Episode 359: Bend That Begins in the Body- The Preschool of Horsemanship

Episode 359.mp3: Audio automatically transcribed by Sonix

Episode 359.mp3: this mp3 audio file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the best speech-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors.

Speaker1:
It is fascinating to me to think that that young foal who’s just weeks old, can totally comprehend all of these lessons really well. And if that’s possible in just a few weeks, then wouldn’t it be fair to expect them to be highly accountable by the time they are a few years old?

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. I am out in the paddock again today with whisper, Gabby and Amber. Today I have whisper on a lead rope, so she’s wearing a halter and lead rope, and I have a stick and string as well as my iPhone that I’m recording into, and I thought I’d pick up where I left off in the last podcast and kind of go forward with the next things that I would have taught Baby Whisper and how I see them tying into future work with horses in older grade levels. Now, I know that all of you don’t have foals, but I think the main point of this is that I want you to understand some of the concepts that they can learn very early in what I would call preschool, and then even in elementary school, that then stick with them for the rest of their lives. And so the next thing after that pull energy and that getting that curiosity that I talked about in the last podcast when I started interacting with whisper, one of the most notable things that I remember doing is walking up to her, but never approaching her from the front. Because with young foals, a lot of times, if they’re gonna run away, you don’t want them trying to do a rollback because they tend to go over backwards, which is really dangerous.

Speaker1:
So I always approach my younger foals from the side, so I’m going to walk up near their shoulder or their withers and I’m going to scratch. And then the other really interesting thing that I teach people to do when they’re handling foals is that when they walk up, they’re going to come from the side like that and they’re going to scratch and rub, and then they’re going to turn and leave, and they’re not going to go towards the front of the horse when they do it. That might be walking off diagonally away or walking off past the hip. It kind of depends on the age of the horse and the situation and that kind of stuff. But with these young foals, they’re much more likely to injure themselves trying to escape from you. So therefore, when I leave, I actually want to do two things. I want to leave in a way that is more likely to keep them safe, so they’re not going to be tempted to roll back. But I also love that it creates even more curiosity because I want you to think about it. If I go up to that pole and I start scratching the withers and that foal is not quite sure, but they’re standing there, they’re thinking about liking it, but they’re not quite sure. And then I just march away and leave out past there. But, you know, doesn’t have to be right straight behind if you’re afraid you’re going to get kicked.

Speaker1:
But just imagine I leave and I’m not headed to the front. What it creates is a lot more of that draw that I talked about in the last podcast, and it also, to me is directly tied with an exercise that I teach people who are lunging their horses. So people will come in and they’ve got an older horse. I had one here last week that was 17 years old, and we were doing this exercise where when you’re lunging, you can pick a spot on, say, the round pen panel or a post or anywhere. Any marker could be a pile of manure on the ground. And when that horse goes past that pile of manure and you’re in the middle of lunging, when the horse goes, when their butt goes past it, you just march off past their butt and they’ll turn and look like, um, I thought we were in the middle of a conversation. Where’d you go? So I think it’s fascinating that basically I have the same exact exercise that I do before I’ve ever put a halter on the foal, and then I’m doing that very same exercise later in that horse’s life. And it doesn’t matter if that exercise was done when they were full. I’m looking at Ember. I bought her as a yearling later in her yearling year.

Speaker1:
She’d never had an exercise like that done before, and it just starts working because it’s super Basic and actually removes pressure from the horse instead of applying pressure. So it’s actually my favorite way to have a horse stop when I’m lunging in the beginning. And they don’t know a lot because I’m literally just marching off and leaving, and it creates a lot of draw. Another exercise that I do very early on, as in the first few weeks of life when I’m raising a foal that I see a direct correlation with in older horses is when I start teaching them to lead. One of the first things I do is I actually start teaching them about moving their hips. Now this goes back to something I just said a minute ago about wanting to be very mindful about the fact that these baby horses are often going to be more likely to be playful or dirty, or want to flee because their instinct might be, if they don’t understand something to leave. So in that mindset, when I’m handling this young foal. After I’ve been scratching them, I’ll start wrapping my arms around them. Keep in mind this is when they’re very little. I’m wrapping an arm around their chest so I can feel somewhere near that point of their shoulder, and I’m wrapping my arm around their butt. And so I can kind of feel around around behind their butt.

Speaker1:
So I’m reaching across to that other side of their their buttocks, to the outside hip. And I can actually when they’re little, I can kind of hug them like that, and I can teach them to walk little circles around me and to disengage their hip. So my babies learn that before I ever put a halter on them, I can wrap my arms around them, and with my hand that’s back on their rear end, I can kind of squeeze, squeeze, squeeze, and they’ll take a step forward and I can release. And they’re stepping forward into that arm that’s kind of gently steering them by their shoulders. Keep in mind they’re tiny little horses at this point, so it works really well. Don’t do this with a yearling you won’t even be able to reach, so it doesn’t have a direct correlation. Until we get to the older example I’ll tell you about in a minute. So very early on, my babies, before they ever have a halter put on, are essentially doing liberty leading. But even more than liberty leading, it really, really, really feels like when I’m doing my liberty ridden work and I’m controlling their body but not their head. And so it feels very similar to me as to when I have a very advanced horse that I can ride without a bridle. Essentially, the way I’m doing that is by steering their shoulders and their hip, and then the head and neck are kind of coming along for the ride.

Speaker1:
And what’s so fascinating about that is that when I’m teaching these babies to walk around me in a circle while I’ve got one arm in front of them, one arm behind them, and I’m having them walk a circle around me, is that I’m basically using the hand on their rear end to kind of scoot them forward a little bit or to just steady them. And I’m using the hand up by the shoulder to bring them in closer to me. And my body is essentially like, what would be my inside leg if I were riding? My body is just there and they’re going around me. And what’s so fascinating is as they figure out where they’re getting released for when I squeeze on their little buttocks and they walk forward, they feel that release. And when I squeeze on their little neck and they step towards me, they feel that release. It’s so cool because within a day or two, they’re walking circles around me and their head and neck is bending around me. It’s not bending to the outside, and that bend is because it’s coming from their shoulders and their hips, and they’re wrapped around me and mentally they’re willing. So I’m seeing that wrapping motion before I ever put anything on their head. And if I remember to post it, I have a video, several videos where I’m leading Baby Whisper in and out of the paddock.

Speaker1:
And at that point, she was several weeks old and I still hadn’t put a halter on her. I would just wrap a rope around her in a figure eight, so there was a loop around her neck and a loop around her butt. And because she had learned that arms around method, then the rope around method worked really well and she led walk and jog left side of my body, right side of my body equally well, basically with that Liberty type of a cue system before I ever introduced the halter. So then the halter was a secondary to the cue system, so I could actually apply a tiny bit of pressure to the halter and then give her the answer using the rope cue. And by moving my body with that, either push pull or neutral energy. And she was already learning all of that before she ever had a halter on. Okay, one more thing that I kind of breezed over right in that little spot that I think is really fascinating. Once I’ve got my arms wrapped around them, and I’m teaching them to move forward with that hand near their rear. And I’m teaching them to come in with their shoulders with that hand that’s wrapped around their chest. The other really big thing that I do in there is I step into their flank area and basically disengage their hip.

Speaker1:
And what that means is I just step in and have them cross over with their hind end, and I push their hind end out so their front feet stop moving or move to a really small step while their hind end steps around. So I find it very useful to teach that super early, because that helps the foal understand the idea that they I want them to bring their attention back to me, that I can push that hip away. And what I really like about it is that because they tend to want to if they’re going to make a mistake where they could get hurt, what they might do is try to roll back and accidentally go over backwards. So if I’m asking them to do a little bit of a turn on the forehand or the beginning of a disengaging the hip, what I’m doing is teaching them to put more pressure or more weight on their front end as I push that hip away and also brings their head towards me. So again, it wraps them towards me. It creates more draw. It creates more of that, um, planting the front end a little bit there, which is helpful for some of the common mistakes that the foals do. And it’s really useful because later on, not very far from now, I’m going to end up putting a halter on that foal, and I’m going to want them to be turning and looking, and I want to be able to disengage that hip, push the hip away and bring the head towards me that I can teach very early on.

Speaker1:
And that’s something that I want all of my older horses to be able to do really well. So very fascinating to me that all of this is taking place early on in the Foal’s life, even before I put a halter on. When I think about those techniques that I just described with Baby Whisper, like approaching the shoulder and scratching and then walking off past the hip or somewhere not near the front end. When I think about wrapping my arms around and having a go forward cue in the rear, and to bring the shoulder in cue in the front. And when I think about asking Baby Whisperer to do a turn on the forehand or a slight disengage of the haunches, those exercises to me are all again, very fundamental exercises when I’m handling any older horse. So it’s going to look different for sure, because Enzo just walked up here and all 1,200 pounds of him. I’m not trying to wrap my arms around him and move him. But when I’ve got the halter attached, I want to know, can I move that front end in? When I pick up a little bit on that lunge line as he walks a circle around me, even on a lead rope, can I use something like a stick and string and tap back there near his tail and ask him to go forward? Is there a go forward cue back there? Is there a separate cue for asking him to disengage or do a turn on the forehand? These are all exercises that I begin very early with the foals that I’m going to use for the rest of their lives.

Speaker1:
It’s for sure going to begin to modify as the horses get bigger, because you’re going to have to be able to do it with more distance or with more tools. But it’s fascinating to me to think that that young foal who’s just weeks old, can totally comprehend all of these lessons really well. And if that’s possible in just a few weeks, then wouldn’t it be fair to expect them to be highly accountable by the time they are a few years old? I know some of the techniques that I just talked about don’t have a very direct relationship to working with an older horse. You’re not going to wrap your arms around a 1,200 pound horse to teach them the things, like I was just describing with Baby Whisperer. But here’s what I do want you to question the next time that you’re out there with your horse, when you are asking that horse to walk a circle around you on the end of a lunge line, or on the end of a lead rope, or on the end of a rein, and that horse is walking around you.

Speaker1:
Do they walk around with their head and neck straight? Are they looking to the outside of the circle? Are they looking to the inside slightly at you? What is the position of that head and neck when you ask them to walk around you. And let’s just say that they’re looking to the outside or their head and neck is straight. So they’re basically their spine is straight, which puts them looking to the outside, but they’re not turning to the outside. If you follow that, but they’re not also turning to the inside. So let’s say they’re either perfectly straight in their spine or they’re looking to the outside. Is it your instinct to do something to fix the head and neck? For a lot of handlers, the answer would be yes if they see a lack of head and neck bend. For a lot of people, the answer would be pull on the rope. But notice in my examples with Baby Whisper, the answer wasn’t pull on the rope. She didn’t have a halter on. And what I’m saying is, the bend in Baby Whisper was created by the shoulder and the hip. So the way her head and neck ended up shaped was a result of the bend in the shoulder and the hip then being echoed into her head and neck.

Speaker1:
So I was creating bend with my arms around her, and that bend was coming from my arms being wrapped around and the bend in her body that was then reflected in her head. When you’re working with your full grown adult horse and they’re looking to the outside, some of the answer is going to be in that push pull or neutral energy I talked about last week. But a lot of the answer, if you don’t want to be reliant on the lead rope all the time, is going to be in you recognizing movements in their shoulders and their hip, and you creating the steps and the movements in their shoulders and their hips that then reflect that bend in their body. Keep in mind this is also true when you’re riding. When you’re riding a horse, it’s possible to create bend in the body from the withers to the tail that then is reflected into the rest of the horse’s spine, meaning the head and the neck. So if you look at videos of me riding, that would be Whisper’s great grandmother, Roxy, bareback and bridleless. When you see her bending in the direction of travel, or bending in the direction of the spin, that bend is coming from the shoulder and the hip that is then carried through into her head and neck. 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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