Episode 309: Back to the Basics: The Dance of Internal and External Focus

Episode 309_ Back to the Basics_ The Dance of Internal and External Focus.mp3: Audio automatically transcribed by Sonix

Episode 309_ Back to the Basics_ The Dance of Internal and External Focus.mp3: this mp3 audio file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the best speech-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors.

Speaker1:
When I say I’m laughing and exploring and seeing these horses through this lens of a really playful elementary teacher, I’m curious, does that feel accessible to you? Or does the phrase back to the basics bring dread or boredom, or a sense of you somehow failed? So now you have to go back to the basics.

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. I have a confession. I bought another horse. For those of you who might be new to the podcast or are now just catching up on podcast episodes, I’ve made some major changes in my barn over the last few months. I sold two of my horses, Willow and Presto, that I had had for ten years and eight years respectively, and I bought two younger horses more recently. Plus, if you’re keeping track of it, I also bought a yearling last fall. So now I have three relatively young horses in my riding string. I have Ember, the two year old mare that I bought last fall as a yearling. I have Luna, a four year old mare who I’ve talked about on some previous podcasts, taking trail riding and things like that. And now Enzo the newest, which is another four year old, this time a gelding. So when I think about it, it’s no wonder that the podcast theme that keeps coming to mind is Back to School or back to the basics, because that’s what I’m doing every day out in the barn. In this podcast, I want to share some of my thoughts on going back to the basics, which includes what some of those basics are and how I’m implementing this back to the basics idea with these young horses. The first thing to keep in mind is that I believe in going back to the basics on a regular basis.

Speaker1:
If you’ve been listening to the podcast over the years, you’ll have heard me talk about my default yearly plan of every spring, say January February when it’s nice and cold here in Ohio and I’m all bundled up, that’s when I’m going back to the basics. A great example of how I do this would actually come if we look at some of my more extreme versions of this. So when I won the freestyle reining at the Congress with Roxy or with Vaquero, or the first time that I showed Haley there. When I did that in October, all of those horses showed Bridleless in October. And then when January and February came around, I would go back to the basics, even with those horses. For those horses that would have included groundwork, it would have included returning to a snaffle bit, riding with no spurs and instead of spurs, riding with dressage whip or dressage whips, one in each hand depending on what movements I was working on, and I didn’t want to have to change sides. Why? Why would I take a horse that could show at such a high level in October and turn around and go back to the basics in January or February? Because by going back and reviewing the foundation skills, I could look for any places that might have become cloudy with myself or with the horses. For example, if I go back to a snaffle bit when I’ve been showing bridleless, it’s going to reveal different things than what riding without a bridle will.

Speaker1:
So yes, the horse can ride bridleless, but will they also willingly accept contact? If not, why not? Or if I take a horse that rides beautifully with spurs and I go to no spurs, what happens? Do I lose some of the refinement, which is what I would expect because I believe that Spurs are for refinement. Or do I lose my ability to go forward? Do I lose forward motion if I am riding with Spurs for refinement? What that means to me is that those Spurs can touch very specific spots very accurately, like pointing with your finger instead of pointing with your fist. That would be the difference between touching a specific spot or a blunt spot. That’s less specific. But if I lose forward motion when I take away the Spurs, that tells me that one of us, or both of us, the horse and I got out of balance in that area. So here’s my theory. Just like riding my horse’s bridle, this isn’t a training technique. It reveals the level of understanding that was built there. Riding without the bridle is not a training technique. It reveals the level of understanding when I ride with the bridle. It also reveals levels of understanding tools, things like bits and spurs. They are just that. They are tools. The real training of the horse is the understanding that the horse brings along.

Speaker1:
It’s what happens in the horse’s mind. And when I come back to the basics, I go back to groundwork and I come back to a more simplified version compared to what I’m doing in my more advanced time periods of the year. That’s when I get to really see their understanding as I switch things around. Now, before I go any further with this podcast, I also want to say this I see two other potential issues for those of you who are listening, issue number one some people get stuck in the basics. Issue number two, some people want to go back to the basics, but they bought a more advanced horse and they didn’t train the basics. And they’ve never trained the basics on any horse. If you sense that you are in either of these categories, listen to what I have to say here. If you feel stuck in the basics, double check whether or not you feel safe. If you don’t feel safe either because of your horse’s behavior or because you have fear of how you would handle a certain situation. If you have fear, a lack of safety, it means you need to get help any time you feel unsafe. The answer is to gain more Understanding the answer is not to push forward for the sake of advancing. If you feel like you’re stuck in the basics, that stuck feeling is likely coming from one of the two of you being confused. Either your horse is confused, and that’s why you’re getting behavior issues that are a red flag and have you not moving forward, leading to the problem of feeling stuck.

Speaker1:
But that is one and the same as you don’t have the answers for how to help that horse that’s confused, or you sense that if you went further forward, say you went on a trail ride, or you asked for something more advanced, that something would come undone. That, again, is a feeling of a lack of safety coming from a lack of understanding. If that’s you. Don’t be afraid to stay in the basics, but also get help. Now, if you’re in the second category, if you bought a horse that’s in high school or higher, this means a horse that does transitions like walk to lope, lope to walk. Maybe the horse is in college, maybe it does lead changes or shoulder in. If it’s a dressage horse or sliding stops or it neck reins really well. Keep in mind that horses who know advanced things won’t behave the same as when you go back to the basics. That means if you start a Colt under saddle and you’re going through the basics, they feel and behave like an elementary level child. But if you take a college age student and you start treating them like a kindergartner, they’re not going to behave like a kindergartner. Maybe a little. But let’s look at it like this. Let’s use a different analogy. Imagine if you built a house from the foundation up with your own hands and your own knowledge.

Speaker1:
If you were going to take parts down and then put them back up, it’s going to make sense to you because you built the house. However, if you bought a house already built and you want to make improvements, you probably wouldn’t start by taking it off the foundation, jacking the whole house up, and then replacing the foundation just for fun. Unless you found out the foundation needed to be replaced, and then that’s exactly where you would need to start. So if you’ve been bucked off or you’re afraid you might need to go all the way down to the basics of jacking the house up and replacing the entire foundation. But if you’re not experienced with foundation building or jacking houses up, you should call and get help. This is a completely different scale than if you bought a house and you want to replace the cabinets, or you want to change out the carpet for hardwood flooring. So if you bought a horse and you feel safe and you want to go back to the basics, it often involves riding more simple things like transitions of gait from the walk to the trot instead of the walk to the Canter you go walk to trot, or you go trot to lope or lope to trot. Notice we’re not skipping over a gait. So you do the more basic things, but with a higher level of awareness that is going back to the basics.

Speaker1:
So for me, going back to the basics is as much a mindset as it is an activity. For me, I have built houses from the ground up, so sometimes when I go all the way down to the basics, I am starting from scratch. But I also keep in mind that when I have a horse, I’ll use my newest horse, Enzo, as an example. When I have a horse that I’m bringing all the way down to the basics. I still don’t expect him to act exactly like Ember did when she was learning at Brand New, because there is a difference as you engage with that higher level horse and you bring them back down to the more basics. Again, look at this as much as a mindset as it is an activity. Let’s take a look at Enzo for a minute. He is actually another first for me. This is the first horse I’ve ever bought that was already riding that I bought without riding him first, so he’s already broke to ride, but I bought him without riding him first. I knew him, he belongs to a friend. And although he was out in Arizona, which is why I didn’t ride him, I did have a vet check done on him. So that means that when Enzo showed up at my house, I already owned him, but I’d never ridden him, so I wanted to go back to the basics.

Speaker1:
What are the basics and where would I start? The two categories that seem the most obvious are groundwork Basics and Riding Basics. Both of these include your ability to get the horse to go, to stop, to steer. But I want you thinking about this in a different way. Instead of looking at the checklist items that you could see in both groundwork and riding, I want you to think about bigger categories that might be less visible. Let’s go to this. The rider’s mind or the horse’s mind. Notice how groundwork and riding Both fall into the activity of the horse’s body. It’s easy to say, I got the horse to go to the right at a walk, at a trot and a canter. Those are activities of the horse’s body. When you take the horse and you do groundwork and you say, Will they walk when they trot, do they have rhythm or a lack of rhythm? Will they lope? Or do they refuse to lope? Or when they lope, do they go really fast and try to drag me away? Those all sound like activities of the horse’s body, but they’re always reflecting the horse’s mind. So the two biggest categories that I keep in mind when I’m going back to the basics and I’m evaluating a horse are number one me, my experience, my intuition, my sense of what’s happening, my curiosity. And number two, the horse. What are they focused on? What are they not focused on? What is their body telling me about their experience? I am basically looking for their mind, their emotions, their processing, their experience as they’re doing the thing with their body.

Speaker1:
So when I say that I’m doing this type of watching, it’s me. Watching me have the experience of lunging Enzo and me watching Enzo, having the experience of being lunged. That’s what I mean when I say going back to the basics is almost more of a mindset. So inside of this, I am also confident in my skill set so I can do this evaluation process in a playful kind of a way. So let’s imagine the kind of energy that you might have if you were trying to engage a six year old child in learning through play for 20 minutes. So what’s fascinating about this for me is that when I do this and I approach my groundwork like this, it really engages young horses. When I do this more playful evaluation, when it’s me being playful and inviting him to move around. It also will bring up different things in these older horses. So let me rewind. When I first took Enzo out, I did a basic session of lunging. I double checked that I could send him around me during groundwork, that I could get him to go clockwise around me at a walk, at a trot, at a lope. I asked him to stop and turn and face me. And then after I had done a session that was more basic like that, while also evaluating his mind.

Speaker1:
Noticing that he was looking around his new surroundings, noticing that he was looking around to see where the other horses were. Noticing that he was looking at a lot of external things and not as much at me as I would have liked, I didn’t label that a problem. I just looked at the experience he was having and the experience I was having when he wasn’t that engaged. I didn’t make it a problem. I kept myself safe. I kept him safe. And then in the next session, I decided to bring out objects. So I brought out a box that was a byproduct, a leftover of a recent delivery. You do not have to spend a lot of money on these things. I brought out an old box, the packing paper from inside the box, an old piece of a tarp, and one of the Weaver leather equine activity balls that I always have around here. And keep in mind, I was also in a closed arena and I had a plan and I have the skills for how to handle it because even though I didn’t know this horse very well, I wanted to move this playful energy of elementary school up so that I could get to know him even better. So I had all the gates shut, and I wanted him to be playful so I could learn more about that processing. So during this second session that was much more playful.

Speaker1:
I was looking more for how did he switch between me and what I was asking him to do? Maybe that might be stop and turn and go forward. And how did the box being there influence his thinking? How did the tarp being there, whether he crossed it or whether he was just near it? How did that influence him? So again, this back to the basics was more about how he was going to respond to the added energy that comes from simply having objects in the arena. So even though I’m saying it’s back to the basics, can you hear how engaging this is? Now again, my primary focus is actually on his emotions, how he’s processing, how he’s handling the challenge of this person, me that he’s just met, asking him to turn and go around these objects that he didn’t seem familiar with, and his willingness to allow me to redirect his attention. There were times that when he was approaching the box, it looked like he was going, what does she want me to do with it? And when I asked him to go past it, that also confused him. So he’s just literally sorting through and I’m watching how he sorts through, and I’m also watching how I interpret his behavior. Now, I’ve done a lot of this, so I know my default and my default is laughing. I laugh a lot when I take the horses to elementary school. I love it.

Speaker1:
It’s one of my favorite things to do, but you might find as you do something like this, as you do your version of returning to the basics of going back to elementary school, notice if your default is to predict problems. So if you bring out an object and you decide to send the horse past it, and the horse tries to roll back and go the other way, notice your own thinking about the behavior of rolling back and going the other way. Because remember, part of this back to the basics is you evaluating you. And maybe it is something where you need more skills, but maybe it is something where you just start to notice that you label it a problem as soon as it happens, and you technically already believe that you have the skill to redirect to three, five, ten times before you decide it’s a problem. I have laughed so much in the last week with these young horses that it feels like I am in an elementary classroom. It’s almost like there’s finger paintings hanging around the room and pipe cleaners over in the corner, ready to make Halloween spiders with, because I’ve got things pulled out of all the corners so that the horses have this really engaging session with me of back to the basics. One other way you could look at this is something I covered back in episode 107. Training Cycles yearly, weekly and daily. Back in that episode, way long ago, I warned against flat line training.

Speaker1:
So when I say I’m going back to the basics, when I say I’m laughing and exploring and seeing these horses through this lens of a really playful elementary teacher, I’m curious, does that feel accessible to you? Or does the phrase back to the basics bring dread or boredom, or a sense of you somehow failed? So now you have to go back to the basics. And if you could bring this playful energy while staying safe, how do you think your horse would respond to it? I find that it engages horses of all ages. It reminds me how to be playful and joyful, and it makes the horses even more curious. But I will warn you, it can also bring up bigger energy for horses. If you start to bring tarps in or boxes, they may jump the tarp or kick at the box. And you do need a plan for how you’re going to handle that. But remember, the whole point of going back to the basics was to do this and find any foundational issues that might be there. Approaching a horse that you’ve owned for many years with a fresh set of eyes is often more challenging than approaching the horse that you just bought with a fresh set of eyes. But when you can do this, you might just unlock a whole new level of understanding. That’s what I have for you today. 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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