Episode 360: How Lightness Gets Lost — The Preschool of Horsemanship

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Speaker1:
I can feel because the halter is on her right now, right where my thumb meets that jawline. Just ahead of that is exactly where that halter is going to be pressing on the side. So imagine if you’re standing on the left side of your horse. When you pull on the left side, it doesn’t apply pressure to the left side, it applies pressure to the right side.

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 continuing the series that I started a couple episodes ago, where I am talking about the early training lessons that carry through for the rest of the horse’s life. I’m getting my inspiration from whisper, who is joining me today in the indoor arena, and Whisper is Gabby’s foal that was born this spring. Some of you caught what I said at the end of the last episode, which is that whisper would be Roxy’s great great granddaughter. Roxy was the black mare that I did the bareback and bridleless ride with. So a quick recap of the main points that I’ve shared so far, using Baby Whisper to illustrate back in episode 358. I talked about creating a pull type energy when you step away, and my main takeaway that I wanted you to get from that episode was, do you pay attention to what you’re doing with your body and how your body is impacting your horse? Because what I often see is that people think about the lead rope, or they think about the stick and string, and they don’t necessarily think about their own body as being a major part of the cue system. Then in the last episode, I talked about bend. Coming from the shoulders and the hips. And I was talking about how Baby Whisper, when she was teeny tiny, was learning to walk circles around me because I had my arms wrapped around her.

Speaker1:
And I was explaining how by getting her shoulders and hips to wrap around me, I was actually creating bend in her body that then carried through to her head and neck, even though she did not have a halter on. I also, in that episode talked just a tiny bit about how I will start a baby disengage, meaning I’m hugging them quite literally with my arm wrapped around their chest and their rump, and then I step into their flank area with my hip. And it’s this very small but very effective disengage where it pushes their haunches to the side and puts their weight mostly on their front end, but also wraps their spine and bends them around me and teaches them to do that turn and look towards me. Motion. The main takeaway from that episode that I really wanted you to get was that that bend that you can create using the the angle of the shoulders and the angle of the hips, it really does echo out into their head and neck. That is a major point that we’re going to see later, much later in a horse’s career when we’re riding it. And I think the other thing that I really want you to think about there is that when I’m training these very young horses, my first thought is about how can I go to their body to shape them? It’s not how can I go to their head to shape them? And I was just speaking with someone yesterday about one of the challenges that I see when somebody is handling a foal and they don’t have a lot of experience handling foals, and that challenge is that because the majority of people handle adult trained horses, the tendency is to use or I might even say overuse the halter and lead rope.

Speaker1:
But again, just like the idea of are you aware of what you’re doing with your body and how your body’s impacting? If you are not super aware of your tendency to use the halter as your go to cue, then what happens is the halter becomes overused, and when something becomes overused, it often becomes kind of dulled out. I mean, think about it. What would be the definition of sacking a horse out to a plastic bag? It would be kind of an overuse of the plastic bag would make them desensitized to it. This week I want to talk about preparing and introducing the halter. Again, I realize many of you don’t have young horses, but the principle stays the same. And many older horses have learned bad habits because people don’t notice the places where they’re accidentally teaching the horse to be heavy. So let’s look at how Baby Whisperer learned, and then I’ll explain how people accidentally train horses to be heavy when they’re leading them.

Speaker1:
So again, I went over it a little bit more in detail last episode, so I won’t repeat it again. But I very first start teaching my horses to walk around me by wrapping my arms around them. And when I start preparing them for the halter, the way that I do that is, that hand that’s back by their tail is acting like eventually, like the stick and string will. It’s a go forward cue, then the hand up by their shoulder or the base of their neck. That’s been helping them steer around me, because they’re just literally walking this tiny little circle right around my body when they’re just days or weeks old. That hand that’s up by the shoulder begins to change its position. When I want to start getting the horse ready to be introduced to the halter pressure. So let’s say that I’ve been handling the foal for several days. I’m catching them so I can put iodine or novasone on their navel and doing some other basic health care. And in that, I take just a few minutes to have them circle each direction around me with my arms around them. When I want to start preparing them for the halter pressure, I take that hand that’s up by the shoulder or base of the neck that’s been steering the shoulders, and I begin to slide it up their neck a little bit further, like halfway up their neck, and then eventually it’s going to go up under that throatlatch area.

Speaker1:
And it’s pretty easy to do because, believe it or not, with just a few days of circling, the foals already understand the pattern, the habit pattern of circling around me. So instead of them trying to turn and leave and looking to the outside like they did the first few days when they didn’t know very quickly these foals learn to just simply circle around you. So then I can slide my hand halfway up the neck and guide them. And then eventually I’m going to actually stand here next to Baby Whisperer and act it out. But you can just oh my gosh, I’m still laughing. I remember when somebody emailed me and said they were listening to one of these podcasts in the airport, and they were acting out what I was telling them about the inside rein, and the outside leg, and they said they were getting a lot of funny stares. I’m now imagining somebody doing that now as I talk out what I’m about to do with Baby Whisperer, I’m actually going to just go ahead and use Baby Whisperer. So I’m standing here beside her left shoulder, and even though I don’t use this method anymore, I’m going to put my hands in this position so I can remember to tell you every detail. So I take that hand that’s down by the shoulder. I slide it up and because it’s my left hand sliding up the right side of her, the first thing that runs into her jawbone is my thumb.

Speaker1:
And so that thumb, she’s much bigger now. But I can feel because the halter is on her right now, right where my thumb meets that jawline. Just ahead of that is exactly where that halter is going to be pressing on the side. So imagine if you’re standing on the left side of your horse. When you pull on the left side, it doesn’t apply pressure to the left side. It applies pressure to the right side. So when these babies are little like this and they’re walking around me and I slide my hand up there as soon as I bump into her jawbone, my thumb is then kind of pointed towards her eye, but it’s not anywhere near her eye. It’s just pointed at that angle. And that is what kind of captures that head, that jaw. And the minute that they turn, the minute that they turn their head away from that thumb pressure, which is so funny because she’s doing it really easily right now. The minute that they turn away from that thumb pressure, they find their own release, because I’ve trained my body not to accidentally continue moving, which would basically, like, clamp her between my thumb and my shoulder. I wouldn’t want to do that. That’s not the point. I want her to feel my hand sliding up there, my thumb pressing on that cheekbone, and then when she moves her head away from my thumb, which is towards me.

Speaker1:
Can you hear how that’s the same theory that’s been going the whole time since the day she was born. The minute that she turns her head away from that thumb pressure, I release. And because I’ve already done several days of her circling around me. The folds circle around you. They continue circling around you and my hand is hovering out there. It is so cool when you do this, because the folds, before they ever have the challenge of having a halter put on their head, already understand how to move away from that pressure that’s going to be applied when you’re standing on the left side. You apply pressure by pulling on the left side, and it actually applies pressure to the right side. So they can learn this right away. That just reminded me of another funny little thing that happens with the babies. Because one thing that is so different with babies than with a lot of older horses. Although some of you might argue that your older horses do this too, is that baby horses have that really sporadic energy that you might associate with kittens that are just losing it and jumping all around, or puppies that are losing it and jumping all around. And so in the middle of all this training, you have to keep in mind that that there are also moments when they’re just going to have little spazzy moments because it’s the nature of dealing with the little babies.

Speaker1:
Which is also why I love doing this, where my main contact is actually with their body and not with their head. I know I’m repeating myself when I say that I’m having these full circle around me, and that I’m having them bend around me with their shoulders and hips, and that I’m having them now bend around me when my thumb goes up their beside their off side cheek. And the reason I’m going over this again and again is because I have this saying that I say when we’re riding horses, but it starts all the way down here in that first week of handling bend is your friend. So circles and steering and bending, it’s your friend. Because whether you’re riding a horse, bend is your friend. If you want to get rid of rearing when you’re riding, bend is also your friend. If you want to get rid of a horse that wants to pull away from you when you’re leading it or lunging it. It’s also the cure for rearing, which I’ve mentioned several times. This spazzy energy that babies will often have will cause them to do things that they don’t even have their balance for yet, like rear roll back, try to scuttle backwards and away from you because they’re just doing the hard wired flee kind of motion, and they’re being little baby spazzes and all of those things.

Speaker1:
They can injure themselves if you’re not aware of how babies act. And so this idea of teaching them to bend early on is going to continue for the rest of their life. But it’s also a really great safety feature, because when they get soft and willing to bend and bend is this thing that they’ve practiced a lot, it’s going to help you prevent them from doing some of those things that could injure themselves. Because in a way, one thing that’s very true about preschool is you are very responsible. It’s your responsibility to be able to see problems ahead of time because it’s a little baby. They’re not gonna. Okay, I’m sitting here scratching her. She’s very dirty. Now that I have a foal where it understands the idea of circling around me, it understands the idea that I’m asking it to go forward using my hand that’s near there, but. And I’m asking them to wrap around me and steer with the hand by their shoulder. And now that I’ve introduced sliding my hand up and steering them with the thumb, that’s when I introduced the halter. And when I first put the halter on, it’s usually kind of funny because they tend to be little rodeo clowns, and I’ll put the halter on and actually just turn them out with their mother and let them run around. And they often want to try to shake it off, and they want to try to jump around and basically just explore what it’s like to wear a horse version of clothing for the first time.

Speaker1:
And since they’ve been naked their whole lives up to that point, it does feel kind of funny. And depending on what kind of buckles you have on there. Sometimes it jingles. And so I let them do that, exploring of how it feels just wearing that weight on their head by letting them just run around under supervision. Then I take it back off them and I practice putting it on and off. I don’t personally leave halters on my foals, because I would rather take the opportunity to practice putting it on and off multiple times a day, and so they get the handling of having it put on and off. But they don’t have that first initial, um, feeling of wearing it and the desire to shake it off. I don’t combine that with a training session immediately because I let them go work out, like what it’s like to have that on their head without me adding anything to it. Then I mentioned in the last podcast that because I’ve done the work of having them circle around me, hugging them with my arms, it’s very easy for me to introduce a figure eight rope where there’s a loop that goes around there. But and then I just, for simplicity’s sake, tie a knot in the end of this.

Speaker1:
Say it’s a 15 foot lead rope that I normally use on a horse. I tie a loop that fits over there, but and that knot kind of sits on their back, and then I just take the end of it up around their chest and then loop it back through. So I’ve got this figure eight one loop is around their butt and one loop is around their chest. And then I just hold either over the withers where that knot is or on the side of their neck. I hold that figure eight, and I can lead them very effectively next to their mother, as I take them, say, in and out to the pasture or moving them from one paddock to another. And when I introduced the halter, I, I put the halter on them, I let them run around. And then the next day or so I put the halter on. I repeat the circling around me exercise, the thumb going up the side and asking them to turn. I refresh that, and then I simply put a little bit of pressure on the left hand side and then give them the answer with my thumb. And I do that over and over again until it’s just a seamless transition, and they just act exactly like they did with the circling around and the thumb pressure. So they don’t go through this really rocky stage of figuring out the left to right idea with the halter.

Speaker1:
Mind you, bending them left to right is different than leading them straight forward. At this point, the gas pedal is still coming from the rear. It’s still my hand asking them to go forward, or if I’ve got the rope around them and I’m leading them. It’s still the rope behind there, but that’s asking them to come forward. One thing that they haven’t learned yet is pulling like direct pressure to come forward. So they haven’t learned that essentially, pressure on the top of the pole could mean move your feet forward. Can you see how that’s not quite as intuitive as the rest of this is? It’s not quite as seamless. For this episode, I want to focus on how the horses learn to be light to that bending because of where the release comes from. Another major advantage of using the figure eight rope when I’m leading them around, say I’m taking them from a stall out to a pasture with their mother and then back in at night or something. One of the major advantages there is that if they do have a spazzy moment, the majority of the contact is going to come from that rope. And at this point, the horse is not fully trained, or the foal, I should say, is not fully trained to understand the halter pressure. So I prefer it if the fallback plan is that it defaults to the rope.

Speaker1:
I’ll say it another way that gives me the ability to go to her body instead of just to her head. So what that means to me is that if she wants to be all spazzy and jump around, instead of having halter pressure applied, she ends up with rope pressure applied around her body. And I love the concept here, and that’s what I want you to grab hold of for your full size horse that you’re most likely working with. The concept is that I want to go to their body first. So even with adult horses, when I am handling them, let’s say that I’m leading them and I want to have them back up. I prefer to go to their body first. So instead of my default being pull on the rope to back them up, I want to know that I can back them up by going to their body. For me, that’s a tap on the cannon bone, or I want to know that I can send them forward with a tap on the butt with the stick and string. So I am using the principle of going to their body as a primary tool across the board, not just when I’m with the baby, but even in the adult horse later on. Although I want them trained to respond to the halter, I think of the halter as a refinement tool, and I think of going to their body as being the main form of communication that I want to go to.

Speaker1:
I want to go to, for example, being able to disengage a horse’s hip when I’m leading that older horse that’s halter broke. I want to be able to go to disengaging the hip, because that’s a very powerful move that I can do. And when they understand it, it can be done really well. And you never even have to pull on the halter and rope. This shows me that I’m going to their body, and that I’m really getting into their mind because they have to understand the request. And at the end of the day, that’s a more powerful request than going to the halter. So I just love that that concept begins so early and then carries through. So let’s shift gears for a minute and talk about how people make horses heavy when they lead them. Because I’ve been out here walking around in the indoor arena with whisper as I’m recording this, and except for her being a little bit pushy in my space and I’m just asking her to back up by actually swinging my arms or legs around. Just like I figure horses kick so I can swing an arm or a leg around, and she already knows how to move away from that because Ember does it with her all the time. So outside of that, when I walk this foal at six months old leads lighter than many horses that I meet when I go travel around.

Speaker1:
She leads very light because her experience has been very consistent with how I think and view halter pressure. Let me say it a different way. She hasn’t been trained on accident to be heavy, but I see a lot of older horses that have been accidentally trained to be heavy, and I can feel the moment when I’m leading her where that opportunity would be right there. For example, if I’m leading her in from the paddock, and she’s looking around at other horses that are running around. There is a moment there when I’m walking, that I can feel her as she’s applying pressure to the rope, looking, that I have to have an increased awareness for how that little thread of the conversation is going to go, where that release is going to come. A lot of times people are leading horses that are distracted, and the horse might have 2 or 3 pounds of pressure on the lead rope, and the person doesn’t really think it’s that big a deal. As I was getting ready for the podcast before I came outside, I was thinking about what pressure, like what number to actually share with you. And I thought, I think it’s about 2 or 3 pounds, but I’m curious what 2 or 3 pounds feels like so I can reference it. And have you have this feeling in your body when I say that? Because I think a lot of times we don’t really think in pounds all the time, and I walked over, grabbed my kitchen scale, picked up a full sized dinner plate and the dinner plates that I happen to have weigh 2 pounds seven ounces.

Speaker1:
So a couple pounds is actually pretty easy to ignore. If you are walking your horse from point A to point B and you’re kind of distracted. A lot of times that 2 pounds or 3 pounds, it’s easier for people to ignore than you might think because it’s not that much. And the problem with leading her in, if she’s looking around and she’s looking to the left, and I’m standing on the right while I’m walking and she’s pulling and pulling, and if I step a little bit and release while she’s pulling, that’s the definition of how I can teach her to think that the release is going to come with that pressure. Now I’m picturing people acting out things in the airport, and I’m imagining some of you weighing your own dinner plates to see how much your dinner plate weighs. If you haven’t trained yourself to pay attention to the level of contact, it’s very easy to accidentally train yourself to accept several pounds of contact when you’re leading your horse. Pay attention the next time that you are going in or out of the barn. You want to actually pay attention in the spots where you wouldn’t necessarily be doing training, so don’t wait until you’re in the middle of the arena with a focus on it.

Speaker1:
Look at the areas where you put the halter on and you’re leading the horse away from its friends. What’s the quality of the contact in those moments? Are you lightly dragging them away from their friends? Because a couple pounds, like I said, Doesn’t feel like that much. Or are you doing almost the opposite and constantly riding the brakes? Are they the ones that are kind of leading the way somewhere and you’re lightly holding the brakes, but maybe you’re back by their shoulder and you’re kind of pulling back and pulling back and pulling back. And even if it is just a couple pounds, these are the beginnings of how a horse learns to get heavier and heavier. So if you want to know what you’re teaching, you need to pay attention to where the horse feels that softening or that release. So in general, whisper has had very accurate releases. So she leads off from pretty light Contact on the halter. If I had one main takeaway, it’s a saying that you’ve heard time and time again, it’s the release that teaches. So when you’re leading, pay attention to the frequency and the quality of the contact. How many times? If it’s 200ft from your pasture gate to your grooming area, how many times in that 200ft do you make contact where there is pressure on the lead rope? And when you do make contact with the rope, whether that is to slow the horse down or speed the horse up, where is the exact timing of your release? Can you clearly identify when and where you release? So when I’m standing here and I step forward and I put pressure on the rope, I am very clearly able to identify the moment where the release comes as her feet are moving and I release as she’s in motion.

Speaker1:
If I want her to stop and back up, I can take hold lightly, pinching the rope with two fingers and hold pressure. And the minute her foot goes into motion, I’m releasing. And because I’ve got two hands on the rope, I can let go to actually guarantee that there’s no contact. The minute I let go with, in this case, my left hand that was being used to back her up, I pinched the rope. I put the pressure I hold, she steps. I drop the rope, my contact from my left hand to totally give that release, because there’s so much clarity in when and how I’m picking up and exactly when and where I’m releasing. That’s what’s creating this lightness, accuracy, and clarity in whisper. These are the same principles you can apply with your full grown horse. 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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