Episode 31: Listener Question: Untraining a Horse or Adding Layers?

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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.

Hi, I'm Stacy Westfall, and I'm here to teach you how to understand, enjoy and successfully train your own horses. This week I'm answering a question that came in from a listener. First, I'll answer with the theory and then I'm going to teach you all how to become a detective.

Let's listen to the question. Hi, Stacy.

First of all, I want to thank you for everything you do to help us help our horses. I am currently a mounted shooting competitor, Level 3. I have a horse that I have been riding for about five years now, and he and I get along really well together. I needed a second backup horse. So I have a 12 year old quarter horse that competed at a higher level than I did. He's a great horse. He's been very well trained, but he gets so amped up going into the arena and I have a hard time settling him down. I don't mean to offend anyone, but he acts similar to a lot of the barrel racers. I have seen I don't know how to help him. So my question is, how do you train a horse? I don't want him competing at that high a level. So my goal is to really help him understand that I'm not asking for him to go that fast or better yet. I would like to get more control over him. I've only competed on him three or four times now. I love him. I want to help him. I want to get us on the same page.

What would you suggest I do?

First, I want to thank you for leaving your question, and I would like to congratulate you on reaching Level 3. No small accomplishment. I don't know if you know this, but I took up hood shooting a few years ago and it was interesting because I actually grew up, grew up barrel racing and I was one of the out of control barrel racers. I have given the example before that I actually came out of the ring one time and hit a car because I couldn't get my horse to stop. But that's a conversation for another day. The good news is that a few years ago when I took up Mt. Hood shooting, I was much more educated, much more in control. But I do believe I totally understand what you're talking about. So the first thing I'd like to add to the conversation is the idea of layers. I would like you to look at it as though you're going to add layers to the horse's training instead of feeling like you have to untrain him. Now it's kind of six of one, half a dozen of the other in a way. If you want to look at it a different way, you could. But for me, I for sure find it to be more beneficial to my mind that I'm actually adding layers to the horse's training, especially because in your case, you're actually somewhat happy with the abilities that he has.

You just want to be able to control when he executes them. Which brings up another theory, which is habits versus control. And what happens a lot of times and this can happen to a mountain shooting horse. A barrel horse. This can happen to a trail horse. This can pretty much happen to any horse that does anything that involves a pattern. Which is why we've talked about anticipation before. But whenever we talk about habits, we're basically talking about versions of anticipation. And so we can have good habits and then begin to habits that work a little bit against us. So basically the biggest dividing line there is whether or not we still have control. So in your instance, his habit of being asked to give it his all when he goes in is affecting whether or not you have full control over him because he's sort of got the habit of running hard and fast.

Again, this can actually happen in a number of different areas, but especially with speed events, it's very common to see horses that get into this habit because with it being a speed event, there's really no incentive for the riders to kind of halfway ride their horses.

For example, in raining, let's say I go to a show and they have really bad footing. So what I mean by that is that the footing would not support sliding stops will automatically because I know that the footing won't support the sliding stop. I will just tone down my ride and I will ask for as much.

And this type of thing can happen in a lot of different events, but speed events typically don't have that happen. So the riders get in the habit themselves of running the horses all out because they hold the show. They paid the entry fee. Their best chance of winning comes from going fast.

So what happens is hopefully when the horse is being trained, it's it's helpful if you layer in this idea of rocking the teeter totter back and forth, which is what I'm showing in my YouTube series that I'm doing right now, the trail to the World show where I'm showing where I show Willow a little bit harder at some shows, a little bit easier in some classes. And I kind of rock the boat back and forth and you'll see that unfold. During the year, but ideally when the horse is being trained, this is going on some and I'm going to talk to you a little bit later in the podcast about opening that up again.

But the first thing for you to realize is that this could be a habit and that is different than you being able to control him when he goes and be able say, now I want more. Now I want less. But he actually thinks he's doing the quote unquote right thing by giving it his all, because that's probably what he was told, not to mention some of the horses really kind of enjoy that adrenaline rush. I think that's something that people sometimes overlook, is that the horses can have this adrenaline rush to the racing and the excitement and and they can actually enjoy it. But even then, it's still not an excuse to let them basically take away the control. Another way to look at this, and I like to rephrase things in a bunch of different ways, depending on who's listening and what's going to really resonate is at the end of the day, when we add all these layers and we say, you know, habit versus control. Here's what I want my horse to feel like for me. I want to feel like I can. It's like a dial.

So imagine your radio dial or dial that you're going to turn and you're gonna go one, two, three, four or five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten.

And then you can turn it back down. That's actually the feeling that I want to have with my horses. So when I took up Mt. Hood shooting a few years ago with popcorn, he had been very trained as a training horse and then for a number of different things. But I also knew that in his heart of hearts, he on my scale is a plus 7 0, meaning balanced negative 10, meaning really, really dull.

Plus 10 being very hot. Popcorn is a plus seven all day long. He's just a naturally hot horse. So I also knew that he needed all these buttons and all this control on him so that when I dialed him up, I would be able to dial back down again because at the end of the day that was super fun to be able to do is bill at dial them up and down if the dial idea doesn't work for you. Do they make radios where you can still turn the knobs? I'm now suddenly feeling old. Although sitting here in my podcasting studio, there's a lot of knobs here. So anyway, maybe I'm just high tech and not that old. But anyway, if the dial up and down doesn't work as well for your mind, we were going to go back to that rock, the teeter totter, because that teeter totter that I have in the front of that smart start book and that whole idea that I keep talking about is balance to zero is right in the middle of that teeter totter. And the horse is neither hot nor cold. They're kind of just ready. But as I said, with popcorn, he was born a +7. That's him in the pasture running around like a crazy horse.

He's just hot. So I have to do a lot of work to make that plus seven horse act like a minus seven horse, not zero. Don't make the mistake of trying to go back to zero because zero. They just rebound in minus seven. You pull it down to zero, you let go just a little bit and you end up with still like a plus four or five something. You know, it's not zero, which is where you want it. And when we get these concepts in our mind, it can kind of help us realize that when we are rocking the teeter totter back and forth or dialing them up and down, that we're going to be leaving that perfect zone of that middle balanced, perfect moment, which F.Y.I, like those only happened. Like I can balance a horse on a day or in a ride, but they don't live balanced. And realistically, that's what we experience in our lives. At least that's what I experience in my life. Like I want to have this ideal perfect day where everything runs just perfectly balanced. And yet I get to experience it. Hopefully, maybe if I'm lucky a few times a year.

It just doesn't work out as well as I plan, but it doesn't make the planning not worthwhile. But what it makes me more aware of is this rocking back and forth and being like, you know, instead of going for a perfect day, I'm going to go with, you know, a little more laid back over here and a little more amped up over here. And that's kind of what I find to be true in my own life. And then I find that to be true with the horses and my job as the trainer, as the horses personal trainer is to know how to peak that horse on those certain days.

And again, this is kind of getting into a lot of theory and a lot of of other ideas that I can build out on as I answer more questions and move into this this fourth season. That's coming up.

But what I want to move into right now is what I call the detective work, because the horse isn't standing in front of me. And even if you pulled into my driveway today and you were coming into a clinic, you're still going to. Have more life experience with this horse than what I would have with him when you pull in the driveway. So here are some of the questions that I would ask. One of the questions I would ask is, is this triggered only at shows or can you trigger a low level version of this at home when he gets amped up? I want you to think about what AIDS does he get resistant to? For example, does he get really sensitive to your legs and you feel like you need to break your legs off? Is he pulling on your hands?

Is he rooting on the bed? Is he kind of making that like trying to pull the reins out of your hand? Does he do a rocking horse? Kind of a low. Does he tend to run sideways, left or right? How exactly does he express himself when he gets all amped up like you're describing? Because what you then want to do is you want to be able say, OK. He typically routes on me and does a rocking horse lope. And then if I keep holding onto him, he tries to do some sideways motions and it's mostly to the right. You can start to be a detective and put this together. Then when you go back to the first question I asked, is this triggered only it shows? Or can you trigger a low level version when you've turned up your awareness to how he is specifically evading certain AIDS when he's when he's getting amped up? You can actually find those problems in other spots at home. So it might seem like, oh, no, he never gets into a rocking horse lope at home. Right. But is there ever a time when you're asking him to stand still or slow down on a trail ride and you feel him push into your right leg because that's what he's doing to you at the shows? Or do you feel like when you're riding him, you have to be really careful? Because if you touch your legs at all on him, he's going to get really hot.

So you tend to ride around with your legs braced off. And typically, if you ride with your legs braced off the horses, a lot of times we'll get a heavy pulling or rooting feeling in their face because basically they're not balanced between your hand and your leg. They won't let you hug them and hold firmly with both legs and hands and and and basically relax into that hug. And so if they're not relaxing into that kind of a hug, they tend to be resisting. And typically with a lot of the barrel horses, it would look like they're supersensitive to your legs and a little bit dull in the face, which when I say doll on the face, that's going to look a little bit confusing at times because you might be like, oh, no, he's not dull. If I touch the rain, he's, you know, diving to the left, diving to the right. But if he's evading it, then it can still be a at a resistance. And so we start to be a detective and and look for all these things. Another place to look for this is if you take him to any mountains shooting practices. I know that our club ran a lot of practices. I would practice at home, but then I could also go and ride with members of my club and go to practices.

And my question for you, there would be when you take him to a practice, is he you know, maybe he doesn't get it. Let's just pretend he doesn't get his amped-up at home. He gets really amped up at the show. When you take him to the practices, does he get halfway amped up? And when you go to the practices. That's a great time when you can maybe set balloons off from him so you could be riding out into the arena for different reasons than just running. And I'm going to hit you with a couple more questions and then I'm going to wrap it into something a little more executable for you. So does he recover once he walks outside the ring? So if you're at a show, is he totally relaxed and then you walk to the gate and he really gets amped up and then he's really just hotter than you want him to be. But then when you come out, how does he respond? Does he come right back down to super quiet or once you run him once as he kind of up? Because sometimes you'll find people dealing with this issue by basically jumping on right before they run, jumping off right after they run.

And then they're avoiding being on the horse in between the runs and the horses get hotter and hotter because they're once they get up, they haven't figured out how to come back down. It's interesting to me because I think at the end of the day, one of the things that I don't like to use the word like secret, but one of the things that somebody would end up calling like secrets to success would be that I go back and retrain my horses all the time. And this is a concept that I find easier to convince people when they're in there down season. So for me, that would be the winter when it's a lot quieter and people aren't showing. I can typically get people talked into doing more groundwork, going back to the basics. Bending to stand still. I'm talking all the way back to the basics, the stuff you can watch on the YouTube videos with me training Jack and Stacy is a video diary. And the reason it's so important is because a lot of the stuff that we train on to the horses is beginning will actually kind of come untrained without use, which is the whole reason that that TV show years ago. Are you smarter than a fifth grader was really successful was because everybody thought it was kind of funny that you were not as knowledgeable as a fifth grader, but it's just because you weren't practicing what the fifth graders were practicing.

And so for sure, I would take this horse back and I would do the groundwork. I would do the whipping around. I would do the sacking out. And then I would take all these little puzzle pieces. And I would say I need to figure out a way where I have a baseline where he's quiet, which it sounds like maybe you have that in some areas. I don't know if he gets up and doesn't recover or if he recovers, but you need some baseline exercises. Let's just say that that is trotting the four leaf clover pattern that you've done that enough that he just totally relaxes and he's like, okay, we're doing the four leaf clover pattern and then you need a way to trigger him a little bit to get up and then come back down. And that's gonna be the game you play now, because he already understands the concept of going into the show and running really hard. Something you can do for him is at the practices and even at the shows. Figure out a way to get into the arena in places where you don't run him hard.

So that could be that you do one of the exhibition classes and you go out there and you begin the pattern and then you decide that you're going to circle around this one barrel over and over and over and over until he relaxes and then you're gonna get off and walk out whatever the club will allow. But I will typically find that you can even find like open barrel racing shows where you can go out there. I've taken raining horses into a $5 open show training situation. And look, the biggest, slowest barrel pattern you've ever seen because I just wandered my horse to go in the pan and be like, what in the world are we doing in here? And then go back out of the pan. It had nothing to do with barrel racing, but I just donated my $5 to the local club and went in and used the arena for the experience.

When you become a detective and you can do all of that kind of stuff, then I think you'll be able to realise which aides he's leaning on, what he might be resistant to, and some of the little places where you can continue improving your communication with him because it sounds like you were kind of on the right track. Look at it like you're adding layers instead of thinking like, oh, I need to untrain him. Although I will admit it does feel a little bit like that. But it's basically just because you want to be able to dial him up and I'll him down. Now, for any of you who are listening to this, who are like, what the heck is mounted shooting and what what are these people talking about? Because I do realize there's gonna be a few of you that are outside of the country that are like, I do not understand this. I will put some links in the show, notes of some mountains, shooting videos that I made, introducing the horse to the gun. And I think I've got one on there with me running popcorn and some of that stuff. So you can get an idea or you can just do a YouTube search on it and you'll find it before I go.

I actually want to tell you guys all about something else that I'm doing online, too. And I wonder if you've ever wondered what it would be like to see like a live version of this podcast. And what I'm doing is I'm actually doing sort of something like that online. I'm doing some live online video calls. And to me, they feel a little bit like a live version of this podcast. What I do is I pick a subject and I teach on the subject and then I answer questions. And if anyone is really brave, I'm hosting these mostly on Xoom 0m. And that means that you have the ability to raise your hand and ask to be live on video with me. And if you choose to do that, then I'll turn your video on and you will be on the screen side by side with me and you can join in for a conversation and ask me questions. And if you want to learn more about this, because I'm going to be doing versions of this throughout the rest of 2019.

If you want to learn more about this, you can visit my Web site and either search for the word live, which will find a page or you can type in Stacy Westfall dot com forward slash live and get more information. Thanks again for listening and I'll talk to you guys in the next episode.

If you enjoy listening to Stacie's podcast, please visit Stacy Westfall dot com for articles, videos and tips to help you and your horse succeed.

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