Episode 316: Three Revealing Behaviors: When Horses Want to Play

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Episode 316.mp3: this mp3 audio file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the best speech-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors.

Speaker1:
That, to me, is a sign that this was a horse that was looking for an excuse to play. So one guideline that I use here is recovery time.

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 horses and play. I'm going to share some of the challenges that I see. The way I see people misread horses in regards to play. And I'm going to give you an example that includes me, and I'm going to talk about a couple assumptions that people make that are worth questioning. But first, two questions for you. Question number one do you consider yourself to be a playful person? Okay. If yes or no didn't automatically appear for you, maybe consider a sliding scale. Are you nearer to the higher frequency side of very playful, or are you towards the lower end not that playful? Or do you think you're playful, but you have a really playful friend who thinks you're not really that playful? Hmm. Maybe the better question would be how do you define playful, and how does your definition line up with those around you? Of course, I went to Google and asked, what is playful behavior. And Google answered on a more descriptive level. Playful people are typically seen as funny, humorous, spontaneous, unpredictable, active, energetic, adventurous, and cheerful. And they tend to display playful behaviors by telling jokes, playing pranks, and horsing around. I didn't add that end part horsing around. Google did that automatically. Now, do you consider your horse to be playful? What's your first reaction? Same scale.

Speaker1:
Is your horse near the high end? The low end? Where do you put your horse? What I want to do is I want to share some different angles that you can view, play, or playfulness with your horse through. These are things that I see show up in horses, and I'm hoping that by putting it into words and explaining it, that it might help you understand your horse better. So the first three categories I want to talk about are possessed play, repressed play, and reactive play. Possessed play. When I think about possessed play and horses, the first thing I actually think about is think about a puppy with the zoomies. That is to me a great example of possessed play. When people see possessed play in a puppy, it's really cute. When people see possessed play in a horse. From a distance, it looks powerful and majestic. It looks amazing in a field or out on the plains, up close on a lunge line or in an arena. It's a lot of energy. Have you ever heard a horse blow like a whale? It's a very powerful exhale. Dramatic. High alert, high energy. It reminds me of a whale. I also view it as a pressure cooker letting off steam. Now let's look at repressed play. This can also be described as a desire to pop. When I'm around a horse who is in this kind of a mode. I will notice the horse is carrying a lot of tension.

Speaker1:
Maybe you'll notice that when you're leading the horse from the barn to the pasture, or the pasture to the barn, maybe they prance or they bounce while they're being led. The horse will often have a holding their breath kind of a feeling. And you might notice this because as the handler rider, you might also begin holding your breath slightly When a writer isn't aware of this repressed play or this desire to play, then oftentimes they will see the horse as disobedient, which oftentimes they actually are because of that built up pressure. That's the underlying cause. And that built up pressure is often overlooked. So this rider, who's not really aware of this desire to play element, might notice that the horse is randomly better at times they'll think, I don't know, he seems better, but I don't know why. Or he seems worse, but I don't know why. And if you look a little closer, these can often be connected with either the horse having an opportunity to play or blow off steam, say the rider took them into the arena and turned them loose and let them play in a big indoor arena in the middle of the winter. And they got to play and blow off some steam. Or maybe they noticed that the horse is better at the end of the week, because sometimes, even though the horse didn't get a chance to play, sometimes harder physical work cycles will make that desire to play be a little bit more reduced.

Speaker1:
So several days of work will often make these horses behave a little bit differently, even though they still have that underlying desire to play. This is an interesting one because there are times that I will still miss this because as you have horses that get really well trained, they'll get good at repressing that desire to play. It's part of being mature. It's part of knowing when you can express something and when you should not express something. And there are moments when I'll still miss this. I remember a particular moment last summer when Willow seemed just a little bit off. She just wasn't quite as focused, not exactly herself. She wasn't doing anything wrong, but I could sense that I was confused and I kept Thinking. Listen to this. I kept thinking I didn't change anything. What's going on here? I know I'm still doing this the same. Notice how I was making it about me. So I was thinking, I'm still doing what is going on. Like I'm I'm cueing this, right. I'm doing this. And then it occurred to me that she had this look in her eyes like she wanted to pop. So she was fine, but her eyes just looked a little bit more buggy than normal. And Willow's eyes were always her giveaway. And because I do have a way that I let my horses play on command, I went ahead and I sent her out to the end of a lunge line, and I invited her to play and she looked possessed.

Speaker1:
She wanted to pop. She was popping. She was jumping and bucking and being all crazy. And so even though she had been doing focused work and actual physical work for several days in a row, and she lives in a turnout. A paddock with a shed, not a stall. Even though all of that was going on, she hadn't had the chance to tear around in good footing with an invitation to play. And after 15 minutes of play, she exhaled, and she was fully herself again. So I tell you all of this just to say, even I miss this. At moments, this repressed desire to play is part of what we are teaching them to do, but it will have some underlying vibes if they never have a way to blow off that steam. The third one I wanted to talk about is the idea of reactive play, and this sometimes will be phrased differently when riders are asking me about it. It'll often come across is this play or is this fear? Let me create an imaginary situation for you. Imagine you're lunging your horse and somebody has left a tarp over in the corner of the arena, and as your horse lunges past it, They kick a little bit of dirt onto the tarp and they blast off, and then they're kicking when they go past it and they're ducking away from it.

Speaker1:
And you're not sure is this play or is this fear? Now, for me, we actually don't have enough information in this example. So here's a better but still not perfect example. Let's say that you're in the same situation. You take your horse out to lunge, and there's a tarp that somebody left in the corner of the arena. You lunge the horse by it, the horse still kicks some dirt onto it and then blasts past it and begins exhibiting the same exact behavior. But you also know this. You also know that your horse is typically okay, or was at least okay with tarps last month. It's not like you're doing tarps every day and they're being really reactive today, blasting past and kicking. But you also notice that ten minutes later, 20 minutes later, something like that. They're totally fine. You actually decide maybe the Tarp needs to be addressed, and you go over there and in a matter of ten, 15, 20 minutes, you've got your normal horse back again. That, to me, is a sign that this was a horse that was looking for an excuse to play. So one guideline that I use here is recovery time. If they're super silly and then really fine in a short amount of time, let's just put this, I don't know, under 30 minutes, under 20 minutes, under ten minutes. The faster the recovery time, the more it tells me about the horse.

Speaker1:
I'm going to give you an example of that in just a minute. But if that horse recovers relatively quickly, it was probably playfulness because fear hangs on longer. Fear doesn't just get over itself in a matter of minutes. So this is very similar to what I just talked about, the repressed play that desire to pop. The difference in this, in reactive play is that something actually set the horse off. In this example, it will look to some people, like the tarp is setting the horse off, and it is. But if it resolves once the horse has blown off some steam, it begins to appear more like the tarp was just bringing up the reactive play, or it was. The excuse to play is the way that I refer to it in my barn. There are many different shades of this behavior, and that is what often confuses riders. The fact that the horse is fine with tarps, but reacting to the tarps but fine with the tarp is a problem for some riders. The other thing is that horses that do this will often pick other things that they're randomly reactive to, because remember, they're kind of looking for an excuse to play because they're playful and they feel pent up. And because of this, the handler or rider's reaction begins to help inform the horse. What is your reaction? Are you freaked out because now the horse is doing this? Are you making it mean now? My horse is scared of tarps.

Speaker1:
Are you making it a problem or are you staying a little bit neutral? And considering maybe my horse is playful, maybe I need to refresh the tarps. What's happening for you in that moment? Because let's just say the horse kicks dirt on the tarp, gets wound up, and you start to get worried. And then the horse transfers that same behavior to a cat walking, and they spook at the cat walking. And then you get tense and you get jumpy, and then the horse is running around. Notice that you're kind of disconnecting in that example. And so the ability to see the horse as a playful creature is separate from being able to decide what you want to make that mean and how you want to handle it. So the way that I begin to separate this out. Let's go back into this example where you know your horse has a foundation of training around tarps. It's not the first day he's ever seen a tarp. You know, he's been over tarps. You know, he's been fine. He kicked dirt on the tarp today and seemed to be very playful. And you're a little bit concerned. What would Stacy do? What I will do is I will think, well, I know this horse had the foundation training to be around tarps, so I'm going to pretend that they were fresh and needed to blow off some steam.

Speaker1:
So I'm going to let them run around. I'm going to move them around. And then when I notice it kind of wearing down a little bit, I'm going to take them and I'm either going to take a break or I'm going to tie them up, and then I'm going to come back and I'm going to do another cycle, because remember, I already know this horse already knows the tarp. And yes, maybe I was planning on doing something different. But if your horse has this high energy blast that occurs out of nowhere in your mind and you don't know what to do with it, take the time to go ahead and address it. So for me, I would go back and I would send them around again and see whether or not it's magically fixed, because the horse is no longer playful, or whether it's actually a horse that's being reactive about the tarp. And then for me, I'm going to do it again. I'm going to go tie him up or take a break, go clean a stall, go work a different horse, go do something, and I'm going to come back and I'm going to come back to it again, and I'm going to go back and forth like that until I get that horse back to the base that I know they had. Because remember in this example, they had training around a tarp before, even if they haven't seen it for a month.

Speaker1:
They had training. And I want to get back to that. What this cycle training does is it gives them time to blow off steam, and it gives me lots of cycles to gather more information. And if I do that on that day, let's call it a Monday. Then the next day I'm actually going to approach it the same. I'm going to come out and I'm going to on purpose, make sure there's a tarp around, and I'm going to take them out, and I'm going to take them around and I'm going to find out, are they completely fine with the tarp because we did three, 4 or 5 cycles yesterday, or do they come out and they're a little bit up in the air on the first cycle, and then I do another cycle. And how much better are they on cycle number two or cycle number three? Because this is what I'm getting at. Although in my training program I allow play. I don't want the habit to become that. The horse starts the play cycles. I start the play cycles in the very beginning with a baby horse or a green horse or a wild horse. It's not going to feel exactly like this. But once I get to the part where I have a riding horse, it's going to feel like I'm going to invite you to play. And I'm also going to maintain the power to shut this down. My expectations of a riding horse are.

Speaker1:
Yes, I will organize times where you can play, and I will do my best to remember that that is a normal desire for a horse to have. Sorry Willow, I missed it on that day. My bad. But I also want the horse to see that there is a difference between play time and work time. I personally want both. There are two extremes that you're probably more familiar with than the three examples I just gave you. One extreme would be a trainer or a person who allowed no play. Think of a stereotypical training barn where you would expect that the horses would be kept in this military type fashion of obedience. No play. That's one extreme. The other extreme happens more on accident. And I call it permanent play. Never serious. I want you to go back to thinking about a dog. Think about a distracted, hyper dog that's always playful, like a puppy with no focus that can be accidentally trained into a horse, as well as it can be into a dog. So while I recognize that horses have a desire to play, and that horses all have different levels of desire to play, which is what we started the podcast with. And I even invite play into parts of my sessions with my horse. I want to be able to shut it down on command. Here's an example. This morning I went out and I was working horses and it was cold here this morning.

Speaker1:
We've been getting highs of 20 something, maybe 30 and lows around 1517. It was cold this morning and before I rode I decided I wanted to let Enzo play a little bit because last night when I wrote him, he felt tense. And last night I chose to ride through it, but I had a hunch that he wanted playtime, even though he lives out in a paddock in a running shed and I see him playing around out there. But right now the ground is frozen, so he's probably not playing to the same level that he would be even if it was summer in the same exact situation. And I was right. He was very bouncy and very silly when I sent him out to the end of the lunge line. We don't know each other really well yet, and in between having him go clockwise, which was the first way that I sent him out to lunge in between going clockwise and then reversing directions, I asked him to stop and stand still while I whipped around him. Now keep in mind, when he was going around me clockwise, he had been at a level eight, playfulness bouncing and striking and doing all these dramatic things with his body bouncing around out there. And then I asked him to stop and stand, and I wanted to whip around him on the left side of him, right side of him, left side of him.

Speaker1:
Right side. I'm hitting the ground on his left side, the ground on his right side. And that's a newish concept to him. We'll just say it's not solid. So I was asking him to stand still, but he looked a little bit more like a cutting horse. So he was at a level eight running around. I asked him to stop. He stopped and then I started whipping around, and when I would whip on the left side of him, he'd jump to the right and I'd whip on the other side, and he'd kind of jump back, and I was handling it to keep him standing still, but it looked a little bit like stand. Go left stand, go right. Stand. I'm standing. I'm not right. Left. He was jumping all around. It was emotional for him and it was physical for him. Now he figured it out. And then when he stood quietly for not a super long time, say, 30s, I went ahead and I sent him the other way. It is possible to have a mix. It is possible to allow play and also require obedience. Here are two assumptions that I often hear come up when I'm discussing some of these concepts. Number one, assuming that horses play when they're outside, I just mentioned it. My horses spend most of their time in small paddocks, and when they get a chance to get into bigger areas, say a large pasture or even my indoor arena, they play differently.

Speaker1:
Why would that be? Well, first of all, size. When they get into a larger pasture, they can run faster And footing. Right now it's winter and the ground is frozen, so even when they're in the paddock, they can't do as much bouncing because it's not comfortable to bounce around on frozen ground. I mean, they will a little bit, but not like they will if they get into the good footing in the indoor arena. It always cracks me up that horses recognize good footing. You can tell because they'll come into the arena and a lot of times they want to roll because they recognize, ooh, this is good footing. And the other thing they'll do is they'll recognize that they can rip and tear and play without slipping and falling, and that makes it inviting to them to want to play. So the mistake that people make oftentimes is thinking that my horse is turned out, you would need to watch your horse to find out. But keep this in mind most of them aren't in huge areas, and most of them aren't required to move around a lot. So unless they're in a playful group of horses while they're out there, so somebody's kind of stirring up the pot, a lot of times it's more quiet, and if you've got the horse that's stirring up the pot, they might be moving around when they're outside, but they're also telling you they're a high energy horse, so that desire to blow off some extra steam is going to look different in each horse, because it's not even just age dependent or training level dependent.

Speaker1:
I've seen yearlings that were pretty low energy in the same pasture, with a seven year old horse that was pretty high energy, and the older horses running around acting like a young horse. And the young horse is standing there acting like an old horse, because young and old are just things that we label on them. It doesn't necessarily equate with their energy level, although it can. So just keep this in mind. Just because they have a chance to be outside doesn't mean they're blowing off steam. That's where the inviting them to blow off steam or moving their body around is often useful. So Gabby right now, I had her in this morning and she tends to be you've heard me talk about her on the podcast before, she tends to be lazy. We could also call it energy conserving. What's kind of funny is that she still really likes to play. Now she's not as frequent a player as somebody like Amber, and she won't play as long as Amber will, but she will actually get pretty intense for short bursts, even though she's halfway through her pregnancy right now, and she's getting noticeably bigger because the ground outside is frozen. When I brought her in today to let her play on the end of the lunge line, she looked possessed, running to the point where I was concerned.

Speaker1:
Don't fall down. Look, you're pregnant and I don't want you to fall down anyway. But don't fall down because she was making these blasting running motions. Because she's so excited about the good footing and blowing off some steam. I find this to be a particularly relevant conversation, especially around the time when the weather changes. I notice this desire to play comes up a lot more for my horses when we switch from summer into winter, and we've got that cold, chilly air that seems to set them off. But I'll also notice that a lot of times in the spring when the weather's warming up and they're shedding and the days are getting longer, so you can look for seasonal reasons. But I think at the end of the day, horses are playful to a degree enough that Google wants to say horse play in reference to playful behavior. I think it's something that you can actually learn to harness and use in your training. I also think that a lot of times people tend to go to one extreme or the other. They tend to either want all obedience and no play, which if you have to choose that one, might be the safer route. Because if you go to the other extreme where you really don't like that look, that focus face look that a serious, obedient horse will often have.

Speaker1:
If you are offended by the focus face look and you always want playful, then you're going to have a higher energy horse that, even in Google's description said potentially unpredictable and energetic. I personally like something in the middle. I like being able to call up that energetic, that spontaneous, that high energy, and I want to know that I can bring it down, shut it down and then call it back up again. That, to me, is a higher level of understanding of it. One of the reasons I wanted to bring this up is because, just like I missed some of the subtle signs with Willow when she was tense and not quite herself, I believe that when horses either don't have the opportunity to play, or aren't in work cycles that bring up their breathing rate to where they're Are actually breathing a little bit hard. I think some horses don't ever get a chance to get rid of some of that excess energy, and it makes them a little bit playful in ways that you're not necessarily agreeing with. So keep this in mind as you're working with your horse. And just question has your horse had an opportunity to play or any sort of organized way to blow off steam? Remember, if you have questions about anything you hear on the podcast, you can go over to my website and you can leave a voicemail for me to use on an upcoming podcast. 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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