Getting Serious

Bridget is growing up.  Physically, she has all but lost her adolescent disproportion and gawkiness and is returning to the beautiful conformation which made her stand out as a baby. Mentally, she is becoming more serious - and more challenging.

She is still curious and affectionate and goofy. But there is an increasing air of imperiousness about her, and a sense that she is becoming someone who demands respect.

Today, as I was working with her, she became impatient. I insisted, by being stubborn rather than by applying pressure, that she pay attention and work with me. She did, but when I set her free, she left immediately - which is not like her.

She doesn't yet have Chloe's wisdom, nor does she have the immense reserves of kindness and courtesy hidden behind George's gruff facade. Or the great sweetness of Rose.

What she does have is intelligence, boldness, enthusiasm, charm, good sense, playfulness, optimism, communicativeness, and cordiality.

I hope that if I work with her regularly, she will learn that there is something to be said for this activity. Going for walks may be a good way of working together. I think I may suspend the privilege she currently enjoys of swinging her tail towards me so that I can scratch her hindquarters. I don't know. I feel a need now to set some boundaries - at least temporarily - and to discuss with her the reality that as she grows into her new role as an adult, I will not allow her to add to her status by trying to lord it over me.

Enjoying a little home-grown alfalfa on the first day of autumn

Battle of Wills

But it wasn't really a battle. More like a summit.

After George's little incident the other day, I decided we'd better do some more regular work with the horses. So I fetched George out of the pasture and decided to do six minutes of work. (Six, because it was like 12:34, and I planned to work until 12:40.) George did everything I asked politely and immediately, so I reduced the work time to four minutes and then let him graze on the lawn for a while.

Next up was Bridget. She walked forward and stopped and backed up once. After a minute, I asked her to back up again. The answer was a very definite no.

So, we stood.

For ten minutes, she nudged and nibbled at me. I kept pushing her head away, and if she came across as too aggressive, I bopped her (in a friendly way) on the nose with the end of the lead rope. After ten minutes, she stopped the nudging.

Just standing.

She became quite peaceful, and snuggled her nose up to my hand.

But every so often, she took a step forward with one foreleg. At which I turned her in a circle and resumed standing. The mood remained calm and cordial.

As the flies were bothersome, Bridget lifted a foreleg sometimes to swat at them. After 20 minutes of standing, she began replacing her foreleg into the same position, rather than taking a step forward. I clicked a "yes" every time she did this.

Up comes the leg.

Down goes the leg.
(Why is her chest so uneven - I hope it's just cos of the way she's holding her neck.)

Every few minutes, I repeated my request for her to step backwards, and every time I felt myself up against an immoveable object.

Finally, after half an hour of standing, Bridget began to place her foot just a teeny bit behind its original position whenever she picked it up. There were a two or three incidents of backsliding when she couldn't help herself and stretched one foreleg out and didn't replace it (at which I would lead her in a circle again). But there were also a couple of times when I said, "Ahem," and she put the foot back.

At last, she took a few steps backwards. So I gave her a treat and let her graze.

Bridget is, as my daughter would say, "Miss Sassitude." She is a dear, loving, warm-hearted, companionable creature. Also bold, brave, and strong-willed. Most of the time, she'll do what you ask without any fuss, but every so often, the bossy and dramatic side of her personality will emerge. In those moments, she is not always very ready to listen to my opinion or the opinion of any other human who happens to be around. So it was, I think, very helpful to have this difference of opinion, highlighting what great resources of stubbornness and determination Bridget has. It was good to be able to settle this disagreement without drama or rancor.

Most people, in my experience, resort to whacking the horse with the rope if it doesn't immediately step back when asked. This is pretty effective, and also takes much less time than 30 minutes. Also, it must be said that a dominant horse does not wait half an hour to exact compliance from a lower-ranking herdmate.

However, I feel it was a half hour very well spent. We explored the reality that I, in my humble, bipedal way, can be even more stubborn than Bridget. Plus we had a nice long stretch of just standing together serenely. And Bridget's acquiescence was not an outcome forced upon her, but a conclusion reached by her.

Finally.

Nice George

Today was a lovely day - proto-Spring! Just the weather to take a horse out for an excursion.

I decided Bridget should come out, as she tends to receive short shrift compared to Mr. Squeaky Wheel, who gets oiled more than the others. I put the halter on her without a rope and invited her (a la Spilker) to follow me. She did follow, and then she hesitated. I felt she almost needed the leadrope to give her permission to keep coming, especially given George's proximity. So I clipped on the rope, and we headed to the gate, where George was blocking the way.

Now, coming in is one thing, but exiting is another. Exiting means Someone Else is getting to do what George wants. However, I knew he would let us out eventually and was determined to wait it out. Bridget patiently bided her time in the safe zone behind me, every now and then amusing herself by tugging on my clothing.

It was a long wait, during which George gnawed the gate, pawed the ground, and bit himself. But our patience paid off - he finally walked away, and through we went. I turned around to thank George (who was back looking over the fence) for his kind cooperation. I hope he knew I appreciated it, although I imagine he may have been thinking something along the lines of "Talk is cheap - show me the money!"

Bridget was all kinds of up: the air was filled with noises - on Sunday everyone is home, firing off guns, riding dirt bikes, shouting in the distance.

A little muddy.

She settled down to graze, and after a while I decided today was the day for Bridget and I do a little work or whatever you call it. So I asked her to practice coming to me and allowing us to just stand quietly for a few moments, a technique which has been helpful with George. Her reaction? "What? You're kidding, right? There's grass here!" But I persisted through some dramatic ground-pawing  and incredulous head tossing, as I think we need to establish this zone of quiet attentiveness.

Bridget's return to the field was a faster procedure than her departure. George moved over, a look of disdain on his face, and allowed Bridget to walk in. George stayed put, not bothering Bridget during halter removal. The halter then went on George.

We ran a little, grazed, and engaged in a spot of work too. I was struck by the difference between Bridget's and George's reaction to the let's-just-stand-here-quietly exercise. Whereas Bridget had thought it a novel and bad idea, George seemed to have the attitude: "Yes, dear, I remember your little game, we can play it if you like."

After he'd had a good spell of grazing, I took him over to the grass-free driveway and practiced some other stuff. It's my belief that a lot of "bad use" in horses pops up the very moment they take the first step from standing. They shorten their necks, stiffen their back, and leave their hind legs trailing behind. They even do this when they're out in the pasture. When riding (what? when?), I used to practice stopping and then starting again with a loose neck and back - it's a good exercise, and a walk picked up in this manner is a better walk.*

Practicing this in-hand involved asking George to relax his head and neck before walking forward, while turning his head slightly toward me and releasing his shoulder away. Now, in the past George has been very picky about suggestions regarding his shoulder. Today, though, I had a whole new feel from him, and for the first time, I had the impression we were on the same page. He didn't seem threatened and didn't look crabby. He projected an air of recognition and understanding - although not unmixed with a little impatience!

Later there was a commotion - the dogs barking at a man walking along the far edge of our property. George decided he needed to return to his pasture in order to get closer to the scene of action and check it out. I let him go and he ran half way over to the far side of the field, looking vigilantly into the distance. Brave defender.

Ready for supper.

*Try setting off into a walk from a standstill. Then stop and drop loosely forward from your waist, your neck, head and arms drooping down. Thusly posed, start walking again. You'll feel a whole different sensation in your legs - much more engagement, and greater lengthening down the back of the leg.

George Deals with his Frustration

I was up giving water to the horses today, and George was standing with his head over the fence. I stood on the other side of the fence next to him. I really wanted to give him a big hug, but with George it's best to hang back a little. He was wearing his put-upon face - not the same as his cranky face, more like he's inwardly shaking his head and sighing. We stood. Finally he reached over and nuzzled my hair a couple of times, before resuming his martyred expression.

Ok, George, I get it. I come back with the halter, George waiting for me at the fence.

Yes, we had 5" of snow on Monday night.

We exited the field, and all that snow meant there wasn't much to be found in the way of  food. George set off ahead of me to see what was out there.

He found one or two interesting items to explore.

This is more like it.

He scraped off some snow to uncover the grass, but only once. I had to stop him from eating the box hedge. (Is box poisonous?)

Then I decided it was time to practice some maneuvers. George and I seem to be progressing in an odd direction these days. Part of it is that he's allowed to express his frustration. Which takes the form of grabbing bits of me or my clothing with his mouth. This is not biting. If it starts to feel like biting, I get crabby. He understands this. 

So - for example - we're standing there, and I'm saying: "George, just chill for a moment, relax your neck, and then take a step forward. It's good for you." And he wants to go off and do his own thing maybe. Or maybe he doesn't like the feeling of being controlled. So he gets hold of my sleeve and holds it. I don't get mad. Maybe I wait a little and ask again, or maybe I rub his ears really hard and tell him he's a silly billy. Or maybe I snort and shake my head, because that's what he does sometimes when he just feels that pent-up frustration but doesn't want to do anything rude.

All this feels in some ways like we're moving backwards. I can't help thinking back to our round pen days, when George would move forward, and turn and stop and speed up and slow down, all on command. But in those days, he was much more of a cipher to me. Occasionally I would see little flashes of resentment, like tips of an iceberg, without really knowing what was under the surface.

Now when he is frustrated or resentful, it's out in the open, laid out on the table and part of the negotiations. I know many people would be horrified at the way I let him use his mouth and would say that I'm opening the door for him to press the advantage and become more and more aggressive. But he's already bitten me, and when he did, it was not the culmination of a process of ever greater liberty-taking - it was more or less out of the blue.

I would rather be with him in the moment, and have him present his feelings to me- I'm having a hard time with this. And then I can respond - It's ok, we can work this out together.

I do have doubts. I think that when you allow humans to continually express frustration, sometimes it can breed more frustration and lead to an inability to focus. On the other hand, supporting a fellow human through the frustration block does not necessitate becoming punitive. Sometimes you may say, "Come on, just get on with it." But that is a different thing from saying, "Shut up, you bad person" - which is what hitting a horse amounts to.

I always used to say it takes two years to get to know a horse. Although I first met George more than two years ago, I've only really known him for a year and a half. We have a ways to go yet, and I'm sure the situation is further complicated by baggage from the past - both his and mine. If I had to characterize the difference between our old way of working and the new, I'd say that before I was working outside George's bubble. In some ways it was a safe place to be for both of us. Neither of us really had to deal with the other - it was all remote control. Nowadays, I'm inside the bubble with George. It was he who let me in initially. When I'm in that close, I have to allow him to wriggle and fuss and complain - anything else would be like having him in a stranglehold.

My thoughts and words on this subject are abstract. I can only describe what I think is going on in impressionistic brush strokes. The way forward is not clear (although I have ideas), but despite our ostentatious lack of achievement (what? no riding? no lunging? no "training"?), I feel ok about where we are.

Work

In the last few days I've been over to my friend's house twice to trim hoofs. While I was there both times, a third friend, of suitably diminutive stature, came over to work with a pony brood mare, the idea being to polish her up into a riding pony to keep her from the fate of returning to her less-than-ideal prior living situation. She was supposed to be "broke," but it's not clear that she ever was.

So, from upside down underneath a horse's belly, I observed Chicky being worked with on two consecutive occasions. She was lead, lunged, saddled, and mounted on both days.

The first day, you could see she was thinking that it was all rather unprecedented and random - being pulled and pushed (gently, mind you) all over the place, and then having this person sit on you. She looked stiff and confused. The second day, her expression was different - softer, more inward looking, more tuned in, more thoughtful. A light seemed to be glimmering in her face, as if she was becoming aware - "Oh, there's actually something meaningful going on here."

Lately, I've started training our two dogs. They know how to sit and be polite and all that, but I want them to know a little more. I think it's good for them. My previous experience with dog training was in Chicago, where our friendly neighbourhood dog trainer was of the Koehler school, a teutonic and draconian method, which delivers remarkable results. I am using a much watered down version of this with Malcolm and Lucy.

The first few days I took them out, they were like Chicky on the first day. They had no clue something meaningful was occurring, although they submitted to my strange behaviour as best they could. Then something clicked. Their eyes became brighter and more focussed, their responses sharpened, and they became eager to participate.

This got me thinking. There is being with horses, and there is working with horses. The two can overlap; but while the horses know all about the former, only I know about the latter. And I think it's an activity that can be fruitful for both horse and human. How are they going to find out about it if I'm always being apologetic and never present it to them as a thing but only tiptoe around the subject?

With this in mind, I took George out of the field today and said, "Before we graze, we're going to do some practicing for, hmm, let's see - fifteen minutes - well, no, maybe ten."

For starters, he was very distracted and alert about Something Going On on the far hillside. I was confused as to whether I should just let him look as long as he wanted or ask him to pay attention to me. I pretty much opted for the former. (I had the disloyal thought: "Hmm, I bet once you start grazing, you lose interest in what's going on over there." But, in fact, while he was grazing later, he kept stopping to look up at the hillside.)

Despite the distraction, we got in some practice backing, moving hindquarters, and relaxing the head down on request. This all went rather smoothly. Next we turned to the prickly topic of turning towards me while releasing the shoulder away. After the second successful attempt, I decided he could graze. Six minutes is long enough to practice, right?

Again, whilst grazing, I periodically asked George to return to me and relax for a moment. He does it quite nicely now. Not that he says, "Oh what a great idea, June - I feel it will be so good for me to centre myself for a moment!" No, he says, "Ok, here we go again, I get it, this is what you want, right?"

In none of this is there a sense of George awakening to a realization that we are engaged in an interesting project. But I'm hoping that will happen eventually. (Um, maybe if we actually do something he considers interesting .... !)

He is such a prickly character. It would be so easy to work him in a round pen, at a safe distance. I'm sure he'd do great. I know he would, as I've worked him in the round pen before. And maybe, eventually, he'd soften and become trusting. Maybe I'm doing things backwards - I'm starting at a soft position and trying to build up something dynamic. But, backwards or not, this is the trajectory I'm committed to.

I also feel that to some extent, I'm making myself more vulnerable by working close to George. I mean, look, I got bitten already. Sometimes, when I'm next to him, I can almost feel electricity coming off him, like you could get a shock just by getting too close. It's not that he "misbehaves" - for example, he behaves well with my daughter. I've been wondering about that, and I think it's because she's very business-like, and he can maintain his armor undisturbed when she works with him. And if I'm in a hurry and just want him to get on and do something, it's not a problem - but in that situation, he also can preserve his protective shell.

However, he knows that I know his weakness. I can put my finger right on the nerve. He trusts me, but is still very reactive and self-protective, and we're working around an acute awareness of that exposed nerve. Do I even know what I'm talking about? Good question.

George gets on with the important business of the afternoon.

George is Still Worried About Food

Today, I took George out to graze again.

He is once more giving off an aura of raw vulnerability. I really don't feel I can approach and touch him except on his head. His defensiveness has returned, brought on, I believe, by the onset of winter weather and a fear of starvation.

My husband was out with us, chatting with me. At one point he was heading towards George's hindquarters, about eight feet off - not actually intending to go towards George, but going in that direction by happenstance. George stiffened and pinned his ears. Oh my!

As I did yesterday, I practiced occasionally  asking George to stop eating, raise his head, and be quiet beside me. The first couple of times he was pissed off. He really wanted to nip me. Then he turned his head away and tried to walk into me with his shoulder. I avoided getting annoyed, and persisted. He quieted fairly quickly.

The third time, I thought I would really just ask and not tell. I kissed to him as usual, and tugged gently on the lead rope, but waited for him to respond when he chose. It took a few moments, but he did stop grazing, and quite kindly brought his head towards me.

The fourth time took longer and was a little grudging, but he didn't get angry, and he stood quietly in a resigned sort of a way for a moment, until I invited him to eat again.

I don't understand what's going on with the horses' eating habits. The grass is down to bare bones, but they're not finishing their hay. It's the same hay they've been getting all along, and they start out eating enthusiastically when it first appears, but they soon lose interest and wander off to pick at the meagre grass. A couple of weeks ago, they were inhaling three bales a day between them. I wonder if the new feed I'm giving them is actually filling them up quite well. I've gone from giving pelleted feed to a much larger portion of non-molasses beet pulp and chopped forage. We switched a couple of weeks ago at least, but I wonder if it's taken this long for the extra nutrition to really make itself felt ... ?

With George in this don't-touch-me mood, I was happy to hear that while I was out, my daughter had taken him out, saddled him up, put one of her friends on him for a walk around the fields, and that he had comported himself in a gentlemanly manner throughout. Go figure.

Communication

When I went in to see the horses today, I was expecting a phone call which might call me away; so I didn't want to take George out to graze, only to have to return him a few minutes later.

He badgered me about going out, tugging on my jacket, and nudging me. It was a bit aggressive. So I said, "I don't really want to be with you when you're like this." He walked off in a bit of a huff. Bridget came over, and George shooed her away.

She soon returned, and we played together. She got the hang of pulling my jacket zipper up and down with great gusto.

Eventually, George came over, and Bridget left. George planted himself beside me, somewhat grumpily, as if to say, "Well, ok, I'm still your friend, but I'm not in a good mood." We stood; I scratched him a bit. Finally, he pawed the ground and snatched with his teeth at the paltry bits of grass still growing: "Do you expect me to eat this???"

It was clear and communicative, and reasonably polite, so off I went to get the halter and rope. We got some grazing in before the expected phone call.

In the late afternoon, after I'd fed them dinner, I went back and took George out. Every so often, I asked him to stop and be still for a moment before resuming his eating. At one point, he reached out in frustration and nipped at me. Without thinking I whacked his nose, and was surprised at how almost instantaneously calm returned to me. George was not offended.

I felt a certain clarity about what I was trying to do. During one grazing pause, George pawed the ground. I said, "I know what you want, and you're going to get it, but I want something too, and it's something I want from you." I want him to be able to let go of whatever it is that's bothering him - in this case the desire to eat, which is a great anxiety producer for George. He is very afraid of being denied access to food. I wonder if perhaps he was weaned too early or had to fight for his share of food as a youngster.

George himself has shown me a place of peace and calm. And now I, in turn, need him to trust me and come to that place when I ask him. For another horse, asking them to do things might work better to distract them from their worry and help them center themselves. But with George, I feel we need to turn down the volume on all fronts and bring ourselves back to stillness before moving forward. It's too easy to lose the connection; busyness pulls it apart, whereas quietness re-establishes it.

It was cold, and the mares were careening around the field in response to some obscure commotion on the distant slope of the mountain, and George was distracted. But I felt he was beginning to be more accepting of what I was asking. With George, it's generally three steps forward, two steps back--so I'm not looking for straightforward linear progress. But, with his help, I feel I've identified a way to work together. I don't think he fully understood the real import of what we were working on, but I think he could feel it a little bit.

 He wasn't in a great mood today, but we managed to have a conversation nonetheless.

Back to Basics

Yesterday, I asked George to turn his head, and he did. It was kind of a big deal.

I have all these grand ambitions for George - you know, fancy moves like walking forward, turning, backing up. But I also have found a quiet, peaceful place with George which I would like to preserve undisturbed while asking these things. Sometimes this can be quite a contradiction.

Yesterday, I went into the field to spend time. I put the halter on George. I re-discovered that he really doesn't like to have me touch his chest/neck/shoulder with any kind of intentionality, other than friendship. This gets back to the scar, put there by an angry pasture-mate, who was fed up with George being so stubborn about refusing to move his shoulders over, the scar which George's previous owner likes to point to as evidence of how much force is needed to make him understand the necessity for capitulating on this point.

I understand, from my limited exposure to Parelli, that the system works by breaking through such barriers in the horse. If you discover an area of resistance, you work through it. Again from my very limited, and possibly not very typical, experience of watching Parelli work in action, it looked like the resistance was broken through more or less by force, albeit mild force. In other words, the horse was not given a choice. Lack of choice = force.

Yesterday, every time I put my hand on George's chest or shoulder, he pinned his ears and looked very sour. My intention in putting my hand there was to ask him to release his shoulder in order to move toward me with a lengthening back. He trusts me quite a lot, and yet it was too much to ask.

I didn't insist. How can you insist on a release anyway? Instead I stopped to think. I stood by George's shoulder and pointed to it. I said, "Look, I'm only pointing, I'm not touching."

I applied a tiny amount of pressure on my end of the lead rope and felt a concrete barrier on the George end. I could tell that if I brought his head toward me, his shoulder would come with it, the whole head/neck/shoulder one big piece of fused hardness. So instead, I put my hand on his nose, and said, "You need to release this, so that when you turn towards me, your shoulder can release away, so that your back can lengthen - and it's all about the back, right? You want your back to feel good, don't you?"

After spending a little more time deconstructing the situation, I touched my finger to his shoulder while thinking about his head. George's shoulder melted away from me as his head curved towards me.

It was so beautiful, it brought tears to my eyes.

I took the halter off, and we spent time together in his favorite pose, with me on his left side. Afterwards, he was very nice about letting me go and interact with Rose and Bridget.

When I left, he followed me and kept looking at me after I'd gone.

So, gosh, things like, I don't know, a collected trot seem to be just a little bit far off. However, I remembered something KFH said in, I think, What Horses Reveal. He said that if you're doing it right, the result will be beautiful. Although you can't aim directly for the result, if you don't get the result, then you're doing something wrong. He says that when a toddler performs ballet even though the execution is simple, and maybe a little awkward, it can have a beauty of its own, appropriate to the level attained by the young dancer.

I guess George and I are in the just-learned-to-walk-never-mind-dance group of toddler babies, dressed in our bunny costumes - but yesterday, George offered something that, in its own way, was as lovely as a dance can be.

George Loses His Peeve

This afternoon found me out in the horse field with a halter and leadrope. When George presented himself, I put it on him and decided to do a tiny bit of "work."

Having been turned out recently into a new pasture, the horses have been happily grazing for a few days. So they're not so obsessed with getting out to eat. (Alas, we're getting near the end of the new pasture too.) I stayed in the field with George, and so he had no expectation that this was all about going to greener pastures. Also, having the halter on gave a signal, I think, that we were doing a little work, and it helped to keep a connection going between us. Liberty work is nice, and probably ideal, but I think sometimes both horse and human can find the halter and leadrope reassuring.

We only worked for a very few minutes, but I discovered that George doesn't mind backing up in the least if you stay shoulder-to-shoulder with him, facing the same way, and walk backwards beside him. Also, in this way, I found that I could ask him to soften his head to the left while moving his shoulder over to the right as we backed up. This is something I could never get him to do before.

After I took the halter off, he wanted me to stand beside him. So I did. For about an hour. I was determined not to go away as long as he wanted me to stay there.

Little Bridget really wanted attention, and she crept as close as she could without arousing the George stink eye, a distance of about two horse lengths. She stood there for ages, waiting for him to go away, but finally gave up and went off to graze with Rose and Chloe.

As time went by, I gradually moved up closer to George's head. He likes having his ears rubbed. He is so peaceful and gentle and soft at times like these that I realize how important, and how difficult, it is to allow action and movement to arise naturally and softly out of this peace.  At one point, his head was drooping almost to the ground; he flicked an ear and gave my shin a tiny nudge with his nose. I took that as a request to rub his ears some more. Who knows if I was right or not, but he was happy with the resumed ear rubbing anyway.

After we'd been standing there for about an hour, he started nibbling some grass, then caught sight of one of the dogs lying on the ground and went over to check him out. The dog is not so brave without a fence in between them and didn't stick around to be inspected. Then George went over to the water trough. I stayed put, but thought that he was ready to go off and do something else. However, after having a drink, he returned directly to my side. We stood for several more minutes, and then George moved off a little to graze.

But it was apparent that we were now in a different configuration - namely the mares were one group over on one side of the field, and George and I made up another little group in our corner. We stuck together for a while until I left the field, the better to pick the longer grass on the other side of the fence and hand it to him. But once I was out of the field, he quickly lost interest and rejoined the mares.

All this goes to show that despite George's reputation as a ladies' man and patriarchal oppressor, what he really wants is a buddy, which is, I suppose, how he came by his original name.

More importantly, this time with George made me re-remember that it's not all about making the horse do what you want. I could read Resnick and Hempfling and Rashid and still be in the mindset of trying new and ever more subtle ways to get the horse to do my bidding. Yes, I do want the horse to do things I ask him to do. I think that would be fun and useful. But I have to remember that this cannot be the only, or even the primary, motivation behind my desire to have a relationship with this creature.

Moving George

Videos of Resnickers sharing space and moving their horses generally show a person moving calmly but confidently, sometimes waving a wand. When this person's intention is to move a horse, she walks toward it, and the horse magically moves away.

I have had a problem moving George in this way. The only times he moves away from me is when I'm angry at him. (This has happened on a number of occasions.) I just can't summon up enough chutzpah to make my aura move his, without resort to some form of violence - e.g. raising my voice, waving my arms or a stick, or getting mad.

But I've discovered I can make him move. I go up to him, and I say, "Ahem, George, excuse me, would you mind please stepping back - or to the side or towards me or wherever." And he will comply. Not with the best grace, admittedly, but hey, you can't have everything all at once, right?

Today we were hanging out, and he really just wanted to chill and have me stand by his tail and protect him from a rear attack (I guess?). I spent time doing this, but I also asked him to practice a little bit of moving for me. He was very good at this, and every time he moved, I'd skip away back from him to take the pressure right off; then he'd come up to me again. He got tired of this after a while and wandered off, looking slightly peeved. Oh, George, you are such an emotional roller coaster for me.

Anyway, when I was thinking I couldn't move George, I guess I was thinking about it wrong. What I can't do is move George without first establishing a connection to him. I think the next thing is to try action-at-a-distance. And I think I might try using treats, as although the thought of treats does make the poor boy go quite demented, it also is a sure fire way of currying favor with him.

Or, I should just forget "working" with George, because he is my daughter's after all, and what he seems to really want from me is just affection and intimacy. Whereas little Bridget seems keen to "do things" and she's the one who's supposed to be "my" horse. So maybe George should be my grand-horse, and I should do the things which Grand-people are supposed to do - namely spoil him. I dunno.

Bridget's New Game

Bridget has devised a novel entertainment for us.

When she gives me her right foreleg, she still likes for me either to stretch it out (she gives a little grunt), or to scratch it (I think).

But she's been experimenting with some freestyling when she gives me her left foreleg. Sometimes, she'll brace against me with her knee and lift her other foreleg off the ground too. Or, she likes to have me hold her left foreleg while she hops along on the other three for a step or two.

I was thinking again of something Sandra said about her two mares.  She realized that each mare approaches her differently, and that this personal style reflects the way that each mare would like to be approached herself.

Bridget just loves physical contact. If you vigorously rumple her ears and face with both hands, she laps it up. When she positions herself to have her hindquarters scratched, she plonks herself into position beside me with a big ker-thump. But for her, that isn't rudeness, because she herself likes to be ker-thumped. (Funnily enough, I have a daughter like that - if you want to make her smile, you start punching her!)

George, on the other hand, for all his tough-guy persona, is very careful not to bump me at all when he maneuvers me into position beside him. And he in turn prefers to be approached delicately.

I've also been working with Bridget on a couple of things out in the field - backing up towards me, backing up away from me, moving hindquarters towards me, coming towards me and stopping in front of me. Those things work pretty well. Moving shoulders towards me sometimes happens. Not so smooth is moving hindquarters away from me. I don't want to accomplish that by physically pushing - I want to use energy. On the lead rope, we're also working on halting when I lift one arm in the air and say "ho."

I read with interest Kris McCormack's latest blog entry about Thunder the wonder horse. Although Thunder knows what's being asked, and remains engaged and cooperative, he still might choose to say no to a request. With Bridget, most of the time (there are exceptions involving her or my safety, for example) I want to work in such a way that she is free to say no. Often, my explanations are not clear, and a refusal amounts to saying - "Could you re-word that, please?" Nothing I'm "training" her to do can be enforced. If she refuses, or doesn't understand, we'll just try again, either right away or another time.

Bridget and Rose appeared both to be in heat this morning. George was acting uncharacteristically subdued. He let first Chloe, then Bridget, then Rose come up to me, without asking for attention himself.  He claimed the first pile of hay as usual, but didn't bother to also claim the others before finally settling down to just one.

Sometimes when food first appears, Rose will try coming at Bridget with a fierce snaky neck, flashing eyes, and bared teeth. Bridget has discovered exactly what to do about that. She wastes no time on rancor, but simply turns around and starts backing up toward Rose. And she can deliver a very precisely-aimed kick. Rose has not found a way to counter this threat - Bridget's back legs trump Rose's teeth.

Most of the time, though, the two of them get along just fine -