probably not going to take up that invitation. Instead, I'd be much more likely to require her to go around me a certain number of times and then allow her to slow down, because it's going to be much more effective if I have set her up for success by involving my ability to read her body language and make educated guesses about the better timing. So for me, I'm gathering information during that lunging stage that tells me how many times she tends to trot or lope around before she starts to look a certain way, where she's looking like she's more receptive to the idea of slowing down. So this is not a quick fix type of thinking. This is a gathering information, and this is more of a long game type of a thinking. But I promise you, this idea of allowing is very powerful. The reason I really wanted to plant the seeds of this idea of allowing versus making, Using examples of groundwork like lunging or ground driving, is because the concept of allowing runs deeply in the concept of self-carriage, which is something that we talk a lot about when we talk about riding.

Speaker1:
So especially if you explore anything to do with dressage, you're going to find the phrasing self-carriage it is very prevalent, even if it's not called that in all the Western disciplines also. But what happens when we get to the more complicated things? Riding things, things like something called collection or self-carriage. When we go into things like that, what we're often doing there is we're trying to find the balance between two opposites, let's say the in collection. Again, just for this simplicity, let's say the in collection, we're trying to find the balance between the rains and the legs. And let's just imagine that it is as simple as the rains can mean. Slow down, the legs can mean go. And in between this go and slow down, we find this thing called collection. The challenge that comes if we don't have this idea or this concept of what we're allowing, is that it becomes this black and white struggle in the rider's mind, that the reins are having the horse slow down and the legs are having the horse keep going. And for the horse, the experience is, let's just say, unpleasant. Because in the way that I described it just now, you're making the horse slow down and you're making the horse keep going.

Speaker1:
There's no allowing happening. So allowing as a concept is there always you should be able to answer the question, which are you allowing more of in your next repetition during your ride? Are you going to allow the horse to think slower in this next repetition, or this next five repetitions, or this next three rides? So in other words, are you rewarding the idea of slowing or are you allowing the horse to go forward more? Are you allowing more forward motion? Which one are you allowing? Which one are you rewarding the idea of? More? Because I know these are complicated things. What I would like to give you is this simple truth. In the beginning, you can't have both. In the beginning you can't have both. The idea of slowing and the idea of forward at the same time. Now, here's an even crazier truth in advanced writing it looks like the writer has both. It looks like the writer has both. But what's actually happening there is that the writer and the horse are very good at balancing the teeter totter. Okay, grab this visual. Think about a teeter totter. It's out on a playground. One child gets on one side of the board. Another child gets on the other side of the board, and they rock back and forth. It's very similar to the concept of scales where you might weigh something on, but the teeter totter is a much better visual because when you think about it on a childhood playground, it implies that there should be movement that one end should go up and the other goes down, and then the opposite end goes up and the opposite end goes down.

Speaker1:
So the up and down, the back and forth, that teeter totter is the reality of the balance that we're going for. Believe it or not, always in writing there is a movement that is happening when you take the same idea, but you make it a set of scales. Instantly people start wanting to think they can get this perfect balance where everything is just right. And that's just not real. At the highest levels of writing, the writer is actively balancing these two seemingly opposite ideas of go and slow. The horse is also actively engaged in the search for what is being allowed for the horse. They must notice that one second they're being allowed to go more forward. They see that they're being allowed to go more forward, and they go more forward. And then five seconds later, that advanced horse realizes that they're being allowed to slow, and they begin to slow. And the balance between the two thoughts in the horse of I could go slower now, I could go faster now. The balancing act between these two thoughts that the horse is having begins to create the horse that has self carriage.

Speaker1:
The self, the horse. The thinking is balancing between these two opposite thoughts. The horse is ready to do either thing that is allowed. Can we just pause and say, horses are amazing? If I were going to wrap it up for you, I would say a couple of the concepts to really think about when you are with your horse would be number one. Allowing is a powerful tool. Notice what you are allowing and notice if it was your idea first, or whether you allowed it after your horse asked. Just notice that also as you're planning your next session with your horse, if it might be true that you can't have both and there are a lot of opposing things when we're riding the horse straightness and bend forward and back. If you can't have both, what are you going to allow to happen in the next session? What are you going to be making happen and what are you going to allow to happen? This allowing is a powerful tool where you begin to engage the horse. You begin to train a thinking horse, a horse that is looking for what you are allowing. And this is where self carriage is born. The horse is actively engaging and searching for what is being allowed. This concept is true in many areas. Go find where its true with you and your horse in your next ride. That's what I have for you this week, 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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