Episode 358.mp3: this mp3 audio file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the best speech-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors.
Speaker1:
And so on the surface, it could have looked like I was avoiding interacting with whisper, but what I was really doing was I was using a lot of what I would call draw energy.
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.
Speaker3:
Hello little one, I want to record a podcast. Hi.
Speaker1:
I'm Stacy Westfall and I'm here to teach you to understand, enjoy and successfully train your own horses. Although you can't see it, today I am joined by whisper, Gabby and Amber for this podcast. I am starting a new season of the podcast and as I was thinking about topics that I could potentially cover, I was thinking about different viewpoints. So this season is going to be built all around. The idea that was actually a book title and a poster that I remember from a very long time ago called all I Really Need to Know I Learned in kindergarten. Now, I think I might extend that to elementary school, but starting in this podcast, I want to talk about some of the concepts that I see begin to show up with a young foal like whisper. Even in the first few days of handling her all the way up through. I don't know how far we'll go through the grades, but at least up into elementary school. So as I was thinking about which topic to start with, I thought, why not just go with preschool and some of the things that whisper here has already learned, and especially how those carry through into the higher level, more advanced things that you will do with a horse. Because you often hear me talk about grade levels, I thought it might be fun to look at it through this lens. I think the other really important thing about looking at a really young, horse like whisper here is that if whisper is capable of learning some of these concepts as a three day old or a three month old or a six month old foal, then I hope it opens your mind to what your horse is capable of.
Speaker1:
If they can learn it when they're this little, they should be able to understand it even more so as they get older. So as I've been taking notes about things I might discuss with you around this topic. The first thing that came to mind was just how I interacted with whisper in those first few days after she was born. And right now I'm walking around out in the paddock and I'm being followed by all three more so by whisper as she has more questions for me about why I'm hanging out out here and why I'm talking. And what's interesting to me is how much draw she has, how much curiosity she has, how much of a desire to come and interact with me that she has. And I believe that a large portion of that is because of the way that I've interacted with her from the very beginning. So in the very beginning, the majority of my training with her for the first few days, outside of the necessary medical treatments, like putting medication on her navel and that kind of stuff, I mostly actually ignored her or stayed out of her way, which is kind of an interesting way to look at it.
Speaker1:
Like, I actually went into the stall and if I was going to walk by her, or if I had to go around Gabby to avoid walking right by her, I actually took the longer distance and went out and around and so on the surface, it could have looked like I was avoiding interacting with whisper. But what I was really doing was I was using a lot of what I would call draw energy as opposed to push energy, or I sometimes will call it pull energy when I've got a horse on a line. But basically what I was doing with her was I was creating a lot of curiosity because I wasn't going after her, I wasn't headed towards her. So the opposite of having something to potentially move away from that being me, she was actually curious about this thing that was in the stall but was moving away. The cat just tried following me into the paddock and came out, and the cat just did a nice demonstration of draw energy. Because the cat saw the foal, the foal saw the cat, the foal started to follow the cat and the cat started to leave, which actually drew Whisperer into following even more. So I think when when you think about interacting with a foal and I say, you know, walk away, stay away, draw them in.
Speaker1:
I think for a lot of people, the concept of using that kind of draw energy would make a lot of sense in that situation, because it's a little 100 and something pound foal and you know that it might be scared. So in that situation, it might be pretty easy to talk a lot of riders handlers into approaching a foal like that. And it works really, really well because it does create a lot of curiosity. It actually works really well at all ages in different situations. So I think one of the things that really struck me when I was teaching a student last week about doing a lot of liberty work, was actually the idea that when I'm working with a horse, I'm always very aware of whether my energy bubble is pushing towards the horse, is standing neutral, or is stepping back or walking away, which would be leaving a gap, increasing a gap which would create that draw or that pull type of energy. So I think as a concept, it's really important to recognize that beyond the cue system of what you're doing with the lead rope, for example, pulling on the lead rope or what you're doing with the stick and string or the rope, are you pushing and asking the horse to move? I think beyond just looking at the tools that you might use, would be looking at your own energy inside of it, but literally your intention.
Speaker1:
So, for example, right now I've been walking away from whisper every time she keeps looking at me, and what it's getting me is more and more draw now because she's six months old, she also knows a little bit more about push energy so I can actually step into her and back her up, but we'll talk about that in another podcast. But what I want you to think about with your horse, when you think about something that could be taught before the horse ever had a halter put on this draw energy, this curiosity, this stepping away, this pull energy that's created when I move away and I open up that gap. I think it's really interesting with older horses, especially to watch people. Let's just put it into an example like lunging. A lot of times when people go out to lunge the horse, they go to send the horse around them. And to me, this is one of the areas where very clearly there are three different Positions I can have with my body or movements. Let's say that I can have with my body. I can be pushing, which oftentimes looks like I'm walking slightly towards. Maybe I'm walking a circle the size of a hula hoop, but it's kind of at the horse or pushing towards the horse. Maybe I'm using the stick and string to push energy and I'm walking towards the horse, so it has a lot of this pushing energy.
Speaker1:
But the other thing I can do is neutral. I can just stop pushing. I can stand and pivot. So think about having a single pivot foot, or think about at least picking your feet up and down and staying in one very small, like the size of a dinner plate spot. So you're neither pushing nor backing up. And then there is the third, which would be draw, which would be either taking a step back. If I were lunging, I could actually take a step back to create that kind of pull back and draw. And you can imagine if I stepped back very far, eventually it would shorten up the lead rope and it would literally pull on the rope. But I would love you to think about it like there are these three different types of opening or not opening that I can create with my own body energy. So whisper just walked up to me, and because I asked her to back up a couple times ago, she walked up and she's not within elbow distance of me. She's staying just out of my elbow distance because that's what I told her a minute ago to do, because I pushed against her energy and said to stay back there. And when I think back to those first few days where if you'd watched me, it may have been looking like I was ignoring her, but I wasn't ignoring her. I was acknowledging that I didn't know where her bubble was, and I was also acknowledging that if I stay at a distance, I'm going to create more curiosity.
Speaker1:
And if I am at a distance and she looks at me and then I move in a particular way, say, I step away from her, it's going to create even more curiosity in her because she's going to start to recognize that there's some kind of interplay, there's some kind of relationship between what she does she looks at me and what I do. Step back. So before she ever had a halter put on, she was very consistent at coming to me and following me around because I was very consistent at stepping back every time she looked at me. Now, for some of you who are listening, who are thinking that somebody might listen to this podcast and go do this with a big pushy horse and get in trouble. Valid concern if you have a big, pushy horse that wants to push on your space, you're going to be using that technique in a very limited kind of way. But I will argue at some point you want to contain both push and pull type energy with the little foal that I'm doing that with. I have the opportunity to create a lot of this draw or pull type energy and then eventually I do have to say there's going to be some kind of a boundary there.
Speaker1:
What I'm curious about when you go out to lunch, your own horses, and feel free to call and leave me a voicemail, or send me an email and let me know what you discover is for a lot of people who are lunging their horses, they want to know how to get that horse, to look to the inside, or to not be constantly pulling. And I think one of the first things to keep in mind is that you need to be aware of when the horse flicks an inside ear at you, or looks at you just a little bit. Now, mind you, if the horse is pulling on the end of the lunge line, they're pulling away from you. They're not trying to run you over. They're creating a lot of distance. So that horse, what would it be like if that horse flicked an ear at you and you went from push energy to one step back, or you went from neutral standing to one step back? What would happen if every time that horse turned an eye or turned an ear or turned their head towards you. You acknowledge that with some kind of movement in your body, just like I did in those first few days with whisper. What consistently happens when I do this is the horse starts to recognize that they're looking in, is a piece of a conversation, they're looking in, is causing something to change. And that would be me stepping back.
Speaker1:
And what's so cool about this is that for me, the way that I interpret this is it's inviting the horse into a conversation. I will put this out there. Also, though I was teaching this to a woman one time who had a horse who was not pushy at all, and I was teaching her that when the horse looked at her, if she would take a step back and acknowledge that, that it would draw the horse in because it would create that curiosity and the horse would ask the question, am I causing that? Am I causing that step back to happen in that person's body? And the the participant that I was teaching this to was very repelled by this idea, very against the idea of giving the horse the impression that if they looked at the handler, that the handler would step back and that the horse might get it in their mind that they were causing that movement of the handler. And I get it, because basically what she was reacting to was the idea that the horse might get it in his head, that the horse can move my feet, but in a way, when I'm inviting them later on in college into a dance of liberty, when I want to be able to take the rope off, I want an element of this question and answer. I think what was missing in that person's mind was they learned it like a black and white rule, like we don't want to teach the horse that it can push us around.
Speaker1:
But what about the idea that the horse could be invited into a conversation, and I can still have boundaries, just because I take a step back to acknowledge and to invite the horse closer in, doesn't mean that I can't say also to the horse, stop and stay outside of my bubble by 4 or 5ft. Or like I just did a minute ago here with whisper when I said, don't come any closer than my elbow width. You can't see me. But she's looking at me right now, and I just kind of picked up my foot and swung it around, not unlike what a horse would do if they were saying, stay back out of my bubble. And she understands it not just because I've used it, but also because Amber and Gabby have used it too. It's basically speaking horse language, and so she's very good at being able to read staying Out of my bubble, even though I've also used a lot of this stepping back and draw energy. So if you take one thing away from this podcast, what I would love it to be is the next time that you're with your horse. Notice, especially during the groundwork when you're lunging. Say, do you use all three types of energy? Do you use a push type energy where you are pushing and asking that horse to move probably further away or forward? Do you use a neutral or standing still type energy that means something different to the horse? And do you ever step back and have some kind of an energy that would draw that horse in to you, either to a smaller circle or literally all the way to you? And what are your ratios? So are you using 80% push and then, you know, you don't ever stand still as a neutral.
Speaker1:
And maybe you do a little bit of pull. What are those ratios as you're handling the horse. And how do you see that reflected in the horse's behavior. Because before you can create a horse that wants to come to you and be caught in the pasture or wrap around you When you're doing liberty, you're going to have to find those different types of energy inside your daily interactions with your horse, because otherwise you're going to give all of the power to the tools, the lead rope, the stick and string, when really it's a lot in you and your behavior and that behavior in relationship to their behavior. It's amazing to me, as I stand here and look at this almost six month old foal now, how many lessons she has already learned that are going to serve her well for the rest of her life. And I look forward to sharing more of those with you in the next podcast.
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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