Episode 304: The Anticipation Paradox: When Good Training Creates New Challenges

Hi, I’m Stacy Westfall and I’m here to help you understand, enjoy and successfully train your own horses. Today I’m answering a question that was left as a voicemail over on my website Stacy. Westfall. Com. Let’s listen to the question.Hello, Stacy. My name is Sophia and I have a question. How do you approach the phenomenon that when you train a horse and the horse is very compliant, and then after the horse has been taught a new exercise, the horse does it all the time on its own initiative, or doesn’t wait for your signal because he thinks this is what you’ll be asking of him in a minute. The problem can be, for instance, he doesn’t wait for me for us to go into Canter, so he just goes into it by himself. And that makes me feel like I’m not being a clear leader. And also I don’t want to take his initiative away from him, but I want him to wait for me because when he does things like that, it makes me feel not sharp on my signals. Love your podcast. Greetings from Denmark.

Thanks for the question, Sophia. What you are describing so well is anticipation. And the fascinating thing about anticipation is that anticipation, the horse guessing what we are about to ask is a big part of training horses, especially if you want them to be trained as a thinking partner. So the first part of training with anticipation feels amazing in the beginning of training horses. We are doing repetitions in a way, so we actually create anticipation of what’s about to come next. So the first thing I want to tell you is congratulations, you did that. Now if you picture training as an arc, I like to picture it as an arc, like a rainbow. And that first half of the training that we do with the horse feels like we’re using a lot of anticipation, and it’s a good thing we say the word whoa, and then we ask the horse to back up and 100 or 800 times later when we say it, they stop on their own and they back up because they anticipate what we’re about to ask them to do. And basically you’ve done a similar thing, but with cantering. Now back to the rainbow. In the beginning of training, we’re using a lot of this type of repetition so the horse can see what’s coming so they can anticipate what’s coming next. But then the second half of that rainbow happens, and that’s where anticipation becomes what you described. Anticipation can begin to feel like a problem.

Here are a few things for you to think about as you work your way through this. One thing you mentioned in your voicemail was, it makes you feel like you’re not being a clear leader. And again, I can see where this level of anticipation could give you that impression. But I would also like you to look at and acknowledge that you have been very clear. You have been so clear that your horse is able to easily predict what you’re about to do. You could look at this situation and feel like you’re not being a clear leader, or you could look at the same exact thing and you could see that you were very clear, and now it might be time to rock the teeter totter. If you have been a long time podcast listener, you will know that I like to talk about teeter totters, but since you also mentioned you’re from Denmark and I’m not quite sure if teeter totter or seesaw or that exists in all parts of the world. This just occurred to me. By the way, I would like you guys to go over to my website and you can see a picture of it, but basically it’s this idea of it’s like a set of scales and balancing something out. But on the child’s playground, they’re not trying to balance it out. One child rocks up and the other child goes down, and they go back and forth on this teeter totter.

Now, I really need to know if this is a worldwide thing when I think about the teeter totter idea. The reason I don’t typically like to use the idea of a scale is because people always want to make that scale balance out at zero or perfect in the middle, where they never do a little bit too much of one thing or a little bit too much of another. And I don’t find that’s a realistic way to live. So I like the idea of the teeter totter, because that means we’re taking the same idea of a scale, but we’re moving it back and forth on purpose. When I put this into the physical world, if you sit and balance on something, whether that’s a bicycle, whether that’s a unicycle, whether that’s a ball that you can pick your feet up off the ground or a beach ball while you’re in the water, you will notice that you will wobble or move in order to stay balanced in the middle. That’s what I’m talking about. So I don’t consider this wobble or this movement or this anticipation one direction a little bit too much to be a big problem. It just means we need to rock it the other way. So your new assignment is to begin to teach him to anticipate or to hunt for your downward transition. If we look at the Canter as an upward transition, the thing you now need to balance it out with is his anticipation of a downward transition.

Another way to look at this is that if a horse is offering the Canter departure frequently. Then I will begin to put that horse’s behavior into the hot category. Again, if you’ve been a long time podcast listener, you’re going to hear me use terms like hot or cold for the horses. And so that hotter horse that easier to go horse is more likely to offer the upper transition. This might not be his natural state of being his default mode, or it might be. But either way, when the horse begins to frequently offer an upward transition, you can actually begin to treat them as though their behavior is currently that of a hot horse. And if you want some tips on how you would handle a hot horse or a cold horse, you could go back to my website and you could search. There’s a search feature up in the top corner, and you can find podcasts that I’ve done on those specific subjects. So back in episode 70, I did an entire episode on using more leg on Hot Horses. That would be a great one for you to go listen to. And episode 42 Training Hot Horses would be another great one for you to listen to, even if you might know he’s not naturally at his core, a hot horse.

But if he’s behaving in this moment like a hot horse, or if you’re listening and you have the opposite issue, go back and listen to some of the episodes that teach on how to deal with those specific things, because at the end of the day, I want to be able to, on purpose, rock that teeter totter, rock that behavior back and forth. Because when I can bring the horse to the warmer or hotter side, and when I can on purpose, bring that same horse back down to the colder or lazier side when I can do that, I can now begin to bring that closer and closer to where I can bring them up a little bit and down a little bit, and the closer together that gets, instead of it being over three weeks or four weeks when it gets down to 3 or 4 days, and then when it gets down to 3 or 4 cycles inside of one ride, and then when it gets down to 3 or 4 minutes and I can rock it back and forth, it can get down to 3 or 4 seconds. And that’s when it feels like you’ve got the horse really balanced. But remember what I said a minute ago about wobbles to me on my most finished horses? I can still feel that easy access to either the upward or the downward. So remember, we’re actually not trying to fully get rid of the anticipation, but we are trying to be able to balance it out, so we could have a way to balance between the upward transition and the downward transition.

And when you can do that skillfully, that’s when it feels like you’ve got that magical balance so many of us are looking for. I think the real key in this entire message, I think the heart of the matter and the real issue that you’re facing is in this one sentence, I don’t want to take away his initiative. I think this is an issue that many riders face, especially when they are aware, like you are, that you actually trained the horse to do the behavior that you now don’t want them to do so much. Because when you recognize the horse is putting out effort, when you recognize that he is trying and professionals will call it, this horse has a lot of try or sometimes you’ll hear it said they have a great work ethic. When you say his initiative, when you know he’s putting in that effort, which is a really great thing, but you also know that you’d like him to do a little less of that great thing. The question becomes, how do you tell him that you appreciate the effort, but he’s getting ahead of the question. Let’s go back. He’s anticipating, so he’s guessing the answer before he’s actually heard the question. This reminds me of watching a game show where the contestant has to hit the buzzer very quickly before anybody else, and then tell the answer.

And if you’ve ever seen a game show like that, there are often times where the game show host will read 2 or 3 words, and before the full sentence is out, somebody is hitting the buzzer because they’re willing to guess, even though they don’t really know the full question. That’s essentially what’s happening with your horse. So how do you tell him that you appreciate the effort, but you’re getting ahead of the question? So the real challenge here is the quality of how you address his guess. If you can be ahead of the guessing, that would be my number one choice. And what that means is, if you feel him building up to offer the Canter departure, redirect before he offers it. This will make you a more proactive rider, and that would be my number one choice. However, if you don’t see that coming and he offers it and you find yourself in the middle of an unwanted Canter departure. Even at that moment. Gently take hold and redirect. Redirecting to me has a different quality of contact. That happens when people say they’re going to make a correction versus they’re going to redirect. I know it might just sound like wordplay, but for me, when I see somebody say they’re going to redirect versus when somebody says they’re going to correct, there tends to be a more smooth and kind and ahead of moment that happens when somebody is willing to redirect.

I did a podcast a while back talking about redirecting attention, and I’ll find that and put a link to it in the show notes over on my website. But basically the analogy I used is, what would you do if you had a challenge to take a young child into a candy store all the way to the back and get them to the bathroom without them asking for any candy, and I proposed that you would have to get ahead of the idea that they were going to ask the question, and you would have to redirect their attention to a lot of other places the ceiling, the floor, anywhere but the candy rack. In this case, the lead departure is the candy. The horse is going after the lead departure. So if you can get ahead of that in your ability to see when he’s going to offer it, and if you can redirect his attention at that moment, those are going to be two of the main methods I’m going to use. I actually just got back from my fifth trail ride on Luna. If you listened to last week’s episode, I actually recorded that the very first time that I took Luna out on the trail, which was alone. The next trail ride I took her on was with one other horse. The next one we were alone again.

The fourth trail ride I went in a group of six, so there were five other horses. And then today I went alone again and I was doing lots and lots of redirecting to stay ahead of the things that Luna wanted to offer. I also don’t want to take away her initiative. She wants to be very forward, but I also don’t want her rushing downhills where it puts both of us in danger of tripping. And I don’t want her getting into habit patterns. Now that I’m going to fight against later. So I am constantly doing tiny movements and rewarding tiny tries on my five and a half mile ride. Today, I would not even know how to start counting the number of times I redirected to teach her and to show her before a problem happened. If I had to give you an idea, I’m probably doing a version of redirecting every 3 to 5 steps. Sometimes it’s every other step, and sometimes it might be 5 or 6 steps, but the average would probably be around that 3 to 4 steps, because there’s a lot going on and I don’t want to make a huge correction. So my other option is to make lots of small redirections. And even though this is only trail ride number five, it’s amazing to me how much me using detail is already showing up in her listening for detail. Again, this reminds me of the wobble I talked about riding a bike, or if you drive a car and you pay attention.

You’re making micro adjustments in the steering wheel, even on a straight stretch. And the same thing goes for riding a horse. Making those micro movements is what I want to call an unseen wobble that really, truly is a part of the conversation. And as I wrap this up, Sophia, what I want you to remember are these two pieces from the four square model in the rider’s mind category. You have proven through your horse’s physical behavior that you are capable of teaching, and that’s why he knows about the Canter. It’s why he’s offering you the answer that he’s so excited that he learned. And the horse’s mind. We can see the horse’s mind reflected in the horse’s body. We know he’s capable of learning. That’s why he’s offering what he learned. This means you are capable of rocking the teeter totter in the other direction, teaching him something on the slower side of movement. Downward transitions, walking adjustments inside of a lower level gait. When you teach him a few more ideas that he can then anticipate, you’ll begin to see that he will have more than this one thing to offer you. And that’s when the conversation begins to take on more depth. Thanks again for the question, Sophia. That’s what I have for you this week, and I’ll talk to you again in the next episode.

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.
\</div\>

Links and Resources:
Podcast about kid in candy store (distraction) Episode 287
Episode 70: Using More Leg on a Hot Horse
Episode 42: Training Hot Horses