Episode 38: Rewarding Physical and Mental Changes in Your Horse

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SWS038.mp3: this mp3 audio file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the best speech-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors.

Speaker1:
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.

Speaker2:
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 going to explain the importance of timing how to improve your timing. Common mistakes I see in timing and in the segment on call with Doctor Marney. We're going to discuss electrolytes and cooling down your horse. Doctor Marney also gives me a tip for cooling that I have never heard of before. Let's get started. At some point as you're learning more about training horses, you're going to realize that timing is everything. No pressure. It just means you have to get really, really good timing. But as soon as I say that, you need really good timing. The next question is. But how do I get it? Especially if I have not so good timing right now, or I suspect my timing might not be great? Well, the good news is your timing is never going to be perfect. You're just going to continually improve your timing. And then in a very, very, very far out episode, I'm going to talk about how in the beginning, your timing is everything. And then as the horse picks up more responsibility, your timing is less important. Okay, maybe I shouldn't have introduced that yet, because it's kind of mind blowing sometimes when you realize that these almost contradictions happen.

Speaker2:
Timing is everything. Wait, now timing isn't so let's just put that on the back burner for now. And let's just talk about timing and improving your timing before we go all the way to that college level example. I want to break it down for you into the idea that there is such a thing as physical timing and mental timing. And for sure, the reason that people talk a lot about physical timing is because it is the first thing that people are able to see and identify, and then much later, people might develop the ability to be able to reward mental timing. Physical timing is when you're able to see that, let's say you're tapping on the horse to load it into the trailer, and you see the left front foot come up off the ground stepping towards the trailer, and you release the tapping. So that would be an example of physical timing. An example of mental timing would be understanding where the horse's mental focus was when that physical thing was happening. So the same thing you're tapping on the horse is standing by the trailer and the horse lifts up the left front foot and you release.

Speaker2:
But my question is, was he looking inside the trailer or was he looking back over his right shoulder, planning how to exit stage right? Knowing the difference, being able to recognize both is extremely important. And here's an interesting thing. Before you get really, really uptight about wondering how good your timing is on certain things and and whether or not you're seeing the physical or the mental. The beautiful thing about working with horses is that they're going to detect your weakest spot, your spot of least understanding, the spot where you're most likely to let go and reward when you shouldn't because you don't understand. So that's a fancy way of saying whatever you don't understand. Your horse is going to go straight there and ask you questions about. So if you're not sure how your timing is, just keep working with your horse and the horse will reveal to you the spots that you have the weakest understanding, and then you'll get a chance to learn about them. I want to make sure that during this topic of timing, that it's very actionable and very easy for you to understand. So I'm going to let us listen to a listener question that came in, and we're going to discuss timing by using this listener question.

Speaker3:
Hello. I have a horse that sets back when tied and it's based out of fear, and I don't know what to do about it. Whether I should try different training methods to get him more desensitized, or if I should try other things rather than tying him. We can go a couple days or weeks without him setting back and then something just might scare him. But he also has trouble loading on the trailer, and I have tried feeding him in the trailer several nights a week to get him used to the trailer, and making sure that the trailer is a nice, safe place. I've tried lunging him behind the trailer and then rewarding him whenever he goes to step to it. He just doesn't pick his legs up to get in there, and whenever I increase the pressure to try to get him to step up into the trailer, he will try for a little bit. And whenever he doesn't pick his feet up to get into the trailer and he starts getting nervous, he'll just turn and run away. And so I'm just don't know what to do because pulling him in there is not an option. Uh, he's very, very sensitive to poll pressure and will set back with too much poll pressure, so I don't have a clue what to do.

Speaker2:
Thanks so much for leaving your question. You've gathered a lot of information which tells me that you're doing a really great job of observing your horse. What I'd like to do is I'd like to see if I can give you a few more tools and ideas for everyone who's listening. We can quickly see how this gets really complicated. I'm going to go ahead and break it down for you. One of the first things mentioned was that the horse will set back when tied, and the idea was also presented that it is based out of fear. I'm going to add to the idea that it's based out of fear, and say that fear is often a lack of understanding. Almost always, you could put it into a lack of understanding. So whenever I see a horse that I believe is acting out of fear, and even if I'm unsure if they're acting out of fear or something else, I give them the benefit of the doubt by saying, I think this horse doesn't understand something. So the first place we see this horse not understanding something is in the idea of giving to pressure to lead. So the leading pressure, the pressure on the pole, the idea that pressure can be the release from pressure can be found by stepping forward. This horse is already saying that it doesn't understand this. Then when we go to the next piece of the question, we hear the idea, the question in the rider's mind, do we desensitize this more? And this is coming from the idea that if we could desensitize the horse to the the fear stimulus, whatever that could be.

Speaker2:
So maybe the horse is tied up and there's a loud noise, or the horse is tied up and somebody walks through moving plastic bags because they were using bedding. And the horse, you know, pulls back. So the idea is there that the horse needs to be desensitized to stimulus. But I'm also going to present that the horse needs to be sensitized to the halter. So you can start to see how there's a multi-layer thing going on here. Because while it is true that the horse might need to be desensitized to external stimulus, the horse also needs to be sensitized to the halter. And this is where maybe instead of using desensitized or sensitized using the idea of emotional balance. So we want to start seeing this emotional balance across the board Sometimes when we use phrasing that takes us to either end of the teeter totter, sensitize, desensitize. Sometimes it makes us feel like it's very right or wrong. It tends to make us lean those directions where if I say all of my groundwork should be leading to a horse, that when I look at it, I want to ride it. This is going to make you have a very balanced look, because nobody wants to really ride an overly sensitized horse, and nobody really wants to ride an overly desensitized horse.

Speaker2:
So we're looking for this kind of a balance. And then because of everything else that's going on, there was also presented in the question, the idea or maybe do I kind of not go here right now? Like maybe I don't tie the horse? And for now, I would agree, I would skip tying for now because until the horse understands it, this is going to be a little bit too much for the horse, and the horse is going to continue to get rewards for doing something we're going to label as wrong, which is breaking the halter, pulling back, and we're going to label it wrong because it's not what we desire, but we're also going to label it. We could use undesirable. It also can be not the best thing for the horse too, because of the physical strain, not to mention the emotional experience that the horse is having. And I love the phrasing. You know, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, because this comes up a lot when I'm working with people, when they're here at clinics, when I'm out on the road, traveling around, when I get questions, whenever I hear the phrasing, sometimes it works. Sometimes he'll go days, sometimes he'll go weeks. This is where I like to use the phrasing. He has holes in his training, so it's not solid and consistent. I would say there are holes. Or another thing you've heard me say is he has questions.

Speaker2:
His questions pop up and the same question keeps popping up. Sometimes he asks it every other day, and sometimes he asks it every other week. But what we're looking for here is the fact that there's a question that is staying the same, and that is, what do you expect me to do with this poll pressure? You know, this is I don't understand this poll pressure or I think poll pressure means go backwards. Now, the reason I pulled this into this podcast is multiply. There's multiple, multiple reasons why I pulled it in, but I really want to use kind of the trailer loading example. And I love that you folded the trailer loading into this idea of the pulling back, because they actually really are related. So whether or not you really know how related they are, I think you're on to and you suspect that there's something related here and it gives a better illustration, a deeper understanding. When we start to see that this horse is having issues being tied, then we see you talking about the trailer loading. And then I love that you added even more information. Again, you're doing a great job of observing. So you've tried the food rewards for going on the trailer. And I'm going to say that that's going to be grandma's rules. So food rewards for going on the trailer versus being able to send or lead the horse on. There are two different sets of rules, which is why oftentimes people are confused.

Speaker2:
And for sure, I remember parking the horse trailer in the pasture and putting food in it and being like, okay, somehow the food is gone in the morning. So therefore at some point you got on and you got off. And then being like, I don't understand why you won't go on what I want you to, but I'm going to put this into the grandma grandma's rules category, because it's that the rules change when you're feeding them, and at their own leisure, they get to go on and go off. It's a completely different set of rules than when you pick up the leadership role, or the directive role, or the requesting role, whatever you want to say there that makes you happy. But when you go to say, go on the trailer, that's when to the horse the whole thing changes because it's actually at that point, it's not about the trailer, it's about a bunch of these other questions that the horse has. And you mentioned the lunging and the reward. This is where I'm going to go deeper in just a minute, because the first thing that occurs to me is this is is this general or very specific when we give this physical timing, when we give this timing, when you say you lunge in behind the trailer and then reward him for going towards the trailer, that's where we're about to go deeper in just a minute. You mentioned again in the question, you know that if he feels any pressure on the halter or his pole that he will turn around and leave that heel.

Speaker2:
He'll take off. And so again, I'm hearing another thread of his answer is more and more consistently that when he feels this pressure that he's got to leave. And this is definitely an issue that we see near the back of a trailer very frequently because the horses are like, okay, this is one of the options. This is one of the things I'm going to try. This is one of the questions I'm going to ask. And you also observe that pulling is not an option. So I totally agree with you. I'm going to go a little bit deeper into that. I'll touch it right now, but the idea of pulling the horse onto the trailer is never a good idea. Does that mean that I don't lead my horses onto the trailer, ever? No. I lead my horses onto the trailer, but I lead my horses onto the trailer in a very similar way as to when I say I neck rein, versus direct rein,. And to me neck rein, means please and direct Rein, means shape and and it's a more effective, more clear communication. So I do lead my horses onto the trailer, but when I do, it's not an option for me to drag or pull them onto the trailer. When you get into the idea of dragging or pulling them onto the trailer, this is where if they resist, well, first of all, if you're if you have to use the word drag or pull, they're going to probably be resisting because if they lead nicely, then you're never pulling or dragging.

Speaker2:
So if you're pulling or dragging anywhere, then it's not really going to work well when you go to the trailer, because the option of going up and I get in the habit of not pulling or dragging anywhere, because if the horse goes up, that means they could throw their head up, or they could throw their whole head and body up and rear. But when you get near the trailer, this gets magnified due to the fact that they can hit their head, which tends to encourage bad timing on the handler's part because the handler starts to pull, the horse starts to throw, the header go up and the handler says, I see stitches in your future, so I'm going to release. And then the horse goes, oh, I get it. I throw my head up and that's how I get a release. Yeah, this is all not going good. So if I walk up to the trailer, you should be able to pinch that rope between your thumb and your first finger. And if they'll lead on with that amount of pressure, have at it, because you're not actually dragging or pulling that horse you're guiding and that horse is following. Hopefully there's kind of a draw because of your body and you, and they know you and they understand the light pressure.

Speaker2:
So in that case, they're not going to throw their head up. If I do go up there and the horse has this question about going on, I just step off and send him on, which is where we're going to spend some some of our time talking right now. The last thing I want to mention before I go into deeper detail about this timing idea, is that you mentioned that he doesn't pick his feet up, and the only reason I want to call this to your attention is because when I hear it, what I instantly change my thinking to is he doesn't pick his feet up dot dot dot because his brain doesn't want to go in there. If you can imagine that if your horse is walking out of the barn, sees the truck and trailer hooked up, sees the trailer and says, I've done this a thousand times. I've done this a hundred times, I've done this ten times. I've got a pretty good idea that she's probably going to ask me to go on the trailer. This is kind of like when you walk to the stall door and the horse kind of considers going on past you into the stall. I would again call that a question because they're challenging your body space at that moment. But at the same time, they're also giving you an answer of, hey, when we walk up here, we go through this gate like, this is what you do with me.

Speaker2:
You bring me to a gate so you can send me through a gate. Well, at some point you take the horse out to the trailer and the horse goes, I see the trailer. There's a good chance we're getting on it, because that's the exercise my human likes to do around this object. So when your horse goes out and sees the trailer, his brain doesn't want to go on to the trailer. And so his feet, when they get close, don't want to go on to the trailer. And this is how I'm going to circle back into the idea that I started with here, which is inside of all of this, because it does. This is the reality of training horses and being around horses and understanding horses. The reality is it starts to get very layered. So if you go back through and you listen to this question again, you can hear all four areas of this, this, um, four square model that I'm using the writer's mind, the writer's body, the horse's mind, the horse's body. You can hear them all inside of trailer loading. You can hear them all in a lot of things, which is what I'm going to show to you as the podcast continues inside of this one. What I said is that I would like you to realize that there's a difference between physical timing and mental timing, and that physical timing is the easier thing for people to see at first.

Speaker2:
So it's a great place for you to start because you can see it at first, but someday you're going to be able to see the mental timing, which is where is your horse focused. So for clarification, let's go back. And we're all picturing that we're standing outside of the horse trailer with the idea of loading the horse onto the trailer. And that means that we're going to be standing near the back of the trailer. If I'm instructing you, you are Ending. If we face the back of the trailer and we're looking at it, there's a left hand corner of that back of that trailer. That's where I want you standing. I would want you standing there, and I would want your shoulder almost touching the corner of that trailer. And the reason for this is because there are several options we want to close out of the horse's mind, and because people do a lot of lunging and sending horses past them. One question that comes up a lot if the horse doesn't respect your space, which is why we talked about this in the last week's podcast, is that if they don't respect your space, one question they'll often ask when you're standing there trying to send them in is if they can try to circle around you, and that will often mean that they try to squeeze between your body and the trailer.

Speaker2:
And if you're standing there between the trailer and there's a little gap and the horse tries to come through there, nine times out of ten, you're stepping out of the way, and they again learn that they can push through that door. They learn that they can move you move your feet, and some not so good things happen. So I always put people positioned with their shoulder up against the edge of the trailer. That way you've kind of shut that door, or at least it's going to be really clear to you that the horse is challenging you because they're going to look straight at you and you're going to be like, oh, I can see this question more clearly now when you're standing there. It helps so much. Again, this is not about the trailer. This is all about questions your horse has, about what you want when he gets a reward, what you're trying to get him to do, whether or not he believes in this system, whether or not he's what I call bought into the system. But we're just going to leave this trailer loading as the example, even though as I'm trying to speak it to you, I'm wanting to tell you you need to go back into the arena. You need to go back into the round pen. You need to go back into the pasture. You need to go back into an area and do groundwork and get your horse understanding more, because it is his lack of understanding that's causing this.

Speaker2:
But here's the interesting thing. Sometimes without the clarity of a goal, which is what trailer loading becomes, sometimes people are very unclear when they're doing their training in the arena, so they might ask the horse to lunge to the left, and they might step out of the way to let the horse go to the left. They might walk around to the haunches and drive from behind like that. They might pull on the halter, they might never pull on the halter. They might just send the horse around at liberty in the round pen, and let the horse do the turns to the inside, and they feel like they've got all this control. But what they don't realize is half the control is the wall, which is fine. It's a great place to start, but half the control is the wall. And then you go to load into the trailer and you don't have the wall anymore. And so now 50% of your control is gone, and now all the other questions come up. So the reason I'm going to use this example of trailer loading, even though everything in me is like take them back to a smaller exercise is for clarity. And then I have faith that over the continuing podcast, you guys are going to layer all this together. So this horse, if we're standing there with our left shoulder touching the back left corner of the I could call it the driver's side.

Speaker2:
Sometimes I get confused whether you guys are going to understand me, but I could call it the driver's side because it'd be on the same side as the driver's side of the truck. Oh, wait a minute. There's a lot of you outside the country that's not going to work. Let's just go back to the left side. So you're standing there and you're getting ready to send this horse into the trailer. Timing is everything. Timing is everything as far as when you're going to physically reward the horse. So let's talk about that just a little bit. You're standing there and you've got the lead line or lunge line in your left hand. And let's just imagine your horse is ten feet away from the trailer. So it's a pretty long line. That way you've got some extra and you've got your stick and string in your right hand, and your horse is standing there and you're standing up here at the corner and your horse is looking at you every move you make right now, and every move he makes right now could almost feel like a chess game. It could feel like, how observant can you be right here? Because I want you to put a light pressure on the lead rope. Well, we listen to your voicemail, so we're just going to maybe imagine your horse slash another horse slash moving you away from the trailer and having you do this in other places.

Speaker2:
But I want you to just put that light pressure, that pressure that I said you can hold just by closing your fingers on the rope. You're just going to pick up, and you're going to pull your left hand towards the trailer door, and your horse is ten feet away. So I don't know at what point your horse has the reaction. So let's imagine, just for the illustration, that the line was almost drooping down to the ground, and that when you start to pick up on this rope and you start to take the slack out and the slack is almost going straight, you're watching all of your horse. You're not just watching the feet, you're not just watching the head. He's ten feet away from you. It's beautiful. You can see a lot and you're not in a rush because this is not during a vet call. And this is not when you're headed to a horse show. So you're taking that slack out. Watch your horse as you're picking up that rope and taking that slack out because he's going to be talking to you. He's either going to have a slightly soft look like he's thinking about coming forward. He might already be looking left, right, left, right. They tend to do either a little left and right because they haven't decided which way they're going to go yet, or they're already decide, excuse me, or they have already decided and they're consistently looking right, right, right.

Speaker2:
But they just haven't gone there yet. You need to start being this aware, because this is actually the awareness you need when you're leading your horse around and when you're going in and out of the stalls and when you're doing your groundwork. But it's going to be magnified here at the trailer. So let's just imagine that you're taking the slack out. You get it to where the rope is straight, but your horse hasn't actually gone anywhere yet, so his feet haven't moved, but you can see his whole body. To me, this is perfect. Sometimes people rush what's happening because they want to get to the right place really fast, and what they do is they make everything really complicated because they won't slow down. And then what happens is the horse gets in the habit of when the human asks them to do something, the horse goes, I don't know the answer, but I think there's going to be 180 questions, so I'm just going to start flinging out answers. So let me do a bad example for a second. Person walks out, horse stops ten feet away. Person raises the arm. Person clucks. Person steps to the right so that they can get into different position. Person uses the whip. Horse moves in three directions at once. Yes, this is possible. Let's say that they step their shoulders to the right, but they also step slightly forward. But they also take their head and they swing it, and the person rewards for a split second while they try to organize their tools.

Speaker2:
And then they put the pressure on again. And what happens is everything happens so fast that the person doesn't have time to recognize that three separate things all happened, and the horse has no clarity on whether that was a reward or whether that was you regrouping. And then the horse goes, I think it was the third one. I think it was the head toss that got me the reward. And so when everything happens fast, you'd better have really good timing. That is the strongest thing that most professionals have over Nonprofessionals is enough experience to be able to see all of those things happening really quickly and still have really good timing. But even as a professional, I much prefer slowing everything down because if I can make this happen in slow motion, not only is my timing better, but I'm not training the horse to be a mental runaway freight train because it is hard to ride and train a horse that is a mental emotional runaway freight train. So slow it down. I think it would be perfect if you were ten feet away and your horse was standing there, and his eyes were kind of wide, and he was looking at you slash the trailer, but from ten feet away, you actually can say you're not quite sure because you're ten feet away.

Speaker2:
So he can be looking in that general direction, and that when you pick up the he doesn't immediately start flinging things around. If you take the slack out of that and he immediately starts swinging all kinds of body parts around, he's really telling you that there's a lot going on for him, and you're either going to need a lot of answers, or you're going to need to move to a place where he will slow down all these questions he has. Most horses will actually slow down if you physically slow yourself down. Pretty amazing. So let's picture that he's back to that slow motion so he's ten feet away. That means when you were walking up to the trailer, you were letting the line be a little bit loose. That means that you weren't requiring him to be 12in from you. You weren't requiring him to be three feet from you. You were walking out when? When you were getting 15ft away, you could tell there was a little bit of something. You were kind of letting that line feed out through your hand just a little bit. Because you knew he had this question. You walked up to this safer spot to work on it because Stacy told you to, and you let him stand back there and observe the whole thing. Because remember, he's reading your body language at the same time you're reading his. So now he's standing there. You've picked up the slack. It's straight.

Speaker2:
He hasn't moved. And I'm saying this is a good thing. Now you've got some choices. You can read his body language and you can say, does he look like he's got wide eyes? Or does he look like he's asleep? Well, we're going to guess he doesn't look like he's asleep because of everything else you've said. But if he looks like he's asleep, just pretend somebody else is listening and their horse looks like he's asleep right now. This is a sign that he's ready or willing or able to handle a little bit of another question, which we're going to label pressure just for the short term. Right now, in another podcast, I'm going to explain more clearly that I don't think it's always pressure and release, because there is a lot to do with all kinds of different ways you can reward the horse. I've alluded to it a little bit when I said you can also make yourself interesting. So I think there's a lot more than pressure release or positive versus negative and all these different things. I think it goes a lot deeper than that. Just like I think it goes a lot deeper than that with people. But that's another podcast. So he's standing there. We're going to if he's if he's looking asleep, we're going to go to the next step. But we're going to say he doesn't look asleep. We're going to say he's standing there and his eyes are kind of wide, and he's got these questions and you're holding.

Speaker2:
Now you could actually just hold that pressure and you'll know you've been holding it long when your arm starts burning because you can just wait. The one of the most underused tools that people have is patience and waiting. Because if you just wait, that horse will actually tell you what his next move was. He's standing there. He's got his eyes wide open. He's alert. You've got the slack taken out. If you wait long enough, he might step forward and you're going to release and reward, and you're going to learn something about your horse. Or you might stand there and hold, and then you're going to notice that his butt starts swinging left and right. And and he's not changing the pressure at all on the lead rope, but he's he's swinging his butt left and right, and his eyes are looking left and right. And you're going to go like, oh wow, I that's a whole interesting thing. But he hasn't changed anything on the rope. So we're not going to change anything yet. Maybe he stands there and he decides to pull the rope out of your hand. So he decides he's going to turn to the right and leave. And so he might just make that, you know. Have you ever had them pull on that rope where they do that? Like they drop their head down, hook it to the right and pull it up, and they know how to, like, pull that rope out through your hand.

Speaker2:
So maybe he maybe he tries doing that. These are all things that you need to slow down and add to observing even more, because your timing is also tied very closely together to what your horse is not only physically doing, but what he's thinking. And it's real hard to see what they're thinking when they're moving really fast. So in this example, we're going to say that he was standing there and he looked left and right, and then he moved his butt left and right, but he didn't change the pressure on the rope. And then he took a step forward. And then you're going to lower your energy level. You're going to drop your shoulders down because you know, your arms burning, because you've been holding it up there and you're going to you're going to exhale because you're going to be like, wow, I could actually stop on this if I wanted to. Now, for a lot of people, it's easier for them to picture that they could stop on this if they weren't actually near the trailer, like they were out in the arena and they were following all these same rules. Just asking the horse to take one step. For a lot of people, that would be an easier place to accept the idea that it could be done. But then they moved to the back of the trailer and they're like, I can't be done there.

Speaker2:
He's going to learn something bad. He did not really. He doesn't know what your end goal was. That one step is exactly the same level of importance in both places. The thing that's changing there is your mind, your mindset that it is now more important to get this done at the trailer than it was to get this out in the arena. But the truth is, they are of equal importance, and that when you believe that, you will carry the same question and rewards and the same energy in your body in both places, and then you'll erase the problem at the trailer before you ever even get to the trailer. Then the horse will ask little questions, but it won't be like a whole new set of things. And you won't be a new, slightly more uptight human being when you're near the trailer. Because when you're a slightly more uptight human being near the trailer, it's either revealing that you have a lack of understanding, or it's revealing that you're placing a higher importance on that trailer, and that actually becomes very cloudy for your horse. So let's just say that we've we've taken that step. We've both taken a deep breath. You've realized you're going to have to do some more weight lifting with that left arm that's just standing there holding the rope. It's not even pulling. It's just holding the weight of the rope up. And that will make your arm burn.

Speaker2:
And patience is important. So make sure that it's not your physical limitation that is holding you back here. Yes, we could totally come up with ten other ways to work around this, But for this example, we're going to try to keep it slightly more clear. But I love getting creative about how we could do this. Even if you had one arm to be getting this horse on the trailer. But we're not going to go there in this podcast. So now I want you to do it again. I want you to pick up that slack out of the rope with that left arm. Your idea is not that you're going to be dragging or pulling. You're sending him towards this. And let's just say that you pick it up and he opens up his eyes wide again. He kind of almost locks his feet, because he's pretty sure you're probably going to try to force him on even though you're not. But that's what he's thinking. And so let's do the history. And so now you're standing there and you think, you know what I'm thinking? That he's being fairly quiet. I'm going to wait for a little while and I'm going to see. But out of curiosity, I'm going to ask a second question, and I'm not going to be forcing it. This is not about force. This is about me learning timing. So you've picked up the slack. You've taken the slack out of the rope. I would prefer, especially on a horse that has pulling back problems.

Speaker2:
I would prefer that you would stand and wait until he finds that right answer. But for the illustration of this podcast, I'm going to keep it moving just a little bit. And then I'm also going to tell you how you can watch this. So hold on. I promise I'm not leaving you hanging. So you're going to pick up that rope. You're taking the slack out. The horse is standing there. He's got that slightly braced look with his feet, and his eyes are a little bit buggy. And so he's standing there and you're holding and you've just done this. Maybe you've done this 20 times and you've taken, you know, little inch by inch steps. He's standing there, he's got that look. And then you notice that he's actually like not rushing so much anymore. Now granted you've only moved a few inches. So how do you know he's not rushing anymore because you're able to observe. Is he not doing that wiggly butt thing where he kicks his hip to the left and right? What are his eyes doing or his eyes doing less of the left and right because he's actually seeing that you're moving slower, so he's moving slower. So he's not doing the eyes left right, left, right, the hip left right, left, right. He's actually standing there trying to connect the dots. This is what most people rush through. Most people rush through this spot and then their timing gets less accurate and their horse learns to move faster, which makes your timing less accurate.

Speaker2:
So let's just say, and it does happen incredibly quickly, that he's like, hmm, well, okay, she's not moving quite as quickly. So I'm going to stand here and I'm not going to move quite as quickly, but let's put a little another layer of, of something into it. Let's say that your arm is burning and you're like, seriously, I'm not going to be able to hold this arm for two more minutes. I probably should have been doing planks. I should have been doing my workout, but I haven't been. So what I'm going to say is for now, we're going to let you ask another question. I'm going to let you raise your right arm, the one that's holding your stick and string. It's just kind of been sitting down there doing nothing. The stick and string have been sitting on the ground, the point of them, and you've been just lightly holding with your right hand. And now your left hand is still got that pull. That's all it is, is holding the weight of the rope. And you're going to raise your right hand. And when you raise your right hand, and that's going to just take that stick from resting the end on the ground to horizontal. If you're watching your horse, you're going to see a change. What did he say? Did he think about shrugging away from you? Did he see the stick move and think about moving away from you to the right? Did he see the stick move and think about moving backwards away from you? Did he see the stick move and think about moving towards it? Yes that happens.

Speaker2:
Did you raise the stick? And he automatically thought about taking a step forward, even though you haven't even suggested to him. Did his wiggly butt come back? Where does his ears go? Where does his eyes go? So you've got to be paying attention to all of this, because all of these little observations are where your timing will come from. This is why I love, love, love the level of detail that was left in this voicemail message, because it tells me that this young lady is really watching the body language. She's trying a lot of things. She's got a lot of ideas floating around in her head. And I'll bet you that as the clarity comes to her, the clarity will come to her horse. Now, it is a little bit more challenging to talk you through this on the podcast, but I would also challenge you that talking you through this on the podcast. You have to visualize horses you've seen and you have to visualize things that you've done. And when you do that, it actually can make a stronger correlation for you. But I will also offer you this. I'm going to put links in the show notes to a place where you can watch me teaching a horse to load onto a trailer, and the horse had some serious trailer loading issues.

Speaker2:
Now in the link, I'll try to also write down which video to start with. Obviously they're all good, but they're little segments, and in the first few segments, I'm showing you what the horse should look like. And in that I'm using, actually, it's Willow's dad, it's the bay stallion. I had Vaquero, and so I'm using a very well trained horse to show you some of what your end goal is, but don't worry, I moved to this sorrel Gelding that has all kinds of questions, including running me over, trying to come between the trailer, including going backwards, including turning to the right. He pretty much throws all available options that are especially all the common available left right, run you over, run backwards. All of those show up in these videos and I'll put a link in the show notes. Here's an interesting thought. If you really wanted to strengthen your learning, you've listened to the podcast, I would challenge you to watch these videos on mute the first time through, so if you mute it, you won't be hearing me talk you through it. But you will automatically have to use your power of observation of handler and horse ten times more, because I'm not talking you through it while you're watching. Then of course you could go back and rewatch it with actually the audio on and double check if you see what I tell you I'm feeling and doing.

Speaker2:
Again, I'm going to just say it one more time. The illustration of the trailer, to me, ends up being more about how clear we can all get with what we observe, because we tend to pay a lot more attention in a situation like this than we do when we're putting the halter on the horse in the stall and leading the horse out to wherever we're going to saddle. All of this same stuff is happening in tiny little spots as we are going along in our day to day life, but we're not seeing all these little timing movements. This horse that has this question about what he should do with the pressure is asking this question, and he's got a number of places where he's figured out he's pretty sure he's fairly confident that the idea is to leave. So he's been experimenting with this. And then if he breaks a halter, he's like, I knew it. If I put enough pressure on this is how you get out. The same thing happens when I talked about the pony drag. The same thing happens when they discover that they can pull away from you, and so it becomes a very physical thing. This is why understanding that timing is not just physical timing is very mental. Because when you discover that, that's where things get really, really fun. I just had a horse not too long ago that we were doing some trailer loading with, and it was really interesting because he was stepping onto a trailer that had the slats in the side like a stock trailer would, and he would be stepping his body closer to the trailer, but his eyes almost never went in the trailer.

Speaker2:
He would either look left kind of over the handler, or he would look right kind of exit stage right back over. Even though his physical body was stepping closer to the trailer, he was looking out left and right because their eyes are beautifully set for being able to do that while still being vaguely aimed straight forward. And then if he did get more committed to the trailer, he was actually stepping forward and then looking out the windows, out the slats. So literally his body was getting closer to the trailer, but his mind was not getting closer to the trailer. And this is where you've got to get more and more creative with your timing of can I get this horse target trained? For lack of a better word, when you're doing your groundwork in the arena, are you paying enough attention that you can actually get him to put his nose on certain things, that you can get him to go over and look at this certain spot? And that's all done with timing. So where sometimes you can get lost is when you think, if his body is getting closer to the trailer, surely he's getting closer to the trailer mentally.

Speaker2:
Not true. They can be in the trailer and be willing themselves out of the trailer. And this is when you have the horses on the trailer that are violent or semi violent, or the ones that are trying to fly back off because they're not mentally committed to the trailer, even though somehow, physically, they somehow crept on there, they hadn't bought fully in to the idea. Check out the videos, tie it together with this podcast, jump back to the Grandma's Rules podcast, and really start putting together all the different concepts I'm teaching you. Because as we start to go into these concepts like trailer loading, you're going to see you're going to need all four quadrants. I'd like to touch just a little bit more on the idea of the halter pressure. And one thing I want to suggest is that I love liberty work. I believe that I touch the liberty work at the beginning of the horse's training, because it's a very natural way to discuss with them things on the ground, because it's much more horse to horse language, and I'm speaking more truly horse language when I'm doing the Liberty work. And then at the end of the training, I do a lot of liberty work, which is why you've seen different things where I'm riding bareback and bridleless and I do some liberty work on the ground. But what I want you to identify is that in the middle part of our job is teaching the horses to speak human.

Speaker2:
And some of the ways this is important is teaching the horses things like yielding to halter pressure. It's going to be something that's going to serve them well for the rest of their life. It's going to help keep them safe, because that halter pressure could be any kind of pressure. So let's just imagine that he gets himself tangled up in something. Is he going to fight to the death or is he going to yield to pressure? Because in nature, most of the time they're not going to have some kind of fencing to deal with. So what his reaction is to pressure can actually cross over, and we can train them to yield to pressure in a healthy way that keeps them safe in this human world that they live in. So this is why I spend a lot of time talking about emotional pressure and teaching horses to yield to pressure. So if you've been teaching your horse to do a lot of turns and you use a lot of body language, I love that. I love, love, love acting like I'm turning my horse with my body by stepping back, by stepping in, by stepping to the side. And I love it when my horses catch on. But also realize that there are opportunities when you are leading or lunging your horse, when you're reversing directions, that you could put a nice steady pressure on that rope, and that's a moment where that horse has to be able to answer that question quickly, in that as soon as they feel it, they go, oh, I know the answer.

Speaker2:
Got it? And they go the other way quickly, not because you're snatching the rope, but quickly because they demonstrate that their first reaction, first response to pressure is to yield to it, and it doesn't have to be a heavy pressure. Same thing. I'm not getting in a tug of war. I can't win a tug of war. But I do want to just remind you that sometimes in leading and lunging, I practice the Liberty type turns, and sometimes I practice the actual shaping, touching, applying the halter pressure. Because if you don't do it there, that's okay. You'll end up having to figure out how to do it in some other places so that your horse can fully learn how to speak human. I'd like to talk a little bit about being proactive with timing. When you get to the point where you're able to see a lot more happening with the horses, it becomes very fun because you can actually get ahead of a lot of the problems. This is what I mean when I say that trailer loading isn't really a trailer problem. It's a communication thing that needs to get worked out in other small areas. Let's take a listen to this question that came in.

Speaker4:
Hi Stacy, thank you so much for sharing your knowledge and understanding of horses with us all. Um, even my partner and son, who have little interest in horses, will sit and listen to the podcasts with me when they're around and apply it to the animals that they work with, like dogs and cows. I'm just thinking if I should strategically listen to episode 30 while they're around and next time they have a squabble, suggest that they go for a walk up the driveway and wonder if they'll get the hint. They're a little bit older, so they might work it out, hopefully. Um, anyway, my question is I have a young horse who chews or plays with his lead rope whenever I'm taking his rugs off or putting them on again. Um, it's nothing malicious. Not like I don't even think it's really frustration. It's just kind of a, you know, a thing to do while he's there. Should I worry about it or just keep an eye on it? Um, if it gets any worse, then than any suggestions on what I could do to take his mind off of that? And, um, yeah, because he stands still perfectly and everything like that whenever I'm doing it. He's a great little pony. Well, not a pony. He's becoming a big horse. Um, but yeah. Anything. Any helpful suggestions would be great. Thank you so much again, Stacy from Katherine in Australia.

Speaker2:
Katherine, you should clearly fly me over immediately to fix this problem and to go out to coffee because Australia has amazing coffee. Okay, okay, seriously, I actually love your question because of the fact that it shows how proactive you are being in observing your horse. And it also brings up episode 30, the driveway example, which is becoming a favorite among parents. The reason I'm so excited about you asking this question now is because while I don't want you to worry, I do want you to ask the question, what could I do to be more proactive? What would I like to replace it with? Another example would be if you were taking a young child through a store and you thought they were going to be trying to grab things off the shelf because they were very young, instead of letting their mind wander to the shelf on the left and the shelf on the right, you could be saying, oh, look up ahead, look where's daddy? Look up ahead, look where's grandma? Look up ahead. And you could be directing their attention to a different spot. And that would kind of close out those that left and right vision that they are looking at the candy bars that are strategically placed at eye level to small children, because there are very smart marketers out there that put everything down at that eye level. But what I want you to think about with your horse is you're seeing this and you see it quite a bit with young horses, they literally can be teething.

Speaker2:
Teasing. So they actually have their teeth erupting, and they have this desire, and they have a lot of questions that they ask when they're young horses with their mouth, which is very natural. But if we don't want that to become a habit, I would say, what do you want to replace it with? You know that it's fairly zoned in to this time. So there's all kinds of different things you could do. But let me just throw an example. But I love it when you throw back. Oh, that example made me think about these other things that work in my situation. So if I'm picturing this when I'm taking off the blankets rugs from my younger horses, a lot of times I'll ground tie them. So they've got the halter and lead rope, lead ropes hanging down there, and I'm walking around them. Well, that leaves the lead rope right there in the spot. So one of the things you could do is you could take the lead rope away. You could be like, okay, we're going to do this without the lead rope on. And then you could see whether or not that just made him go to chewing on the rugs, because if you don't actually solve the attention problem.

Speaker2:
You can take away the the object like the lead rope, and then they just kind of transfer it to another object because in a way he's got some questions and he's expressing a little bit of we're just going to call it like curiosity slash boredom. He's like, hey, there's a rope right here. Why don't I play with this while you're doing whatever you're doing? Now, you could also start to ask some other questions about your handling him fairly frequently, because you're putting these blankets, rugs on and off and you're doing this stuff so you could actually start to say like, hey, I want you watching me out of your left eye when I'm on your left side and right eye when I'm on your right side. So I want you to have this slight shape to you. So when you're ground tied, even if the rope is on, I want to be over to your left. And I want you looking. I want that that left eye to be like glancing left. And I want that ear to be rotating back to me. I don't need this to look obsessive, but I can be kind of interesting over here. I know you think I just come around and I just do this, but there are these little tiny things I can do that make me a little bit more interesting.

Speaker2:
And then that's up to you, what you do to get interesting, because it ties together with the rest of your groundwork program and what you've done. But for mine, I can I can wiggle an elbow, I can do this. And they're like, oh, is she getting ready to ask something? And you could build positive reinforcement into it. You could build certain shapes that you wanted to then reward with scratching. You could do some different things. It might be like if you stand in this position and you watch, I unbuckle this and then I scratch you here. And then when I step across to the other side behind you, does your head come over here and meet me on this side? I'll scratch you over here. You can do these little tiny things, because what you're doing then is you're engaging them in this conversation. And that takes away a lot of those boredom things where they're just kind of like, I don't know. You're back there doing your thing. I'm up here doing mine, and we're not really connected. Let me know how that goes and let me know if you come up with any other little things that you these little nuance, things that you can replace it with. And let me know if you want to fly me over there so I can show you firsthand and have some more of that coffee.

Speaker1:
Supporting companies make this show sustainable. Thank you.

Speaker2:
In this week's segment on call with Doctor Monty, sponsored by Equa thrive. Doctor Monty and I discuss electrolytes and dealing with the heat. I'd like to thank Equa thrive for creating the opportunity to talk with Doctor Monty and for sponsoring this podcast. Doctor Monty Mcinturf is located in Tennessee and operates the Tennessee Equine Hospital that has three locations. He's been an equine practitioner for over 30 years with a focus on the equine athlete. Here's my discussion with Doctor Monty.

Speaker5:
Doctor Mani, here is a question. It is hot here right now. And when we're working the horses and it's really hot, I've got two questions kind of hovering around here. What signs should we be watching for? For stress. And is that plain white salt block sitting in the corner of the stall enough.

Speaker6:
Those those are super questions. Electrolytes is is what you're talking about with the salt. And there's all kinds of electrolytes on the market. And they're very, very important for the horse's cardiovascular system, which helps to cool the horse and helps to oxygenate the horse. So the salt block really does matter. Uh, white salt actually may not quite be enough. Um, there's a lot of different types of electrolytes out there. So when it's really, really hot, I encourage you to put a hot a electrolyte supplement into the feed so that we know our horse is taking it in. Some horses are really great salt eaters and the great water drinkers. Some aren't. So if we actually take an electrolyte pack and put it a scoop into our feed, that's much lighter than going to the salt block. So I just want to throw that out to be careful. Some horses don't take enough salt in, and if you don't take enough salt in, that tends to help you fatigue more quickly. Your muscles need potassium. It needs chloride. It needs sodium to kind of help the cells recover while they're while they're working. So it's very, very important. Heat is another big thing. And the if it's actually too hot outside for you and you feel like the humidity is making you struggle and the heat is giving you a little bit of a headache, it's probably not a good time to be riding your horse.

Speaker6:
Horses like shade. They like fans just like you and I do. So take the time of day you ride. If it's really, really hot, start early and ride in the morning or wait until the cool of the evening. Or especially a shaded area. But the way horses deal with heat is through their sweating mechanism and through their respiration. A horse that is overheating quickly is probably a horse that's not sweating quickly. So, you know, in really extreme competitions when it's super hot, we have cooling stations along the way and some of our endurance rides, some of our steeplechase races, some of our polo games, we'll have cooling areas. So when the horse comes out of competition, we can cool him down quickly. Another trick is to take a bag of ice and like in a little baggie and place it on the jugular vein. Because. Because cooling the blood flow helps to cool the body. So instead of just putting ice on a horse's back or water on their back, take a little bag of ice and put it right on the jugular vein and you can cool a horse down quickly. It's a neat trick in competition.

Speaker5:
Yeah, I have never heard that. And I'm gonna totally try that. That would be fun. Yeah.

Speaker6:
You like it? The horse likes it, too. And you'll know when the horse is panting and he's sweating and you think he feels warm to the touch and you want him cooling down quickly. Another way is to take alcohol and place alcohol on his back. That'll cool him quickly. But, you know, water and ice are something we have in our, you know, our coolers. And it's easy to grab and ice on the jugular is a great, great trick.

Speaker5:
Okay. That's awesome. Now, one thing I've heard is that if you do hose them off, you know, if you if you hose them off and you stop hosing them off, you should scrape them because you don't want the heavy layer of water on them, you know, you want to help it evaporate. Is there truth to that? Or you know what happens?

Speaker6:
The the water heats up on their body, right? And so drying them off is going to help them. Cool. Most definitely. Yeah.

Speaker5:
So scrape that water off.

Speaker6:
Yeah. Scrape that water off. Yeah. That's good I didn't think to say that. It's perfect.

Speaker5:
Yeah. Well it's I got a question about it sometimes and I'm like well I think this is right. This is what I remember from somewhere. So I love that. I love that I can double check this with you. That's awesome. That's good.

Speaker6:
Yeah. I'm going to.

Speaker5:
Definitely be trying the, um, the ice on the jugular, though. I'm actually kind of looking forward to seeing my horse's response. We just installed some big they're actually made for like, cooling cattle, these huge fans. And it was so funny because the horses look like they're striking poses, like models, because it's flipping their manes and and they've got this very dramatic hair flying around look, but they're super happy with their fans.

Speaker6:
Oh, yeah. Well, just think about it. If you love it, they love it. Yeah, yeah. Good missing fan when I'm hot. Hey, give me more. Right.

Speaker5:
Awesome. Well, thank you so much for sharing your knowledge.

Speaker6:
Thank you.

Speaker2:
I hope you found that segment as interesting as I did. I'm actually really excited about trying the ice cube tip on popcorn just so I can see his expression. He's got great eye expression. I'm also going to ask the endurance riders that I know if they're using it, because I know that one of the things I may have been looking into is a little bit of endurance riding, and I know that at those checkpoints that you need to cool the horses down, get their breathing and respiration rate level. And so I'm wondering if they're using the ice cube trick or not. I keep the white salt block in the stalls and out in the pastures, but I also use an electrolyte pellet that EC3 makes. Over the years, I've used different electrolytes. Some of the ones that go into the water and some that are powders and go onto the grain. But I for sure prefer these pellets because it's really easy. You can hand feed them if you want to. It's easy to see if they've ingested them, and I don't like the idea that if you mix the electrolytes into the water, that the horse might not prefer the taste and might actually drink less. So if you do choose to use something that goes into the water, please make sure you also leave fresh water that doesn't have anything mixed into it just so they have that option in case they decide they don't like it. I personally like to see them eat it, and that's pretty easy when it's shaped like grain and they scoop it right up. If you'd like to learn more about the products that Equi Thrive has, you can visit Equi Thrive.com. And if you decide to purchase something, use the code Stacy at the checkout. Stacy to receive 10% off plus free shipping. Again, I'm going to put links in the show notes to the Problem Horse video for trailer loading. Watch the video with the purpose of watching my body language and my timing. Thanks for joining me and I'll talk to you again in the next episode.

Speaker1:
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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