SWS033.mp3: this mp3 audio file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the best speech-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors.
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. In this episode, I'm answering another listener question. This time we're gonna be talking about piquing a horse for a show. Let's listen to the question.
Hi, Stacy. My question is, how do you keep your horse from peeking before you go to the show? I am a week away from my show. I do cowboy obstacle racing and I'm doing two different kinds. I exercise my Mary yesterday and she was spot on show ready. And I'm not too sure for the rest of the week what I should do with her because I don't want to turn her off and have a dark horse. By the time I get to the show. I'm just a basically a beginner. But I know I know enough that I can overtrained my mare. Thank you very much.
First, I want to thank you for calling in and if any of you were listening and you would like to call in. You can find the information on that over on my Web site. And I'm also really glad that you mentioned two things. First, I'm glad that you mentioned an awareness that you could overtrained. And I'm also glad that you're aware of the fact that your horse feels like she is at her peak. Now, let's see what other questions I can ask you that might bring up more awareness in other areas that I think you might already have the answers to what you just maybe haven't considered. Here's the first question. How did you get her to this peak? How long did it take? Have you had her at a peak like this before? How long did that peak last? And what do you think brought her down off from that last peak? Now, obviously, we're not on the phone, so I can't actually hear your answers. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to run through some different scenarios here. I'm going to picture different horses that I've trained over the years and I'm going to kind of talk both sides of this. But if any of you would be interested in recording a phone conversation with me like a Q&A, but you're actually on the phone with me, let me know, because that could be really fun to listen to here on the podcast.
Send me an email over at Westfall horsemanship at gmail.com or the contact on my Web site. That could be really fun to try. So keep in mind that as I run through these scenarios, what we're really trying to do is figure out how to bring this horse into this zone. But I also kind of want you to picture that zone a little bit like the idea of the teeter totter now where this might not be quite as clear as the balanced idea of the teeter totter. I'm going to discuss that after we run through this scenario, because I think there are some exceptions to the idea. And that's why I'm on to almost say bring this horse into a zone vs. the super clearcut teeter totter. I think that is more clear cut depending on the level of riding that you're doing. But I'm going to discuss that after we talk through these questions. So how did you get her to this peak? If I go back through the years and I picture some different horses, some horses, you can bring up to a peak pretty quick, but it almost feels like they kind of fall off the other side and go downhill really quickly. So, for example, if I know I have a horse that will kind of peak like that and then drop off the other side, then I need to, first of all, have the awareness that that's happening and that I need to kind of study the pattern and ask myself when the horse comes up to the peak, what am I doing and how long does the peak stay? And when it goes down, what was going on? So if I picture a certain horse, I could say, well, I don't know the horse super well, but it seemed like it didn't take that long to bring her up to a peak.
And then she felt really good for like a day or two. And then I started to feel like instead of being peaked, she was almost getting anxious, nervous, a little bit too trigger happy, a little bit too sensitive. And that would be the version of this horse falling off the peak. So the version of that horse falling off the other side was not the horse getting dull. It's actually the opposite. It's the horse going too sensitive to hair trigger too quick, basically anticipating and carrying tension. Now, with a horse like that, you would learn you'd have to learn how to rock that boat back and forth. You'd have to recognize where that where that breaking point was of what feels like it's good because the horse is very responsive. But also what it feels like when the horse starts to tip over that edge of going from very responsive to a little bit too tense, a little bit too tight, a little bit too hair trigger.
If I were showing that horse, I would be very careful about bringing the horse to a peak until literally at the show. So it would be common with a horse that had kind of that type of a pattern that you might bring the horse gently up. And then when you were going to take the horse, let's say you take the horse to the show Friday, your main classes are Saturday, Sunday, then you would actually probably be starting to bring that horse up at the show on Friday and then that would have you peaking somewhere around Saturday, Sunday. The other goal with this particular horse, I'm imagining, would also be that you would want to figure out how to extend that, because what ultimately end up happening with a horse like this one is that you might even have to rock that teeter totter inside the weekend. So maybe you start to bring the horse up on Friday and you show Saturday morning and then you enter some kind of a schooling class later on in the day on Saturday, or basically a class that you can not ride your best in so that you can actually ask that horse to perform at 50 percent capacity to ultimately bring that horse back into a calmer state so that you could then be able to possibly bring the horse back up to another peak on Sunday.
This kind of stuff that I'm talking about with bringing the horse up and down is that idea of rocking the teeter totter, of bringing that horse into this physical and mental state, of being ready, but not too ready. Being quiet, but not too quiet. And you should be rocking this boat at home. You should be trying to figure out this zone or this teeter totter. Or however you want to look at it. You should be trying to figure this out at home. And for me, what that means is that I will pick a week when I don't have a show and I will be playing with these little ups and downs during that week because there's nothing really at stake. And then it gives me more information. This is especially useful over the winter because it does a couple things, even in my down season. It gives me a little bit more structure, but it gives me a way to collect a lot of information before I'm right in the thick of showing, because a lot of times once you hit show season, seems like they just kind of keep the shows are just pretty frequent. Now I'm going to go ahead and picture a different horse. So when I picture this one, I'm going to think, how long did it take to get to this peak? And let's say, well, you know, the horse was feeling almost really relaxed and really dull.
So I really started to think about how to sharpen this horse about a week earlier than the show and pretty much fully took me almost the whole week. And even when I went to the show on Friday, I was thinking, boy, I really almost feel like I need to push a little bit harder. I need to ask for things to come a little bit quicker. I need to basically sharpen this horse up a little bit more because this one's being pretty relaxed, but almost to the point of dull. And with this horse, I can think and say, well, how long did the last peak last? Well, the horse actually felt pretty good for three or four days and it wasn't as dramatic a peak, but it also felt like a more of a plateau up there. And so in that situation, you know, I can kind of know I can start turning it up a little bit on a little bit on maybe Wednesday or Thursday and know that because that peak tends to be longer, even though I really started on Monday, on Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, I was really bringing that horse up to a peak. And I'm pretty sure that it has the stamina and that mental toughness to to be able to handle that peak through the whole weekend.
And then when I think, you know, what brought that horse down off from the peak? Well, I actually started to think that maybe there was some physical fatigue because this horse doesn't tend to have as much gas in the tank. It's one of those horses that just seems to be a little lazier, a little more naturally dull. And I have noticed in the past that this horse doesn't have a lot of stamina. So I need to make sure that even when I'm working on peaking this horse, I don't actually, like run this horse out of energy because this one doesn't seem to rebound really quickly off from that kind of stuff. So that's a couple different ways that if I picture horses from the past, there's a couple different ways that I would run through that scenario. But I have two more kind of big ideas. One question I would get expect to get a law after this would be why doesn't this balance last? And I want to tell you that at the lower levels, it is something that's very achievable. So at a lower level, it is very possible to get a horse and balanced. And in this state where you can go and show and have this this level kind of way of being across the board, it is more evident when you start thinking about taking the horses to a higher level that you have to start thinking about how getting in the zone will work.
Because when you start thinking about a high level athlete, even just picturing a human, that you could almost compare that to like somebody who's doing a general workout, you know, three days a week and they're working out for 20 or 30 minutes vs. go ahead and go to an extreme a pitcher like a high level athlete that's getting ready for the Olympics or getting ready for some really big event in whatever sport you like. And what you realize is that when you're operating at a higher level, at some point you are asking for a very high level of sharpness mentally, which can cause a certain level of stress, which people, certain people and horses can handle more of or less of. But nobody can live in that zone because it's just above this general zone. And the same thing physically, there is an amount of training that you can do with a human and then there just has to be that recovery time and again. When we're working in the general zone, when we're working in that more generalized zone of of exercising and competing and working out, it's just not amped up as much. So it doesn't take as much from you. So as that zone moves higher, it's going to be a different conversation than this balanced teeter totter in the middle where you could actually have like a general maintainable workout.
So one of the things to keep in mind when we're running these scenarios is how far out of the. Sources comfort zone. Are we taking it, which is a little bit more mental. But there is physical there, too. And how much out of the horse's ability level are we trying to take this horse? Let me talk about that for just a minute. What that could mean is that I've had horses in the past that I've trained all the way up through. But because they were more limited in their physical ability, what ended up happening was for me to go show in the classes that I'm required to show in as an open rider. I would have to ask these horses for 100 percent of their ability across the board. They would have to be maxing out at their physical ability to spin and slide and do these these very physical things. And anytime you're maxing out physically, you're also going to be pushing that edge of that that mental. And so what would happen with these horses is that I'm asking them for everything. And that is a much different scenario than what I ended up choosing to do with these different horses is over the years I've chosen to sell those horses to a non-pro that was going to go and win even more statistically than I was, because the horse is more capable in those lower level classes than it is at the classes that I'm gonna be showing in.
But also, here's the beauty of it. That horse could actually go and show up 70 to 80 percent of its maximum capability and actually still be winning the classes. And in that scenario, that horse is going to be much easier to maintain. It's not really being pushed out of his comfort zone that far. It's well within its ability level. And this is how the whole thing goes when you start really sliding up the scale. This is one of the reasons that I love showing is because it brings up my awareness about this subject. But the truth is, this is actually happening everywhere that you're working with your horse. And for me, that's been a game changer on my day to day riding and my trail riding, having this awareness that we're always rocking this this teeter totter back and forth, that we're always searching for this zone. And what it allows me to do is it allows me to be more consistent with the idea of pushing that comfort zone. And here's the key, bringing that horse back down off from that high level, because it's very important to remember that when you do learn how to sharpen this horse and how to bring this horse up and how to really get this horse right where you want him to be.
This could also be if you're especially when you start working above the 70 percent, you know, above the 80 percent, somewhere above that level. When you start doing that consistently with the horse, you are introducing a certain level of stress. And so it's nice to bring them back down off from that. So I don't ask my horses to live in this high performing zone all the time. I take them to a show. I ask them to be there in that high level zone. I bring them back and I go trail riding and I let them come down. Or even if I go into the arena, maybe I play around more. I bring out one of the equine exercise balls and I start chasing it around and I just am way less particular. And I let that horse come down because a lot of show horses that don't last don't know how to come back down because people are so excited that they've got them in this high functioning zone that they don't let the horses come down or have a breather. So keep that in mind. What I want you to think about is maybe you don't have enough experience with this horse to be able to answer all of these questions, but start answering them now and start answering them on a day to day and weekly basis.
Start really studying this in all areas. And I think you'll be surprised how much information you do know as you turn your awareness up in all of these areas. Thanks so much for listening and I'll talk to you again 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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