Episode 350: How Does the Training Ever Work to Stop a Spook?

Episode 350_ How Does the Training Ever Work to Stop a Spook_.mp3: Audio automatically transcribed by Sonix

Episode 350_ How Does the Training Ever Work to Stop a Spook_.mp3: this mp3 audio file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the best speech-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors.

Speaker1:
Training doesn’t erase the surprise. It builds the recovery. It teaches the horse how to come back to you. And when it’s done really well, they come back to you before you even have to ask them to. That’s the end result. It’s not where it starts.

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 Stacey Westfall and I’m here to help you understand, enjoy and successfully train your own horses. In this episode, I want to begin answering a question that someone asked me recently and the question was, how does the training ever work so that it stops a spook. It’s a great question that has many layers, and a question like this always makes me think of Willow. If you’ve been a long time podcast listener, you’ll remember hearing about her over the years. And if you go to my YouTube channel, you’ll see a video series called trail to the World Show, and you can see lots and lots of footage of Willow. She was a horse that I owned for many years, and she went from being a very jumpy horse. I’m talking jump at every chipmunk, even if there were 100 chipmunks on a 2 or 3 hour trail ride jump every single time she went from that to a solid citizen. I was just looking up an article the other day for somebody. I wrote a blog post, I think it was back in 2018 where I had taken Willow to a show, took my jacket off, dropped it on the ground from on her back, and then had to spend 30 minutes it’s just trying to ride past my own jacket. Okay. Keep that in mind when I say this horse became a solid riding horse that won awards at the AQHa World Show and the Western Dressage World Show.

Speaker1:
And I could put friends on her and take her trail riding. No jumping at Chipmunks. So it is totally possible to transform these horses. In this episode, I want to look at three things that help explain how the training actually does change the way that a horse handles these unexpected moments. First, horses respond to the quality of your attention. So let’s go to a non horse example. Let’s imagine that you’re sitting at a coffee shop with a friend and you’re fully engaged in the conversation. You guys are talking, talking, talking. Someone drops a plate and it breaks. Yes. I’m going to guess you’re going to startle maybe glance, but you’re in deep in a conversation. You probably go right straight back into the conversation. Because what you’re experiencing during that conversation is connection. Now imagine yourself same coffee shop, but you’re alone and you’re sitting there and maybe your laptop’s out because you thought about doing some work, but you’re kind of daydreaming and the plate drops and your mind jumps to the plate. And not only does it jump to the plate, you probably start to look around and try to figure out how it happened. And maybe you look to 2 or 3 other tables to try to figure out how other people are reacting to the plate. And maybe your mind starts to make up stories about what’s going on and what’s about to happen.

Speaker1:
You’re watching the cleanup crew. You’re all caught up in it. You’re much more likely to stay gone and to go deeper. So if someone approached you for a conversation right then. They’re going to have to pull your attention away from this thing that’s happening around the plate. Same coffee shop, same plate drop, different quality of attention. Think of writing as an ongoing conversation. If the horse is used to checking in with you and they’re deep in this conversation, even if the horse version of a plate drop happens, they are much more likely to return to that pattern of that conversation after the distraction because it’s been practiced. I know this concept of a conversation is more theory. So let’s pivot now and make this next one more about physical cues. Number two. So on the surface, when I say that I’m in constant communication with my horse, people often think that sounds amazing, especially when it sounds like we’re sitting at a coffee shop. Then when I explain the physical system of this and I say, I’m using my leg. I’m looking where I’m going, I’m using my seat. I’m using my rein,. I’m balancing with my other rein,. I’m using more leg. I’m adjusting my seat. I’m adjusting my leg, I’m adjusting my rein,. One of the most common objections that I hear is, uh, that sounds like a lot today. When I was thinking about this question and the answer I was preparing, I got into my truck to drive somewhere, and I was thinking about this micromanaging idea, and I realized how similar writing is to driving, not counting, using the cruise control.

Speaker1:
Take that out of your head, but the rest of driving is pretty darn active. If you pay attention, you could probably be accused of micromanaging. So today when I was driving, I was on a relatively straight road, going 55 miles an hour and noticed how my hands are making these little micro adjustments to keep the truck right where I want it. And my foot is making these little micro adjustments on the gas, unless I need to then shift and change to the brake. But there are a lot of constant little adjustments that are happening when you’re driving a vehicle. Now, when you were first learning to drive, or if you want to go away from driving, you can think about learning to play an instrument or to play a new sport. When you’re first learning something new, it is going to feel like there are a million moving pieces and lots of rules, and you can’t remember them all. But as you get better and better at it, like driving, it becomes so seamless that it doesn’t feel like micromanagement. But all you have to do is look at somebody who’s learning it new, and it looks a lot harder than what it feels like to you. To be in conversation with the horse means you’re going to be a very active writer, and active means making adjustments, noticing something, making adjustments, noticing, making adjustments.

Speaker1:
Just like driving. And if you think about that coffee with a friend, technically what you’re doing in that conversation is noticing, responding. We could say that’s an adjustment. You’re noticing. You’re responding, you’re engaged in the conversation. When you’re driving the car, those constant adjustments are physical and they create safety and they come from muscle memory. And the third one that I jotted down is your horse can be trained to expect the unexpected. One way that I teach it is that I train my horses using both rhythm and random rhythm is what I do primary teaching with, because rhythm is predictable so the horse can understand it. And then I also teach with random and that for me a lot of times looks like jumping around or doing something randomly. I’m going to keep it real simple for you. I was just doing this today with Baby Whisper. She’s about three months old now, and I’m already doing both because I’m working on things that are rhythmic. The way that I’m scratching her, the way that I’m asking her to move, if I ask her to move using the second string, I’m tap, tap, tap tap tap tap tapping with a rhythm. And when she moves, she feels the release. But I’m also randomly jumping here and there, and it might look like a random movement for no apparent reason.

Speaker1:
Or it might be. I suddenly go quickly down one of her legs to pick it up, and I’m purposely already building in random because if I stay with only rhythm, she will learn to expect only rhythm. And right now. As a youngster, she’s the most open to what I have to say because she doesn’t have any other history. So the fact that I’m already moving with rhythm for things like teaching her how to respond to the tap, tap tap, which will be her go forward cue now with leading and lunging and someday it will be her go forward cue when riding. So I’m being very consistent, but I’m also sprinkling in. And then Stacy takes off doing jumping jacks or Stacey runs. That is also exciting because that tends to make the baby run, and then you get to deal with baby energy going high and how you’re going to handle it. However, let’s transition away from Baby Whisper. Maybe she needs the whole podcast on her own sometime. I also think again about Willow when I think about this rhythm and random. There was a particular moment I’d done all the groundwork with Willow. She was trained in much more advanced, but the same idea. I was just saying with Baby Whisper, and I remember being out jogging with her one time on the trail, and it happened to me in the arena too.

Speaker1:
So I’m telling you, I’ve fallen down multiple times while doing groundwork around my horses, and I was out jogging on the trail, and I tripped on a route one time and went down on my hands and knees. And she didn’t spook. She didn’t do anything weird. She just stopped. And she was like, yeah, you’re not going to fool me. Why? Why did she have that response? Because right now, if I fell flat on the ground with whisper, I’m pretty sure it would freak her out and she’d take off running. So even though whisper has never seen a human fall, that unusual high energy is going to make her go somewhere. And that’s pretty typical. But why did Willow, who was a jumpy horse, respond like that? Because she’d been trained with rhythm and random in a controlled environment. And then she also saw me do lots of weird things. So for Stacy to jump into random jumping jacks is actually somewhat common. It’s not every day, but I’m random enough, but weird enough that my horses are exposed to what you could consider inconsistencies on purpose. I’ve told you before on the podcast, sometimes on the way in or out of the barn, I’ll just randomly start running with them. Lots of things like that that make the horses think that the unexpected is part of the normal. Okay, one more example. I know I’m kind of jumping through and fast, but it’s because I want you to get the idea of these things more so than one specific technique, because you’ve got to grab on to the bigger idea of how the training around spooking works before you’re going to actually be able to do the how to.

Speaker1:
So one final example in writing, I had somebody over and they were riding on Enzo, and when they got off they said, Sorry. I felt like I was all over the place and I said, it’s perfect because to him, he doesn’t even think it’s a problem because it feels like me. Because that’s how I ride him. When I am intentionally helping him get comfortable with wobbly or imperfection. Okay, let me say that a different way. I ride sloppy on purpose when the horses get to a certain stage of training. Why would I do that? I would do that because if I ride less than perfect, if I ride sloppy on purpose, then that means Enzo has to work out what I want, even when I’m not writing, quote unquote perfect. Much like Baby Whisper, having to sort out Stacy being normal and Stacy jumping around randomly, it’s continuing through my training all the way up through to where? When I’m riding. Sometimes I’m riding very precise. And other times I’m riding a little wobbly. So that I can see the spots where maybe my good riding is covering up a problem. So if I ride a little wobbly, it’s going to let him show me what he knows.

Speaker1:
It also makes it perfect. So if somebody comes over and I say, hey, jump on this horse so you can feel this particular thing. If they say, sorry, I feel like I’m all over the place. I can say it’s fine. He’s totally trained for that. The other really cool thing about all of these examples that I gave you is that the horses are also learning to read you in these different situations. So if I’m approaching something like it’s a coffee shop and I’m an engaging conversation, I don’t feel like I’m trying to force the horse to do something. It feels like I’m in conversation with them. So they’re reading me as, hey, I’m actively engaging you. So do you see how that approach is going to change how you show up? Well, when I also gave example number two and I say I’m in constant communication with my horse, with my seat, my legs, my reins, if you believe that that is micromanaging, you’re going to be very resistant to doing it. So again, you have to be able to get your mind wrapped around the idea that this constant communication is a good thing, that it’s a fun thing, that it is how you have a conversation with a horse, and the idea that a horse can be trained for the unexpected, that might stretch you to think, do you believe that? And if you did, how could you make that a normal part of your training routine so that if you ever trip and fall flat on your face, like I also did in the arena one time when I just plain tripped over my spur as I was turning around and Willow just looked at me like, nope, that’s not going to trick me either.

Speaker1:
Try harder. When your training is done really well, your horses will actually expect the unexpected. And that is how we actually get to the real answer to that original question. Training doesn’t erase the surprise. It builds the recovery. It teaches the horse how to come back to you. And when it’s done really well, they come back to you before you even have to ask them to. That’s the end result. It’s not where it starts. In the beginning, you are going to feel like you’re micromanaging that, just like you felt like you were micromanaging a car when you were figuring out how to drive it. Then in the middle, you’ll start to feel more of that balance, more of that, like, hey, this is partly on me and partly on you. And if you do the work and you get to the other side, you’ll get to the point where I did with Willow, which was something would startle And before I even had a chance to respond. She already had the recovery happening before I even had the chance to take hold and help her.

Speaker1:
That is the ultimate end goal. Back in episode 277 of this podcast, I shared two ways you may be disconnecting from your horse. It was another angle of looking at this same challenge from. In that podcast, I describe freezing and shrinking. And I want to go ahead and play that for you now. I think it’s a great compliment to what I was just discussing. And as always, if you have questions about these podcasts, feel free to send me an email and ask your question. You never know when it might show up right here on the podcast. In this podcast, I want to talk about two types of releases Leases that riders sometimes give without even considering that it’s a release. While you’re listening, try to envision situations in your own life where you felt like this and the actions that you took when you felt like this, because you’re going to hear that I’m talking about a feeling, but also actions or inactions. Also, notice how these things can happen in your everyday life, not just your horse life. And I’m going to share a recent experience that I had with one of these. So the two accidental types of releases that riders sometimes give are number one freezing and number two shrinking. Now, freezing is kind of like that moment when you feel like a deer in headlights. So if you’ve ever seen a movie or been driving and had a deer in front of the car staring straight at the car, they often look frozen.

Speaker1:
Still not moving even though moving would be in their best interest. So this is what I’m defining as frozen. Moments like this. Come up with your horse. Sometimes they’re more predictable than you might imagine, and other times you’re going to learn after the fact that you need a plan in case this happens again. But if you’ve ever been in a moment where you’ve felt frozen and without an answer, notice for just a minute. If you freeze that movie in your mind. Now look at your horse, even though you’re standing there frozen. Can you see how as you’re standing there, frozen, The horse is left unsupported, undirected, not guided. So freezing is one type of accidental release. Now freezing is best solved with a plan of action, and then once you have a plan of action, you also need to practice it like you would practice a fire drill or any new skill. You need to practice it when you don’t need it, so that when you do need it, you’ll snap into action almost without thought. This is what I have that keeps me safe when I’m starting Colts under saddle for the first rides, because I have practiced thousands of quick mounts and quick dismounts. Because I have practiced thousands of bending to a stop dismounting smoothly.

Speaker1:
My body begins this sequence before I even have time to think. And when you have done this, it actually feels like a superpower. In reality, what it is is unconscious competence. Many of you have felt something like this when you’re driving a car and something happens, and it feels like your body begins to respond to the situation before you have time to process what’s happening. That is possible with your horse also. I talk about this more back in episode five of the podcast, and I think that levels of competency is something well worth going back and reviewing, because it helps explain why certain areas of learning feel the way they do. But the main point I want you to remember about freezing is that if you pause that little video in your mind, look at your horse. You’re having one experience, which is your frozen in moment experience. Your horse is likely having a completely different experience that doesn’t really involve you because you’re frozen. The second way that riders sometimes give a release without considering it a release is by shrinking. Now, shrinking can happen for different reasons, but it feels physically the same in your body. So shrinking is that feeling of withdrawing or lowering your energy. And a couple of reasons that I see riders do this are number one. I see writers try to lower their energy, hoping that by lowering your energy, it will lower your horse’s energy.

Speaker1:
So, for example, if the horse is escalating and has gone from a five to a six to a seven or an eight. Sometimes I’ll see a rider who is going from a three to a two to a one to a zero. And the reason this matters is because on one hand, there’s an essence of lowering your energy. That’s true. If you happen to be escalating your energy or using too much energy physically or even stirred up in your body. But the difference is, is if you begin to withdraw as that horse escalates, oftentimes you cause a disconnect. Now, this could go back to number one If your horse escalates from a five to a six to a seven or an eight. Emotionally, they’re probably also showing physical symptoms. And if you don’t know how to handle those physical symptoms when they’re at a five, going to a six, going to a seven, if you don’t have the skills to step in and redirect that horse, then it may get to a point where it’s a seven, it’s an eight, it’s a nine, and you may be disconnecting to get distance and keep yourself safe. However, what I’d like you to focus on for this one moment is just your horses experience of when they begin to escalate, you begin to shrink or disappear. Maybe you going down to a one or a zero. Isn’t that helpful for the horse? This second reason that I see people shrink is when they are attempting to not offend the horse.

Speaker1:
And this is very closely related to what I was just talking about, because oftentimes if the horse is escalating five, six, seven, sometimes the way that the rider perceives trying to handle a horse that’s at a seven feels like it requires a lot of the rider, and that requires a lot of the rider can look like a lot of different things, but it typically means directing the energy of a horse that’s escalating. This is also, by the way, why it’s beneficial if you can step in when they’re still at a five or a six, versus trying to help redirect them and gather them when they are a seven, eight, 9 or 10. But what goes on for a lot of riders is that if they are concerned about possibly offending the horse. This will set a lot of riders into. I don’t want to offend, so I’m going to withdraw a little bit and shrink. I want you to look at the horse’s experience. If you have a horse that’s scared and is escalating, they’re at a five, a six, a seven. They’re headed up the scale because they are scared. Reacting and wanting to leave town when the rider reduces themselves. When the rider withdraws. The horse often perceives this as being left alone, abandoned. And the horse that’s scared is desiring safety. And this is where they often begin looking for another horse or another location that they perceive as being safe.

Speaker1:
Can you see how, from the horse’s point of view, if the rider shrinks and shrinks and shrinks, it could give the horse the impression they are being left alone, unguided. Now, again, this is not a prescription for you to escalate. And I think where a lot of people get confused is that showing up in a strong energy is definitely different than showing up in an angry energy. So just keep that in mind when you’re looking for how you could show up at a four, a five or a six in your energy in a way that could be strong and powerful and create safety and security for the horse. Now, what’s also interesting is that when horses start to escalate, there’s a whole nother group that is more strong willed. Maybe not as scared. Maybe it comes across as more like they’ve got a plan of where they want to go, and it doesn’t look like it’s coming from fear. And that is very true, because oftentimes when you have a horse with a strong leadership type of a drive, what happens is when they begin to grow in energy and they have a plan of what they would like to do and where they would like to go again. If the rider begins to shrink or withdraw in an attempt to lower the energy, that horse that already has a determined plan will often perceive that as an open door.

Speaker1:
Like here you go. Make your own choice. And this type of horse, even though they’re not acting from fear, still perceives that shrinking energy as a lack of guidance. So at the beginning I said, these sound like feelings, but they’re also visible through your action or inaction. And I also mentioned that if you pay attention, these are things that can happen in everyday life. And I actually experienced a fair amount of shrinking energy in myself in the last week. I’m hoping that by sharing this non hoarse example, you’ll gain more clarity of what shrinking energy is, but also how you can look for it in other areas of your life. This week we had a pretty good size building project happening here on our property. So there’s a contractor or actually a couple partners that are contractors that are coming in and out. There’s the work crew. For me, there’s a lot of unknown. There’s rental equipment. There’s gravel being delivered. There’s just a lot of stuff happening on the property. And even though there’s a contract and we’ve talked. There’s still a level of unknown. And what I noticed this week in particular was how often when I went out to the work site, I would notice a desire to shrink. I could feel it physically show up in my body with a resistance to walk up to where the work was being done.

Speaker1:
I could feel it in my body of wanting to roll my shoulders forward and almost go into that slight, like shrinking. Like you’re going to go into almost a fetal position, kind of a feeling happening. I could feel a slight version of that wanting to happen in my body. And I thought that was so interesting to be experiencing on my own property. In a building project I signed up for. So it made me really curious. I kept going right to the edge of where this experience would start to happen, and pausing to try to figure out what was going on. And I realized that while construction was happening, there were times I wanted to ask questions, but I didn’t want to sound stupid, and it didn’t show up in my brain as you’re going to sound stupid, but there was a resistance to walking up and asking what it came across to me, as was, I don’t know the right terms, which is just a fancier way of saying that I don’t want to sound a particular way, like, I don’t want to sound like I don’t know the proper terms. And it wasn’t so much that I cared about, like proper terms, but I literally couldn’t figure out how to describe something that I could picture so clearly in my head. So there was this underlying vibe of a concern or not really fear, but it’s similar to fear, this concern of how am I going to get my point across, and how am I going to be perceived as a woman who’s asking a lot of questions and making a lot of decisions? And as I would engage with going up, asking the questions, I could feel this resistance happening in my body.

Speaker1:
And it was fascinating because I could then feel it make me tongue tied, which made it even harder to ask the questions. And I stretched myself by pointing and walking and gesturing and doing different things. And it was really uncomfortable. At times. I could feel the desire to shrink, to step back, to just let it happen, to just trust that it would all come out right. But that was competing with my other desire, which was to be my own advocate. To ask for clarification before the window is installed, to ask for clarification, before the concrete is poured and cannot be changed. And here’s the really interesting part. It took me being okay with the fact that they might perceive me in a way that I obviously want to avoid. I’m not even totally clear what that is, because really, they could have tons of thoughts about me that were not flattering. I don’t even need to know what they are. All I need to know is I had a sense that I kind of didn’t want them having negative thoughts. So then I had to actually decide to be okay with the fact that that could happen.

Speaker1:
And what gets even more interesting is that I knew on one level that it actually works out better in the end for both of us. If I’m proactive because if the window goes in in the wrong location, either I’m unhappy afterwards and I just live with the window in the wrong location, or the windows in the wrong location, and I ask them afterwards to make changes. So my discomfort in the moment of walking up and pointing and asking questions is actually helpful to both of us in that moment. This is so true when you do this work with your horse, when you start realizing that if you are in a moment where you feel yourself shrinking, pause and actually try to find what’s causing that shrinking. Sometimes you’ll be like me and you’ll feel it in your body, and you’ll actually feel that contraction, or you’ll feel that resistance to even going to a certain situation. And you don’t have to go do it to find it. Remember I said I was walking to the edge of where I could feel that start to happen to me, and then I was just pausing there and trying to figure out what was happening. Again, many times if you’re in a freezing situation, you’re going to notice that if you keep putting yourself into freezing situations, you’re going to start to shrink. Freezing. To me is a little bit different, because truly, being frozen is that moment when you actually no longer know.

Speaker1:
So shrinking energy was more like I wanted to avoid a certain situation because of the perceptions and because of the uncomfortableness of not knowing how to communicate clearly. But you can probably hear that shrinking and freezing can get kind of close to each other, depending on what situations you’re in. Be compassionate with yourself when you recognize something like this happening. I could have talked to myself very mean. I could have told myself that I was just being stupid for having these thoughts. But that’s not how I want to show up for me. And if I force myself through something like that, it’s going to become a habit in other areas. One thing that makes these two situations so challenging, freezing and shrinking, is that they tend to be situations that are such strong reactions in our bodies that sometimes it’s hard for us to remember to pause and look at the other person. Or in this case, the horses experience of us in that moment. And remember, just like my discomfort in the moment of actually asking about the windows and asking about the concrete actually helps both of us. Your willingness to identify these moments and find solutions to them is actually going to be beneficial to you, and especially to your horse, in the future. That’s what I have for you this week. 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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